I’m wrong again, as usual. I haven’t been right yet, so I should be accustomed to that state of affairs. For weeks, ever since the Lingayan landings (which I also guessed wrong) I have been betting that the next landing would be Subic Bay, basing my predictions on (1) a very vivid dream involving Olongapo (old Navy base), and (2) the fact that our side has been bombing that area constantly and heavily. Now they land six or eight miles above Subic and I lose my bet—a bottle of rum. I’ll pay, and gladly, for a second landing, coinciding with that great sweep down the valley across the Pampanga plains towards Manila, means release, prison camps opened up, life, liberty and the pursuit of wheat flour—oh, joy, and all that!
We are joyful but fearful. The Jap version of the Gestapo is more than busy. Some of our good friends have disappeared during these last days. Connie, gay Connie, with her four lovely children and her chatter about the news, was taken away with the children, her mother, her sister and her sister’s fiancé. The children were returned, but the rest are gone. Connie had a radio and also a brother who was a guerrilla. We hear they have all been liquidated. We become more careful with our radio, but we cannot let it alone!
The demolition squads are busy blowing up installations near the town, fires blaze in every direction, more streets are barricaded, soldiers swarm about.
This noon we saw four formations of six big planes each, obviously B-24’s. One antiaircraft seemed in action and reaching high, too, or else the B-24’s were flying lower than usual. Judging from the explosions, they were smacking Corregidor and Cavite. It was beautiful to see and know they were ours. The little boys in the house, three-and-a-half and six, said, ‘See, Daddy, they are coming down low to look at our flag.” Clear yellow and blue (the Swedish flag)! We have a red-white-and-blue job to join it soon—and it will be soon, we all feel.
The children’s discipline these days wouldn’t meet with the approval of the better child psychologists. We say: “Jannie, drink your milk or you can’t go meet the Americans.” “Sander, eat your porridge or the Americans won’t give you candy.” Take a bath, run for the shelter, do this, do that, ‘or you won’t get any gum from the Americans.” Fine system! It works, and is more agreeable than walloping and shutting up in closets, certainly.