Had a gabfest at the Montinolas' this afternoon with Aurelio, his three sons (including the one who was arrested and released) and Jose-Marie Lacson. Aurelio had hit pay dirt almost immediately on the case of Luis Rodriguez Asencio: a lady who was in the same shelter when the lad died. On the afternoon of the 12th, Luis told his father he was going back to their house to try and rescue something. There was a low-key argument but the lad left anyway. He had been overdue enough to cause anxiety and worry when he suddenly returned with a ghastly bullet, shrapnel or bayonet wound on his stomach. The first words to his Dad betrayed the seriousness of his wound. Helped into the shelter, he weakened and died later that night. It was pathetic, she recalled, but there was no doctor or medicine around. She doesn't believe in the father's tale and doesn't know anything about the other four.

Aurelio forgot to ask her how many were in the plaza (one of his sons said several hundred) but he did ask her if she saw any Japanese machine-gunning, bayoneting or grenading of civilians then or later. She simply said: "No."

The conversation shifted to the Campos atrocity, and I was astonished to find everyone conceding that the Japanese were perhaps justified. Sergio had also dug up the story that Tony Campos had two pistols. Tony's companion on that fateful trek to the Nippon Club was his cousin, Salvador Campos. Lacson added that Judge Locsin, one of the victims, also had a pistol.

On the way home, I passed by R. Hidalgo and saw "Chino" Valdes, brother of the General. On the subject of the war prisoners torpedoing of December and the MFP article, he said that the prisoners were on board several ships, not one, and that only one was torpedoed and all were rescued. He added 700 were evacuated via San Fernando, La Union, on January 5, but that boat was subsequently sank near Formosa. I heard that before but never in so definite a fashion. As to the 1,800 on a boat and 900 drowned in December, as reported in MFP, February 26, Chino doubted it was true. But then startled me by saying:

Henry, I consider all those prisoners as 90% dead. Maybe it's better if they died suddenly than to have to face all that's probably in store for them.