World War II

My father ran a barber shop at Labores Street fronting the church. They were renting the place and an extension to the shop served as their residence. My mother was the cashier. She studied piano under Prof. Serafin Magracia and graduated with a degree in pianoforte from the UP Conservatory of Music so they bought on installment, a piano from the Yupangco Music Store at Echague. She would eventually pay this all up with Mickey Mouse Money during the Japanese occupation.

In early December, Japanese bomber formations were observed flying within 20 miles of Lingayen Gulf beaches and returning to Formosa, presumably making trial runs in preparation for the attack. The actual attack came several hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, when Japanese air strikes destroyed half of MacArthur's air force on the ground.

General MacArthur and Major General Brereton would later fault each other for the loss of half of the Far East Air Force. While Brereton claims it was MacArthur who took no significant action between 3.00 a.m. and 12.20 p.m., a birthday party at the Manila Hotel in honor of General Brereton on Sunday night, December 7, 1941 is said to have caused the airmen to delay implementing an order to fly B-17s at Clark Field to Mindanao where they would be out of range of Formosa-based Japanese bombers. In the final analysis, the Japanese war planes from Formosa practically wiped out American air presence.