The oceanic squid is a kind of short life cycle species which has the characteristics of being dead immediately after spawning, and the stock size entirely depends on the recruitment, while the recruitment mainly depends on the mortality of the oceanic squid in the early life stages. Ommastrephes bartramii is an important economic cephalopod, and widely distribute in the North Pacific Ocean, therefore understanding the progress of the early life history of Ommastrephes bartramii thoroughly can play an important role on predicting the changes of recruitment in the next year. For this purpose, this paper mainly reviews and discusses the distribution of paralarval and juvenile of Ommastrephes bartramii, feeding, age and growth, natural mortality, also the correlation between the environment and recruitment. This passage also gives a brief introduction of the progress of embryonic development and morphological changes of larvae. The early life history which is from spawning to hatching and embryonic development to grow to be larvae is a very important and least understood stage. Future research should focus on this stage by studying the growth and death of the larvae and the influents of environment changes on the squid hatching success, as well as the stock recruitment.