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In January 1943, Joe was asked to finish the school-year in the Juniorate teaching Rhetoric to all the Juniors. This he did. And at the same time he gave much time and valuable advice to five of us who wiere working on the whole course of studies from Noviceship to Theology. From March to June he went back gladly to his writing, this time a manual to accompany Fr. Connell’s book on poetry. In this field he had spent many years, and was a master. He was the best literary critic (poetry, essay, novel, biography, drama) in the P.I. This work was to consist of 200 selections from a variety of poets, analysed and appreciated (criticised) according to about six different methods. (The six methods were not applied to each selection). This was completed by July 1943.

In June Joe was teaching Poetry in the Juniorate and was Prefect of Studies, (I forgot to mention that he gave the retreat to the Scholastics in April 1942 and preached several of the weekly Holy Hours that were held in our Auditorium, to say nothing of his regular talk at Sunday Mass). July 2 we were all put out of the Ateneo school building by the Japs, and Joe moved with the Novices and Juniors to Santa Aria retreat house. About the middle of August (17 or 20) the Jap M,P. raided Santa Ana, searching the place for a guerrillero who was supposed to be hiding there, They searched all the Fathers rooms, and in Joe’s room they found a film of slides of the 1923 Tokio earthquake which Fr. Mark McNeal had used in the States to collect about $10,000 for Japanese relief. That roll of film was sufficient for the Japs. They hauled Joe together with Frs, Kennally and Doucette, and Brothers Abrams and Bauerlein to Fort Santiago for investigation. The men were all corralled downstairs during the search, so they didn’t know at the time why they had been taken (a different reason for each),

Joe was declared “innocent” and released from Fort Santiago one month later. He was an old man, and a broken man (though he seemed to have been restored to normal by March 1944). What happened in Fort Santiago? Joe was not beaten or tortured physically. He was examined for about two hours each day for the first two days, and then left in his cell for a month without a word pro or con. The examination covered his boyhood, youth, schooling, visits to Japan, years in Manila, all kinds of immaterial questions.

The cell was about 20 ft. by 10 ft. and there were from 20 to 30 inmates. One door opening on a corridor and no windows. They had to sit on the floor away from and facing the wall, with their hands in their laps, in silence, from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. From 7:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. they had to lie down, willy-nilly. The only exceptions were meals, which were served twice a day (soft—boiled rice arid salt called “lugao” and some greens), using the latrine, which was a bucket in the cell, and three times a week they were taken out for a half-hour of setting up exercises in the fresh air. Joe couldn^tt eat the rice regularly and some of the boys in the cell with him (two or three were Ateneo boys, and Father de La Costa, S.J., a Scholastic, was with him) would give him extra greens. This, I think, was the start of the stomach ulcer that finally caused his death. He lost a lot of weight, 30 or 40 pounds in Santiago.