Australia was warned to avoid the fate of the NEI — "Resistance will result in disaster ... the situation is hopeless."

Schaer is a big fellow, an ex-boxer — not easily intimidated. Yesterday he narrowly missed getting beaten up because of unburned garbage at the back of his restaurant. The garbage belonged to Sylvel's next door, but since he was closed, the Japanese picked on Schaer's boy and gave him a severe beating. To avoid the same fate, Schaer dashed to the Military Police to get an interpreter, finally finding one at Domei. By the time they got to his restaurant the soldiers were gone.

I almost got it today too. Six soldiers followed me into the store and began to look around. I noticed they were Formosans (3-stars are Japanese, 2-stars are Korean, 1-star Formosan, goes the story). Finally they spotted some old, hard-to-sell long-sleeved polos and began negotiations by pantomime. They only wanted to pay one-third of the already marked-down price, which I refused to accept. After much pantomiming, one suddenly got a bright idea and pointed to me: "You... American!" he shouted.

I looked him square in the eye and said, "Me... Spanish-Filipino."

To make a long story short, after 40 minutes of argument about prices, colors and sizes, I got angry. And that's when they started snapping the polos up without regard to colors and sizes. I made out with only 30 centavos less than full payment after one of them was called back in by the rest for taking a shirt without paying. Exhausted, I resolved to never open the store early again.