Death of Harry S. Truman

The Death of Harry S. Truman came after three weeks in the hospital, as lung congestion, heart irregularity, kidney blockages, and a failing digestive system overcame the former president. He died at Research Hospital and Medical Center on December 26, 1972, with his family close by. The account of his final illness also looks back across a life shaped by consequential decisions—from accepting a highly secret wartime project on the assurance of Henry L. Stimson to weighing how to end the war with Japan—and ends with Truman’s own preference for a farewell rooted in Independence, not Washington.

The final hospitalization

In the summer of 1972, Truman had been hospitalized after another fall and then spent two weeks in the hospital with gastrointestinal troubles. Late on December 5, he was taken by ambulance from his home to Research Hospital and Medical Center for the last time. His condition was initially reported as fair, but the next day it was listed as critical. Doctors used antibiotics and oxygen in an effort to clear his lungs; bronchitis complicated treatment, while hardening of the arteries caused his heart to race periodically.

For a few days, Truman seemed to rally and was removed from the critical list. But the improvement did not hold. The struggle continued for three weeks, with lung congestion joined by an irregular heartbeat, kidney blockages, and a failing digestive system. On December 14, he was reported no longer able to talk. The account records the measured changes in his condition rather than a single decisive turn: a brief reprieve, then a gradual narrowing of what remained possible.

Family at the bedside

Bess Wallace Truman and Margaret Truman Daniel were with him daily in his room on the hospital’s sixth floor. Mary Jane Truman also visited, despite being a patient herself after injuring herself in a fall several weeks earlier. In the first part of his stay, Truman was reported awake and smiling. Asked how he felt, he answered, “Better.” On December 11, he reportedly said, “I feel all right.” By then, Christmas decorations were visible in his window, a small seasonal detail set against the worsening medical bulletins.

A special-duty nurse who had cared for Truman at night since his admission later remembered him as warm, sweet, and appreciative. On Christmas Eve, as her shift ended, she leaned over and told him she would have the night off; when she asked whether he would still be there when she returned, he squeezed her hand. She took the gesture as a sign that his mind remained responsive. It was one of the last recorded exchanges in an illness increasingly defined by what he could no longer say.

On Christmas morning, Truman was in a deep coma and near death. A hospital bulletin described his condition as unimproved, and the chief of staff said his chances of survival were very small. Bess had been staying overnight and spending most of each day with her husband, and she was almost totally exhausted. Margaret persuaded her mother to return with her to Independence that night. Truman was comatose, and, as the account makes plain, there was nothing the family could do to help him.

A life of decisions recalled

The final illness closes a narrative in which Truman repeatedly faced consequential choices without complete information. In June 1943, staff investigators had encountered puzzling evidence of secret expenditures for the Manhattan Project. When Truman spoke by telephone with Stimson, the secretary said that only a handful of people knew about the development. Truman accepted his assurance that it served a specific and unique purpose and asked no further questions. By July, he knew its essential nature; when former senator Lewis Schwellenbach raised concerns about nearly half a million acres condemned near Hanford, Truman wrote back that Schwellenbach need not worry.

Two years later, as he considered whether to invade Japan or use bombing and blockade, Truman described the strategy as his hardest decision to date. A June 1945 meeting reviewed a proposed invasion of Kyushu, beginning in November, with General George Marshall estimating roughly 31,000 losses in its first thirty days. The account emphasizes that the bomb was not mentioned at that meeting, even as invasion plans proceeded. Such episodes frame the death not as an isolated ending but as the close of a life repeatedly placed at the intersection of limited knowledge, grave consequences, and presidential responsibility.

That pattern continued in office. When Congress rebuffed his requests, Truman asked again, including for compulsory national health insurance and universal military training. In 1947, he called congressional leaders together as a crisis over Greece and Turkey sharpened; after hearing George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, he agreed that the country faced a choice between acting and losing by default. During the Korean War, he also moved cautiously in response to General Douglas MacArthur’s defiance, sending a restrained reprimand rather than immediately dismissing him. These episodes do not explain his final illness, but they show the public life that the hospital’s steady bulletins brought to a close.

Death and the farewell he chose

Truman died at 7:50 a.m. Central Standard Time on Tuesday, December 26, 1972, at Research Hospital and Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. A state funeral plan, prepared years earlier, specified a five-day ceremony conducted by the Fifth Army. It originally called for Truman’s body to be flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda before returning to Missouri for burial. During the weeks he lay dying, the Army’s horse Black Jack was flown several times to prepare for the planned journey to Missouri.

Truman had reviewed the funeral plan at his library and approved nearly all of it, subject to changes his family might want. He objected to lying in state in Washington. He wanted to be buried “out there,” gesturing toward the courtyard, where, he said, he could get up and walk into his office if he wanted to. The preference gives the account its final image: after a public life organized around the presidency and its formal duties, Truman’s chosen resting place remained close to the home and work to which he had returned.