Our House ACT IV: At 0715, Sotelo, Lombek and I went to see Figueras. Slick as slime, he said Captain Ito had agreed to our ousting. In fact, he offered to show us a letter with the Kempeitai Seal signed by Ito himself to that effect. He "regretted" ... he had "tried ... but you know ... he'd "done his best." He offered to try to get us one room upstairs and two downstairs, provided we could offer some furniture to "Minister Tashiro, the right hand man of Murata." As far as he was concerned, Tashiro could even move into the White House as there was plenty of room there, "but..." he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders with an eloquent look. Well, if Ito had agreed then we were sunk and there was nothing left to do but to make the best of a bad bargain, as Lombek would say.

So off I went with Figueras to the Watson Building to see First Secretary Fukushima of the Embassy, who though smoother and less irritable than Okazaki, had a reputation for being vicious when crossed. Immediately, Figueras asked Fukushima to give us a couple of rooms downstairs in return for ALL the rooms upstairs plus the use of our furniture! The offer being made, it was too late for me to quibble about the details. Fukushima did some deep thinking, not forgetting to apologize to me for the inconvenience of moving an aged and infirm couple out of their room. He decided to inspect our house at 0900 tomorrow.

The interview was over as far as I was concerned, but not so for Figueras. You see, he said, he had already moved two families into different homes for the Embassy, but this family (us) had nowhere to go and no means to move the furniture, nor any place to store it. As an afterthought, he mentioned the still-vacant Pritchard house, the second floor of which was reserved for the Embassy. Fukushima shook his head; he needed a lot of space because, he said looking at me, "we are evacuating our Embassy staffs in Davao, Cebu and Iloilo to Manila. They will be here soon. There are more than 20 of them ... In fact," he added with some embarrassment, "we still haven't enough rooms." He mentioned that he was thinking of housing them in the Watson Building, a spacious, concrete, well furnished and ventilated structure. Splendid idea, I thought, but here is where Figueras astonished me and placed himself at the top of my list of unpleasant individuals.

"No, NO, NO," he said, "JUST LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU NEED"! And he started offering house after house in V. Mapa, a fine residential district a couple of kilometers away, but apparently not near enough to suit Fukushima.

continues...