His health problems persisted, as well. He had stomach trouble, was far too thin, and failed physicals for both the army and the navy. But again, his father's connections prevailed, and a friendly doctor gave JFK a clean bill of health. JFK was sworn in as a naval ensign on September 25, 1941, less than two months before the bombing of Pearl The War Hero and Tragedy .
The early 1940s marked a changing of the guard in the Kennedy clan. Joseph Kennedy, Sr.'s political star was in eclipse--in the country at large, because of his support for appeasement while Ambassador to Great Britain, and in the Democratic party in specific, because of his opposition, in 1940, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's nomination to run for a historically-unprecedented third term as President of the United States. His children, however, were on the rise. Kathleen Kennedy, JFK's favorite sibling, was working for a newspaper in Washington, and being romanced by the social elite of both the U.S. and Great Britain. Joseph Kennedy, Jr. vigorously opposed U.S. involvement in World War II while at Harvard Law School, but once Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, he enlisted in the Naval Aviation Cadet Program, and was soon flying missions over Europe. Meanwhile, JFK (now "Ensign Kennedy") was working for Naval Intelligence in Washington, and sleeping with a Danish beauty named Inga Arvad, who worked as a columnist for the same paper as Kathleen. An exotic, well-traveled woman, Inga had connections to Nazi leaders, a circumstance which eventually got JFK in trouble with his superior officers. The young ensign was reassigned to a bureaucratic post in South Carolina, and his romance with the Danish beauty fizzled.
JFK found South Carolina paralyzingly dull, and he begged his father to pull strings to get him assigned to sea duty. Joseph Kennedy, Sr. obliged, and in late 1942, JFK was given an assignment on a Motor Torpedo Boat, or "PT boat," as it was informally known.