October 28, 2024 • 39 mins
Bradley W. Hart, PhD, Military Historian, talks with Rona Simmons, author of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944, which chronicles the US Armed Forces’ single deadliest day of World War II. More than 2,600 Americans perished around the world on October 24, 1944—more than on any other single day of the conflict—yet the day remains overshadowed by more widely remembered dates in WWII history.
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(00:05):
I'm Bradley WHart at the National World War II Museum.
I recently sat down with writerRona Simmons during one of our Meet
the Author events here in New Orleansto talk about her new book, No Average Day
The 24 Hours of October 24th, 1944.
You'll hearwhy that day deserves to be remembered.
Even though it may not be onethat you've heard about before.
(00:31):
Rona Simmons,thank you so much for joining us here
at National World War Two Museum.
It's a real pleasureto to be with you tonight.
And thank you for sharing this bookwith with us and our audience before it's
officially come out, which is,which is very exciting for all of us here.
I had the pleasure of reading your bookin preparation for this.
I've been sort of talking about thethemes of it was with
some of my colleagues hereat the Institute and some of our visitors
(00:52):
and the other groupsthat come to visit with us.
And I tell people, you know,it's about the deadliest day for Americans
in World War Two.And they say, oh, you mean Pearl Harbor?
And thenI say, no, no, it's not Pearl Harbor.
And they say, oh, well, you mean D-Day.
And I say, no, it's not D-Day either.
And they sort oflook at me confusedly then, and say, well,
what are you talking about?I say, it's October 24th, 1944.
(01:12):
That's when you get a totally blank stareout of almost everyone I tell about this.
So it's a fascinating concept for a book.
How did you come up with with the idea
before you get into the eventsof that terrible day,
how did you come up with the idea,and what were some of the challenges
you encountered researchingand writing a book like this?
Well thank you.
thank you, everyone, for being hereand for the museum having me.
It's truly an honor, and especiallyeven a week before the book comes out.
(01:35):
So, it's a great preview.
it is about three years in the making.
And as all of you know,there are countless, I won't even say,
books, countless bookshelvesfull of World War Two books.
And so if you if you want to write aboutWorld War II or you choose to write about
World War Two, you have to come up withsomething that people don't know about.
(01:58):
You know, you can't write about my father,the P-38 pilot, or D-Day
or midway, or any of the big battlespeople who have spent their lives.
Historians have already written that.
And so you have to look for somethingvery different.
And I there's not one answer.
And from a very pragmatic standpoint.
(02:18):
I tried to find somethingthat people don't know.
Like you say,people know about Pearl Harbor.
People know about D-Day or think they do.
And so those events were blastedon the on the newspapers,
you know, on the two inchhigh, headlines.
So I started thinking, well,what do people not know?
(02:39):
Is there maybe another daythat we haven't heard for some reason?
So that thoughtwas at the back of my head.
But then I decidedthat it's really more basic than that.
With that premise. It was,
I do this because I am passionate
about World War Two,having come from a military based family.
(03:01):
But I also I as the generations pass
and you meet young peoplewho barely know that there was a World
War two or barely know who fought in WorldWar two.
And the thought of what my fatherand my father in law did for us,
and all of the 16 millionmen and women who fought that I didn't.
(03:22):
I just can't let that gowithout some recognition
and doing whatI can to preserve their memory.
So that started me down the path.
I know I'm going to write about people,but how do you tell
the next generation or the one after thatwhat war really is?
And especially from someone like me,I didn't go to war.
I didn't fight in war.
(03:43):
And thank goodnessI haven't yet or had to.
how do you tell someone what war is likeif you're not going to write
about the battles, great naval battlesor army ground battles?
And to me, it's always been.
And through my earlierbooks talking about individuals
taking the war from, say,
(04:05):
the 26,000 30,000ft person up in ain a bomber or fighter
and bringing it down to the ground,not necessarily meaning to the army,
but to an individual, whether it's someonein the back of a plane
or someone on the ground,and then helping a young person
put their feet into those shoesand walk their walk.
(04:27):
And so that's that.
I knew I would do a storyabout individuals again.
I knew I would do find somethingthat no one had found.
And so I looked past those big headlines,and I knew I wanted it to be global
because so many people I talk to,if I write a book about Europe in the war,
they say, well,why didn't you address the Pacific?
(04:48):
And if you write about the Pacific,someone said, well,
why didn't you write aboutwhat happened in Europe?
And I wanted it to be global.
I wanted people to knowthat there was a global war going
on, that people were fightingand dying across the globe.
It wasn't just D-Day,it wasn't just, Pearl Harbor.
So that'swhen I said, I've got to find a day.
(05:09):
So it's going to be later in the war
when there were peoplefighting across the globe.
And I started just picking off
different days, different battles.
I didn't againwant it to be about a single battle.
And I do a lot of researchabout individuals and profiled them.
And I kept-- this date, just kept
(05:32):
coming up, October 24th.
What's that?
And I would, being the obsessivecompulsive person
that I am,I had my little checkboxes of who,
what day, what monthand that block just kept filling up
faster than most othersbecause If it was D-Day I was ignoring it.
If it was Pearl Harbor I was ignoring itand I kept coming back to it.
(05:54):
I thought, well,what happened on that day?
And that's when I stumbled on if you will.
And I guess half of this is luck.
So that's when I found out that day inand then we went from there.
Luck is always good for historianswhen it comes to finding those stories
that no one else has told before.
more than 2600men and women lost their lives on
October 24th, 1944,which is a really astonishing amount,
(06:16):
even in a conflictas bloody as as World War Two was.
how did you from this, this mass ofpeople who lost their lives this day?
How do you choose which storiesto focus on and profiled in the book?
Well, and,as I was going around the globe
documenting these individuals,and we'll get back to
some of the individual people out there.
(06:36):
But, they were stories that stood out.
And as I would research one,I would find, you know,
more than just a tick boxbecause to me, honoring these people
is morethan just getting the their birthdate
and the day they died and where they died,it was it was really drilling down
into their stories and,I've picked a few.
And I always hate to do thisbecause I feel like I'm
(06:58):
doing a disserviceto all of the rest of them.
But just to give you an idea of,the breadth
of what we have found on the farleft is Gervase Holttum.
And he was actually the first storyI found.
And I say, again, luck.
It was the internet.
I was researching and just saw this story,
(07:19):
about Peter [?]who was looking for his uncle,
who was killed in a plane crashin the Pacific.
And he had gone to,a number of the islands
because there was very sketchy informationabout his, uncle.
So he was going to the different islands,and he was on Yap
(07:40):
Island,and I did not know where Yap Island was.
I did not know there was a Yap Island,but Yap Island is between Peleliu,
where GervaseHolttum was stationed in Guam.
So really in the middle of nowhere.
And Peter [?] went to that island.
And had search for his uncleand the citizens there said, no,
(08:02):
we don't have any records of your uncle,
but there is this gravewe want to show you.
And they had found the grave,
at the end of the runwaywhere his plane crashed.
And they had been, attending it.
Now, he was actually found in 1947,
two years after the end of the war,when we repatriated many of the men.
(08:23):
in the Pacific.
But in those two yearsafter he crashed and died on October 24th,
the local people dug his grave,buried him,
and tended to it, and keeping the junglefrom encroaching on that.
And they told him the storyand showed them where it was.
And he ended up erecting a monumentto Gervase Hulton.
So that was the first story.
(08:44):
And that's okay.
This is this book.
So we'll we'll go on from there.
And then the second type of story,when you say, how do I pick them?
They, they sort of picked themselvesand came to me.
The next one is, Herman, Joseph, Adolphe.
And in my research,I always try to find if I can find
a relative of one of these people,because the story comes
(09:07):
so much more alive when you can talkto someone about the person.
