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By Root 389 0

in the gaps covering most of August. The medal ceremony had been on May 21, 1943. Yet there was no official news about it until June 23 when it was released to the national press. The New York Times ran its front-page story on June 24, under a headline that read, “Slew 38 Japanese in one battle; Jersey Marine gets honor medal.” The lead read, “The son of an Italian-born tailor in New Jersey took his place tonight among the great American war heroes, when a Marine Corps platoon sergeant, John Basilone of Raritan, 26, one of a family of ten children, was cited for the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest tribute the nation can bestow on its fighting sons.” John’s letter to the family telling about the medal was dated June 12, and they received it June 21, did not understand its significance, and therefore didn’t really react until the news broke in newspapers on the twenty-third or (as in the Times) the twenty-fourth of June.

Bruce Doorly in his monograph notes, “In July of 1943, John was notified that he was being sent home, but there was a catch to it. John would have to go on a ‘bond drive’ and on a ‘speaking tour,’ to war plants.

“This wouldn’t be the first of these bond-selling caravansaries of Hollywood stars and actual decorated heroes to tour the country. In 1942 the luminous Carole Lombard, a glamorous figure and gifted film comedienne, the wife of Clark Gable (himself now an Air Corps officer), was killed in a plane crash during just such a trip. As John loaded up to go home he told his buddies he would be back, but they did not believe him. . . . John arrived back in the U.S., landing in California in August of 1943.”

Jerry Cutter, Basilone’s nephew, attempts to nail down his uncle’s return to the continental United States, starting with this account, in John’s voice, of the press reception at Roosevelt Base, a wartime operation on Terminal Island off Long Beach, California, possibly where the Rochambeau docked following its long crossing from Melbourne: “They swarmed over us, snapping pictures and yelling questions, everybody calling to me, ‘Manila John, how d’ya feel when ya got the medal?’ ‘Hey, Johnny, were ya scared?’ ‘Have ya called home yet?’ ‘How’d ya feel when you killed all those Japs?’ Talk about being in the spotlight, it was like the whole country turned its headlights on me and wanted me to tell them every last thing down to what I had for breakfast.”

Sounds like the celebrity press of today, the paparazzi, the shouted questions about whether he liked being called “Manila John, the Jap Killer”? Would he be going back into the ring?

This was a guy who hated to be “gawked at” in his own barracks by Marines he knew, let alone total strangers doing a job. But here’s how Phyllis Cutter reconstructed the time following the May 21 award presentation at Melbourne, in Basilone’s voice, including a brief reference on a fairly important official matter. During his California sojourn in August 1943, she quotes him, fed up by all the press, as saying, “Turning down a commission, I asked to be sent back into action with my buddies and was promptly refused.”

This is new, the mention of a possible commission, the Corps finally offering him an opportunity to become an officer, just as they had earlier with Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige. There would later be similar offers in Washington, but this reference is the earliest such bid of commissioned rank that I can find. In Phyllis’s article, Basilone goes on: “I think it was during the latter part of July 1943 [while still with his unit in Australia] I was being briefed on my return to the States. Yes, I was being given leave. However, there was a hitch to it. I was given a faint idea of what was expected of me and told I would be filled in at HQ in New York City.”

Phyllis describes Basilone’s departure from Melbourne with one Marine, on seeing John crying, sneering to another, “I thought you said he was a tough guy.” There is no account of his voyage home aboard, the records say, the Rochambeau, or his brief August stay in California with its welcoming