No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

On Tuesday, October 24, 1944, nearly three years after the United States entered World War II, over 2,600 Americans perished--more than on any other single day of the conflict--yet the day remains overshadowed by more widely remembered dates in WWII history. Drawing from the accounts of men from diverse backgrounds who served in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Corps, Rona Simmons offers a gripping retelling of the fateful day, hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First Class Paul Miller’s demise in a prisoner of war camp and ends with the death of Navy Seaman Second Class Wanza E. Matthews after the Japanese submarine I-56 attacked his ship off New Guinea. The sinking of the Japanese ＂hellship＂ Arisan Maru--a lesser-known tragedy of the war--looms large, deftly interwoven through each part of the narrative.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of No Average Day is its attention to the human side of conflict, telling the stories of ordinary individuals--clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews--as they grapple with the horrors of the war. Despite its narrow focus, or perhaps because of it, No Average Day reveals the vastness of World War II through a consideration of the largely overlooked events that unfolded on what, for members of the US Armed Forces, was its deadliest day.

Rona Simmons is an Atlanta-area author of historical fiction and nonfiction. After co-authoring Images from World War II in 2016 celebrating the art of WWII veteran and artist Jack Smith, Simmons again turned to the Second World War for The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines. The book, released by Kent State University Press in 2020, celebrated the remarkable but often untold contribution of noncombat veterans. Her latest book, A Gathering of Men combined her passion for history and her skill in research to tell another story with a unique perspective on the war, that of the true story of the toll of war on the psyche of an American soldier--a B-17 pilot. The book was published by Koehler Books in 2022.