What a Christmas Eve! Morning broadcast that Port Area, Manila, heavily bombed and civilian casualties high. No thought of Christmas. Jim’s office is in heart of Port Area and bombing occurred during office hours. Packing to move, taking down blackout materials only recently taped over windows. To Hawaiian-Philippine Central with the Wileys, who advised me not to return to Bacolod for night, but to spend Christmas Eve night at their house. Two children and I slept in two single beds pushed together. No Christmas tree, toys for children, decorations, or other signs of the season. On the radio a few scattered out-of-place Christmas songs, but most stations broadcasting of the extreme suffering in Hong Kong where the civilian population as well as the army were fighting Japanese in the streets, of cut water supply but valiant effort to hold out, of reinforcements to Japanese in Philippine Islands, of bombing attacks, Manila to be declared an “open city.”
Elizabeth Vaughan
Elizabeth Head Vaughan (1905 - September 29, 1957) journalist and Sociologist. Interned in the Bacolod Internment Camp and Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila, 1942-45.
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