I found his son and daughter in law,and they sent me
reams of paper about,
Herman, Adolphe, who was also a pilot.
He was killed.
He was flying.
actually, he joined the Navy originally, long before the war.
(09:28):
He did two tours of dutybefore the war broke out.
And then he got bit,as I say, by the flying bug.
And he wanted to fly above all else.
But America was not in the war.
And of course, a lot of the youngmen thought, well, if I don't
get in the war nowand get to fly, it's going to be over.
Little did they know.
(09:49):
And so he went to Canadabecause Canada was recruiting.
They were in the war and they didn'thave they knew they did not have enough
citizens to fillthe need for their, bombers or fighters.
So he crossed over and, Canada,
it was against the law to actually solicit
men from the United States, to go to war for a different country.
(10:11):
But they got the word out,and word went from person to person.
And Herman heard about this.
So he went to Canada, got his wings, flewfor Canada, actually was transferred to,
Europe and to England and was over therefighting for Canada when, D-Day happened.
And he said, that's it.
(10:31):
So he joined the American Air Forces,and he was traveling,
carryingcargo into Belgium on a mission.
And they got just a few degrees off
course and a few degreesbecame more than a few degrees.
They came in over Dunkirk, which was,still under occupation and actually
a fight between the Czechoslovakians,Germans and the British there.
(10:54):
And his plane was shot down and he,they could not find him.
And he actually his planecrashed into the,
opening area where the submarineGerman submarine pens were.
So his plane was blockingthe submarine pens,
and they had to bomb itto get it out of the area.
And of course,all the men were killed instantly anyway.
(11:16):
But, what happened?
that was that for years and years.
But then the Defense POW/MIA AccountingAgency, which is the organization
that is still working todayto bring home our men
across the world, they went overseas.
They found witnesses who told them where,
the men that did survive the crashwere they
(11:39):
exhumed the bodies, they buried themand unfortunately not Herman's body.
So he, remains at the bottom and,
at the [?].
So that was, a great connection
to be able to talk to some descendantsand makes all the difference.
The third gentleman is, Shiro Togo,
who was with the 442nd combat,Regimental Combat Team.
(12:01):
I picked his story.
It's just one you, you can't overlook.
there's the lost battalion,and every war has had a lost battalion.
I think, but these men, from the 141stInfantry, were stranded
in the mountains in northern France. And,
they had been cut off.
They went up to the mountainsto fight with supplies for one day,
(12:26):
food for one day, ammunition for one day,anything they could carry for one day
and got cut offand team after team from their...
other battalions with their,
their group went in to try to rescue themand failed.
Now a week later they're still up there.
They’re
existing on almost nothing.
(12:47):
all of our attempts to drop in foodfailed as well.
So the American Army called in the 442nd.
The 442nd was a Japanese Nisei group.
All Japanese American citizenswho had volunteered to fight.
And they sent them in.
Their motto was go for broke.
They did not failwhatever mission they took.
And they went in and found the lostbattalion, got them out
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at an enormous cost to their unit,and Shiro Togo was one of the ones
who was killed on October 21stin rescuing these men.
So again, a storythat you just can't overlook.
and then the next one, is GeorgeMcElroy.
He had been in, World War one,
and he was with his VeteransAdministration
(13:32):
in Mason City, Iowa.
And he had been with the American Legion.
He was a on their board or director.
And he said, when World War Two came, hesaid, I've got I've got to sign up again.
He thought he was maybe too old,but they accepted him,
and he was on a destroyer in the Pacific.
(13:54):
And as you know, things changeand the army is in charge.
And you might think you have your positionin the army and things change.
Well, they decidedwhen they got to Alaska, Adak,
that he and I don't really know the reasonbut they transferred him to shore.
And I don't think it was anythinghe did wrong.
(14:14):
but the records don't exist.
He went to shore.
He was a newspaper man.
He finds himself in Adak, Alaska.
And who was in Adak, Alaska.
Dashiell Hammett, he'swriting a newspaper.
His head of the newspaperfor the armed forces in Alaska.
And here's George, and he's.
I mean, he must have been beside himself,to be able to work on the newspaper,
(14:38):
his hometown newspaper,
put a article about their herowho was in Adak.
And, a couple of weeks later,they put a second article.
He died of a heart attack.
And, that, you know, that to me
also spoke to all the deaths that weren'tnecessarily the people who were fighting.
And he had chosen to to enlist.
But that's not how he died.
(14:59):
And then, I'll say George W Pitman,
I can't look at that face
and not say he's going to be on this book.
He was a seventh grade educated
black man from ScotlandNeck, North Carolina.
I live in North Carolina.
I don't know where Scotland Neck is.
It's a very small town.
(15:20):
He came from a family of six children,
joined the Navyand raised through the ranks.
His middle name was Washington.
George Washington Pitman.
Believe it or
not, I encountered several GeorgeWashington's, several
John Pershing's, Woodrow Wilson's,all who died on October 24th.
But this George, Pitman was very special to me.
(15:41):
he died on the USS Shark,which we will come back
and mentioned a little bit,
like kind of a spoiler to the book,but we'll mention it anyway.
And then the last one, if I were jumpingthe gun, we're going to talk about women.
There were only 350,000 womenwho served out of 16 million men.
In the war.
(16:02):
It wasn't that womendidn't think about serving,
but they were put into traditional roles,nurses and clerks.
I could not find a single woman who diedon October 24th, and I was distraught.
And I know when I talkedto University of Missouri,
they would really want to havea well-rounded book.
We had all 24 chapters finished.
(16:24):
The book was pretty wellmaking its way down the road, and somehow
Margaret Neubauer shows up on my computer,
died on October 24th at 9:45 a.m.
in the Proving Grounds in Virginia.
She was a specialist.
And, I'll talk a little bit moreabout here when we talk about women later,
(16:44):
but she, was killed in a and, was hit by a truck on the proving grounds,
and she was returning to her barracks.
so, again, she had to make the book.
So, it's it's a little bitof everything.
And, I thought that was as it should be.
What I think what the book illustrates
so well, as is the truism of historythat everyone has a story.
Right?
It's so easy to reduce, casualtiesand fatality lists to mere numbers,
(17:08):
whereas you've done a fantastic jobreally giving personality really
to to the charactersthat you talk about the real individuals.
Obviously in the book,there were two really tragic stories
that stuck out to mewhen I was reading the book.
and they're both naval storiesto some extent.
but these are the two sort of highest,how highest casualty events
you talk about in the book.
And the first one,
(17:29):
is an incident involving two ships,USS Birmingham and USS Princeton.
at the battle of Leyte Gulf,which is raging on October 24th, 1944.
you know, this was a story
that I was vaguely familiarwith as someone who studies the war,
but you really flesh the story outin considerable depth.
And I learned quite a bit from the book.
So what is what is the storyof the Princeton and the Birmingham?
(17:50):
And why is this? Why is it so tragic?
they had both been,
traveling throughout the Pacific,involved in many of the battles up
and to until the time,that we went back into the Philippines.
for those who may not recall,the battle in the Philippines,
as you say, was goingon, we landed back in the Philippines.
(18:11):
General MacArthur made his famousI have return speech
on the 20th of October.
So the war or the battlesthere had just started,
but he, and the troops were moving inland
and there were many, many deaths as theyas they tried to cross to the Philippines.
But the ships were still out at seaprotecting,
our troops or delivering more troops,delivering more supplies.
(18:33):
And there was constantenemy activity around.
And the Princeton, was out at sea
just off of Leyte, where the landings had taken place.
And, there were some Japanese bombers,airplanes flying through
and harassing the ships, bombing,making strafing runs on the shore, etc..
(18:53):
And, they called a Judy bomber.
Our, our men gave the Japanese bomberswomen's names.
