Newly released documents reveal John F Kennedy's lukewarm stance on Irish reunification shortly after World War II.
John F Kennedy was only beginning to research Ireland and his heritage as he embarked on a political career. Photograph: Bryan O'BrienThe 29-year-old Kennedy returned from the second World War as a hero having saved the lives of crew members of a patrol torpedo craft boat in the Pacific Ocean when it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. On his return to Boston the head of the Irish legation (embassy) in Washington, Robert Brennan, sought Kennedy out and had lunch with him in November 1945.
He was, after all, the son of the former US ambassador to Great Britain Joe Kennedy and the grandson of John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, the former mayor of Boston. Kennedy had been in Dublin shortly before his return to the United States and Brennan anticipated that he would be fired up over the issue of partition. “I was somewhat surprised to discover that Mr Kennedy was quite apathetic towards the question and was inclined to belittle our cause,” Brennan recounted in a note which is in the Boston consulate files as part of the National Archives annual release. “He said that after all we had not been too badly off and there were other partitions that were so much more pressing and that, in the final analysis, he would see no reason for the United States taking a particular interest in that problem since it might well mean that in another war, which to him seems likely, the bases in North, if a united Ireland came into existence, would then be unavailable in the United States. “In other words, he asked what has the United States to gain from backing Ireland’s point of view on this partition question and antagonising Great Britain with whom her interests are so closely aligned for the present and, indeed, may be more closely connected in the futur
JOHN F KENNEDY IRELAND PARTITION WORLD WAR II US FOREIGN POLICY
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