About 800 families, who were burnt out in the last raid on Tokyo, have set up housekeeping in their air-raid shelters, reports the Times. A typical group of 45 families, after subsisting on the emergency ration of rice and dry biscuits, has worked out a “relay system of rationing” under which they take turns going to the distribution centers unharmed by fire. They take their baths in an open stone pool in the neighborhood; there is plenty of fuel in the debris. But their biggest problem of course is housing. The shelters are usually shallow ditches, floored with mats. In some districts water seeps through, two feet below the surface. Drainage will be a universal problem when the rains come. In preparation for this, most of the households have put up rude roofs over the ditches, using the rusty iron sheets scattered throughout the raided areas. Over or under the sheets earth is packed closely. One physician is quite happy over his new home. “It has one great advantage,” he says. “When the air-raid signal is blown, you don’t have to get out of bed.”
Leon Ma. Guerrero
(March 24, 1915 — June 24, 1982). Lawyer, journalist and diplomat. Served in USAFFE (later, USFIP) in the press relations staff, then assigned to Corregidor; upon surrender of USFIP and release from internment, served as a technical assistant to Jorge B. Vargas in the Philippine Executive Commission, then resumed broadcasting (station PIAM) under the same pseudonym he had used prior to the Japanese Occupation: Ignacio Javier. He then joined the diplomatic service of the Second Republic of the Philippines, assigned to the Philippine embassy in Tokyo under Jorge B. Vargas, ambassador.
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