Reminiscences of Capt. Stephen Jurika, Jr., USN (Ret.), vol. I

Captain Jurika grew up in the Philippines and attended schools not only in the islands but in Japan and China. A large part of this volume is concerned with the Far East. He became a Navy pilot in 1936 and spent the next two years in torpedo squadrons attached to the Saratoga. In 1939 he commenced a two-year tour as assistant naval attaché for air in Tokyo, where his command of Japanese and other Far Eastern languages aided his intelligence gathering for the Office of Naval Intelligence prior to World War II. In 1941 he put the Hornet in commission and was intelligence and operations officer when she carried Jimmy Doolittle’s bombers for the famous Tokyo Raid. Volume I concludes with a description of the Battle of Midway. Volume II continues with his service in the Hornet (CV-8) in the occupation of Guadalcanal until her demise at Santa Cruz. Captain Jurika then became gunnery officer on staff of Commander Fleet Air Noumea. Dodging Japanese and crocodiles, he led a three-man scouting party to pick a landing field site in Munda, New Georgia. In 1945 he became navigator in the carrier Franklin (CV-13), and at war’s end was operations officer on staff of Carrier Division One. In 1946 he was with OpNav and then returned to the Far East as assistant naval attaché for air in Melbourne, Australia. Duties that followed were: XO at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, Texas; 1951 returned to the Pacific on staff of Carrier Division One; liaison with U.S. Air Force in Japan; special missions in Pacific Fleet for Admirals Radford and Stump; Commander Fleet Air Wing 14; and in 1959, before his retirement, he was assigned to Stanford University as both teacher and student, getting his doctorate.