May 11, 1945 - Morning - Finished loading. The natives worked in shifts and stuck to the job all night. Noon - retracted from beach and anchored in area. We saw a couple of big turtles swimming in the water. Afternoon - Departed Saidor for Finchshafen New Guinea. We arrive tomorrow.

May 10, 1945 - We are lying off Saidor, mandated territory of British New Guinea. This is a better looking place than the more northern parts of New Guinea. 10:00 - A pilot came aboard to show the beach. He says there is only one airstrip and 250 white men here. One aussie plane flies in here once a day and an American plane one a week and ships hardly ever stop here. There are still Japs a little ways back in the hills. As we were going in to the beach we saw a school of big fish jumping off the reefs just off the land. We beached at 2/3 speed and nearly got a dry ramp. There are about 2 or 3 hundred native men on the beach to load us. We are going to carry the tank deck full of fuel oil and kerosene in drums to Finchshafen. We will also carry about 12 vehicles on the top deck. They are fixing to abandon this place. The natives are dark fellows with dull kinky hair standing straight up on their heads. Their hair is black except where part of them have it bleached about white. They say these are the unmarried ones. They all wear a piece of cloth wrapped around them like a dress. They take this off and wrap up in it when they sleep of a night. They wear a vreech cloth under their wrap. Some of them have holes in their ear lobes and the holes have been widened until they are about the size of a quarter or bigger and nearly all of them have bands around their arms cutting them about half in two it seems. Most of their have piece of bright colored rag bands around their head and have stuck some leaves, flowers or some other bright colored object in them. All of their mouths were orange in color from chewing beetlenut, which is a native nut that makes them high like whiskey or dope. For all of this though they seemed pretty friendly and they sure did work hard. They are to work from about 1600 this afternoon until about 1100 tomorrow if they can be persuaded to do so. For their chow tonight they had rice cooked in banana leaves and a can of Australian meat rations. They all cut themselves opening their can of meat they mixed with the rice. To eat this some of them had spoons while others eat with their fingers. They all took about a heaping tablespoonsul at a bite. To control the natives the Australians had made some of them police. These wore long sabers on a belt and wore a purple and red wrap around. To make these police the Aussies take a native who has killed another native or two and send him to school instead of to jail. The natives are all afraid of these guys and so they can keep them in hand ok. There are some Japs back in the hills a few miles and the natives are mostly the ones to fight them. One Australian officer was saying one of the natives has nearly a hundred Japs to his credit and another had killed 40. There is a lot of malaria around here and we have to wear our shirts topside. This afternoon a bunch of our boys went off the ship and picked 5 pecks buckets of limes. They grow wild around here and grow about the size of lemons. They make a pretty good drink. A lot of boys went back into the jungle a little ways and came back with loads of bananas which they stored in the refrigrator to ripen as they were still green.

April 22, 1945 - Morning - GQ. Air raid, but we never saw any Jap planes. We are now entering Polloc Harbor. Morning - Beached at Parang and unloaded men and equipment. We beached on some metal pontoons. We can see some houses all blown to pieces on the land. We were talking to some of the soldiers here and they said that the Moros, a tribe of people living here were as bad as the Japs to fight. We also saw some natives and they are about the sorriest looking Filipinos we’ve seen to date. Some of the boys slipped ashore and got some nice souvenirs, but I stayed around the dock. We won’t get unloaded until tomorrow. Twilight - We saw what looked like around a million bats flying around the harbor. Although they are shaped like the bats back home, they are about the size of a buzzard.

February 13 - Morning - Moored about 25 yards off the beach. We couldn’t beach because of coral reefs. I met a boy who went to radio school with me on the ship tied up to us. This is a pretty beach. There is a native village just down the beach with a river coming out behind it. In front of us is a hill covered in coconut palms. A whole swarm of natives were out all day in their dugout canoes talking and trying to sell souvenirs. Noon - Started raising small boat (LCVP) when cable snapped, leaving small boat hanging by its bow from the Davits. The stern was in the water up to the motor. The coxswain and seamen in the boat hung on to their lifelines, but the motormac (Brummer) was thrown into the water. They had to bring him aboard in a stretcher, but he is ok now. They fastened a line to the stern of the boat to keep it from going on down and lowered the bow slowly. The boat is pretty banged up, but they got it down ok.

