The copy of the book by Laura Hillenbrand I read was purchased by the Friends of the Westminster Colorado Public library. The book was selected by the Northern Colorado Common Read (NCCR) for this year and there were several discussion sessions that included meetings with veterans. The book is the story of Louis Zamperini. He was saved from a delinquent childhood by a bother who convinced him to try out long distance running. He broke the high school record for the mile. He was a star on the University of California track team where he met a mysterious Japanese man named Jimmie Sasaki who later turned up as a Japanese military official. Louis finished seventh in the 5000 meters at the Berlin Olympics. He soon was a bombardier on raids over Japanese targets in the Pacific, and perhaps the brutal training and running of the 5000 meter “torture chamber” prepared him for what was in store.
Louis participated in several bombing runs against Japanese targets, and was one of three who survived a plane crash in the Pacific. They had two small rafts and meager supplies; the survival kit did not make it to their rafts. One of the other men ate the entire supply of chocolate the first night, which left them with no food. Louis caught an albatross that landed on his head, the meat was so putrid they couldn’t eat it, but they did catch a small fish with a hook baited with the meat. Sharks circled the rafts for almost the entire 47 days of drifting. The sharks occasionally resorted to trying to jump into the rafts and had to be fended off with the oars.
The men teetered on starvation with only an occasional fish, bird, or the livers from a couple of small sharks to keep them barely alive. They roasted under the sun, and rains came just often enough to keep them from dying of thirst.
The men fired a flare to attract a plane, which turned out to be Japanese. The plane made several strafing runs, shot up the rafts, but miraculously missed the men. One raft couldn’t be saved and became a sun shade. They patched the other raft despite the fact the sandpaper in the patching kit was not waterproof and the sand had fallen off. One of the men died shortly before the raft drifted up to an island where a Japanese boat took the two survivors captive.
The captors treated the two prisoners very kindly, but they were then transferred to Kwajalein, which was called “Execution Island.” An officer told Louie, “We cannot guarantee your life.” Louis and his companion were not executed, and didn’t learn why until much later.
The years in horrid conditions made me wonder whether the man who died was the lucky one. The Japanese called them “unarmed combatants,” which they used to justify not following the Geneva Convention requirements for prisoners of war. The men lived in squalid conditions, were poorly fed, had poor quality water, and beaten and tortured by sadistic guards. One guard nicknamed “The Bird” decided Louis deserved daily violent beatings and other tortures and degradations. I wondered whether a poorly fed person could really survive the treatment described.
There were a few Japanese guards who treated the prisoners kindly and occasionally gave them extra food. Mostly the Japanese were brutal and kept all of the Red Cross packages intended for the prisoners for themselves or sold or traded the contents.
Louis was taken from the brutal conditions, fed well, and asked to make a radio broadcast. The broadcast was the first indication to his family that he was still alive. Louis learned that the reason he had not been executed on Kwajalein was that he had been identified as a “propaganda prisoner.” He declined living a comfortable life as a propaganda tool and was sent back to the deprivations of the “unarmed combatant” camps.
The prisoners learned to retain their dignity by tricking the Japanese guards, stealing food and supplies, and committing various acts of sabotage. There was both hope and fear when the B29 bombers began first running photographic runs and then arrived in the hundreds on bombing missions. The prisoners knew the raids indicated the allies were winning and that the war might be coming to an end. They also knew that the Japanese had a “kill-all” rule to eliminate any prisoners who were in a location about to be overrun by the allies. There also were sightings of women and children being drilled with sharpened sticks and wood rifles in preparation for an expected invasion. The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima one week before the mid-August deadline to kill the prisoners. The book states that the prisoners all believed that the use of the atomic bomb saved their lives. American planes were soon dropping food to prisoners in camps all over Japan, and the men gorged themselves.
There are many disturbing statistics about the prisoners of many nations help by the Japanese. About a fourth of all the many thousands of prisoners did not survive. The descriptions of the conditions they suffered make it difficult to understand why more of them didn’t die.
The prisoners were eventually returned to the United States and their families, but the horror didn’t end. Many of them, including Louie, suffered severe problems. He did manage to convince a beautiful young woman to marry him, but he became a severe alcoholic and went through many severe moments of depression and loss of control. He awakened from a nightmare in which he is strangling the sadistic “Bird” to find himself strangling his wife. He also was a target for shysters. Even the frequent speeches and awards begin to go poorly because of his alcoholism. He wanted to return to running, but a wound suffered in the camps flared up and ended the comeback attempt.
His wife filed for divorce, withdrew the filing, and searched for a way to save Louis. She attended a Billy Graham event and finally convinces Louis to attend the next night. Louis listens to most of the sermon but storms out. His wife convinces him to return, and the next night he remembers that he had promised on the raft to serve God if he were saved. He returns home, throws out his liquor, cigarettes, and “girly magazines.” He eventually opens a camp for troubled children and lives a long and productive life. He carried the Olympic torch in Japan.
The trials and punishment of Japanese war criminals are detailed. There were executions and long term imprisonments. There was a massive search for Bird, but he managed to elude capture by working as a menial laborer. The United States determined that they needed Japan as an ally during the Cold War, and the searching for and prosecutions of war criminals came to an end in the early 1950s. Perhaps one of the least gratifying part of the book was that Bird, Mutsuhiro Watanbe, escapes punishment and actually becomes a successful businessman.
My wife observed that the title “Unbroken” is a bit misleading. It is true that Louis was not broken on the raft adrift at sea or by the brutality of the camps. However, he was a broken man who probably would not have survived but for a wife who refused to give up on him and Billy Graham.