Hero of the Pacific

by James Brady

  Well, after my talk with undertaker Bongiovi I was still getting differing versions of whether the body had passed through Raritan, where a mass was said at St. Ann’s Church, several sources insisting they had seen the casket. So I asked Deacon John Pacifico of the church to clear up the mystery. On September 2, 2008, he wrote back: “Dear Jim, Both Anna Marie Bongiovi and Steve Del Rocco have confirmed that the body of John Basilone never came to Raritan. The body was at Arlington.”

  So at some point the decision had been made to bury their son at Arlington, instead of in New Jersey. Some sources say Bongiovi recommended Arlington. He didn’t say that to me but continued telling me what then happened.

  According to Doorly it was the undertaker who convinced Dora being buried at Arlington was a big deal, would do honor to her boy, and that Arlington was where Basilone belonged. I don’t believe that any of them, including the undertaker Bongiovi, suspected what was coming. They all expected an intimate little funeral, a prayer from Father Russo, some friends, the family, a rite appropriate to a small Jersey town and a blue-collar family and their boy who never made money or much of a splash when he lived there, who joined the Marines, and then died in the war.

  The burial was on April 20, 1948, but the Basilone funeral was going to be relentlessly small-town. Police chief Rossi volunteered to drive the limo, Bongiovi volunteered the undertaking services, Father Russo drove up front with the chief, with Dora and Sal, the parents, in back. A couple of other cars made up the cortege, carrying Basilone brothers and sisters and some neighbors. Al Gaburo the laundryman came, the man who once fired Johnny for goofing off and sleeping on the laundry bags; the mayor Rocco Miele; a future mayor, Steve Del Rocco. It was about two hundred miles, but the traffic was lighter then and they made it in under four hours.

  Bongiovi told me they expected a simple affair, a couple of guys with rifles, maybe a bugler to play Taps, that was about it. Doorly gives this account from the family and Raritan vantage point: “When they arrived, they were amazed. First, they were picked up from their vehicles and driven in jeeps to the grave site. There they saw dozens of military dignitaries, a Marine band, and uniformed soldiers [Marines, surely] who would fire a gun salute. It was a most impressive, inspiring service, a true tribute to an unselfish hero. Father Russo blessed the casket. An American flag had first covered the coffin, and then as is customary, it was later taken off, folded in the ritual manner, and given to the Basilone family. Anthony Bongiovi, when he spoke with Doorly, said the funeral was simply unbelievable. He recalls that it was during the playing of Taps that everyone became emotional. The family and friends all drove back the same day.”

  More than four hundred miles down and back and eight hours behind the wheel. No one thought to have reserved a couple of hotel rooms or a motel, what was then called a travel court. Maybe they didn’t have the dough. But they had properly buried their Johnny. Lena Riggi Basilone, the widow, wasn’t there. She had come east after the war to meet John’s family, though only the once. Her niece, an actress and dancer, lives in New York, where in 2007 I interviewed her.

  Doorly contacted Virginia Grey for a comment to use in his monograph, asking if she remembered Basilone. She was eighty-seven by then and still living in California, and she sent a statement: “How I do remember John. Every time I pass Basilone Drive at Camp Pendleton, it brings tears to my eyes.”

  Curiously, there is very little about Basilone’s widow, though there is a photo from 1949 when she and the family attended in Boston the commissioning of the destroyer USS Basilone on July 26. Doorly writes this brief passage about her: “Lena did not meet John’s parents until after his death when she came to New Jersey. A picture of them together appears in this book. She never remarried, as she was very content with her life. She told a friend ‘Once you have the best you can’t settle for less.’ Lena was described by her friends as a great cook, who enjoyed inviting people over for special dinners. She worked at an electrical plant. Always active in military affairs, she volunteered at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital, the American Veterans Auxiliary, and the Women Marines Association. She died on June [11] of 1999 at the age of 86.” Former Marine Clinton Watters, the best man at their wedding in 1944, told me in admiring tones, “When she was in her eighties, she looked fifty.”

