Only three newspapers of the TVT are in circulation: one in English, one in Spanish, and one in Tagalog. They are the most insipid papers ever published, with nothing of truth in them. Everybody knows that only what the Japanese approve of goes into print. The size of the paper has been maintained but the pages are reduced in half. It carries only three kinds of news: the press releases from Domei, the official news agency of Tokyo, which treat of the Japanese victories in the Pacific; the proclamations and orders of the new Military Command, which imposes new rules everyday, changing former decrees; and some overflowingly lyrical compositions whose note of optimism dwarfs that of Cervantes in alluding to the way the New Order is ushering in a golden age.
A spokesman of the new regime had the effrontery to announce that whereas before the Philippines was a paradise for the Americans, how the Japanese are converting it into a paradise for the Filipinos. A metaphor without foundation in reality!
The claim that everything has returned to normal is turning into an annoying refrain. When we see that the majority of the people are jobless, without income and nothing at all to eat, when eyewitnesses pour in accounts of big towns being razed, houses plundered and burned, people fleeing to the mountains or hiding in the barrios, unable to work either because they do not like to, or afraid to, or are prevented from working, then, harping on the return to normalcy and converting the country into a paradise is a farce which is not only tragic but irritating.