A German told Schaer he saw about 4,000 American POWs marching north, looking so weary, so pathetic, so hungry and ill that "I almost cried." Many could hardly walk. Efforts by prominent Filipinos, even through Vargas, to find out if their sons are alive have been futile. When Mr. Schultze made a timid inquiry into the whereabouts of an American family's son, the Japanese officer snapped: "What are you, a German or an American? If you are, you can have nothing to do with Americans." Even Max Kummer of the Gestapo told him to lay-off.

Today's propaganda atrocity suggests to me that the Japanese may have taken some girls:

Articles of feminine wear found in trenches in Bataan.... Immediately after the Japanese Forces occupied Bataan, red dresses, rouge, face powder, and other articles for women were found in the enemy's trenches at the foot of Mariveles.

After investigation, the following fact was ascertained.... The American troops who settled in Bataan Peninsula cannot tolerate their desire of strong whiskey and women, so they took young women of the nearby villages, despite the women's unwillingness.... These poor women were never taken care of even if they fell ill, and the serious ones were shot to death. The first eager petition of the inhabitants of Bataan to the Japanese was may their snatched girls return home.

Francisco B. Icasiano

Icasiano writes: "If the civilians were grateful, the prisoners of war are even more so. They never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were among the swellest guys we have met." Very few of the Japanese guards had guns or fixed bayonets, he says.

Some of the guards held pieces of sticks picked from the highways, at times using these to gently shoo-shoo the marching prisoners. During rests, usually near artesian wells, faucets and creeks, the prisoners were given freedom to go quite far afield to gather unharvested sugar cane and guavas or to purchase boiled eggs and cigarettes from the civilians.

Yesterday's La Vanguardia had a picture showing the Japanese feeding Civilians in Bataan, calling it "a beautiful humanitarian gesture." For any other nation it would be the natural thing to do. The Japanese are feeding them with OUR food anyway.

The chauffeur of a chrome miner ended up as a driver in Bataan after the USAFFE commandeered the boss's car. By January he had had enough so he tried to slip through the lines. The Japanese caught and interrogated him, then forced him to drive their dead from Bataan to an incinerator in Guadalupe every night. Eventually he fled to Laguna, passing by Manila to offer his boss the choice of any of 16 watches he had picked off the corpses. He also had P450 and 11 fountain pens!

At 2000, Tokyo reported that nine "unidentified" planes "indiscriminately" bombed the outskirts of Tokyo, hitting houses and a hospital. "Our fighter planes went up and dispersed the enemy, shooting down nine bombers." It was about time is all I can say.