how heavily guarded. We had the additional advantage of two listen-
 
ing points, one of us (McCoy) being in prison with the Army and
 
Navy staff officers at Pasay, and the other (Mellnik) in Old
 
Bilibid.
 
             All Filipinos, we learned, were now forced to bow to the
 
Japanese invaders on the streets of Manila. All streets with
 
American names, incidentally, were being given Japanese names.
 
All commercial enterprises were being given Japanese direction,
 
and cultured Filipinos were being subtly told that their place in
 
the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was in the rice paddies
 
and abaca fields. Education was being suspended, and the Japanese
 
 were announcing in forcible terms that they were benevolently
 
decreeing a return to the original Filipino "culture".
 
              This meant that, for Filipinos, there was to be no more
 
such "foreign. corruptions" as modern plumbing, cooking on electric
 
stoves, going to movies, riding in automobiles, wearing silk
 
stockings or using cosmetics. In addition, the English language
 
(spoken by almost every Filipino over 35) was to be forbidden,
 
and was to be replaced by  Nippon-Go, a sort of simplified "basic Japanese".
 
    
          And the Japanese conquerors had already begun a systematic
 
 looting of the Philippine Commonwealth. Cities were being
 
stripped of all articles needed by Japan. Electric fans, refrig-
 
erators, machinery, household appliances, automobiles, scrap iron--
 
all were being taken to Japan. Even rice, never too plentiful in
 
the Philippines, was being sent to Japan. Of course the Japs were
 
paying for these things, or some of them, and paying high prices,
 
                                        - 22 -