I deliberately cut my Bataan Day Dambana ng Kagitingan to the simplest and starkest statements. I attach the speech. The corrected transcript is not what I delivered. Most of the Insert I I did not deliver. Too prolix for such an audience. But good and informative for print.
The hijacked PAL [Philippine Air Lines] Bac-III’s still in Bangkok with a damaged hydraulic system and tire. They have been offered a commercial airline trip to Cairo which they have initially refused.
I have, by telephone, authorized Ambassador Manuel Yan in Bangkok to offer a conditional pardon inasmuch as the MNLF [Moro National Liberation Front] spokesman a certain Abdel Baki Abubakr Sec. Gen. for foreign relations in Cairo has disowned them saying the Phil. Authorities were “plotting this act to discredit the Muslim struggle for autonomy in the Southern Philippines.”
Typhoon Konsing, a freak summer typhoon is as of 1900 hours 300 nautical miles east of Borongan Samar with maximum winds of 90 knots moving NNW at 10 knots.
The Presidential Pilot recommends cancellation of their trip (F/L [First Lady] and guests) to Tacloban.
Official Gazette for April 9, 1976: THE PRESIDENT and the First Lady led the nation in commemorating the 34th anniversary of the Fall of Bataan. Center of the nationwide celebration was Mt. Samat in Pilar, Bataan, where the beleaguered defenders of the peninsula made their fierce but futile stand against the Japanese invaders in 1942.
PHILIPPINE government accepted the nomination of Aber Abdel Kander Shammont as the first ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the Republic of the Philippines.
THE PRESIDENT temporarily took over the reign over the Department of National Defense as Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile flew to Washington to join a Philippine panel in talks on the revision of the Philippine-American military bases agreement.