His father struggling with malaria, 13-year-old Alejandro understands his responsibility: Along with his younger brother, Roderick, Alejandro takes to the streets of war-ravaged Manila whenever it is safe and barters cigarettes for food to help his family and their friends. Fifteen in all, they hide in the cellar of his family’s home to wait out what they hope is the last few weeks of a brutal three-year occupation by the Japanese. Today, Alejandro and Roderick make their way through the burned rubble and rotting corpses in the street.

The two brothers are intercepted by Japanese soldiers who question them concerning the whereabouts of Domingo, the elusive leader of the underground Filipino guerilla movement. That movement is suspected in the killing of a Japanese officer that morning. Alejandro denies knowing Domingo, although Domingo and his wife and children have taken refuge in the Karangalan cellar. The two brothers are then rounded up with others suspected of aiding the movement, among them Domingo himself (the Japanese do not know what he looks like). They are herded to the barricaded grounds of Fort McKinley on the outskirts of the city. The Japanese, determined to find the killers, use barbed wire to suspend Alejandro by his thumbs to make him talk.