Cars, Cigars and Sugar Cane (52)

After being stuck in the New Guinea jungle for a while, Gene is enjoying the cars, towns, and markets.  He is interested in learning about how things are done in the Philippines and is able to do this because there isn't much threat from the Japanese in this area.

13 Feb. '45
Beloved,
     This afternoon Steve, our Red Cross man, asked me if I wanted to go with him to a town about 15 or 20 miles from here.  I'd spoken to him about going some time.  McDaniels went along.  Steve bought this '38 Chevrolet from a civilian, or rather the Red Cross bought it a la Steve.  Ordnance worked it over and it went OK until a few days ago when it took to stopping - vapor lock, defective fuel pump or something.  He thought he had it fixed.  We left about 1:30.  Just a mile from our destination it began its old tricks.  If allowed to cool down it would start.  We got into town and walked around to see the sights.  Practically all the buildings (business and so forth) had been burned by the Japs.  In some places there were the bodies of as many as a dozen cars.  They must have been late models from the looks of them.  There was one street of buildings (poor ones) still standing and doing some business.  I priced some cigars - 30 centavos each [about 14¢; in U.S prices ranged from 4¢ to $1 each, but the Philippines produced lots of tobacco, and even women there smoked large cigars].  I laughed at them! 

Filipina woman smoking a cigar

And the wooden sole slippers the women wear - 13 pesos [about $6]!  We asked F.'s [Filipinos] how much such things were worth - cigars 5 centavos and the slippers P1 - were the proper prices.  But no doubt some Yanks are fools enough to pay it.
     There were still Jap handbills plastered on the walls.  The market was some market.  Originally it was a good block long, though some of it had been destroyed.  The people say that under the Japs, they seldom held market days because the Japs would just take what they wanted.  Even though this was afternoon part of the market was still crowded.  Such a display (and smell!) of food.  Numerous large trays of dried shrimp (all [parts] of the shrimp!) ranging from about 1 inch to 6 inches in length, a dried flat fish resembling shiners, fresh meat, leaf and root vegetables, peanuts, dried corn and various confection things.  There were a few small stalls of dry goods.  I took a picture of one corner of the thing. 


Sugar cane press near Guimba

     Then we went on Steve's errand and the car [vapor] locked some more.  We stopped in at a hospital motor pool and their mechanic couldn't decide what it was.  So we borrowed a jeep and came home in that, for we had no yen to sit out on the "lone prairie" all night, especially since a few stray Japs wander around at night.  I spotted several "cane squeezin' " places on the way up so on the way back I took a picture of a carabao-powered press.  The press is really just two heavy steel rollers about a foot wide between which the cane is fed three or four stalks at a time with an arrangement to catch the juice.  But I think I messed up the picture for I didn't turn it all the way and took another picture over [it].  So I shall borrow a jeep some other time and go back for some picturesque rice stacks of which I want a picture.
     The fellows who went to the grand opening of the nightclub figure they got a yenzzing [were hoodwinked or deceived]!  For their 10 P they had a good chop suey dinner , a drink of rum and some sort of wine in plenty and some dancing!  They said the gals were nice (apparently too nice).  All the guys were home by 9:30 which is our curfew hour.  They say they'll mark that 10 pesos to charity.  I had a nip of F. scotch - it is really brandy, I think.  Not bad, but not good!  Some of our men have helped other outfits move to a city (Manila [either Beth guessed and wrote it when she copied the letter, or the censor missed it]) and report they are glad we aren't there.  They drove trucks.  They say they were all sniped at but that the Japs are punk shots!  The men who know (I mean they've been on the receiving end) say that the Jap equipment - guns, tanks, artillery, and etc. - on this island is much better stuff than the Japs had in New Guinea.  Steve went to a city on business one day.  That night he stayed with an F. family.  They took him upstairs to sleep.  He slept well.  In the morning he looked around - no one upstairs or downstairs.  The family all slept in foxholes that night!