Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [43]
Did Del Rocco believe Basilone went into the Army because there were no jobs, or for excitement and travel? “I think he went in because [he] wanted to do something and there was nothing [here] to do. It was a depressing time those years in the thirties and I think it was a great challenge for him to go into the Army.” And after that tour in the Army? “We knew him. He used to hang around what they called the joint down Ellison Street, and that’s the last time I saw John [before the war]. We were playing cards there that night and he was leaving the next day to join the Marines, and that’s the last time I saw him. He looked like he was anxious to get in the Marines, he thought it was something a little tougher, or something better. He would like it better than the Army, and I’m sure that he found it a better place to go. That is, for him. What motivated him, you know, he worked in the laundry, and I remember he got the job there and he stayed around for a while, and he got a little tired of the job and I think that’s why he left.”
And after Guadalcanal and the medal? Was he still one of the boys or distant? Scarred by the war or something like that? “Well, he wasn’t scarred by the war. The only thing I can say about that is that I knew he missed it. He wanted to go back to it. He wasn’t very happy selling war bonds. That wasn’t his forte. He couldn’t wait to get out of here and go back into the Marines. He never talked about combat. We never, one of us, brought it up. I think that was what drove him back to the Marines that he didn’t want to sell war bonds. He just didn’t want to do it. He wasn’t up to it. He’d much rather be with the boys he left behind. Very anxious to get back, to get back in the worst way. He had a chance to spend the rest of his life as a Marine without going back to battle, but he chose to go back to battle to be with his friends, and that’s something you got to admire.”
And when the future mayor learned his local pal was dead? “I got a telephone call from I forget who it was who called me and told me about it and I didn’t know anything about it until this phone call, and of course the next day it was all over the papers. That’s when I knew for sure. There’s not much I can say except to say his love for his country, to go back when he didn’t have to go back. He could have stayed here and laid around and lived a good life, but he chose to go back and sacrificed his life for his country.”
Del Rocco was one of the pallbearers, “the last pallbearer still alive. The big regret,” he said, “that John’s mother passed away before his body came back to Raritan or was taken to Arlington. [Not so; Dora Basilone attended her son’s funeral at Arlington.] But when anybody was killed or died in the service, ten thousand dollars was given out to the family, and at that time John was married to a Marine girl from California and when she got the check for ten thousand dollars she turned it over to the Basilone family in respect of John Basilone. “She returned ten thousand dollars to the family.”
Lena Riggi’s niece later confirmed that story to me that her aunt, John’s widow, gave the ten thousand dollars to the family. That didn’t mean there wasn’t some family hostility toward the widow, for whatever reason. Later I would get some insight into that.
Pacifico also got another neighbor on tape. Joe Sian is also eighty-nine and a lifelong friend of the Basilone family but one with a special perspective: “During the war when he got killed at Iwo Jima, I was there at the time [aboard a Navy warship providing naval gunfire support to the Marines ashore]. Yes, I heard it the same day because I was in the radio gang and when it came over our speaker I knew about it. It was the same that day as every day with that invasion. You were there two days of bombarding, day and night. And then we went