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Character Tournament: Round One

John Basilone vs. Tatty Spaatz

John Basilone

Tatty Spaatz

Voting ended onJul 2

learn how to steal this poll

#the pacific #mota #john basilone #tatty spaatz

love that there's a 50/50 chance that basilone and leckie would've gotten along nicely because they're both so insane OR they would've hated each other's guts because they're both so insane

#different types of menaces but menaces all the same #the pacific #john basilone #robert leckie

A couple photos where John's right arm tattoo is more visible. And yet, I still can't quite tell what it is..

#I can't find the post now but I saw someone say it reminded them of the sorting hat 😂😭#it prompted me to do a little digging but I still don't know what I'm looking at #john basilone #the pacific #WW2

#the pacific #thepacificedit #hbowaredit #hbo war #john basilone #basilcreations #jb

The Filipina Who Called Me Manila John

John Basilogne x OC - The Pacific Fanfic

Before the war in the Pacific, before Guadalcanal, John Basilone was just a young Army private in Manila with a boxer’s hands, a smart mouth, and a nickname he had not earned yet.

They called him Manila John later.

But first, there was this city, and there was this girl.

(a love letter to the forgotten Pearl of The Orient, Manila, Philippines and the soldiers, families, life, love and laughter lost in time because of the war.)

(not about the real veteran but the portrayal and idea, theme from The Pacific HBO show.)

Before Guadalcanal, before Iwo Jima, before the world learned his name in bronze and blood...

John Basilone belonged to Manila.

And Manila was his.

Rambunctious, alive, bloomed in different angles and colors and music.

Oh, the music and her laughter that laced through jazz were bright and rang in the darkest recesses of his mind.

When Manila wasn't just a city in the Philippines, when Manila had bronze skin, kissed by Pacific heat and soft curving eyes that only looked with love and awe.

When Manila was a girl that stood 5 foot and brave, loud and all red lips on his skin and wild curls around his fingers.

Not forever. Not enough. But enough that the city got under his skin.

He remembers it all.

That heavy, golden Manila heat blanketing the glorious stretch of Dewey Boulevard as he drove down past the mansions, façades of government buildings, from the iron rails of the city's cable car, a tranvía, from the glimmer of Manila Bay.

That world swallowed men in sound next: jazz spilling from club doors in Ermita, Tagalog and Spanish and English crossing over one another in the street, calesa wheels rattling past American automobiles, church bells rolling out from Intramuros as if the old walled city still believed it owned the hour.

Manila was not one thing.

That was what John loved before he knew he loved it.

It was Art Deco rising sharp and new along Escolta, all clean lines, glass, chrome, and confidence.

He remembers walking down boulevards, shoving his friends shoulders as they whooped in their loud American ways, riled up for another boxing match.

It was the glow of shopfronts and theaters, the bold faces of buildings that looked like they belonged to the future , the Crystal Arcade, the Capitol Theater, the grand sweep of the Metropolitan Theater with its tropical colors and carved ornament like Manila had taken Europe’s geometry and taught it to bloom.

But then, just around the corner, the city turned old again.

Stone churches. Wrought iron. Courtyards smelling of damp earth and incense. Intramuros standing stern and weathered under the same sky, while the Manila Hotel, the Army and Navy Club, the Post Office, and the wide government avenues gave the city its American bones.

Europe, America, and the Philippines did not blend politely in Manila.

They collided.

They danced.

John learned the city with bruised knuckles and a soldier’s appetite: boxing rooms heavy with cigar smoke, officers laughing too loudly in Ermita clubs, cold beer sweating on tabletops, uniform jackets, dark hair, polished shoes, the sweet sting of rum, the sharp brass of a band trying to sound like New York while the tropics pressed in through every open window.

Then he met Ligaya Buendía.

Miss Buendia at first, because he was a gentleman.

Walking closer to her like she was the sun and he was only the world who doesn't know heat or light without her.

Then she was..

"Lee.. Leg, aya?" Then it was him fumbling over her name, and her face had broken into a grin, the room brightening up by degrees.

“Ligaya,” she corrected, her voice lilting, amused, soft at the edges.

The walls of the club had softened then, melting into hues of gold and acrylic, pools of golden sun that spilled over her curves.

John crossed his arms, amused. “That’s what I said.”

“No, Mr. Basilone. It really wasn’t.”

He grinned because she smiled when she corrected him, and because he was young enough then to think losing could be a kind of winning if the girl laughed afterward.

Then she was Aya to him, Aya in his arms as he swung her once, her head tipped back in joy.

A lilting voice that made English sound less like a borrowed language and more like music passing through an open window.

She was curls pinned neatly in the afternoon, laughter spilling loose by evening, gloves and manners and family expectations until the moment she kicked off her heels.

That was how he remembered her later.

Not posed. Not still. Never still.

The girl in proper dresses, that smelled like the local flower Sampaguita and cigarette smoke from her lingering in her father's club and sneaking in to watch his boxing matches.

His Aya. Pulling the breath clean out of his lungs as he chased her down Jones Bridge, her heels in her hands as she spun once under starlight and lamp posts.

She showed him the city beyond the barracks, beyond the bars, beyond what American soldiers thought they understood.

She showed him the cathedral where he had grabbed her waist, kissed her fierce and prayed to God then that it would never end.

The rush of the Pasig river, coursing infront of the grand post office, as they hopped in the water lapping around them as they laughed. Reckless and free. Her arms around his neck as they watched fireworks burst in the sky.

The way Manila could be elegant and loud, holy and sinful, American and Filipino and Spanish all at once, a city dancing on the edge of something it did not know was coming.

John fell in love then.

He remembered thinking Manila was alive because she was alive in it.

Before names became memorials. Before streets became ghosts. Before boys who laughed under club awnings were sent across oceans to become legends.

They would call him Manila John later.

But before that, he was just John Basilone in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, bruised knuckles from a boxing match.

Chasing tranvia street cars to catch up with Aya, laughing, beckoning him to run faster.

And for one brief, burning season, before the war took the city and the man and everything left unsaid between them, Manila was not a memory yet.

It was music.

It was heat.

It was her hand in his.

It was dancing in the Army and Navy Club under palm trees and smoke.

It was sweet spoken promises after watching a pictureshow and ice cream in Binondo.

And John, young enough to think some places waited for you to come back.

And as he sat under the moonlight he had one hand to his heart, hoping to smother away the burning embers of Manila, like a cigarette that never ceased to scorch him.

And if you ask him where he picked up the nickname, he wouldn't tell anyone, but in the dark he said,

"She was the Filipina who called me Manila John."

photos of Manila pre war credit to Renacimiento Manila

listened to this an ungodly amount of times, it really feels like american soldier x filipina prewar times.

#the pacific #john basilone #john basilone x oc #the pacific fanfic #the pacific x oc #manila #philippines #manila story #Spotify

I read the John Basilone book I’m Staying With My Boys and had a few takeaways, but one big one. Throughout the book it showcases Basilone’s premonitions and how he accurately predicted his own death but still went to fight at Iwo Jima.

That got me thinking. What if he had one of those premonitions about Guadalcanal? What if he went to the high extremes running around and killing and being an insane daredevil because he had a premonition someone would die and he knew it would be him? If I’m going to die, might as well make my life worth a shit, right?

But he’s wrong. He’s wrong and it’s Manny that falls to the enemy. He never saw it coming. How cruel that he puts himself in harm’s way like that and it’s Manny that gets shot down. How cruel that he gets the Medal of Honor when he expected a grave that Manny got instead.

#I think about this a lot #I hope I worded this in a way that made sense #John basilone #manny rodriguez #JohnManny #the pacific