S2c Hugh Ivory Jr. Jones

Hugh Ivory Jones Jr. served in the Navy for just 311 days before he was killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Dec. 7, 1941. He was a seaman second class

Mr. Jones was born June 29, 1923 in Shawnee, Oklahoma but mostly lived in Los Angeles and attended high school there. His father was a truck driver and his mother, Vera Alice McGuire, a homemaker. She died just before Hugh Jr.’s 7th birthday. A brother died when Hugh was 10.

His father remarried and it was Hugh’s step-mother, Coy, who signed the papers permitting him to enlist in the Navy. He needed a parent’s permission because he was still 17.

Mr. Jones wrote frequent letters home. He was homesick but loved the Navy. The only photo the family has is one he sent a few days before he died. It shows him with a woman he’d recently met.

His father had two other sons, Harlan and Wallace, who served in World War II and survived. Hugh Sr. was able to visit the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor shortly before he died in 1966.

Sources: Special thanks to a cousin, Linda Dyer Craig, for most of this information and the photograph; Census; Navy muster roll; California death index. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.