I still haven't figured out why,but so a Judy bomber came over
and dropped a bomb on the Princeton,and it hit the deck, went through
one level deck down into the next level,down, down to the next level.
And that's where it exploded.
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captain Buracker said,He looked at the damage
and said, I thought it was a small holeand that wouldn't do too much damage.
Well, it didn't until it it kept going through
these levels of the, of the decksuntil it exploded.
So the other ships in the, area came to the Princeton's rescue.
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a couple of destroyersand cruisers came over there.
There are designed to fight firesand had, many crew
members on them,who were trained in firefighting.
And the Captain Inglis of the Birmingham,
ships were docking and actually,
tied up next to on the Princetonwhile it was on fire.
And the Birmingham said,I really have the capability.
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I have more hoses and more menwho are trained in firefighting.
So some of the ships pulled back,they tethered up to the Princeton,
who was now dead in the water,and they had to keep moving their engines
with the the tides on the current
was pushing the Princetonone way and Birmingham the other way.
So they finally strung tiesto keep the two together
(20:17):
while they, fought the fireand they actually put out
the initial fire, over about a five hourperiod of fighting these fires.
And they were pretty well satisfied that,you know, it was all over, but,
things looked pretty good.
and so thatthen there was more enemy activity.
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And so they had to untie and move away.
And once that turned out to be nothing.
So the Birmingham moved back.
They tied up again.
And five hoursafter that initial explosion,
the ammunitionin the lower deck exploded.
It caused,
untold, havoc on deck.
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Many of the men on the Birmingham,
because they had been tied up for hoursand were successful in fighting this fire.
Had come on deck to watch the firefight.
These are men.They didn't have anything else to do.
So they all came up on the deck.
And some of them, you see,
were just watching,although many of them were helping fight
the fires themselves, even thoughthat might not be their training.
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So, what happened
is when the Princeton exploded, debrisas small
as pieces of shrapneland as large as cars flew up into the sky
and landed on the Birmingham, mostly,
and some on Princeton, of course,
it killed 300 men on the Birminghamand another 100 on the Princeton.
(21:46):
Seven numbers. Right. horrific deaths.
there was a chaplain and a
medic who saw the man and and were running
to everyone's rescue,and they said this was one time
when the blood ranlike rivers on the deck.
It was horrific.
And men were terribly burned.
(22:07):
many, many killed, obviously.
And, the captain, actually,John Hoskins on the Princeton
and what his, was hurt in the,in the explosion,
his, foot was actually amputatedor cut in half.
and so that actually a surgeon
cut the other half of his foot offwhile he's on the deck,
(22:30):
and the man retains his consciousnessand is talking to people.
And finally, when he gets, readyand they bandage him up,
he actually went to the--
went to the captain and said, permissionto leave the ship, sir.
And, you know, this is going onin the middle of all this devastation.
So it was a horrific accident.
(22:50):
the second most, as you say,deadly of the day.
And, it it really requiredas I look back on the numbers,
and then,
the event as big as thisin order to get to that 2600, you couldn't
there weren't 26 individual,2600 individual men who died around them.
(23:11):
Or you had to find incidents like this.
And as tragic as they were but, the, the,
Birmingham survived,but the Princeton had to be sunk.
And I tell the story.
It's, it was also a tragedy in the way,it had to be sunk.
They gave a destroyer, to R--Sorry the Reno,
(23:33):
orders to go ahead and sink the ship.
When they knew the Princeton
couldn't be saved,it was so badly damaged, it they fired.
Much like the Tang experience.
If you haven't seen it here at the museum,they fired five torpedoes
that all missed or hit a partnership.
That wouldn't take it down.
And they finally discoveredthat, battleship,
a cruiser had been
(23:54):
tied up to the Princetonduring the early parts of the day
and had been,they had been colliding back and forth.
And they believe that damaged the torpedo,capabilities of the function.
So they finally had to call another
the Erwinin to actually sink the Princeton before
because they couldn't let it surviveor be taken over by the Japanese.
(24:14):
So that was one tragic event.
It's one of those scenes.
It's almost impossible to fathomwhat it must've been like.
And it really, is disturbing inso many ways.
The other really disturbing storyand tragic story that you
highlight in the book, and you kind ofweave it through narratively.
No spoilers.
Here is is the story of the Japanese shipArisan Maru.
(24:37):
the Arisan Maru representsthe largest single loss of life
that you talk about in the book.
And in fact,
unless I'm mistaken, the greatest maritimeloss of life in American history.
this is a story that that I was,somewhat aware of
as someone who studies this,but I think the vast
majority of Americans are not familiarwith sort of the Arisan Maru or,
or the similar shipsthat were sailing at this point. So.
(24:58):
So what does the story of the Arisan Maru,
and why do you think that Americans aren't
more familiar with this part of historyof the war in the Pacific?
Those are easy questions.
They have great answers.
it was the first Hell ship
that was sunk by a,
by the American forces, the Hell ships.
And, I had no idea what hell ships were.
(25:20):
And I say in the book, many people, like many of the soldiers
who were on hell ships, may not have knownwhat a hell ship was before they got on,
but when they heard the word, they knewwhat the hell ship was.
Again, this is October 24th.
The Japanese had knownthat the Americans were coming back.
They had enough intelligence out therethat they knew
(25:41):
our ships were coming, and they knew thatwe wanted to take back the Philippines.
And so it wasn't unexpected.
And by this time they had.
And you've heard of the baton death marchand all of this troops that surrendered,
after, we lost
the Philippines were in the prisonerof war camps, and Japan was going through
a difficult time to, in their own economicsituation back in their homelands.
(26:06):
And they needed labor.
They needed labor for their mines,to manufacturing to help
keep their ships going.
So they decided what better way to fillour labor needs than to get the prisoners
that we're holding in the Philippinesand elsewhere around the South Pacific
and bring them back to Japanand let them labor there.
So they began emptying the prisoner of warcamps at the Montevideo.
(26:30):
I forget exactly how many.
I think, there were 1200, but these weremostly Australian, prisoners on board,
when they were sunk, because of what
they put them on these freighters,they were cargo ships.
That or in some cases, liners
that they had refitted to carry prisonersin their holds, not in cabins
(26:51):
or anything quite so decent as that,but in the cargo holds,
they were unmarked because they were,taking sometimes supplies,
sometimes passengers and oftentimesthe prisoners just started.
Montevideo was the first onethat started in earlier
in, in 44 before the-- we returned.
But it continued at a greater height.
(27:12):
No one knows exactlyhow many of these ships were,
transported or how many prisonersthey transported or how many died.
Exactly.
But, the next one was the Oryoko Maru.
That in the middlethat, traversed in December, 44.
It, too, was sunkby an American submarine,
(27:33):
again unmarked and transportingprisoners back to Japan
and in the Oryoko Maru’s case.
While there were many, almost as many, P.O.W.s
on board as the Arisan Maru,they actually survived.
They were close to land, and they minutethe prisoners were in the water
after the ship was broken apart,and they swam to shore
(27:55):
only, of course, to be picked upby the Japanese and then, herded together
and put on the in Enoura Maru,which is the bottom ship.
Yeah. No, no, no prize for surviving.
They were then put on the next ship.
The conditions ontheir ships were horrific.
So there were prisonerswho drew who did survive.
(28:17):
Some of the shipswho drew, likenesses of what occurred.
These men, as you need to understand,came out of the prisoner of war camps.
They were already emaciated.
They were already many of them. Malnutrition.
Very, very, practically near death.
They had been beaten and, many other atrocities.
(28:38):
And they were then put on these hell shipsin the cargo holds.
They were given one cup of water,one cup of rice a day.
They were put in holdsthat would carry maybe 2 or 300 people,
a thousand 1500
nowhere to sit, nowhere to lay down.
