Marciana, our ever-faithful domestic helper, was with us at that time, and she and Mama would go out daily, looking for something to feed us. They would walk and walk very far throughout the city — but would often come back without anything at all. One morning, after several days of fruitless searches for food, Mama told us to pack our clothes and everything we would ever need for a long, long time.
Packing orders didn’t mean much to me, and I didn’t have much to take along anyway. We hadn't brought much from our real home when the Japanese soldiers evicted us, and besides, I wouldn’t have known what was mine to pack and what clothes belonged to someone else. Our meager selections — everything that an adult, three growing children, and one three-month old baby might need, were collected and placed into our little red children's wagon. Mama knew that if we were going to survive, we had to get out of the city.
She told us that we were going to our Catalunan Pequeño farm, about seven miles outside Davao City. We learned that we would have to walk every step of the way, in the dark of night. Mama emphasized that we could make no noise, — especially when she told us to be quiet! We were just kids, so we placed emphasis on the Great Adventure side of it, and looked forward to the excitement of the whole trek — instead of finding fault with the plan.
We started out when the night was so dark we couldn’t even tell who was near us, although we knew as soon as the person spoke softly. Recognizing a whispered voice was the only way we could tell who was near us. As clearly as I can remember, Mama carried Winston, the baby who could only cry. I clearly recall during that night-time trek in pitch-blackness from our city home to our farm, we wouldn’t have had any problems drawing attention from patrolling Japanese soldiers with baby Winston’s crying, because he was so small and weakened from lack of food that he was almost dead anyway. When he cried, his sounds were so tiny, like a small music box with perforations in all of its sides — more like a faint wheeze than a crying baby. He sometimes cried silently, much like the whispering sound of a breeze blowing through the clumps of cogon that surrounded the city. So the baby would be no problem at all. Besides, he was so small that he looked like he was part of the bundle of rags that were used to wrap him for the journey.
Marciana didn’t go with us. I think she had she had friends or relatives in the city, however, a man was with us. I didn’t know him, but I think he was Marciana's half-brother. He was short and wore black pants and a white, sweaty T-shirt that needed to be laundered. I am so grateful, as I write about these early experiences, for individuals such as him, for helping us — at the risk of their own lives.
At the edge of the city, we needed to cross over the river on the Bankerohan Bridge; however, it had been severely damaged in these early stages of the War, making normal passage questionable. Also, it was being guarded by troops from a nearby Japanese military compound. Sometime after we arrived at the broken bridge, Mama told us kids to stay in the dark with the wagon while she and The Man went ahead to the military compound. I fell asleep, and I don’t know what negotiations transpired.