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About Lydia C. Gutierrez

About the author: Lydia C. Gutierrez, staff member of The Sunday Times Magazine of the Manila Times in the 1960s.

About the diary: This was published as “Liberation Diary: The Longest Wait,” by Lydia C. Gutierrez, in the The Sunday Times Magazine, April 23, 1967. Here is the introductory note as published in the Manila Times:

One morning in February, 1945, a loud explosion startled the congregation attending Mass at the Malate church. One explosion followed another and smoke blackened the skies. It was not the Americans bombing Manila but the Japanese who were demolishing military installations.

STM staffmember Lydia Gutierrez was one of those in the church. At that moment, she thought of the idea of recording the succeeding events in a diary. Together with 16 other members in her family [including one in-law and baby nephew] she spent many days and nights in a dugout. Here are excerpts from that diary, prepared in the idiom of a 14-year-old.

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