(29:00):
They were stuffed body to body.
The latrine facilities were fivefive gallon
cans at the front of the cargo hold.
If you were at the back or anywhere pastthe second row,
you are not going to take a-- ofuse of the latrines.
They were on these ships for a week.
(29:25):
The temperatures in the hull
went way over 100 degrees
and they say somebody saidthe sides of the ship was so hot
and you know,the men were pressed against them
that it would burn your skinto stand against them.
People went mad.
They killed some,killed others to survive.
(29:46):
and some of some luckily survived.
There were 1800American prisoners out of Camp Cabanatuan.
The people who survived the deathof the Baton death
march,who were on the ship in this condition,
they actually, when they were stuffed
into one of the holdshalfway through the trip.
(30:08):
and they were on this ship for 12 days.
Halfway through the ship,there were so many people dying.
And of course they did not.
They left the bodies such as they could,with the men who were in the hold. And,
they finally realizedthey needed to stop the dying
because what the, Japanese shipcaptains knew were their orders,
(30:31):
were that they had to bring these men
in ready working condition to the Japanesehomelands.
Well, this was not going to happen.
So they transferred 600 of the menout of 1800 into a second hold.
That hold was one third filled with coal.
So these men now stood on shards of coal
(30:52):
for the other six,seven days of their trip.
So miraculous.
I mean, miraculously, most of them
were still alive on the24th when it was torpedoed
and went down.
It sank in two hours.
And I have one more slideabout the Arisan Maru.
(31:15):
If you can't imagine and I can't 1800 men.
I put this graphic, each of these icons is ten men.
They're 180 icons of this.
That's 1800men were crammed into these holds.
They all went into the water
and all but nine, the last little icon,
(31:38):
died on October 24th.
And it, it is, a tragedy, you ask?
Well, why why don't people know this?
Well, in fact,we can talk a little bit about the
the nine survivors,five of whom are pictured here.
there, of course,were no allied witnesses to this,
(32:00):
so there was not going to beany newspaper report.
So you can look, October 24th, 25th, 26th,
27th, you will not find a headlineabout the Arisan Maru.
We did not know about ituntil these, gentlemen came home.
who survived.
And they didn't make it backto the United States until December
(32:21):
and, December 5th, I believe it was.
And, they were thenbrought to the white House, given medals
and told not to speak about the incident.
At that time, we we didn't really know.
I mean, these these five menshow up and talk about this horror
that, of course, Americansdidn't really want to be released
(32:42):
if they didn't have to, or until they knewmore about what exactly happened.
And we really didn't know
who sank the Arisan Maru at the time.
And it was one of our submarines.
So was that represents the largestloss of life that you talk about.
We talk about in the book.
one more question forI want to open up for the audience.
I'm sure there's a tonof great questions out there,
(33:03):
but maybe one brief question here.
you know, we often forgetthat the general conditions
were hazardous in World War Two,even if you weren't in combat.
When we think about the war,we often think about,
people who lose their lives in combat.
But you actually talk about individuals,both men and women,
who lose their livesin non-combat situations.
Can you tell usabout some of those stories
that you really fascinating stories,in a lot of ways,
(33:24):
tragic storiesthat you talk about in the book.
I also, as you say,
I'm very partial to not overlookingpeople who signed up for the war.
I mean it to me, if you volunteered,you went down, you enlisted,
you went through boot camp,you're with your unit, you're in.
You're in the army now, as they say.
And these
people deserve as much recognition,even if they never made it to the theater.
(33:47):
So I always look at the,
what they call the zone of the interiorof the United States.
And on October 24th,
there was a crewflying on their last training mission.
They left, Nebraska.
Their route was to come to Baton Rougeand then refuel and go back.
(34:07):
And within a week,they were supposed to go to the Pacific.
So they took off for 3 a.m. from Nebraska.
Sorry, 4 AM from Nebraska.
Got in here to Baton Rouge, refueled,ten men on the plane,
a very experienced pilot refueled,
went to the end of the runway, took off
(34:29):
and crashedimmediately at the end of the runway.
it's in a Barksdale,
field at the endthat they set fire to the woods.
At the end, everyone perished.
And, you know, I'd like these men,
as I say that for a weekwould have been in the Pacific somewhere.
Navy, died.
And I think they deserveas much recognition as all of the rest.
(34:51):
The fascinating thing to me,when I saw that
and so how could, how do you top that?
Well, there were two other plane crashes
on that day in the United States
where 10 or 11 men were killedbecause their plane crashed.
And you can imagine the headlines, the,
the Baton Rouge-- Sorry,the Barksdale field
(35:14):
accident hadn't happenedbefore the news came out that another one
had crashed one in Kansasand one in California.
And this was going on.
And you think, well,how did these young men fly these planes?
can wewe have a hard time understanding this.
It was a flight, infancy of flight.
And, the B-29 had particular problems.
(35:36):
And one of the planes at crash was a B-29.
That pilot got in that plane.
And in the days before, there had been
three B-29s that went down in China.
And yet he gets on his plane,takes off, and, you know, it's it's an 18
or 20 or 22 year old who has to say,it can't happen to me.
(35:56):
I'm better than that.
I'm a good pilot.It won't happen. Well, it did.
so there were there were accidentslike that and plane crashes.
We talked about Margaret Neubauerbeing hit by a truck.
There was a gentlemanwho had visited the Pope.
He was a Catholic,and he was moving from in transit
from one, with his groupfrom one place to another.
(36:18):
And they'd gone through Rome
and there was a chance to see the Pope,and he got his rosary blessed by the Pope.
He was in the truck and it veered offthe road, crashed and was killed.
But his rosary made it back to his family.
And it's just, again, stories like thatthat touch my heart
and I, I hope you will find them to thatthey touch your heart
(36:39):
as you read the book.Absolutely fascinating.
I think we should open up to questionsfrom the audience. I'm sure there's a ton.
We have a microphone in the back.
one of my colleagues will bring bywho is some questions
for for Rona Simmons.
I'm curiousif your research in any kind of,
sort of data or demographic insightsabout where these
where these men came from, what statesthey're born, if they're from cities
(37:01):
or from rural areas, different classbackgrounds, different racial backgrounds.
I love the idea of this bookjust as a sort of snapshot of the war
and of the sort of the casualties hereas a sort of, a slice of American life.
So I'm just curious if you found any,if there are, large numbers of soldiers
from a specific stateor specific regions area wondering
(37:24):
if there's have any, any, demographicson these, on these men or woman?
Well, it pretty much mirrorsthe war in the sense that largely
these were white men or some Hispanics,but that was a minority of the population.
I mean, it mirrored the populationin America back in the 1940s,
which was largely white.
the there were a number of black menwho weren't allowed
(37:48):
to serve until later in the warand only very certain positions.
So you can imaginethe blacks were of a minority,
the Japanese Americans who were interned
at interned in Camps.
when the war started for a few years,they volunteered in great numbers.
They did not want to sitand not serve their country.
(38:10):
And so they joined up.
But again, that's a very, very smallpercentage of the population back in
that time as well.
native Americans,
I have read that 99% of the eligible men
and Native American tribesvolunteered and enlisted.
they weren't drafted, they enlisted.
And so that's a large percentageof that demographic.
(38:32):
But again, a very small portionof the, population.
So it really was mixed in termsof demographics, in terms of states,
the deaths are againdistributed pretty much population.
California's big one.
New Mexico, Arizona, a lot in the Philippines.
A lot of those men were in the artilleryand were sent to the Philippines.
(38:54):
I didn't add it up that way.
but I think they probably havea disproportionate share in those, too.
But beyond that, it was, forthe most part, where the population was.
Good question. Thank you.
Our special thanks to author
(39:15):
Rona Simmons for joining usfor this important conversation.
