Jack Clarey Transcript.pdf

Jack Clarey, Operations Officer, U.S. Navy 

During the Vietnam War, Jack Clarey served his country through his work as an operations officer in the US Navy and eventually through his work aboard a Vietnamese navy ship. 

Jack Clarey was born on June 5, 1942, in Waterloo, Iowa. He lived there for six months before his family moved to Des Moines, where he attended St. John's Catholic School during his elementary years and Dowling High School for his high school years.

In high school, Clarey was a gifted speaker and actor, participating in speech competitions as well as school plays. After high school, he went straight to college at Iowa State University, in 1960, where he majored in Industrial Administration while he was a part of the Navy ROTC Scholarship program.

Initially, Clarey sought to become a Marine, and during his freshman year, he took a summer cruise to a destroyer in Long Beach. After his second year in Aviation and after having spent time on the West Coast, he decided to switch back to the Navy.

After his graduation from Iowa State University in 1965, Clarey was commissioned, married, and celebrated his birthday all within seven days. His commission assigned him aboard a minesweeper, the USS Jacana, as an Operations Officer. While aboard the USS Jacana, in Norfolk, Clarey was in charge of several men and had to deal with blunders that resulted from having a four-star admiral as an uncle.

Clarey recalls later on being phoned and told he would be detached and sent to Counterinsurgency school to learn the Vietnamese language. This would prepare him to serve aboard a Vietnamese Naval Ship as the only American. Thinking it was a joke, at first, Clarey laughed it off.  He would learn, however, that it was a very real call. Months later would be sent to Saigon after intensive training where he was the advisor aboard a Vietnamese ship using whatever language skills he had managed to learn during his time at the school. Clarey also provides fascinating examples of how differing American and Vietnamese cultural assumptions affected communication and operations.