This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Sgt Edson Franklin Bellis
to remember
Marine Cpl Michael John Bonagura, Sr..
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Contact Info
Home Town Belleville
Last Address Belleville
Date of Passing Mar 31, 1993
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
My father was a Marine Raider on Guadalcanal. He was in the 1st Marine Division. I know from his records that he started out in the 5th Marines, 2nd Battalion, but somehow he wound up in the Raiders, notice the Raider patch he's wearing in the picture. The details of that story, like so many others, I never fully understood. He enlisted in June of 1940, before Pearl Harbor, as he was always fond of telling me. Somehow that distinction mattered to him. The Old Breed versus all the guys who enlisted after December 7, 1941, a few months seemed to make all the difference, though in the end they were all called The Old Breed. In fact Michael had dropped out of school after finishing tenth grade at Belleville High in New Jersey. He altered his birth date on his birth certificate and forged his mother's signature on a parental consent form so he could enlist at 16. Over the years he always talked a lot about the Marines and not much about the war. All I knew about his war experiences, traits that carried over onto his life with his family, were that he hated rain, nighttime, and almost anything Japanese. But he loved the Marine Corps, and he was a good fit as a Marine. He told me he would have made a career out of the Marines had he not suffered so acutely from Malaria. Recruit training was easy for him (as a tenth grader he played semi-pro football on Sundays for the Newark Bears!). The food in the Marines was good and there was plenty of it, and he got to travel and see places he'd never otherwise have seen all over the United States, Cuba, New Zealand, Samoa, the South Pacific islands, Australia, California, the Pacific Northwest and probably many other places I don't even know about. He brought more than just memories home from the Pacific. He suffered terribly from PTSD for the rest of his life after the war and that's a long time when you go into battle at 17. He died of service-connected disabilities at 69, his father lived to be 96, so I guess dad hoped he'd live a long life, but it wasn't to be. He lived longer than a lot of other Guadalcanal vets though.
Northern Solomon Islands Campaign (1943-44)/Battle of Bougainville
From Month/Year
November / 1943
To Month/Year
January / 1944
Description After New Georgia, the next major operation was an invasion of the island of Bougainville, which was approached by landings at Mono and Stirling in the Treasury Islands on October 25-27, 1943. A Marine division landed on the west coast of Bougainville at Empress Augusta Bay on November 1, 1943. The Marines were followed within the month by an Army division and replaced in the next month by another Army division.
It was late November before the beachhead at Empress Augusta Bay was secure. This beachhead was all that was needed, and no attempt was made to capture the entire island. Allied planes neutralized enemy airfields in the northern part of the island, and the Allied command made use of its naval and air superiority to contain the Japanese garrison on Bougainville and cut its supply line to Rabaul by occupying the Green Islands (February 14, 1944).
Despite these measures, the Japanese maintained pressure against the beachhead, mounting an especially heavy but unsuccessful counterattack as late as March 1944. Success at Bougainville isolated all Japanese forces left in the Solomons. The Japanese sustained comparatively heavy air and naval losses during the campaign, which further crippled the Japanese Combined Fleet and had a vital effect on the balance of naval power in the Central Pacific.
