February 5, 1945 - Evening - Passing Mindoro - can see lights from shore. One transport joined us here.

January 28, 1945 - Anchored off San Jose’Mindoro in the Philippines. There is an airfield in front of us and B-24’s are landing and taking off there . The land along the waters edge is flat but there are some big mountains further back. There is a tanker, or what used to be a tanker off of our port bow. It has burned completely up down to the water line. A Jap plane hit it and it exploded some high octane gasoline and then the fuel oil caught on fire and it is still burning. It isn’t anything but a mass of molten steel now. We are to lay over here 4 days and go in D-Plus 5 on the lower part of Luzon.

January 27, 1945 - Passing Panay all day. Morning - got Bogie report, but 4 of our planes went up to intercept it and it never got over us. Noon - Got a report of another Bogie, but it never got to us either. Night - Passing Cuyo Island to port. We have 2 monkeys and about 4 big dogs on board this trip. The Army has a bigger monkey than we have and they also have the other dogs. We are due at Mindoro early tomorrow.

January 14, 1945 - Passed Manilla Bay last night. Morning - started through Mindoro Straits. Night - Man fell overboard. Don’t know which ship he was from or whether he was picked up or not.

January 7, 1945 - Passsing through Mindoro Straits - had 5 air raid alerts whole day. Morning - passed a ship burning in water near shore. Our planes shot down a Jap plane ahead of us about noon. Evening - Some ships of our convoy fired at a Jap plane but we never saw it. Night - Our Naval ships sank a Japanese Destroyer near shore to our starboard. We could see them firing. Our engines went out twice today and we thought we were going to have to be towed. 1600 - Hospital ship ahead of us had a burial at sea, all ships in convoy flew flags at half mast. Noon today our Destroyers dropped depth charges and we did an emergency turn to port because of a sub. We will pass Manilla Bay tonight or early tomorrow.