The fires and explosions in various parts of the city continue unabated. Like the last days of December, 1941, we are again almost completely in the dark as to what is going on around us. There is no electricity of course, so that even those who have been clandestinely operating their shortwave radios are unable to tune in on General MacArthur’s broadcastings station. There are no newspapers, and since no one is allowed to cross the Pasig we do not even know what conditions are on the other side of the river. In order to prevent Filipinos from slipping through under cover of darkness, the Japanese here are destroying all the bancas they can lay their hands on. Japanese soldiers are scouring the river bank armed with saws and axes. Whenever they find a dugour canoe they proceed to cut it in half.
The roar of flying American reconnaisance planes adds to the general confusion and we sit in our homes, dazed and befuddled as to what is going to happen next. Everyone’s nerves are on the edge and although we realize that the hour of our deliverance is perhaps a matter of a day or two, the almost total lack of information concerning our situation is most discomforting.
The water supply was cut off yesterday. There has been no garbage collection for sometime. There is not a scrap of food available in the public markets not only because it is almost impossible to move any supplies but because no one is willing to accept Japanese military notes any longer. Unless American forces are able to take complete control of the city soon there will be much hardship and acute suffering among the masses. In fact, we shall be lucky if we can pull through the present crisis without a typhoid or a cholera epidemic breaking out among us.
Marcial P. Lichauco (1902-1971), lawyer, member of the Os-Rox Independence Mission, and former Philippine ambassador, from his diary, dated February 6, 1945.
He and his family lived in Santa Ana district during the Battle of Manila in 1945.
(Source: My Dear Mother Putnam: A Diary of the Second World War in the Philippines by Marcial P. Lichauco)
Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the 1945 Battle of Manila, the gruelling battle for the liberation of the city that lasted from February 3 to March 3, 1945.
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