Eighty-four years ago this weekend, on the night of October 24, 1942, it was raining hard on the south side of Henderson Field. The Japanese Sendai Division came out of the jungle in the dark and hit the line held by the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. Sergeant John Basilone had two sections of heavy machine guns on that line. By morning his guns were still firing, and the regiment that came at them was mostly gone. He would have turned 110 next week, on November 4. For this installment of our Veteran Spotlight series, here’s the man the Marines called “Manila John.”
John Basilone’s Early Life
John Basilone was born on November 4, 1916, in Buffalo, New York, one of ten children. His father, Salvatore, had come over from southern Italy and worked as a tailor. The family moved to Raritan, New Jersey, a small mill town on the Raritan River, and that’s the town that still claims him.
He went to St. Bernard Parochial School and didn’t stay in a classroom much longer than he had to. He caddied at a local country club, took whatever work came along, and by his late teens he was looking for something bigger than Raritan had to offer.
He found it in the Army. Basilone enlisted in the mid-1930s and served a three-year hitch, most of it with the 31st Infantry in the Philippines. He boxed while he was there and won enough fights to get a name out of it. The Marines would pick that name up years later on Guadalcanal: Manila John.
A Second Enlistment
Out of the Army, Basilone drove a truck in Reisterstown, Maryland. It didn’t take. On July 11, 1940, he walked into the Marine Corps recruiting office in Baltimore and signed up again, this time in a different uniform.
The Corps sent him through Parris Island, then to Quantico, Guantanamo Bay, and New River, North Carolina, the base that would become Camp Lejeune. He already knew his way around a machine gun from the Army, and the Marines noticed. He made sergeant in January 1942, a month after Pearl Harbor, and shipped out with the 1st Marine Division.
John Basilone’s Military Service
The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines went ashore on Guadalcanal in September 1942. Their battalion commander was Lt. Col. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, who we covered in an earlier Veteran Spotlight. Henderson Field was the reason anyone was fighting for the island, and 1/7 was strung out along a long stretch of the perimeter south of the airstrip.
The Japanese came on the night of October 24. Basilone was in charge of two sections of water-cooled Browning heavy machine guns, about fifteen men. The attacks kept coming through the night and into the next morning. When one of his sections was knocked out, he carried a gun into position himself, repaired another, and manned it until replacements could get to him. With ammunition running low and the supply lines cut, he went back through the enemy for belts of ammunition and carried them up to his gunners.
His Medal of Honor citation credits him with contributing to “the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment.” PFC Nash Phillips, one of the men on that line, later said Basilone kept the guns working for three days and nights without sleep, rest, or food. General Alexander Vandegrift, who commanded the 1st Marine Division, pinned the medal on him in Australia in May 1943.
That should have been the end of the war for him. The Marine Corps brought him home in August 1943 to sell war bonds. Raritan threw him a parade on September 19, and Life magazine covered it. He was offered a commission and turned it down. He was offered a stateside instructor billet and turned that down too. What he wanted was to go back, and on December 27, 1943, he reported to the new Camp Pendleton in California to train with the 5th Marine Division.
At Pendleton he met Sergeant Lena Mae Riggi of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. They were married on July 10, 1944, at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Church in Oceanside.
On February 19, 1945, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone landed on Iwo Jima with Company C, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines. A blockhouse held up his company’s advance off the beach. He worked around its flank, got on top of it, and took it out with grenades and demolitions. Then he guided a Marine tank that was stuck in a minefield back out under heavy fire. He was killed later that day near the edge of Airfield No. 1. He was 28. The Navy Cross came posthumously.
Where You’ll Find John Basilone Today
Arlington National Cemetery lists Basilone as the only enlisted Marine of World War II to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. His remains came home from Iwo Jima in 1948 and he rests in Section 12, Grave 384.
The Navy has named two destroyers for him. The first, USS Basilone (DD-824), was launched in December 1945 with Lena as her sponsor and commissioned on July 26, 1949. The second, USS John Basilone (DDG-122), was commissioned in New York City on November 9, 2024, and is homeported in Mayport, Florida.
In Raritan, a 1948 statue by Phillip Orlando shows him with a water-cooled Browning in his arms. The town has held a Basilone parade every year since 1981, and in 2022 five blocks of Somerset Street were renamed Basilone Boulevard. Out west, Marines heading into the north end of Camp Pendleton come in on Basilone Road, and the stretch of Interstate 5 that runs past it carries his name. The Postal Service put him on a stamp in its Distinguished Marines set on November 10, 2005. A lot of younger readers met him for the first time in HBO’s The Pacific, where Jon Seda played him.
He and Lena never had children. When the second destroyer was commissioned, it was his niece, Diane Hawkins, who spoke for the family.
Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima Patches
If you or a loved one served with the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Marines, or the 27th Marines, Popular Patch has patches to commemorate that service. Start with the 1st Marine Division Guadalcanal US Marine Corps Patch, the blue diamond the division took up after the island. The 7th Marine Regiment “Magnificent Seventh” Patch is for the regiment that held the line that October night. For Iwo Jima there’s the 1st Battalion 27th Marines Iwo Jima Vietnam 1968 Patch, the battalion he landed with. And for the sailors who have served aboard the ship that carries his name, we carry the USS John Basilone DDG-122 Patch, plus the USS Basilone DD-824 Patch for the old tin can that came before her.
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