Hero of the Pacific Read Online Free PDF Page A

Pacific, taking one island, one battle after another, and why would they stop short now? No one in Washington or the Pacific knew just where the enemy would strike next. Samoa was certainly a potential target. So the Marines detached to defend it against a proximate invasion dug in and set up their gun emplacements, not only artillery and mortars but those heavy machine guns of Basilone’s platoon. When and if the Japanese arrived at Western Samoa, the Marines would be ready to defend the islands, to hold the islands. They’d stacked arms and surrendered at Peking, gallantly lost Wake, burned their colors and asked for terms in the Philippines; they weren’t going to lose Samoa without a fight.
    Guadalcanal wasn’t yet on anyone’s charts. No intelligence had come in about the Solomon Islands. And the Japanese had not made up their own minds. They might not yet have recognized the strategic value of the ’Canal for an airstrip. In May when the Marine defense forces landed at Apia, Samoa, there were intelligent men both Japanese and American studying the situation, assessing the region, marshaling their forces, moving prudently closer to each other, but neither side knew precisely what was going to come next.
    The Japanese moved first, landing on Bougainville, in the northern Solomons, and then on May 4 taking undefended and minuscule Tulagi, twenty miles across the water from Guadalcanal. In June, they finally made their decision: they would build that famous airstrip in the jungle.
    Samoa knew nothing of this. Meanwhile, the Marine defense detachment’s job had its fringe benefits. Samoa was “cake . . . a piece of cake,” as Marines of the time put it. Basilone, having seen duty in tropical outposts as a younger man while in the Army, would have a basis for comparison. According to his sister Phyllis’s serialized newspaper account, Basilone remarked, “Compared to Tent City [in North Carolina], our five month stay in these beautiful islands was a luxury. Not that we didn’t continue our training. We got it every day, only now it was real jungle warfare, camouflage, the works.” After all, “the Japs were coming, the Japs were coming.” Weren’t they?
    Well, yes, or they had been. Those had been the Japanese plans. But when American naval and air forces defeated the enemy at Midway, June 4-7, Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo scrapped plans to invade Midway, Fiji, New Caledonia, and Samoa. Meanwhile, on Samoa, which was now not being invaded, Basilone remarked, “There were some good times. The native women were eager to help the Americans and for months I don’t think a single Marine had to do his laundry. Fresh eggs and butter were plentiful and for once the griping subsided.
    â€œBy this time I had been promoted to sergeant and my boys were the best damn machine gun outfit in the Division. All sorts of scuttlebutt was drifting into the boondocks and the men were getting restless. We all had thought we would see action first. One morning about the middle of August 1942 word trickled back that our buddies from Quantico and Tent City had already locked grips with the legendary and superhuman Japs.”
    That last we can take as Basilone sarcasm, but the fact was that a week earlier, on August 7, elements of two Marine infantry regiments, the 1st and 5th Marines, and the 11th Marine artillery regiment, the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, and the Parachute Battalion had landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and nearby Gavutu. While at Samoa and other backwaters and aboard transport ships, Basilone’s own 7th Marine Regiment was scattered over miles of the Pacific and had not yet been committed to battle. Needless to say, the 7th Marines were not happy. When Basilone complained to a Captain Rodgers about his men’s impatience, he was told, “For the next few days we are going to run the men ragged. I know they’ll bitch and