February 3, 1945 - Morning - Passing Battan Peninsula. We are entering Subic Bay on the other side of Battan Peninsula. There is a big mountain on the other side dropping straight down to the sea. It is really pretyy although it doesn’t look like anyone could live on it. There is not anything hardly growing on it. Bataan on the other side is covered with Jungle. 0800 - Passing Grande Island which sits in the middle of the entrance of Subic Bay. We can see some big guns on it. There is also a big house there. There are some pretty white lighthouses on some of the small islands in the Bay and also on the big mountain opposite of Bataan. 0900 - Anchored behind Grande Island. There are a lot of Destroyers and other ships here. Also, a squadron of PT’s came in. Some of them without their torpedos. Noon - Underway to the beach. The water hasn’t hardly got a ripple in it. All this place looks like a big inland lake. We hit the beach at the furthest end of Subic Bay. We landed in Subic village with a population of about 1000 people. This is a really nice beach to beacj on. We hit at standard speed and landed with a dry ramp. The native huts were built so close to the water that we splashed water into their yards when we hit. The people and huts looked about like Leyte and other Philippine Islanders. They were all friendly and there were a good many guuerillas. We unloaded in about 2 hours, retracted from the beach, and returned to our old anchorage.

January 22, 1945 - Morning - Beached at Catmon Hill Beach to take on a load. The Army camp on the beach is in the middle of a native village of about 50 or 60 houses. Noon - Retracted from the beach and moved further down the beach. There is still a lot of native huts on the beach. We are about 30 miles from Tacloban. There are some coconut trees on the beach with some hills in the background, making it look a lot better than that jungle of New Guinea. Night - loading cargo.

January 21, 1945 - Some of the boys traded the natives out of a small monkey.

January 20, 1945 - Some of the boys got a couple of roosters from the natives. One was a game and the other a brown leghorn. They got them to fight, but the brown leghorn wouldn’t fight. Had more air alerts during the night. We thought we were leaving for Finchaffen but got a change of orders and are staying here.

January 19, 1945 - Still trading with the natives. Some of the girls are not bad looking. Nearly all of the natives speak pretty good English.

January 18, 1945 - Nearly everyone is playing with the natives who come out in canoes and trade straw hats, mats, chickens, and other junk for clothes and mattress covers. They are worse than Jews to trade with, you can’t beat them out of anything. Night - Air alert, but secured while air alert was on as we are not allowed to fire at night. The shore batteries were firing and the search lights were flashing around.

January 17, 1945 - In Leyte Gulf - Evening - anchored in San Pedro Bay between Leyte and Samar. There are a lot of natives in canoes around the ship.

August 7, 1944 - Moved anchorage closer to mouth of harbor. On the shore is some native huts and a pretty little church; probably some missionary’s church. Mariners are landing and taking off close to us.

August 3, 1944 - Went ashore on Aore Island. It is really a tropical island all right. They have big coconut plantations here set out. We went down to Paradise Beach. The road to the beach led through the heart of the coconut plantation and the jungle around it. After we got to the beach we walked around picking up coral and looking the place over. We saw one native hut made out of grass. The natives are small dark skinned people. After we left the beach we went back to the recreation center and played ball until I could hardly wiggle because I wasn’t used to it and we played so long and hard.

July 20, 1944 - Sighted Borabora in the Society Islands. It has mountains thrust half a mile high out of the sea. The tops of the mountains are generally clothed in clouds. The island'’ were covered with coconut trees and other tropical trees. Before we got to the island we were met by a whole swam of natives in their canoes, dug out of wood, selling all kinds of trinkets as souvenirs. I bought a hula skirt and beads which I don’t know what to do with and do not need. The natives are average size, brown skinned and pretty intelligent. Especially where money is concerned.