Whoa! The B-25s are back and low! Hunting for artillery or something. I got a really good look. If they drop a bomb on Piña-Santol, we're cooked. Here they come again ... in single file thirty yards or so on my left at 200 feet ... what a deafening roar! In the excitement of getting up, my pen caught on my thumb and sprayed ink all over me ... and there's no water to wash with. I could see the turrets clearly, the cannon in front ... could almost count the rivets. The French ladies next door are going nuts cheering the planes and waving pots and pans from their porch. Another pass coming ... but further away and still very low ... the ladies look disappointed. The local machine gun coughed up a few shots. Some fun eh? Things quieted down by 1734.

. . .

1830: Been out for a short walk. The sky on our west, one black mass of darkness, completely blots out the sun. I heard several explosions, a few pot shots, machine-guns here and there and the sound of artillery shells in flight. Two Piper Cubs circled leisurely over the city. Feltman shouted at a pilot who passed over us ever so slowly: "Sa-ay! Are you lost?"

One of the Preysler girls said guerrillas running around in a car with an American flag are hunting for more Japanese after they killed one in Domingo Santiago. The Sulzer girl added that guerrillas killed several Japanese by the Daimon (Japanese) Glass Works near the Rotonda at 1800.

The pathetic spectacle is of a few Japanese or Formosans — merchant sailors left stranded in the city when their ships were sunk in port — standing unarmed, dirty and unkempt, wearing greenish suits and an air of absentminded ignorance or unconcern for their predicament. These poor derelicts have been abandoned by a nation boasting of its culture, benevolence, brotherhood and racial homogeneity, but that now lies exposed, stripped of its shameless veneer.

Night is slowly enveloping the city. It'll be a dark night now that the Japanese have blown up the Meralco plant, and a waterless night for south Manila now that the bridges are gone.

. . .

As I write this at 1935, a lone B25 has been leisurely circling overhead. Eight fires rage in the city; the flames previously hidden by the smoke in the afternoon are clearly visible at night. The Japanese are still firing an occasional shell toward the National Development or Pandacan. Just now we had a terrific earthquake-like explosion at 1940 sharp. It's becoming tiresome. Another two explosions at 1942 and a third — the first two, the strongest yet, rang a little bell in our dining room that I hadn't even known was there. A fourth explosion now ... a fifth.... I'm starting a game of solitaire.

continues...