The final diary entry penned by Katsuhiko Oku, a diplomat who died in an ambush Saturday in Iraq, was posted on the Foreign Ministry's Web site Monday.

The entry was written two days before his death in northern Iraq.

The site has received a flood of hits since Oku and another ministry official, Masamori Inoue, were gunned down, with site visitors wishing to read the "Letters from Iraq" Oku wrote while he was posted there.

A Foreign Ministry official stated that the site has attracted so much interest that it has become difficult to access.

In the entry dated Nov. 27, Oku, 45, noted that U.S. airborne troops, who have been taking part in military operations in Iraq since February, were celebrating Thanksgiving Day with a special meal of turkey and pumpkin pie.

"(The troops) spent the night of Thanksgiving Day thinking of their families at home," he wrote.

The journal starts April 23, with Oku detailing how he had left Kuwait early in the morning with other U.S.-allied officials heading for Baghdad, a drive of roughly nine hours.

He and an Australian diplomat riding with him were "a little nervous," since they were the first to enter Iraq from their respective countries, Oku wrote.

When he visited the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations after a deadly truck bombing Aug. 19, he "miraculously" found the name card of a UNICEF official he knew who had died in the attack, according to a journal entry for Aug. 24.

"By chance, I actually picked up the last name card that he apparently left (for us)," he wrote. "I can only vow from the bottom of my heart to carry out his last wish and help rebuild Iraq."

In his Nov. 13 entry, Oku stressed the importance of fighting terrorism when he visited Nasiriyah, a city in southern Iraq, in the wake of a bombing that had targeted the local headquarters of the Italian military police.

"What we should inherit from the precious lives of the victims is their strong resolve to fight terrorism," he wrote.