Many local civilian nurses and missionary nurses from India, Japan and China had volunteered their services at the hospital. The entire city worked together, building air-raid shelters, helping the Red Cross, and starting vegetable gardens.
There was no more dressing for dinner, dancing, and the movies. The long walks on Dewey Boulevard with my little pet at sunset time were over. There was no time for anything but sleep and work, for which we were grateful.
Another tragedy struck Manila! The S. S. Corregidor, en route to the southern islands with a passenger list of fifteen hundred or more evacuees, struck a mine and sank in about six minutes. Several hundred were rescued from the shark-infested water by patrol boats from Corregidor, but the remainder perished.
Tokyo called the sinking of the ship “another stupid American blunder.”