  With the widow so relentlessly offstage in the various accounts of Basilone’s life, I contacted her niece, Fiddle Viracola, an Emmy-winning actress, singer, and dancer who appeared on Broadway in such plays as The Beauty Part and The Rose Tattoo, and who lives in Greenwich Village. She told me she had met with a writer for a new Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks television series about the Pacific war, and has on her own been collecting material about John and Lena for a screenplay. She’s also had an exchange of letters with the Spielberg office and with the casting people, so she’s anxious to see the finished project. “I’m working on the script now [her own script, not theirs] and I’ve got eighty-eight pages. It’s a powerful love story. Lena was so strong, and they were very compatible. He was very lost, always losing jobs, and Lena gave him a center. She knew his passion to go back [to the Pacific and the war].”

  According to Ms. Viracola, Lena met the Basilone family only that one time in Massachusetts and never in New Jersey (as other sources insist she did). “They met up in Boston for the commissioning of the ship. The Basilones had been horrible to her. Raritan was resentful. I gather his sister wanted to run the show, getting all the limelight and the plaudits. There were a lot of self-serving people around.”

  To my knowledge, the widow did not attend the 1948 reburial at Arlington. “I don’t know if she was invited,” Viracola said. “I hear the mother [Dora] wanted Lena to come back to Raritan and live there, but that wasn’t her style. She became a master sergeant and left the Marine Corps eventually and ran a company that was in air-conditioning and things like that and was involved in many things for the vets. People were drawn to Lena.”

  What about that line explaining why she never remarried, “I was married to the best”? “Yes,” said the niece, “that quote is true. She also said, ‘Great love only happens once.’”

  Had she as reported handed over her ten-thousand-dollar government check as next of kin to the Basilone family? “Yes, she gave it to them. And when Lena was asked if she wanted to be buried next to John at Arlington, she said, ‘I don’t want anything to do with them.’” Was “them” the government or the family? “The family. They did not treat her well. And when she died Lena was buried in California wearing his wedding ring.”

  28

  Sixty-five years after he earned the Medal of Honor fighting on Guadalcanal, sixty-three years after his death on Iwo Jima, there remains within the Marine Corps controversy about John Basilone. Not that anyone seriously disputes his heroism or questions the Medal of Honor, but you encounter differences of opinion about him, and he has his critics.

  For instance, did Chesty Puller recommend Basilone not for a Medal of Honor but for a lesser award, a Navy Cross? No, reported Bob Aquilina, of the Marine Corps History Division, who sent me Puller’s formal recommendation of October 30, 1942 (just a week after the October 25 battle), for a Medal of Honor for Basilone.

  Aquilina also provided more information about what exactly happened on Iwo. According to a dispatch from Marine combat correspondent Henry Giniger, shortly after the landing Basilone was “wounded fatally” when “he was about to lead his machine gun platoon forward through a heavy barrage.”

  More descriptive is part of a cover story in the Marine Corps Gazette of October 1963, which also brings into question the account in Chuck Tatum’s book of the famous blockhouse attack that first day on Iwo. It quotes former Marine corporal Ralph R. Belt (also cited in a disparate version by Tatum): “Basilone and I were both in the 27th Regiment—he was with C Company, I was in B Company. We landed on Red Beach 2. Right after we’d landed, my squad ran into a Jap block-house firing canister shells at the 26th Marines, and doing a lot of damage, too. The
re was a Marine standing on top of this pillbox, shouting for flame throwers and demolition men, I was a demolition man, and my buddy right alongside, PFC William N. Pegg, was a flame-thrower man. Before I had time to prepare demolition, Pegg moved to one side of the pill-box and knocked it out. He got a Silver Star. The Marine standing on top of the pill-box—shouting instructions, yelling for a machine gun, shaking a Ka-Bar knife at the Japs trying to get out—was Manila John. He would turn his back on the Japs to yell at us—wave his knife and laugh, then turn around toward them again—wave his knife and laugh right in their faces. I think Manila John was a great Marine. I’m very proud to have served with him in the Marines and on Iwo Jima. With the block-house out of the way, Manila John and his platoon fought their way across those bullet-torn sand dunes toward Airfield Number 1.”

