Our murmured prayers could be heard early that Sunday morning. It was all we could do–pray and hope for the best. Almost every minute there were explosions from the cannons and the mortars of the Americans. We ran down to the garden, but the same Japanese patrol that herded us yesterday now forced us to our knees, ordering us to put up our hands. I, who had never thought of bending my knees except to God,
now had to do it before these assassins. An impotent rage engulfed me and I closed my eyes to hide the hatred I felt. I bit my lips to keep from screaming against their inhuman acts. The officer kept walking back and forth in front of us, searching, searching—for what, I do not know. Finally they motioned to the men to stand up and they took them away.
“Papa, papa!” the children cried as their fathers left for an unknown fate.
We heard the hum of airplanes. Far above we saw American four-engined bombers against the blue sky. In anguish and desperation we cried, “Mother, Mother America, why have you abandoned us?”
Later we learned that the men had been taken as hostages. We were herded into an empty lot and told not to make any noise. Two of the wounded children died that day. We were all terribly thirsty and we drank muddy water from an improvised well dug two meters deep and lined with empty gasoline drums.
A shell exploded in the upper part of the house at about ten o’clock that night. We fled from the place through the holes in the walls, so as to avoid the Japanese in the streets. The entire Oregon Street was lit by the burning houses. Every house in the district was razed.