Be sure to check out our websitefor upcoming Meet
the Author events here at the museum.
We'd love to have you join usnext time you're here.
But for now,that's World War Two. On topic.
I'm Bradley WHart at the National World War II Museum.
I recently sat down with writerRona Simmons during one of our Meet
the Author events here in New Orleansto talk about her new book, No Average Day
The 24 Hours of October 24th, 1944.
You'll hearwhy that day deserves to be remembered.
Even though it may not be onethat you've heard about before.
(00:31):
Rona Simmons,thank you so much for joining us here
at National World War Two Museum.
It's a real pleasureto to be with you tonight.
And thank you for sharing this bookwith with us and our audience before it's
officially come out, which is,which is very exciting for all of us here.
I had the pleasure of reading your bookin preparation for this.
I've been sort of talking about thethemes of it was with
some of my colleagues hereat the Institute and some of our visitors
(00:52):
and the other groupsthat come to visit with us.
And I tell people, you know,it's about the deadliest day for Americans
in World War Two.And they say, oh, you mean Pearl Harbor?
And thenI say, no, no, it's not Pearl Harbor.
And they say, oh, well, you mean D-Day.
And I say, no, it's not D-Day either.
And they sort oflook at me confusedly then, and say, well,
what are you talking about?I say, it's October 24th, 1944.
(01:12):
That's when you get a totally blank stareout of almost everyone I tell about this.
So it's a fascinating concept for a book.
How did you come up with with the idea
before you get into the eventsof that terrible day,
how did you come up with the idea,and what were some of the challenges
you encountered researchingand writing a book like this?
Well thank you.
thank you, everyone, for being hereand for the museum having me.
It's truly an honor, and especiallyeven a week before the book comes out.
(01:35):
So, it's a great preview.
it is about three years in the making.
And as all of you know,there are countless, I won't even say,
books, countless bookshelvesfull of World War Two books.
And so if you if you want to write aboutWorld War II or you choose to write about
World War Two, you have to come up withsomething that people don't know about.
(01:58):
You know, you can't write about my father,the P-38 pilot, or D-Day
or midway, or any of the big battlespeople who have spent their lives.
Historians have already written that.
And so you have to look for somethingvery different.
And I there's not one answer.
And from a very pragmatic standpoint.
(02:18):
I tried to find somethingthat people don't know.
Like you say,people know about Pearl Harbor.
People know about D-Day or think they do.
And so those events were blastedon the on the newspapers,
you know, on the two inchhigh, headlines.
So I started thinking, well,what do people not know?
(02:39):
Is there maybe another daythat we haven't heard for some reason?
So that thoughtwas at the back of my head.
But then I decidedthat it's really more basic than that.
With that premise. It was,
I do this because I am passionate
about World War Two,having come from a military based family.
(03:01):
But I also I as the generations pass
and you meet young peoplewho barely know that there was a World
War two or barely know who fought in WorldWar two.
And the thought of what my fatherand my father in law did for us,
and all of the 16 millionmen and women who fought that I didn't.
(03:22):
I just can't let that gowithout some recognition
and doing whatI can to preserve their memory.
So that started me down the path.
I know I'm going to write about people,but how do you tell
the next generation or the one after thatwhat war really is?
And especially from someone like me,I didn't go to war.
I didn't fight in war.
(03:43):
And thank goodnessI haven't yet or had to.
how do you tell someone what war is likeif you're not going to write
about the battles, great naval battlesor army ground battles?
And to me, it's always been.
And through my earlierbooks talking about individuals
taking the war from, say,
(04:05):
the 26,000 30,000ft person up in ain a bomber or fighter
and bringing it down to the ground,not necessarily meaning to the army,
but to an individual, whether it's someonein the back of a plane
or someone on the ground,and then helping a young person
put their feet into those shoesand walk their walk.
(04:27):
And so that's that.
I knew I would do a storyabout individuals again.
I knew I would do find somethingthat no one had found.
And so I looked past those big headlines,and I knew I wanted it to be global
because so many people I talk to,if I write a book about Europe in the war,
they say, well,why didn't you address the Pacific?
(04:48):
And if you write about the Pacific,someone said, well,
why didn't you write aboutwhat happened in Europe?
And I wanted it to be global.
I wanted people to knowthat there was a global war going
on, that people were fightingand dying across the globe.
It wasn't just D-Day,it wasn't just, Pearl Harbor.
So that'swhen I said, I've got to find a day.
(05:09):
So it's going to be later in the war
when there were peoplefighting across the globe.
And I started just picking off
different days, different battles.
I didn't againwant it to be about a single battle.
And I do a lot of researchabout individuals and profiled them.
And I kept-- this date, just kept
(05:32):
coming up, October 24th.
What's that?
And I would, being the obsessivecompulsive person
that I am,I had my little checkboxes of who,
what day, what monthand that block just kept filling up
faster than most othersbecause If it was D-Day I was ignoring it.
If it was Pearl Harbor I was ignoring itand I kept coming back to it.
(05:54):
I thought, well,what happened on that day?
And that's when I stumbled on if you will.
And I guess half of this is luck.
So that's when I found out that day inand then we went from there.
Luck is always good for historianswhen it comes to finding those stories
that no one else has told before.
more than 2600men and women lost their lives on
October 24th, 1944,which is a really astonishing amount,
(06:16):
even in a conflictas bloody as as World War Two was.
how did you from this, this mass ofpeople who lost their lives this day?
How do you choose which storiesto focus on and profiled in the book?
Well, and,as I was going around the globe
documenting these individuals,and we'll get back to
some of the individual people out there.
(06:36):
But, they were stories that stood out.
And as I would research one,I would find, you know,
more than just a tick boxbecause to me, honoring these people
is morethan just getting the their birthdate
and the day they died and where they died,it was it was really drilling down
into their stories and,I've picked a few.
And I always hate to do thisbecause I feel like I'm
(06:58):
doing a disserviceto all of the rest of them.
But just to give you an idea of,the breadth
of what we have found on the farleft is Gervase Holttum.
And he was actually the first storyI found.
And I say, again, luck.
It was the internet.
I was researching and just saw this story,
(07:19):
about Peter [?]who was looking for his uncle,
who was killed in a plane crashin the Pacific.
And he had gone to,a number of the islands
because there was very sketchy informationabout his, uncle.
So he was going to the different islands,and he was on Yap
(07:40):
Island,and I did not know where Yap Island was.
I did not know there was a Yap Island,but Yap Island is between Peleliu,
where GervaseHolttum was stationed in Guam.
So really in the middle of nowhere.
And Peter [?] went to that island.
And had search for his uncleand the citizens there said, no,
(08:02):
we don't have any records of your uncle,
but there is this gravewe want to show you.
And they had found the grave,
at the end of the runwaywhere his plane crashed.
And they had been, attending it.
Now, he was actually found in 1947,
two years after the end of the war,when we repatriated many of the men.
(08:23):
in the Pacific.
But in those two yearsafter he crashed and died on October 24th,
the local people dug his grave,buried him,
and tended to it, and keeping the junglefrom encroaching on that.
And they told him the storyand showed them where it was.
And he ended up erecting a monumentto Gervase Hulton.
So that was the first story.
(08:44):
And that's okay.
This is this book.
So we'll we'll go on from there.
And then the second type of story,when you say, how do I pick them?
They, they sort of picked themselvesand came to me.
The next one is, Herman, Joseph, Adolphe.
And in my research,I always try to find if I can find
a relative of one of these people,because the story comes
(09:07):
so much more alive when you can talkto someone about the person.
I found his son and daughter in law,and they sent me
reams of paper about,
Herman, Adolphe, who was also a pilot.
He was killed.
He was flying.
actually, he joined the Navy originally, long before the war.
(09:28):
He did two tours of dutybefore the war broke out.
