December 12, '41: Dr. Allen and I had a Filipino soldier's wife on the operating table at 0800 hours ready for a sterilization operation. She was thirty-four years old and had seventeen children. During her last pregnancy, which she had delivered ten days before, she became greatly swollen with edema (severe kidney disease). Another pregnancy would probably kill her.
Bomb began to fall. I shouted, "Everybody downstairs-under the hospital!" After the" All Clear," we returned to the operating room to find our patient had retrieved her clothing and departed for safer areas.
Again the wounded were coming in. This time we were ready
for them. The operating room was all set up and ready to go.
Radio from USAFFE: Capt. Eugene C Jacobs, M.C, promoted to Major.
Heard that a strong Japanese force had landed at Legaspi accompanied by a large naval escort.
During the next ten days, while we treated our sick and wounded, and buried our dead, nearly one-hundred various sized Japanese ships were quietly assembling in the Lingayen Gulf, only twenty-five miles from Baguio. We had neither airpower nor naval forces to deter them. The Army Air Corps had been about
75% destroyed, and Admiral Hart would not risk his small Asiatic Fleet in battle; he took off for Australia.
At dawn on the morning of Dec. 22, '41, some 60,000 veteran Nipponese troops of Lt. Gen. Masahatu Homma's crack 14th Army from China swarmed ashore between Vigan and Dagupun, twenty-five to fifty miles from Baguio.
Maj. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright had four divisions (11th, 21st, 31st, and 1 10th) of the Philippine Army on the beaches to prevent a landing. When the cruisers and destroyers opened fire with their big guns, there was great confusion on the beaches; many recent recruits buried their rifles in the sand, and took off for the mountains. "This was not their kind of war!"