{"id":7811,"date":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/?p=7811"},"modified":"2026-07-18T21:12:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:12:21","slug":"fighting-basques-agustin-guisasola-basque-jai-alai-player-and-world-war-ii-veteran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2025\/09\/08\/fighting-basques-agustin-guisasola-basque-jai-alai-player-and-world-war-ii-veteran\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Basques; Agust\u00edn Guisasola, Basque Jai-Alai Player and World War II Veteran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Sancho de Beurko Association<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In celebration of Basque Diaspora Day 2025<\/strong>, which on Monday, September 8 in Markina, Bizkaia, will recognize the contribution of pelota to the Diaspora, the authors of this blog publish the previously untold story of the jai-alai player from Eibar, Agust\u00edn Guisasola<\/strong>, a World War II veteran with the United States Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This year, the International Day of the Basque Diaspora 2025 is being celebrated in Markina (Bizkaia). This year\u2019s celebration pays tribute to the Basque pelotaris<\/em> who brought \u201cjai-alai\u201d or cesta punta<\/em> to courts all over the world. Among those young men who pursued their professional careers in America was Agust\u00edn Guisasola<\/strong> of Eibar, whose life story exemplifies the intersection of sport, emigration, and commitment to his adopted country.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Passenger list of the steamship Seneca<\/em>, on which Agust\u00edn Guisasola and his companions embarked from Havana, Cuba, bound for Miami, Florida, on January 7, 1926. (Source: Document via authors).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pedro J. Oiarzabal<\/strong> and Guillermo Tabernilla<\/strong> are the principal investigators of the research project \u201cFighting Basques: Basque Memory of World War II<\/a>\u201d of the Sancho de Beurko Elkartea<\/a> in collaboration with the North American Basque Organizations<\/a> (NABO). The present article derives from the \u201cFighting Basques\u201d project.

Oiarzabal received his Doctorate of Political Science-Basque Studies from the University of Nevada, Reno. Over the last two decades, his work has focused on research and consulting on public policies (citizenship abroad and return), diasporas and new technologies, and social and historical memory (oral history, migration and exile), with special emphasis on the Basque case. He is a member of Eusko Ikaskuntza<\/a>.

Tabernilla is a researcher and founder of the Sancho de Beurko Elkartea, a non-profit organization that studies the history of the Basques of both slopes of the Pyrenees in the Spanish Civil War and in World War II. Between 2008 and 2016 he directed the catalog of the \u201cIron Belt\u201d for the Heritage Directorate of the Basque Government. He is author, along with Ander Gonz\u00e1lez, of Basque Fighters in World War II<\/em> (Desperta Ferro, 2018).<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in 1906 in Eibar, Gipuzkoa, Guisasola set sail for Florida, United States (U.S.), at the age of 19 as part of a large group of professional jai-alai players who inaugurated a second fronton in Miami, the Biscayne<\/em><\/strong>, on April 1, 1926. Its opening was warmly received by the local press as a major event, which even included Basque traditional dances performed by the young puntistas<\/em>. The first court, the Hialeah<\/em><\/strong>, inaugurated in January 1925 in the city of Hialeah in Miami-Dade County, was forced to close after its first season due to the success of the Biscayne<\/em>. The Biscayne<\/em> had become a cultural and sporting landmark in Miami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few months later, in September 1926, a devastating hurricane left the Biscayne<\/em> in ruins, but it was soon rebuilt and reopened in June 1927. Nevertheless, it never returned to its former glory until it changed ownership [1]. Chronicles of the time highlight its Basque players, among them Guisasola, as the stars of a spectacle that drew thousands of spectators in South Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agust\u00edn also took part in the inauguration of the Summer Casino<\/em><\/strong> in Havana in 1928, and in 1930 he played at the Habana-Madrid<\/em><\/strong> court, also located in the Cuban capital.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Postcard of the Biscayne Fronton<\/em> in Miami, 1930s. (Source: Boston Public Library).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In 1928, Agust\u00edn married French-born Therese Yvonne Savoli in New York. During the 1930s the couple alternated their residence between the United States and France. Upon returning to New York, he played\u2014already a veteran\u2014at the Biscayne<\/em> until 1940 and afterward worked in the textile industry. Naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1943, only a few months later, in October, he enlisted in the United States Army<\/strong> during World War II (WWII). He is very likely the first and only professional Jai-Alai player<\/em><\/strong> (identified to date) who served with the United States during WWII<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a>
The roster of jai-alai<\/em> players at the Biscayne<\/em>Fronton in 1940. Number 12 could possibly be Agust\u00edn Guisasola, though this has not been confirmed. (Source: Miami Springs Historical Society and Museum).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After the war, Agust\u00edn and his wife continued to reside in New York, and later in Florida, where he passed away in 1982 at the age of 76.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of Agust\u00edn Guisasola is that of an emigrant whose trade was pelota<\/strong>, who participated in the early days of cesta punta<\/em> in America and who, when the time came, put on the U.S. uniform to fight under his new flag. His name is now added to the nearly 2,100 Basque and Basque-American veterans of WWII<\/a> whose memory we seek to preserve and honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anyone has photographs, newspaper clippings, or memories of Agust\u00edn Guisasola as a jai-alai player in Miami or Havana, we would be most grateful if you could contact us at <\/em>sanchobeurko@gmail.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. A photograph of him would be a valuable testimony to accompany his story and enrich our project to preserve the memory of the Basques in World War II.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Sancho de Beurko Association In celebration of Basque Diaspora Day 2025, which on Monday, September 8 in Markina, Bizkaia, will recognize the contribution of pelota to the Diaspora, the authors of this blog publish the previously untold story of the jai-alai player from Eibar, Agust\u00edn Guisasola, a World War II veteran with the United States Army. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,1958],"tags":[4280,4281,1209,236,129,1463,159,1936,4277,246,4282],"class_list":["post-7811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diaspora","category-fighting-basques","tag-agustin-guisasola","tag-biscayne","tag-eibar","tag-fighting-basques","tag-jai-alai","tag-miami","tag-pedro-oiarzabal","tag-sancho-de-beurko-association","tag-veterans","tag-world-war-ii","tag-wwii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-69.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-21Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7811"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7818,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7811\/revisions\/7818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}