Laurel Declares War

Two-page Tribune: "Philippines in State of War with U.S., Britain." Proclamation No.30 by Laurel says: "A state of war exists between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States and Great Britain." The document consists of five "Where-as" and one "Now, therefore" — very brief but carefully worded. The Japanese must be satisfied. A picture shows Laurel dressed in khaki and wearing a military cap reading the proclamation.

"Nippon Government Hails War Declaration," of course. The Editorial concludes somewhat ambiguously: "With Japan on our side, we have all hopes of victory."

Page 2 counts Filipino casualties of the bombings — 131 in total. The number for Thursday was 124, 71 of which were admitted as patients, and 53 sent home after treatment. Friday's count is only 7, of which 5 died en route to, or in hospital. The difference between both days is due to the late air raid signal on Thursday and the absence of workers near military targets on Friday.

The casualties occurred in all parts of Manila, and included those killed by antiaircraft shrapnel or stray rounds. It's hard to believe that so few were injured despite exhibitions of carelessness. Only half of the population here took real shelter. Most of us dashed back-and-forth, sticking our necks out and looking in every direction. We'll know better next time. Shrapnel blanketed the city and taught us a valuable lesson.

At 0820 this morning, the Air Raid siren went on again, and although no planes appeared, we didn't get the Alert until a bit after 1300. So the Task Force is still around and hitting other objectives. There was another huge oil fire today — the smoke came through the heavy weather — probably from Bataan.

For fancy caricatures of the news, nothing beats Radio Tokyo. The Japanese are morally bankrupt and stooping to nothing now. I predict they'll force independence on Indonesia and extract a declaration of war too. Being masters of intrigue, they're adept at trapping you into buying a political and financial lemon. When it fails, you can't get them to admit it's a lemon because they would lose face by then.

The best of San Francisco radio today was Mrs. Castillo's sarcastic remarks about our forced declaration of war: Japan can't stop the bombs so she asks the Philippines to; Japanese airplanes can't challenge the American airforce so she asks the Filipinos to; the Japanese Navy is unwilling to meet the American Navy, so the Philippines must do it. But not a single Filipino will lift his hand to help Japan. There is still no official American reaction to Laurel's declaration of war. Leave it that way, I say.