Tribune: "Alejandro Roces Laid to Rest." The picture shows only one casket. Pedro Aunario, who long ago counseled "Moy" to buy and rescue La Vanguardia, wrote a long tribute in that paper. The only reference to the circumstances of his death is at the start: "Don Alejandro Roces, father, who just died victim of a heart attack facing an immense tragedy...."

Commentator: "Halsey's-Hit-And-Run Fleet Suffers Terrific Damage." In two night naval engagements in poor visibility, two fleets meet, launch torpedoes against each other and beat it out of there. The Japanese claim 6 ships sunk and none damaged.

Premier Tojo arrived in Manila again to "a big welcome," according to La Vanguardia. Poor weather delayed his flight. Loudspeaker trucks prepared the route at 1500 yesterday, but he arrived at 1220 today. The crowds were poor so La Vanguardia skipped its usual picture. Tojo's in a hurry to grant us independence and get us to form an army.

A clever broadcast by Ignacio Javier ridiculed claims of an allied naval victory in New Georgia, thus managing to give us their side of the story.

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Received a letter from Joe today written July 7. He received my last two packages and described himself as being "in fairly good shape." The POWs spend half a day working their farm, including planting rice.

Unfortunately, I had a light attack of malaria about three weeks ago, the first since December 7, which is quite good as I used to get it every month. I thought I had it beat, but it is a tough disease. But I'm getting better and taking a lot of quinine.

There is very little I need, some tooth powder, a belt, the usual quinine.... If you can, send me an empty can (one-gallon size) for 'zuansing.' In this camp a lot of new words have been coined, among them 'zuan' meaning food which one has, 'zuansing' means the cooking of that food and 'zuan can' the receptacle in which you do your cooking. My zuan can is rapidly going to pieces and you cannot replace it here. You may wonder what we zuan. It's mainly mongo beans, eggs, and sometimes we brew tea or coffee. We generally pool our resources among the four officers of the bahay.

The ingredients of a mongo beans lunch generally consist of a 3/4-cup of mongo beans, okra, green peppers and corn from the bahay garden, and a little pork grease (darn hard to get). And occasionally it includes a can of sardines, fish, or corned beef — whatever we can get our hands on. This makes a meal for 5 and is served piping hot at noon. We sometimes make what is called a 'Ho-Cake' with rice or corn flour (which we grind ourselves), to which is added 3 to 5 eggs, bananas, coconuts or pineapple — or all 3 when we are flush. Then 3 spoonfuls of sugar, baking powder or soda plus lime or vinegar and a little water to make it work. This is fried on both sides like a hotcake but is 5 times as large. It's served hot, with jam if we are lucky, but usually it's used in place of bread.

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KGEI FLASH! American, Canadian and British troops landed in Sicily, following 19 unopposed air attacks against aerodromes and a massive aerial and naval bombardment of the landing zone yesterday. Maurice was listening to the radio at the Sotelos when an excited Mr. Sotelo ran up the gravel path ahead of Freddie and Georgie. Maurice dashed home and shouted the news from our porch. I almost choked him to get him to shut up.

...ooOoo...