All Manila is quiet. Sad. I can feel the loneliness in the streets. A woman reading the Tribune in a newsstand burst into tears. Her husband was a soldier. The boy who skates on the pavement near the entrance to my office was sitting on the sidewalk, dejected. His elder brother was a soldier.
Met Mrs. Gruet. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her son is also in Bataan.
Lolita was weeping the whole day. She asked Mrs. Vargas by phone if the news about Bataan was true and Mrs. Vargas could not speak clearly because she was crying, too. Her son is also in Bataan.
My barber inquired if I could ask the Japanese in my office what treatment the Filipino soldiers would receive. Would they be concentrated? Released? Killed? He was worried about his three sons. He gave them all to the Army.
The Japanese in the next house are singing, drinking, shouting.
In my house, everything is quiet. I can hear my daughters mumbling their prayers…
Uppermost on our minds was my son, Philip. What has happened to him?