And then he got bit,as I say, by the flying bug.
And he wanted to fly above all else.
But America was not in the war.
And of course, a lot of the youngmen thought, well, if I don't
get in the war nowand get to fly, it's going to be over.
Little did they know.
(09:49):
And so he went to Canadabecause Canada was recruiting.
They were in the war and they didn'thave they knew they did not have enough
citizens to fillthe need for their, bombers or fighters.
So he crossed over and, Canada,
it was against the law to actually solicit
men from the United States, to go to war for a different country.
(10:11):
But they got the word out,and word went from person to person.
And Herman heard about this.
So he went to Canada, got his wings, flewfor Canada, actually was transferred to,
Europe and to England and was over therefighting for Canada when, D-Day happened.
And he said, that's it.
(10:31):
So he joined the American Air Forces,and he was traveling,
carryingcargo into Belgium on a mission.
And they got just a few degrees off
course and a few degreesbecame more than a few degrees.
They came in over Dunkirk, which was,still under occupation and actually
a fight between the Czechoslovakians,Germans and the British there.
(10:54):
And his plane was shot down and he,they could not find him.
And he actually his planecrashed into the,
opening area where the submarineGerman submarine pens were.
So his plane was blockingthe submarine pens,
and they had to bomb itto get it out of the area.
And of course,all the men were killed instantly anyway.
(11:16):
But, what happened?
that was that for years and years.
But then the Defense POW/MIA AccountingAgency, which is the organization
that is still working todayto bring home our men
across the world, they went overseas.
They found witnesses who told them where,
the men that did survive the crashwere they
(11:39):
exhumed the bodies, they buried themand unfortunately not Herman's body.
So he, remains at the bottom and,
at the [?].
So that was, a great connection
to be able to talk to some descendantsand makes all the difference.
The third gentleman is, Shiro Togo,
who was with the 442nd combat,Regimental Combat Team.
(12:01):
I picked his story.
It's just one you, you can't overlook.
there's the lost battalion,and every war has had a lost battalion.
I think, but these men, from the 141stInfantry, were stranded
in the mountains in northern France. And,
they had been cut off.
They went up to the mountainsto fight with supplies for one day,
(12:26):
food for one day, ammunition for one day,anything they could carry for one day
and got cut offand team after team from their...
other battalions with their,
their group went in to try to rescue themand failed.
Now a week later they're still up there.
They’re
existing on almost nothing.
(12:47):
all of our attempts to drop in foodfailed as well.
So the American Army called in the 442nd.
The 442nd was a Japanese Nisei group.
All Japanese American citizenswho had volunteered to fight.
And they sent them in.
Their motto was go for broke.
They did not failwhatever mission they took.
And they went in and found the lostbattalion, got them out
(13:10):
at an enormous cost to their unit,and Shiro Togo was one of the ones
who was killed on October 21stin rescuing these men.
So again, a storythat you just can't overlook.
and then the next one, is GeorgeMcElroy.
He had been in, World War one,
and he was with his VeteransAdministration
(13:32):
in Mason City, Iowa.
And he had been with the American Legion.
He was a on their board or director.
And he said, when World War Two came, hesaid, I've got I've got to sign up again.
He thought he was maybe too old,but they accepted him,
and he was on a destroyer in the Pacific.
(13:54):
And as you know, things changeand the army is in charge.
And you might think you have your positionin the army and things change.
Well, they decidedwhen they got to Alaska, Adak,
that he and I don't really know the reasonbut they transferred him to shore.
And I don't think it was anythinghe did wrong.
(14:14):
but the records don't exist.
He went to shore.
He was a newspaper man.
He finds himself in Adak, Alaska.
And who was in Adak, Alaska.
Dashiell Hammett, he'swriting a newspaper.
His head of the newspaperfor the armed forces in Alaska.
And here's George, and he's.
I mean, he must have been beside himself,to be able to work on the newspaper,
(14:38):
his hometown newspaper,
put a article about their herowho was in Adak.
And, a couple of weeks later,they put a second article.
He died of a heart attack.
And, that, you know, that to me
also spoke to all the deaths that weren'tnecessarily the people who were fighting.
And he had chosen to to enlist.
But that's not how he died.
(14:59):
And then, I'll say George W Pitman,
I can't look at that face
and not say he's going to be on this book.
He was a seventh grade educated
black man from ScotlandNeck, North Carolina.
I live in North Carolina.
I don't know where Scotland Neck is.
It's a very small town.
(15:20):
He came from a family of six children,
joined the Navyand raised through the ranks.
His middle name was Washington.
George Washington Pitman.
Believe it or
not, I encountered several GeorgeWashington's, several
John Pershing's, Woodrow Wilson's,all who died on October 24th.
But this George, Pitman was very special to me.
(15:41):
he died on the USS Shark,which we will come back
and mentioned a little bit,
like kind of a spoiler to the book,but we'll mention it anyway.
And then the last one, if I were jumpingthe gun, we're going to talk about women.
There were only 350,000 womenwho served out of 16 million men.
In the war.
(16:02):
It wasn't that womendidn't think about serving,
but they were put into traditional roles,nurses and clerks.
I could not find a single woman who diedon October 24th, and I was distraught.
And I know when I talkedto University of Missouri,
they would really want to havea well-rounded book.
We had all 24 chapters finished.
(16:24):
The book was pretty wellmaking its way down the road, and somehow
Margaret Neubauer shows up on my computer,
died on October 24th at 9:45 a.m.
in the Proving Grounds in Virginia.
She was a specialist.
And, I'll talk a little bit moreabout here when we talk about women later,
(16:44):
but she, was killed in a and, was hit by a truck on the proving grounds,
and she was returning to her barracks.
so, again, she had to make the book.
So, it's it's a little bitof everything.
And, I thought that was as it should be.
What I think what the book illustrates
so well, as is the truism of historythat everyone has a story.
Right?
It's so easy to reduce, casualtiesand fatality lists to mere numbers,
(17:08):
whereas you've done a fantastic jobreally giving personality really
to to the charactersthat you talk about the real individuals.
Obviously in the book,there were two really tragic stories
that stuck out to mewhen I was reading the book.
and they're both naval storiesto some extent.
but these are the two sort of highest,how highest casualty events
you talk about in the book.
And the first one,
(17:29):
is an incident involving two ships,USS Birmingham and USS Princeton.
at the battle of Leyte Gulf,which is raging on October 24th, 1944.
you know, this was a story
that I was vaguely familiarwith as someone who studies the war,
but you really flesh the story outin considerable depth.
And I learned quite a bit from the book.
So what is what is the storyof the Princeton and the Birmingham?
(17:50):
And why is this? Why is it so tragic?
they had both been,
traveling throughout the Pacific,involved in many of the battles up
and to until the time,that we went back into the Philippines.
for those who may not recall,the battle in the Philippines,
as you say, was goingon, we landed back in the Philippines.
(18:11):
General MacArthur made his famousI have return speech
on the 20th of October.
So the war or the battlesthere had just started,
but he, and the troops were moving inland
and there were many, many deaths as theyas they tried to cross to the Philippines.
But the ships were still out at seaprotecting,
our troops or delivering more troops,delivering more supplies.
(18:33):
And there was constantenemy activity around.
And the Princeton, was out at sea
just off of Leyte, where the landings had taken place.
And, there were some Japanese bombers,airplanes flying through
and harassing the ships, bombing,making strafing runs on the shore, etc..
(18:53):
And, they called a Judy bomber.
Our, our men gave the Japanese bomberswomen's names.
I still haven't figured out why,but so a Judy bomber came over
and dropped a bomb on the Princeton,and it hit the deck, went through
one level deck down into the next level,down, down to the next level.
And that's where it exploded.
