Have you heard about the coconut that saved a president?

As our current Oval Office occupant would say, “No joke, folks!” If you’ve visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, you will have seen the historic memento that facilitated JFK’s rescue during World War II. It is a coconut husk preserved on a wooden base and covered by a plastic dome. On this day for celebrating presidents, when Americans no longer see their chief executives as heroic, it might be appropriate to remember those presidents who revealed strength of character in combat.

With his fragile health and unstable back, young John Kennedy could have sought a 4F draft designation, preserving him from conscription during World War II. Or, at the very least, with his father being an influential figure in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, JFK might have performed military service from behind a desk and out of harm’s way. Instead, he enlisted in the Navy just prior to Pearl Harbor and used his family connections to engineer an assignment in the South Pacific war against Japan as a patrol torpedo (PT) boat skipper.  

On a moonless night, in early August 1943, Lt. (j.g.) Kennedy and his 12-man crew were patrolling the waters of Blackett Strait, searching for enemy convoys supplying Japanese troops in the Solomon Islands. JFK’s boat, PT 109, lacked radar, experienced spotty radio communications, and engaged only one of its three engines to reduce noise and wake. As he piloted from the cockpit, he heard a panicked shout from a crew member, “Ship at 2 o’clock!” A giant hull was bearing down on Kennedy’s 80-foot mahogany and steel cruiser. With no time for maneuvering into position to fire torpedoes, Kennedy watched in horror as the Japanese destroyer, Amagiri, advanced in the misty darkness. “He turned into us, going like hell,” JFK later remembered.

A thunderous explosion rocked the 109, shooting flames in orange plumes above the wreck and out into the water. The enemy ship had sliced Kennedy’s craft in half and ignited its fuel tanks. The collision slammed the young skipper against the cockpit bulkhead, exacerbating his back injury. When he righted himself, he saw his crew scattered by the destroyer’s wake, struggling amid waves and fire.

Two men had been killed instantly by the collision and were lost in the dark water. Several survivors suffered severe burns and injuries. Summers spent in the waters off the Kennedy family’s Cape Cod compound, and years on the Harvard swim team, now prepared JFK for the test of a lifetime. He swam to the dispersed crew, towing them back to the portion of his craft that remained afloat.

As daylight broke over the battered sailors, holding on to the listing hulk of their boat, they hoped the Navy would send a rescue party, but none appeared. They were surrounded by enemy-held islands. If they waited for currents to determine their fate, they might drift right into Japanese hands, where torture and death were possible outcomes as POWs.  

The skipper decided to swim for Plum Pudding Island, so small that it was unlikely to be occupied. Yet it was more than three miles away, and some of the men were poor swimmers or too injured to make the journey. One had suffered burns over 70 percent of his body and could barely move. Kennedy ordered his executive officer to lash planks together so the men could hold on and not scatter. JFK slipped into the buoyant saltwater and began swimming breaststroke, towing the burned crew member by clamping the man’s life-preserver strap between his teeth.

The agonizing journey took nearly four hours. Despite towing his crewman, Kennedy arrived at Plum Pudding first. Convinced that American ships would pass that night on their way to patrol Blackett Strait, Kennedy swam out into the dark ocean carrying a lantern and pistol to signal them. He treaded water for hours, afraid that sharks and barracuda might attack him. No predatory fish approached, but the U.S. Navy was also absent. Near daybreak, the skipper had to retrace his long swim back to Plum Pudding, where he fell ill from fatigue and the saltwater he ingested. 

Kennedy developed a new plan, ordering everyone back into the water for a swim to Olasana Island, where he hoped to find food and potable water. When they didn’t, the skipper and another officer swam to Naru Island. Two native Solomon Islanders, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, young teens who served as scouts for the Americans, came upon the castaways. They spoke only broken English but comprehended Kennedy’s request to deliver a message. With no writing materials, Gasa suggested a coconut, and Kumana shinnied up a palm tree and plucked one, indicating to JFK that he could use the smooth husk like paper. Kennedy took out his knife and carved letters: “Nauru [sic] Island. Native knows posit.[ion]. He can pilot. 11 alive. Need small boat. Kennedy.”

Handing the message to Gasa and Kumana, Kennedy watched the young islanders paddle away in their canoe and hoped they could elude the enemy to summon help. After traveling seven miles, the teens passed the coconut to Benjamin Kevu, another Solomon Island scout, who spoke fluent English. In turn, he relayed Kennedy’s predicament to an Australian coast watcher, Lt. Reginald Evans. He contacted the U.S. Navy with Kennedy’s request for rescue. 

An American PT boat rendezvoused with JFK, who guided it through enemy waters and dangerous coral reefs to Olasana, where his crew remained hidden. After a harrowing week spent dodging the enemy and searching for sustenance, the 11 survivors of PT 109 headed back to base. Bill Johnston, the doomed boat’s engineer, observed, “Lt. Kennedy was one hell of a man. … I didn’t pick him for my skipper, but I kept thanking God that the Navy picked him for me.”

In fighting for his crew’s survival against immense odds, Kennedy’s physical courage, admirable leadership, unshakable optimism, creative resourcefulness, and staunch perseverance prompted the Navy to award him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. 

Kennedy, with typical self-effacement, would comment that his heroism was “involuntary. They sank my boat.” His loyal crew rode atop a recreation of PT 109 in JFK’s 1961 inaugural parade. From the reviewing stand, the new president saluted his comrades in arms, and they returned the gesture. The president invited Gasa and Kumana to the inauguration (though they couldn’t attend); posed for photos with a model of the 109, which he kept nearby on an Oval Office shelf; welcomed to the White House his rescuers, Kevu and Evans, who had received the SOS coconut almost two decades earlier; and advised producers of the movie “PT 109,” starring Cliff Robertson as JFK, based on a 1961 book. 

In each office where Kennedy served, from Capitol Hill to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Naru Island coconut occupied a place of honor. In his congressional office, it sat on the mantel, but it was most prominent in every photo of his Oval Office desk, at the front right, as he looked across the room.

Once the Kennedy Library opened in 1979, the coconut and a reproduction of the president’s Resolute Desk went on display. When his daughter Caroline became U.S. ambassador to Japan in 2013, she wanted to share with the Japanese her father’s war experiences. Obtaining permission from the National Archives to send the coconut back to the Pacific from whence it came, the JFK Library flew it in a passenger seat to Japan. Ambassador Kennedy also met with the elderly widow of the Amigiri’s captain and sipped tea with her.

By the commemoration of Kennedy’s centennial in 2017, the coconut had gained such notoriety that the JFK Library’s Gift Shop began selling reproductions of it for $75. Now anyone can own a facsimile of this White House memento that saved a future president, who would become the first of six Navy veterans to win the nation’s highest office.

Barbara A. Perry is Presidential Studies director and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Follow her on Twitter @BarbaraPerryUVA.