April 19, 1942

It has been relatively quiet most of the day, although the artillery opened up this afternoon, and for a time we received a lot of shells, and passed out a lot as well. There hasn’t been much air activity today, although we had a couple of raids, and this afternoon the Japs tried dive bombers on us—the first time they have tried it for a long time. At least one plane was shot down. So far as I know there was no particular damage done by the bombers. Otherwise it has been relatively uneventful. We are trying to get a couple of Navy sea planes to ferry personnel to Mindanao, and it now appears that the planes will be sent. If we get two of them we can send out about 50 at a time. There is a possibility that the Japs may try a landing attack against us one of these nights. It is quite dark now, and the tide is at its highest in two or three days. The conditions would then be best for such an attack. However, our artillery is still in such good shape that it would seem to me to be very foolish for the Japs to attack now.