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July 27, 1942

One of the shortest and most drastic decrees was the one released today by the Military Administration.

It went like this:

“The official languages to be used in the future are Japanese and Tagalog. In the meantime, the use of English shall be permitted.”

With one stroke of the pen, Spanish was banished, and English was sentenced to death as official language. I do not believe the Filipinos have attained even a mediocre proficiency in spoken Japanese. Those who are able to write in that language are very few indeed. We are just waiting for the order that Japanese be taught in our school.