I biked over to Schaer's this afternoon, pausing to have a close look at the remains of a Sherman tank that had hit a mine. Schaer reported that the First Cavalry reached his area via España on Tuesday evening (Feb. 6) but didn't stay the night. After the tanks withdrew, the Japanese moved back in, burned some houses and raised hell with the people, possibly killing a few. The next morning, the First Cavalry came back and forced the civilians to evacuate to the Quezon City Hall, after which it went on with its business. It took four days to clean up the Japanese in the area; the Americans lost three Sherman tanks.

On the Friday before at 0200, the Japanese rounded up all the Filipinos in the neighborhood, tied them up and took them to Schaer's porch, where each was questioned. Five were executed; the rest were released at 1800 on that same day. "If this had occurred two days later," said Schaer, "the Japs would have killed them all."

Major Hans Menzi told me that Baguio has been taken, and he's pretty sure the civilians were all killed. "The Japs missed killing them at Santo Tomas, missed killing them at Los Baños — I'm certain they made up for it in Baguio." And I'm certain that they didn't, but I didn't say anything.

Voz de Manila: "Cabinet Formed of 100% Filipinos" — and all are untainted. Sotero Cabahug (Public Works and Communications) is a Visayan ex-governor of Cebu; Tomas Cabili (Secretary of National Defense) led guerrillas for three years in Mindanao. Many Tagalogs were ruled out because of their association with the Japanese during the occupation.

Page 1: Pro-Japanese asked to leave the PCAU "voluntarily" or risk "drastic measures of exposure" by "dignitaries prepared to testify." We hope they get exposed anyway.