  Corporal Belt then also corroborates the yarn about Basilone’s guiding the tanks ahead before winding up his eyewitness account. “They had reached the edge of the airfield when the end came for Manila John a bursting mortar shell got him along with four others of his platoon.” Later, crossing the airfield itself, “Pegg and I ran across a kid from our company by the name of Sorenson who had a very bad shoulder wound. A few feet away a corpsman was working on another wounded Marine. It was Manila John. He’d been hit bad. It looked like a mortar shell had landed right in front of him and ripped him wide open from his chin on down. As bad off as he was, he spoke to us—and he wore that grand smile of his. I have thought about that smile many, many times since. He died soon afterwards.”

  In 1992 a couple of newspaper reporters named Laurence Arnold and Regina de Peri Whitmer of the Bridgewater (NJ) Courier-News Sunday paper, for a feature about Basilone, got hold of a letter sent by a Lieutenant Hector R. Gai Jr. to his own sister on March 7, 1945, writing this about Iwo. “When a Japanese mortar struck Basilone’s position, I was with him when he died on the south edge of [the airfield] Motoyama 1. He certainly did a hell of a fine job before he got it. He was only in action about two hours and a half…. John lived about an hour and a half but was in a coma. Surgery was the only thing and, of course, at that time it was out of the question. There wasn’t any.”

  Aquilina also highlighted a copy of Basilone’s posthumous Navy Cross citation signed by Forrestal and cited earlier. In part it reads—according to Corporal Belt, inaccurately—how Manila John, on top of the blockhouse, destroyed it single-handedly with grenades and demolitions.

  As Time magazine reported in 1945, it was a mortar shell that killed Basilone. That story was also appended by the reference branch, as were other newspaper clips from the Journal-American in New York, a 1943 story bylined by Burris Jenkins Jr., headlined “Fought full regiment of Japs, Now he has Congressional Medal.”

  Regarding Corporal Belt, how just plain wacky is it that a veteran Marine machine-gun platoon sergeant in a firefight would be on the roof of an enemy blockhouse waving a Ka-Bar hunting knife around and taunting the Japanese instead of firmly on the ground commanding his gun crews and directing their fire? Tatum’s earlier version seems more credible, that Basilone ordered demolitions man Belt and flamethrower Pegg to attack the bunker while his machine guns provided overhead covering fire.

  Then again, as in Tatum’s memory and book, was Basilone firing off a storm of bullets at the enemy in a fury, eyes blazing, or had he never fired a round just before he was hit? You can’t have it both ways. Was his final action on the beach? Clearly not. Or inland on the approach to Motoyama Airfield #1? Probably there. The contradictions escalate with each different source. I’m not quite sure just which of the competing accounts is the most reliable. Some seem more bizarre than anything else with their obvious fabrications.

  As far as Basilone’s performance on Iwo is concerned, we have the official citation for his Navy Cross with attachments, including the signature of the commandant of the Marine Corps, who by that time late in the war, six months after Basilone died, was General Alexander Vandegrift, his commanding officer on the ’Canal and the very officer who in Australia in May 1943 presented Basilone with his Medal of Honor.

  Here is the documentation for the Navy Cross on Iwo and the citation itself, starting with the recommendation for an award: “From the commanding officer, Company C, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, 24 April 1945,” and sent upward through the chain of command all the way to Vandegrift:

  Subject: Navy Cross, recommendation for, case of Gunnery Sergeant John (n) Basilone (287506). USMC (Deceased). (A) Simple citation. (B) Statement of Witness.

  It is recommended that Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone be considered for the award of the Navy Cross. On 19 February, 1945, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone was serving in combat with 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands.

  On this date, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone, moving forward in the face of heavy artillery fire, worked his way to the top of an enemy blockhouse which was holding up the advance of his company. Single handed, through the use of hand grenades and demolitions, he completely destroyed the blockhouse and its occupants. Later, on the same day, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone calmly guided one of our tanks, which was trapped in an enemy minefield, to safety, through heavy mortar and artillery fire. Gunnery Sergeant Basilone’s courage and initiative did much to further the advance of his company at a time vital to the success of the operation. His expert tactical knowledge and daring aggressiveness were missed when he was killed at the edge of the airstrip by a mortar blast later the same day.

