Harry S Truman

Thirty-Third President

1945-1953

Born: May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri

Died: December 26, 1972 in Independence, Missouri

Married to Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name--the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.

He was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88.