(19:14):
captain Buracker said,He looked at the damage
and said, I thought it was a small holeand that wouldn't do too much damage.
Well, it didn't until it it kept going through
these levels of the, of the decksuntil it exploded.
So the other ships in the, area came to the Princeton's rescue.
(19:34):
a couple of destroyersand cruisers came over there.
There are designed to fight firesand had, many crew
members on them,who were trained in firefighting.
And the Captain Inglis of the Birmingham,
ships were docking and actually,
tied up next to on the Princetonwhile it was on fire.
And the Birmingham said,I really have the capability.
(19:57):
I have more hoses and more menwho are trained in firefighting.
So some of the ships pulled back,they tethered up to the Princeton,
who was now dead in the water,and they had to keep moving their engines
with the the tides on the current
was pushing the Princetonone way and Birmingham the other way.
So they finally strung tiesto keep the two together
(20:17):
while they, fought the fireand they actually put out
the initial fire, over about a five hourperiod of fighting these fires.
And they were pretty well satisfied that,you know, it was all over, but,
things looked pretty good.
and so thatthen there was more enemy activity.
(20:37):
And so they had to untie and move away.
And once that turned out to be nothing.
So the Birmingham moved back.
They tied up again.
And five hoursafter that initial explosion,
the ammunitionin the lower deck exploded.
It caused,
untold, havoc on deck.
(21:00):
Many of the men on the Birmingham,
because they had been tied up for hoursand were successful in fighting this fire.
Had come on deck to watch the firefight.
These are men.They didn't have anything else to do.
So they all came up on the deck.
And some of them, you see,
were just watching,although many of them were helping fight
the fires themselves, even thoughthat might not be their training.
(21:21):
So, what happened
is when the Princeton exploded, debrisas small
as pieces of shrapneland as large as cars flew up into the sky
and landed on the Birmingham, mostly,
and some on Princeton, of course,
it killed 300 men on the Birminghamand another 100 on the Princeton.
(21:46):
Seven numbers. Right. horrific deaths.
there was a chaplain and a
medic who saw the man and and were running
to everyone's rescue,and they said this was one time
when the blood ranlike rivers on the deck.
It was horrific.
And men were terribly burned.
(22:07):
many, many killed, obviously.
And, the captain, actually,John Hoskins on the Princeton
and what his, was hurt in the,in the explosion,
his, foot was actually amputatedor cut in half.
and so that actually a surgeon
cut the other half of his foot offwhile he's on the deck,
(22:30):
and the man retains his consciousnessand is talking to people.
And finally, when he gets, readyand they bandage him up,
he actually went to the--
went to the captain and said, permissionto leave the ship, sir.
And, you know, this is going onin the middle of all this devastation.
So it was a horrific accident.
(22:50):
the second most, as you say,deadly of the day.
And, it it really requiredas I look back on the numbers,
and then,
the event as big as thisin order to get to that 2600, you couldn't
there weren't 26 individual,2600 individual men who died around them.
(23:11):
Or you had to find incidents like this.
And as tragic as they were but, the, the,
Birmingham survived,but the Princeton had to be sunk.
And I tell the story.
It's, it was also a tragedy in the way,it had to be sunk.
They gave a destroyer, to R--Sorry the Reno,
(23:33):
orders to go ahead and sink the ship.
When they knew the Princeton
couldn't be saved,it was so badly damaged, it they fired.
Much like the Tang experience.
If you haven't seen it here at the museum,they fired five torpedoes
that all missed or hit a partnership.
That wouldn't take it down.
And they finally discoveredthat, battleship,
a cruiser had been
(23:54):
tied up to the Princetonduring the early parts of the day
and had been,they had been colliding back and forth.
And they believe that damaged the torpedo,capabilities of the function.
So they finally had to call another
the Erwinin to actually sink the Princeton before
because they couldn't let it surviveor be taken over by the Japanese.
(24:14):
So that was one tragic event.
It's one of those scenes.
It's almost impossible to fathomwhat it must've been like.
And it really, is disturbing inso many ways.
The other really disturbing storyand tragic story that you
highlight in the book, and you kind ofweave it through narratively.
No spoilers.
Here is is the story of the Japanese shipArisan Maru.
(24:37):
the Arisan Maru representsthe largest single loss of life
that you talk about in the book.
And in fact,
unless I'm mistaken, the greatest maritimeloss of life in American history.
this is a story that that I was,somewhat aware of
as someone who studies this,but I think the vast
majority of Americans are not familiarwith sort of the Arisan Maru or,
or the similar shipsthat were sailing at this point. So.
(24:58):
So what does the story of the Arisan Maru,
and why do you think that Americans aren't
more familiar with this part of historyof the war in the Pacific?
Those are easy questions.
They have great answers.
it was the first Hell ship
that was sunk by a,
by the American forces, the Hell ships.
And, I had no idea what hell ships were.
(25:20):
And I say in the book, many people, like many of the soldiers
who were on hell ships, may not have knownwhat a hell ship was before they got on,
but when they heard the word, they knewwhat the hell ship was.
Again, this is October 24th.
The Japanese had knownthat the Americans were coming back.
They had enough intelligence out therethat they knew
(25:41):
our ships were coming, and they knew thatwe wanted to take back the Philippines.
And so it wasn't unexpected.
And by this time they had.
And you've heard of the baton death marchand all of this troops that surrendered,
after, we lost
the Philippines were in the prisonerof war camps, and Japan was going through
a difficult time to, in their own economicsituation back in their homelands.
(26:06):
And they needed labor.
They needed labor for their mines,to manufacturing to help
keep their ships going.
So they decided what better way to fillour labor needs than to get the prisoners
that we're holding in the Philippinesand elsewhere around the South Pacific
and bring them back to Japanand let them labor there.
So they began emptying the prisoner of warcamps at the Montevideo.
(26:30):
I forget exactly how many.
I think, there were 1200, but these weremostly Australian, prisoners on board,
when they were sunk, because of what
they put them on these freighters,they were cargo ships.
That or in some cases, liners
that they had refitted to carry prisonersin their holds, not in cabins
(26:51):
or anything quite so decent as that,but in the cargo holds,
they were unmarked because they were,taking sometimes supplies,
sometimes passengers and oftentimesthe prisoners just started.
Montevideo was the first onethat started in earlier
in, in 44 before the-- we returned.
But it continued at a greater height.
(27:12):
No one knows exactlyhow many of these ships were,
transported or how many prisonersthey transported or how many died.
Exactly.
But, the next one was the Oryoko Maru.
That in the middlethat, traversed in December, 44.
It, too, was sunkby an American submarine,
(27:33):
again unmarked and transportingprisoners back to Japan
and in the Oryoko Maru’s case.
While there were many, almost as many, P.O.W.s
on board as the Arisan Maru,they actually survived.
They were close to land, and they minutethe prisoners were in the water
after the ship was broken apart,and they swam to shore
(27:55):
only, of course, to be picked upby the Japanese and then, herded together
and put on the in Enoura Maru,which is the bottom ship.
Yeah. No, no, no prize for surviving.
They were then put on the next ship.
The conditions ontheir ships were horrific.
So there were prisonerswho drew who did survive.
(28:17):
Some of the shipswho drew, likenesses of what occurred.
These men, as you need to understand,came out of the prisoner of war camps.
They were already emaciated.
They were already many of them. Malnutrition.
Very, very, practically near death.
They had been beaten and, many other atrocities.
(28:38):
And they were then put on these hell shipsin the cargo holds.
They were given one cup of water,one cup of rice a day.
They were put in holdsthat would carry maybe 2 or 300 people,
a thousand 1500
nowhere to sit, nowhere to lay down.
(29:00):
They were stuffed body to body.
The latrine facilities were fivefive gallon
cans at the front of the cargo hold.
