Well, someone at last dared to stand up and tell the Japanese off. Seems the Japanese cornered Quirico Abadilla of the Bureau of Mines and demanded to see the survey of Philippine minerals. Abadilla couldn't find it (he was scared stiff and admits it). So he told the Japanese that the man who wrote it was Harry Foster Bain, a famous geologist interned in Santo Tomas. Two Japanese civilians, two officers and Abadilla sought him out.

Harry Foster Bain

Now this Bain is around 80 years old, sick and very thin; you could blow him over with a sigh. He started out being civil until they asked for his surveys.

"I'll see you in hell before I help you with that," he shouted, shaking a finger under their noses.

The Japanese civilians were taken aback (Abadilla almost passed out) but the senior officer, struggling to maintain his composure, said, "I believe you're not well." He hinted with a great show of generosity that it might be arranged for him to go home. Bain would have none of it.

"If these people here can stand it, so can I. I'll stay," he said.

The officer changed his tone and intimated that they had ways to force him to divulge his info. Bain hit the ceiling and shouted:

Look here! Don't go monkeying with me. You are too fresh. You think you are going to stay here but you're mistaken. Your days here are numbered. You don't know the Americans. They'll be back here just as sure as I'm talking to you, and you'll be lucky if you ever see Tokyo again.

The Japanese retreated in silence — a complete triumph for Bain.

A prominent Filipino doctor had some misgivings about taking care of a Japanese colonel, but he was brave enough, recently, to speak his mind. Trembling a little, he told the colonel that he would always treat the Japanese medically to the best of his ability, but he asked only one thing in return: that they stop deprecating Americans in his presence.

The Americans were here for forty years, and I want to tell you they treated us Filipinos better than we deserved. I've lived with them almost all my life, so please don't go on insulting them in my presence.

The officer swallowed it all and kept still.

An unfortunate Filipina, a piano teacher at the conservatory, found herself in Dewey Boulevard as soldiers were clearing people away because an important Japanese general was about to pass by. She looked at one soldier questioningly, as if to say, "What shall I do, go across the street?" The soldier hauled her off and slapped her. When she screamed and asked why, he used the butt of his revolver to smash her arm then her derrière thrice. She got slapped a couple of times more until, hearing the shouts of her friends, she ran across the street, hysterical.

Today's propaganda atrocity accompanies a picture of the ruins in Cebu, quoting a letter found on a dead Filipino (found chained to four others) addressed to his wife: "Oh my wife, my child and my descendants, remember always not to be cheated by the Americans."