Aurelio Montinola, an intelligent man, good friend and top client before the war, told me his story today. His house was at M.H. del Pilar and Remedios, one of the terribly battered streets of Malate/Ermita. On the morning of February 15, he left home and headed east with his family of six children. "We were lucky because the shelling kept the Japs under cover. We didn't know where we were going, or where the Americans were until ran into an American patrol at Vermont and Georgia."

Aurelio witnessed no atrocities or deliberate targeting of civilians. "The Japanese commander in our area was a decent chap," he said.

Why, a Japanese sentry caught my third son (he's 15 but big) crossing the street, grabbed him by the wrist and sent him up before the commander. He was asked: "Where are the Americans? Where are the guerrilleros? Where do you live?" and then "Where were you going?" Then they let him go.

We went to a shelter in a lot to the right as you face the Bay, off the Boulevard. While we were there, two Japanese soldiers and an officer came by. The latter said in broken English: "Better you go. This ... no good ... no safe ... American shells.... Also we burn this, this, this," indicating three houses including one of the Zobels'. Sure enough, the Zobel house caught fire that night.

They went to a Japanese evacuation center at the corner of Carolina and San Andres. "It was being continually shelled ... was turning into a graveyard." So they went back home. "It was only a short trek but you can imagine how desperate we were to go out in that barrage." At first everyone thought the Japanese were doing the shelling.

Later we weren't so sure. I became certain of it after that trek with my family towards the Americans.... The shells were passing overhead, very audible, and the direction was immediately apparent. They came from where the Americans were.

He related the story of Rocha, who lost his wife as she stood almost beside him out in the open. In a gesture of supreme hate, rage and futility, Rocha lifted his clenched fists and uttered a series of epithets against the Japanese beginning with cobardes [cowards]. But it was an American shell that got his wife.

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