Emery, Jack Mandeville, ENS

ENS Emery was stationed aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was listed as missing in action and later declared dead.

Jack Mandeville Emery, a grandson of the founder of Emeryville, California, was a member of the ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he graduated in 1939. Jack was born on October 9, 1916, in Los Angeles, California, to Ralph Emery, an insurance agent, and Katherine (Kelly) Emery, a homemaker.

Jack Emery was lieutenant commander of the Beta Psi Chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity when he graduated and went on active duty with the U. S. Navy, Service # O-082845. He was appointed an Ensign (ENS) in the Naval Reserve in May 1939 and went on active duty aboard the USS Arizona that November.

ENS Jack Mandeville Emery, who was also a signal officer, was aboard the USS Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

At the onset of the December 7, 1941, attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on “Battleship Row.” The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side, and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island.  Just before 8:00 AM, the ship’s air raid alarm sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including an 1,700 lb. armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days. Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board, representing about half the total number of Americans killed that day.

ENS Jack Mandeville Emery is listed as Missing in Action or Buried at Sea (MIA). His remains are entombed along with more than 900 of his fellow shipmates at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii. His name is inscribed on the American Battle Monuments Commission's Courts of the Missing in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also located in Honolulu, Hawaii. ENS Emery was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

A destroyer escort (Emery DE-28) was renamed in his memory in July 1943. The ship earned four battle stars during the war.

All three of his brothers served in World War II - one in the Marines and the others in the Army.

This information was researched and written on behalf of the USS Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.

SOURCES:
The Oakland Tribune
“The Delta” of Sigma Nu magazine
Alameda Times-Star
San Francisco Examiner
Census Records
Naval History and Heritage Command
University of California Yearbook
https://pearlharbor.org/facts-uss-arizona-bb-39/
http://www.ibiblio.org/phha/arizona/history.html#pearlharbor 
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7892673/jack-mandeville-emery 

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This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Together We Served and on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen person’s name and read his/her story.

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