Tribune: "300 enemy parachutists wiped out" — in the vicinity of Myitkyina on May 25. Presumably the same ones that landed and took the airfield, a little item the Japanese here neglect to mention.

"Enemy airfields in China blasted; 62 planes destroyed" — in Honan and Szechuan provinces on May 29 and 30. "All Nippon planes particularly in the raid returned safely."

The deadline for alien registration is over: "47,448 aliens register here" — that's 19,014 less than last year.

Splashes: "Too many cooks may be bad, but in our case we haven't enough cooks and too many seeking to eat" — and more arriving every day.

These days, Manilans are preoccupied about the fate that awaits us. What's amazing is our ability to switch from the depths of gloom to uproarious laughter and a devil-may-care attitude in a flash — as if an underlayer of coming-hysteria is abudding. Only yesterday de Castro entered the Astoria while we were coating our tongues in grim forebodings. He started lecturing us in true oratorical fashion so that Schaer suggested he mount a soapbox to make it official — and everyone cracked up (weren't we gloomy a moment before?). De Castro continued without missing a beat, and we missed the significance of his closing sentence. The whole point was "to be alive and see the happy, glorious and sublime ending of the war." Then with our applause ringing in his ears, he proudly marched out.

We are lucky that Commentator is around, that the Tribune and La Vanguardia continue to be published, and that news from the outside is available. The first few of the above give us plenty of laughs, the last gives us hope. We are consoled by one undeniable fact: We are still incomparably better off than the people in Europe.

A few minutes later Schaer got up to pick up the phone and I sat alone in deep (ahem) thought, waiting for a ride home in his truck. Suddenly someone sat next to me — to my surprise it was de Castro. After a moment of silence, he sighed a Zepellin-full. "Gosh," he said, "where is this all going to end?"

Radio: U.S. landed reinforcements at Biak unopposed. U.S. has 60 aircraft carriers on "active stations" in the Pacific. In Palau, Truk and the Marianas, they sank 52 ships and destroyed 500 planes for the loss of less than 50 planes and no ships.