Juan H. Jaurigue was killed in action during the Battle of Saipan in the summer of 1944.
At least, that’s what the Tucson Citizen reported at the time. Jaurigue, now 90, smiles when this story is brought up in his south-side home.
The Marine veteran was erroneously reported as dead after being wounded in the summer of 1944. The newspaper eventually corrected the mistake.
Jaurigue joined the Marines in August of 1943 at age 18. The Bisbee-born Tucson resident didn’t meet the weight requirement the first time he tried to enlist — 2 pounds underweight, he said.
So, he ate several bananas just before going in a second time and was able to enlist.
Jaurigue, also called Johnny, manned a Browning automatic rifle as a Marine infantryman fighting the Pacific Theater.
In short, Jaurigue says, his job was to “kill people.”
He fought in some of the key battles of the Pacific campaign — Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, he said. Jaurigue was wounded in the fighting on Saipan and Iwo Jima and received the Purple Heart and the Gold Star for his service.
“I’m fortunate to be alive,” he says.
Jaurigue said he can count about 15 of his friends in the Marines that were killed during the war.
“All these really young kids, man, cut in half. Sometimes right here,” he says as he points to his stomach. “You don’t live too long after that.”
After the war, Jaurigue returned to Tucson, where he’s been living ever since, working for Pacific Fruit Express and then Arizona Ice and Cold Storage.
Catherine Jaurigue, his daughter, said that growing up her father never told their family stories about the war. She said she didn’t find what he had done during the war until she was about 50.
“He just didn’t talk about it to any of us,” Catherine Jaurigue said. “He worked a Monday through Friday job, a Saturday through Sunday job.
“I think he figured that the more he worked, the less he had to think about what happened,” she said.
Jaurigue says he’s proud to be a Marine. He struggles to remember some details from the war, but he points out one he remembers.
On Okinawa, at the closing stages of the war, he planted a cypress tree on the island, Jaurigue says.
Has he gone back to see it?
“Not yet,” he said.
