Ships
- USS Paul Jones (DD-230) Captain, 15 September 1941 to 10 January 1942
John Joseph Hourihan was born in Miami, Florida, on 3 November 1902. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1925 and spent his career in the United States Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 August 1935 and to lieutenant commander on 1 April 1941. Temporary wartime rank made him a commander on 15 August 1942 and a captain on 1 August 1943. He later retired as a rear admiral. He died in Miami on 7 February 1984 and was buried in the United States Naval Academy Cemetery.
On 15 September 1941, Lieutenant Commander Hourihan took command of the destroyer Paul Jones (DD-230). She was an older four-stack ship of the Asiatic Fleet, then serving in the Philippines as war with Japan drew near. He was her captain when the fighting began in December 1941. Japanese aircraft wrecked the navy yard at Cavite, and the surviving surface ships were driven south out of Philippine waters toward the Netherlands East Indies. Through that opening month of the Pacific war, Paul Jones remained his ship.
His command ended on 10 January 1942. That day Charles Richard Herms became captain of Paul Jones. Hourihan had held her from 15 September 1941 to 10 January 1942, from the last weeks of peace in the Asiatic Fleet through the first weeks of war.
He was not her captain at Balikpapan on 24 January 1942. That night a small group of American destroyers ran in among the Japanese ships gathered off Borneo for a landing and attacked the anchorage with torpedoes and gunfire. Herms had Paul Jones. The Navy Cross awarded to Hourihan still names him as commanding officer of the destroyer for the night of 24–25 January. The change of command on 10 January places Herms in that fight.
A Silver Star awarded to Hourihan likewise names him as commanding officer of Paul Jones at the Battle of the Java Sea on 27 February 1942, and in a daylight attack on Japanese cruisers. He had already turned the ship over on 10 January. Those citations attach to him a command he had left behind.