If you were at the back or anywhere pastthe second row,
you are not going to take a-- ofuse of the latrines.
They were on these ships for a week.
(29:25):
The temperatures in the hull
went way over 100 degrees
and they say somebody saidthe sides of the ship was so hot
and you know,the men were pressed against them
that it would burn your skinto stand against them.
People went mad.
They killed some,killed others to survive.
(29:46):
and some of some luckily survived.
There were 1800American prisoners out of Camp Cabanatuan.
The people who survived the deathof the Baton death
march,who were on the ship in this condition,
they actually, when they were stuffed
into one of the holdshalfway through the trip.
(30:08):
and they were on this ship for 12 days.
Halfway through the ship,there were so many people dying.
And of course they did not.
They left the bodies such as they could,with the men who were in the hold. And,
they finally realizedthey needed to stop the dying
because what the, Japanese shipcaptains knew were their orders,
(30:31):
were that they had to bring these men
in ready working condition to the Japanesehomelands.
Well, this was not going to happen.
So they transferred 600 of the menout of 1800 into a second hold.
That hold was one third filled with coal.
So these men now stood on shards of coal
(30:52):
for the other six,seven days of their trip.
So miraculous.
I mean, miraculously, most of them
were still alive on the24th when it was torpedoed
and went down.
It sank in two hours.
And I have one more slideabout the Arisan Maru.
(31:15):
If you can't imagine and I can't 1800 men.
I put this graphic, each of these icons is ten men.
They're 180 icons of this.
That's 1800men were crammed into these holds.
They all went into the water
and all but nine, the last little icon,
(31:38):
died on October 24th.
And it, it is, a tragedy, you ask?
Well, why why don't people know this?
Well, in fact,we can talk a little bit about the
the nine survivors,five of whom are pictured here.
there, of course,were no allied witnesses to this,
(32:00):
so there was not going to beany newspaper report.
So you can look, October 24th, 25th, 26th,
27th, you will not find a headlineabout the Arisan Maru.
We did not know about ituntil these, gentlemen came home.
who survived.
And they didn't make it backto the United States until December
(32:21):
and, December 5th, I believe it was.
And, they were thenbrought to the white House, given medals
and told not to speak about the incident.
At that time, we we didn't really know.
I mean, these these five menshow up and talk about this horror
that, of course, Americansdidn't really want to be released
(32:42):
if they didn't have to, or until they knewmore about what exactly happened.
And we really didn't know
who sank the Arisan Maru at the time.
And it was one of our submarines.
So was that represents the largestloss of life that you talk about.
We talk about in the book.
one more question forI want to open up for the audience.
I'm sure there's a tonof great questions out there,
(33:03):
but maybe one brief question here.
you know, we often forgetthat the general conditions
were hazardous in World War Two,even if you weren't in combat.
When we think about the war,we often think about,
people who lose their lives in combat.
But you actually talk about individuals,both men and women,
who lose their livesin non-combat situations.
Can you tell usabout some of those stories
that you really fascinating stories,in a lot of ways,
(33:24):
tragic storiesthat you talk about in the book.
I also, as you say,
I'm very partial to not overlookingpeople who signed up for the war.
I mean it to me, if you volunteered,you went down, you enlisted,
you went through boot camp,you're with your unit, you're in.
You're in the army now, as they say.
And these
people deserve as much recognition,even if they never made it to the theater.
(33:47):
So I always look at the,
what they call the zone of the interiorof the United States.
And on October 24th,
there was a crewflying on their last training mission.
They left, Nebraska.
Their route was to come to Baton Rougeand then refuel and go back.
(34:07):
And within a week,they were supposed to go to the Pacific.
So they took off for 3 a.m. from Nebraska.
Sorry, 4 AM from Nebraska.
Got in here to Baton Rouge, refueled,ten men on the plane,
a very experienced pilot refueled,
went to the end of the runway, took off
(34:29):
and crashedimmediately at the end of the runway.
it's in a Barksdale,
field at the endthat they set fire to the woods.
At the end, everyone perished.
And, you know, I'd like these men,
as I say that for a weekwould have been in the Pacific somewhere.
Navy, died.
And I think they deserveas much recognition as all of the rest.
(34:51):
The fascinating thing to me,when I saw that
and so how could, how do you top that?
Well, there were two other plane crashes
on that day in the United States
where 10 or 11 men were killedbecause their plane crashed.
And you can imagine the headlines, the,
the Baton Rouge-- Sorry,the Barksdale field
(35:14):
accident hadn't happenedbefore the news came out that another one
had crashed one in Kansasand one in California.
And this was going on.
And you think, well,how did these young men fly these planes?
can wewe have a hard time understanding this.
It was a flight, infancy of flight.
And, the B-29 had particular problems.
(35:36):
And one of the planes at crash was a B-29.
That pilot got in that plane.
And in the days before, there had been
three B-29s that went down in China.
And yet he gets on his plane,takes off, and, you know, it's it's an 18
or 20 or 22 year old who has to say,it can't happen to me.
(35:56):
I'm better than that.
I'm a good pilot.It won't happen. Well, it did.
so there were there were accidentslike that and plane crashes.
We talked about Margaret Neubauerbeing hit by a truck.
There was a gentlemanwho had visited the Pope.
He was a Catholic,and he was moving from in transit
from one, with his groupfrom one place to another.
(36:18):
And they'd gone through Rome
and there was a chance to see the Pope,and he got his rosary blessed by the Pope.
He was in the truck and it veered offthe road, crashed and was killed.
But his rosary made it back to his family.
And it's just, again, stories like thatthat touch my heart
and I, I hope you will find them to thatthey touch your heart
(36:39):
as you read the book.Absolutely fascinating.
I think we should open up to questionsfrom the audience. I'm sure there's a ton.
We have a microphone in the back.
one of my colleagues will bring bywho is some questions
for for Rona Simmons.
I'm curiousif your research in any kind of,
sort of data or demographic insightsabout where these
where these men came from, what statesthey're born, if they're from cities
(37:01):
or from rural areas, different classbackgrounds, different racial backgrounds.
I love the idea of this bookjust as a sort of snapshot of the war
and of the sort of the casualties hereas a sort of, a slice of American life.
So I'm just curious if you found any,if there are, large numbers of soldiers
from a specific stateor specific regions area wondering
(37:24):
if there's have any, any, demographicson these, on these men or woman?
Well, it pretty much mirrorsthe war in the sense that largely
these were white men or some Hispanics,but that was a minority of the population.
I mean, it mirrored the populationin America back in the 1940s,
which was largely white.
the there were a number of black menwho weren't allowed
(37:48):
to serve until later in the warand only very certain positions.
So you can imaginethe blacks were of a minority,
the Japanese Americans who were interned
at interned in Camps.
when the war started for a few years,they volunteered in great numbers.
They did not want to sitand not serve their country.
(38:10):
And so they joined up.
But again, that's a very, very smallpercentage of the population back in
that time as well.
native Americans,
I have read that 99% of the eligible men
and Native American tribesvolunteered and enlisted.
they weren't drafted, they enlisted.
And so that's a large percentageof that demographic.
(38:32):
But again, a very small portionof the, population.
So it really was mixed in termsof demographics, in terms of states,
the deaths are againdistributed pretty much population.
California's big one.
New Mexico, Arizona, a lot in the Philippines.
A lot of those men were in the artilleryand were sent to the Philippines.
(38:54):
I didn't add it up that way.
but I think they probably havea disproportionate share in those, too.
But beyond that, it was, forthe most part, where the population was.
Good question. Thank you.
Our special thanks to author
(39:15):
Rona Simmons for joining usfor this important conversation.
Be sure to check out our websitefor upcoming Meet
the Author events here at the museum.
We'd love to have you join usnext time you're here.
But for now,that's World War Two. On topic.
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