Below is the transcribed diary. We would like to give a special thanks to Brooksie Conery for the wonderful job she did transcribing George Crane's diary.

Sept. 29.    Early muster for the ship to leave Pearl Harbor at 0800 the skipper came on the skwak box informing us we were with a cruiser and carrier task force headed for Wake Island; it was a strong fortification of Japs that was too close to Pearl. 

Oct 4 and 5 we bombarded Wake Island for two days – one of our ________ was shot at by a zero over the target – while spotting for our gunnery.  But he did survive ____.  Wake Island is a flat island only 7 miles long.  We head back to Pearl where we anchored in the stream where the crew took liberty and took buses into Honolulu – some of us enjoyed going out to Waikiki Beach for a good meal at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and had a brief tour of the beautiful beach area

Oct. 31. Some of us remembered it was Halloween in the States.  We got underway for gunnery practice for four days and were on gunnery practice for four days and were on patrol in the Hawaii area. 

Nov. 11 we left Pearl with cruisers, carriers, and met up with a battle wagon task force for the Gilbert Islands which meant we were going to cross the equator, 00-00 longitude and 170-10 latitude – the new crew members were lined up from the fan tail to the well deck with Pollywogs for their_____________________ by the old timers (Shellbacks) – with big paddles, paint and sloppy goo – I lost most of my hair by the _________ _________ barber and had a very sore back side but most of us survived and received special Shellback certificates from the rustic Sea Dragon.