I could not write my diary on April 5, 1971 as we were on board the 777 on the way to Gaang Wharf, Currimao, Ilocos Norte and the ship was pitching and gaining deeply preventing any kind of writing. We cast off from the pier at San Fernando, La Union at about 10:30 PM...

Thursday Father Mafalen, [Rev. Michael McPhelin, S.J] the Jesuit economist who is with us, when I asked him where he thought we were deficient in our economy, referred to two areas: The absence of an export bank to facilitate credit for buyers of our exports. The lack...

Sunday Ex-Gov. Datu Udtog Matalam, appearing before Sen. [Mamintal] Tamano, blamed me for the Cotabato violence. “Kasalanan lahat ni Marcos ito,” he declared. He is a lying by cunning old boa constrictor. The violence was started by his blackshirts under his son and...

Saturday “This is your principal mission in life—save the country again from the Maoists, the anarchists and the radicals.” This is the message that I deduce from the visions that I see asleep and awake. “Subordinate everything to this,” God seems to be saying to me....

Sunday If and when I declare martial law, it will become necessary not merely to assume greater powers but to impose what is referred to as martial law in its severest form or in its technical senses —“that of the will of the commander, unlimited by any restrictions...

Monday Started dieting on Delmor and pospas last night up to today. But was cleared of ulcers or my growth in the GI [gastrointestinal] tract when I went through a GI series of X-Rays in Makati Medical Center with Dr. Piedad and Dr. Villacorta with Dr. Yap and Zagala...

Thursday I have just had my teeth attended to by the dentist, Dr. Primo Gonzales, Chairman of the Board of Examiners of Dentistry and Capt. Paz as well as Dr. Maliksi who attended (the latter two in the Pres. Guards). My teeth that had been broken by my Japanese...

I attach the communications on the sugar quota problem. We want to keep our quota of 1,500,000 tons provided for by the Laurel-Langley agreement plus 47.22% of the deficiency of the Puerto Rico quota and the American increase of their consumption. But the domestic...

Sunday I went to Ilocos Norte by plane (Fokker) waking up at 6:15 AM to see Baguio in a fog and the plane not yet in Loakan Airfield, going over some papers and issuing instructions, breakfast and dressing up ready to drive to Loakan at 7:00 AM, where we awaited the...

I did not send this— December31, 1971 Dear Hans, I could not help writing you on the Bulletin. It has graduated to the yellow journalism of the Manila Times. It concocts (and I use the word advisedly) a supposed order from me to some fictitious Foreign Affairs post or...