The U.S. Naval Institute Memoir Collection

The U.S. Naval Institute’s Memoir Collection honors and preserves the personal stories of those who served in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. For family members, friends, shipmates, and researchers, the growing Collection serves as a valuable source of firsthand accounts and primary-source history.

  • Many rank their military service as a defining milestone in their lives.
  • While service memoirs generally face tough hurdles in the publishing market, the Naval Institute Memoir Collection provides authors with an accessible, central online location for the preservation of their autobiographical accounts, viewable today and by future generations as well. Whether already self-published or never published, their stories have a welcoming venue in perpetuity with the USNI Memoir Collection.
  • Others may have a memoir - of their own or of a family member's service - simply gathering dust somewhere, unseen but nonetheless a part of the overall American historical record. With the Memoir Collection, such memories - be they in the form of a shorter vignette or a fuller autobiography - now have a valued place in a permanent, searchable online archive.
  • Learn more by clicking below.

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General Genda Remembers Pearl Harbor

Minoru Genda
World War II
On 3 March 1969, the U.S. Naval Institute made history (and generated no small degree of controversy) when it hosted a talk by retired Japanese General Minoru Genda, a “mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack,” at the U.S. Naval Academy...
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Memoir

Memoir of Captain Albert J. Pelletier, USN (Ret.)

Albert J. Pelletier Jr.
World War I
Captain Albert Joseph Pelletier Jr. (1914-1999) served in the U.S. Navy from 1932 to 1968 and is most well remembered for his cryptography work during World War II and postwar communications intelligence (COMINT) activities. In the book "U.S. Navy Codebreakers,"...
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Memoir

Naval Aviation Training in the Early Days

Alfred K. Warren Jr.
World War I
The wild and woolly pioneering days of naval aviation, and the formative years of the nascent Naval Air Station San Diego, are recalled in this colorful account by Alfred K. Warren Jr. It is from a never-before-published series of interviews...
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Memoir

A Sailor’s Letters to Mom, 1930–1943

Raymond Cornelius Malley
World War II
On a warm, muggy and rainy day in July 2012, the Malley Family had a reunion at the Montgomery, New York, Firehouse with about 55 family and friends in attendance. It seems the younger generation of Malleys has an interest...
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