MFP: "Col. [Jiro] Saito (former chief of the Japanese Bureau of Information) killed while brandishing his sword" — by Lt. Col. Eugenio Castillo near the Quezon Institute on the day the Americans entered Manila. It was a close fight with several guns against the Japanese who were retreating from the city.

Tito Preysler: Baguio City was bombed everyday since mid-February in a campaign "undoubtedly based on incorrect information"; 200 civilians perished for every Japanese killed by the bombing. He said there were very few Japanese in the City; mostly at the Easter School — the one place the Americans didn't hit till very late. One of the first bombings hit the Notre Dame Hospital, resulting in a "catastrophe." The Holy Family Building was full of civilians and took several direct hits with heavy casualties. The city was carpet-bombed on March 15 and 16, and on the 17th the Americans dropped leaflets urging the civilians to escape. Only the Pines Hotel still stood — "ironically there were many Japs there but no munitions." The shopping center and the market are "gone," and the church atop the Hill in the heart of the City was hit several times. Many civilians had taken lumber from the ruins of their homes, carted it up to the church and built shanties around it much like at Santo Tomas. These too were hit.

The Japanese didn't commit any atrocities apart from shooting any who tried to get through their lines. Ten or eleven were thus shot while "hunting for camotes" when they stumbled into a Japanese outpost. One of them was a friend of his called Alvin. Unlike the two-week Battle of Manila, Baguio took it for two months, during which the Japanese kept up a continuous series of inspections to ensure no weapons or guerrillas were about. Tito was able to move back and forth between Baguio and Laong-Laong a number of times. He wasn't bothered when crossing the sentry lines so long as it was clear that he was going no further than Laong-Laong. Few guerrilleros were about, perhaps explaining why there were no incidents of atrocities.

I'm reminded that Machado said that virtually everyone at Paco was a guerrillero or claiming to be one. Quite a few of them went around his district asking for money for "expenses."

Meanwhile, the MFP — an American paper unlike most private papers here — serves us a daily menu of atrocity stories to keep our minds focused on the enemy rather than on American actions or our present plight. They're having so much success with this that the private papers have begun to ape them. What you won't find in the press, and what no one has yet failed to mention to me, is that how few Japanese were around them during the bombing and shelling.

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