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27 November 1944

Yet another night of alerts, but they didn’t come directly over us. The moon is nearing the full and the nights are clear.

The Air Corps dump right next to us is getting bigger & bigger, & should provide a fine target soon. They work all night with cranes & bull-dozers, & this keeps me awake during the brief all-clears. I feel deadly tired.

For all their nuisance value, these bombings are not severe, and militarily they are quite inoffensive. We keep pouring men & material into Tacloban. The town and nearby roads are jammed with transport & I am told that this is the case throughout that part of Leyte which is under our control. The Japs, on the other hand, are poorly off for transport. When they were here they requisitioned local civilian transport trucks. Col. R. says that their base at Ormoc has been wrecked by our bombers.

I expect that when the bomber strips are completed on Leyte, our planes will blast Jap airfields throughout the Phillipines, & that the raids on Tacloban will become fewer. For the present, particularly while the moonlight lasts, one must put up with them.

Today I made my confession & went to Mass in the afternoon. Father Wood of the Air Corps said Mass & the congregation consisted of five men of our section, including Ogawa, the Japanese (Nisei) sergeant. Evidently we are all feeling that this was no time for mucking about with one’s spiritual welfare. This sudden resorting to the Church, in my case, is a shade contemptible, but I think that may be forgiven me. The other night I sheltered between the concrete pillars of the church, & f when the AA shrapnel was flying through the air, & felt quite safe not because I wasn’t almost as likely to get hit there as anywhere else, but because I felt somehow that if I were killed there, death would be acceptable.

The WACs have moved in to the building next door which we have evacuated. Only about 30 of them so far. White women look odd & haglike to me after the smooth brown creatures here.

In my hazy mental state I’ve forgotten to record that three days ago I had a letter from Margaret to say that our daughter, Elizabeth Mary, was born on November 3rd. I am longing so much to see her that I think I must have automatically shut the thought of her out of my mind. Perhaps lack of sleep has something to do with it too. I wanted our second child to be a girl.