HARRY S. TRUMAN
Politics
Born: May 8, 1884
Lamar, Mo.
Died: December 26, 1972

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Harry Truman used the middle initial S. as the family could not agree on whether his middle name should be Shippe or Solomon. After attending public school, working as a railroad timekeeper, a bank clerk and running the family farm, Truman attended law school and was elected U.S. Senator in 1934. With Roosevelt's help Truman was nominated for and elected Democratic vice president in 1944.

He became the 33rd President of the U.S. when Roosevelt died in 1945 and was elected to a full term in 1948.

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S. Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Truman was responsible for bringing World War II to an end by authorizing the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 8) 1945. In 1948-49 he crushed the Russian blockade of West Berlin with a giant airlift and sent American forces to Korea in 1950 when communist North Korea invaded South Korea.