CHAPTER 27
Battle of Bataan and Corrigidor
That day, Nora May and Juanita woke to find themselves among a group of soldiers who had awakened around them and were
already eating rice and fish. A soldier loaded a couple plates and handed them to the girls. Nora May fell right into eating.
Juanita paused and nodded to the man, who nodded back to her, respectfully, for he felt she had saved his life with her shooting the day before. As she did eat, she felt elated and decided that the feeling was hope.
"Saan, nga?" she asked the soldier and gestured around with her hand.
"Dito?" he asked. She nodded.
"Balanga," he replied with the city's name.
"Salamat po," she thanked him and held up the plate.
"Salamat po," he thanked her.
Allied U.S. soldiers and Filipino Scouts were spending the peaceful morning creating defensive positions on the south side of a river Juanita learned was the Talisay.
Due to the normalcy of the morning, both Juanita and Nora May independently allowed themselves to believe that the thrust of the Japanese had been thwarted that they would soon be reunited with their families.
Mid morn they went with three other Filipinas on an ox cart to a hot spring that a local woman knew about up in the hills leading to the dormant volcano, Mount Natib.
Once there, Nora May melted into the hot water and lay her head back on mossy rocks. Juanita was wary of the abundant algae in the hot spring pool, so after she had scrubbed up and stretched her heavily utilized muscles, she got out of the hot
water and went in the way the local woman pointed to a stream. It was there that Juanita also melted, in her own manner, in the cool though too muddy water, letting her sore neck relax on a sunshine heated rock. She gazed toward the old volcano
and was about to close her eyes when something caught her attention that made her sit up in the stream and focus on the nearby ridgeline sloping down toward Manila Bay just northward from her. There! She saw a Japanese soldier, then another.
They were descending from the ridgeline into the valley toward where she streamed.
She realized in that moment that this was the new condition her life was to be in, to be endured for as long as she lived, which at that moment seem as though might not be for too much longer.
Immediately after that, she grabbed her rifle and ammunition belt and hurried to the where the other women soaked in hot algae. "Japanese," she whispered loudly, pointing.
She heard a bullet pass her head. Nora May yanked her suddenly to the ground and Juanita followed after her as she crawled quickly, as if they were both native quadrupeds.
Southward, ever southward, they and the three other Filipinas they led crawled and crept throughout the day, wariest and lowest to the ground where cover was scant, such as ice paddies, but moving quickly, at a crouched run, when
the landscape was jungle covered.
Late in afternoon Japanese paratroops floated earthward around them and they hid clumped together in a thicket beside a rivulet. They heard Japanese words being spoken all around them and stayed silent. Then the voices trailed off and they waded along the rivulet, hearing occasional gunfire in the distance during the dusk, until, as the Moon rose, they heard Tagalog being spoken.
At first Juanita and the others were fightened that it was the Japanese pretending to be Filipinos.
"Salamat po, Filipas dito," Nora May said loudly. A quiet followed. "Cinco Filipinas dito, salamat po," Juanita said loudly. Absolute silence. Then came a Fipino voice from the darkness, that said the Tagalog word for O.K., that sounded like "see-gay."
"Come out," came an American voice. "Show yourselves. Weapons lowered."
Nora May pushed Juanita down as she stood up into the moonlight. "Dito!" she was commanded. She walked toward the voice, seeing a sweeping landscape especially vividly, volcano cones of Bataan Penninsula to her right, Manila Bay glittering in moonglow to her left. She was
thus sure that the moment was to be her last.
"Dito," a voice said below her, just as hands grasped her ankles roughly and pulled her down into Earth, into a trench. Moments later, she stood and called back toward the others, "Juanita, dito, nga!"
In a few short moments, Nora May was saying, "Dito, dito," to Juanita and the Filipinas and all were in the trench with the U.S. troops and Philippine Scouts. Good thing. After their next breaths, the air above them burst from a mortar explosion.
Bullets streamed past over them, impacting leaves and branches. The five Filipinas joined in returning fire. The battle was still underway when, just before dawn, Juanita felt a tug from Nora May and saw that the trench was being abandoned.
Together, quiet as if nothing were happening but the moonlight mating of insects, those who were in the trench escaped further southward toward the end of the Bataan Peninsula.
Japanese Occupied Manila
At the Sukimoko sari-sari shop in Valenzuela, northwest of Manila, north of where the Tullihan River empties into Manila Bay, Maria finished her restocking with several new items she hoped would catch the eyes of her recently arrived Japanese customers.
Japanese soldiers strolled her street, a planque, a wet market street, shopping as though they had not a care in the world. That, with the absence of airplane clouds overhead, had caused Maria to assume that the Japanese had already won.
She saw a couple soldiers across the street at the rice shop and as she watched them select rice, she thought about where her niece Juanita might be.
At the bar of the golf course surrounding the old Spanish fort Intramuros in Manila, concerned beauty queen Christina Ortegas sipped champaign. It had been served to her by the former bartender, who had now come to the customer side of the bar and was standing next to her.
He had revealed to her yesterday that he was indeed Japanese Naval Intelligence Captain, Yoshi Imai. He had been pleasant to her. He seemed considerate and caring about her concerns, noting that she should not worry, as the
Japanese meant only to liberate the Philippines from American colonialism, then to help the Filipinos play a constructive part in their Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
Today his movements had seemed quicker, tighter, directed toward something. He put his cold hand upon her left hand which she had been resting on the bar. "You are left handed," said the Japanese intelligence major.
"So what," she replied, bored sounding, and took another sip, attempting to slip her hand from under his.
The agent squeezed her hand a bit tighter.
"Where exactly does our American elevator salesman live," the intelligence officer asked her.
"How should I know?"
He squeezed her hand harder. "Where did he say he lived?"
"He did not say." The next thing from her mouth was a scream that was stopped at her lips by his other palm across her mouth.
"Where would you say?" He removed his palm from her mouth but not the tremendous pressure he was putting on the bones of her left hand.
"Northwest," she gurgled in pain.
"Northwest where?" Then a little tighter squeeze.
"Valenzuela," she whispered hoarsely.