  This was signed by Edward Kasky.

  Rereading this “simple citation,” a sort of preliminary sketching out of the facts for the authorities to review before writing and approving the formal citation itself and the award, I’m struck by several problems noted earlier in other accounts. Why would a machine-gun platoon sergeant be toting hand grenades and demolitions enabling him to knock out a blockhouse? Earlier stories seemed to indicate he destroyed the blockhouse from ground level, running toward it, not on its roof. And how is it that Basilone, just arrived on the scene, is able expertly to guide a tank through enemy minefields?

  Then there is the statement of a single witness, PFC George Migyanko, dated April 24, two months after John’s death: “I, George Migyanko, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, saw Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone (287506), USMA, single-handedly destroy an enemy blockhouse which was holding up the advance of his company. Later in the day he led one of our tanks from a trap in a mine field in the face of withering artillery and mortar fire.” End of statement.

  That April 24 document was approved and forwarded to the secretary of the Navy on September 13, signed by H. G. Patrick, senior member of the board looking into the matter. Attached are other endorsements from lower-ranking officers of the 27th Marines, including Gerald F. Russell on April 25, T. A. Wornham on April 27, and K. E. Rocket on May 25. On June 27, 1945, it is the commanding general himself, “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, who adds a fourth endorsement and sends the whole package on to the secretary of the Navy, via the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet (Chester Nimitz, I would suppose) and to the commandant of the Corps. Next, on August 10, the commander, Pacific Fleet, sends along his approval to the secretary, again via the commandant, this letter signed by J. A. Hoover, deputy CINCPAC and CINCPON. On August 27 Vandegrift, who was by now the commandant, sends along his okay to Forrestal, the Navy secretary, noting, “recommended that Gunnery Sergeant Basilone be awarded the Navy Cross, posthumously.”

  There’s a little more confusing bureaucracy at work here, it seems, since James Forrestal, SEC/NAV as they say, would not date until August 12, 1946, the official award of the Navy Cross, a year after the war ended. Who can explain that one except to suggest the office rubber stamp was incorrect in dating the sheet of paper with Forrestal’s signature 1946 instead of 1945 when all the other material is dated? Clearly, in wartime, paperwork in the Corps or in the Department of the Navy was often sloppy.

  Here, in an
y event, is the final version of the citation for his Navy Cross, verbatim:

  For extraordinary heroism while serving as a Leader of a Machine Gun Section of Company C, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 19 February, 1945. Shrewdly gauging the tactical situation shortly after landing when his company’s advance was held up by the concentrated fire of a heavily fortified Japanese blockhouse, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone boldly defied the smashing bombardment of heavy artillery fire to work his way around the flank and up to a position directly on top of the blockhouse and then, attacking with grenades and demolitions, single-handedly destroyed the entire hostile strongpoint and its defending garrison. Consistently daring and aggressive as he fought his way over the battle-torn beach and the sloping, gun-studded terraces toward Airfield Number One, he repeatedly exposed himself to the blasting fire of exploding shells and later in the day coolly proceeded to the aid of a friendly tank which had been trapped in an enemy mine field under intense mortar and artillery barrages, skillfully guiding the heavy vehicle over the hazardous terrain to safety, despite the overwhelming volume of hostile fire. In the forefront of the assault at all times, he pushed forward with dauntless courage and iron determination until, moving upon the edge of the airfield, he fell, instantly killed by a bursting mortar shell. Stout-hearted and indomitable, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone, by his intrepid initiative, outstanding professional skill and valiant spirit and self-sacrifice in the face of fanatic opposition, contributed to the advance of his company during the early critical period of the assault, and his unwavering devotion to duty throughout the bitter conflict was an inspiration to his comrades, and reflects the highest credit upon Gunnery Sergeant Basilone and the United States naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.