Obituaries : James Douglas Jr.; Ex-Defense Official

James H. Douglas Jr., former secretary of the Air Force and deputy secretary of defense, is dead of cancer. He was 88 when he died Wednesday at his home here.

Douglas was an attorney and investment banker who served briefly under Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and for the full eight years of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Administration.

Douglas was both undersecretary and later secretary of the Air Force under Eisenhower, and he presided over planning and construction of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

He advised Eisenhower to accept responsibility for the U-2 espionage flight over the Soviet Union in 1960 and the American involvement in Southeast Asia. As Air Force secretary in 1958 he reaffirmed the 1925 court-martial and conviction of Brig. Gen. William (Billy) Mitchell, saying that Mitchell had violated orders from his superiors because they refused to accept the military significance of the airplane.

But Douglas also noted that Mitchell’s stance had been vindicated by time and the posthumous Medal of Honor that Congress awarded him in 1946.

The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native graduated from Princeton University after serving as an Army officer in World War I. He later spent a year at Cambridge University in England before attending Harvard Law School.

After earning his law degree in 1924, Douglas moved to Chicago.

He held a high post in the Treasury Department under Hoover and Roosevelt. He returned to the Army during World War II.

By 1945, he was chief of staff of the Army’s Air Transport Command.

Eisenhower appointed Douglas undersecretary of the Air Force in 1953, and secretary in 1957. In 1959, Douglas began a two-year stint as deputy secretary of defense.