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, Hugh Ivory Jones, was a truck driver and his mother, Vera Alice McGuire, a homemaker. She died in California just before Hugh Jr.’s 7th birthday. A brother died when Hugh was 10.

When he applied to enlist he said he’d completed 10th grade and was living at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Glendora, California. The CCC was a Depression-era federal jobs program for young men.  They planted trees, built roads and trails and made other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. 

His precise name is a bit confusing. On both his application to enlist and his enlistment oath Hugh signed as “Hugh Junior Jones.” The state of Oklahoma told the Navy that his birth certificate said “Hugh Jones Jr.”

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. Other sources include: enlistment records; 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.