Laura Hillenbrand. Unbroken: A World War II
Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.
New York: Random House, 2010.
as reviewed by Ted Odenwald
He was unbroken, though beaten, starved, tortured, humiliated, cast adrift, diseased, and imprisoned. U.S. Army Air Force Lieutenant Louie Zampirini endured hardships that nearly destroyed him physically, mentally, and spiritually in the last two years of World War II. Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, has detailed the ordeals of another “American legend,” focusing on the trials themselves as well as upon the personality traits which allowed Zampirini to both survive and rise above a world that seemed determined to obliterate him.
“From earliest childhood, Louie had regarded every limitation placed upon him as a challenge to his wits, his resourcefulness, and his determination to rebel. The result had been a mutinous youth.” He seemed destined for encounters with the law, as he continually was involved in pranks, thefts, and fights. Well on his way to becoming a delinquent, he was diverted by his older brother, Peter, into becoming obsessed with the challenges of long-distance running. Focusing many of his teen years on improving his strength, endurance, speed, and racing strategies, he became first, an athletic sensation in his hometown, Torrance, California, then an NCAA champion at USC, and finally an “unseasoned” but impressive competitor in the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
The stamina and determination that were the foundations of his great athletic performances, were the traits that enabled him to preserve himself through a series of imposing challenges. During World War II, Louie served as a bombardier on B-24 Liberators, not so affectionately called “Flying Coffins” by flight crews because of the plane’s unpredictability of performance and the many difficulties it posed in terms of maintenance and maneuverability. On a mission to locate and rescue the crew of a lost B-24, Zampirini’s plane had two engines fail (one failure alone would have been enough to doom the bomber). The plane crashed into the ocean, killing most of the crew. Zampirini and his pilot drifted in a raft for seven horrific weeks, braving the hardships of thirst, starvation, exposure to the sun and the evening’s chill, menacing sharks, a typhoon, and even a strafing by a Japanese reconnaissance plane. Their survival was partly due to pure cussedness and a refusal to give in. They trapped fresh water whenever possible. They ate whatever morsels nature would provide: livers removed from jumping sharks which had actually entered their raft; pilot fish which accompanied the sharks; and an occasional seabird which had landed on the raft. Each man lost approximately half of his body weight.
After drifting for more than 2,000 miles, Louie and his pilot, “Phil” Phillips, were pulled from the ocean by a Japanese war vessel. “Rescued” would be an inaccurate term, for they probably would have been safer in the water with the sharks. They then entered the world of the P.O.W. imprisoned in brutal camps for interrogation and slavery. Prisoners of all ranks were starved, beaten, humiliated, and worked to exhaustion-all in defiance of the Geneva Convention. For all allied troops, these camps would be remembered as disease-infested, filthy death traps which sucked the humanity out of the prisoners. Unprovoked brutal beatings, and even summary executions were part of the camps’ daily routines. Zampirini’s life-long belief that he could overcome any boundary had helped him survive the ordeal at sea. Now, as he was trapped in another horrible situation, “despair and death [had become]the focus of his defiance”-defiance that would enable him to survive captivity.
A Japanese corporal, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, nearly became the “boundary” that would defeat Louie. Called “The Bird” by the P.O.W’s, Watanabe was a psychopathic monster, who delighted in terrorizing prisoners of all ranks. “Raw brutality gave him sway over men that his rank did not.” Threatening with his sword, punching, and striking with a kendo stick, he constantly tormented helpless men, as he dreamed up horrendously filthy chores to make their misery more demeaning. He clearly aimed to drain them of their dignity. “Dignity,” as Zampirini learned, “is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.” Apparently the corporal hated Louie immediately, for this prisoner was “… an officer, a famous Olympic athlete, and a man for whom defiance was second nature….” Attempting futilely to avoid his tormentor, the American was subject to daily berating, death threats, and beatings. The captor imposed a seemingly impossible task upon Louie; Zampirini was ordered to hold a heavy 6-foot board above his head; if it dropped, he would be killed. Refusing to give in, he held it aloft for 37 minutes until his frustrated tormentor punched him in the stomach.
Unmolested flights of squadrons of the new B-29 Flying Fortresses were clear evidence that the war was coming to an end. This assurance was cold comfort for the Allied prisoners, who were aware of the “kill-all” policy of the Japanese military. Fortunately the dropping of the A-bombs led to an abrupt surrender before the mass executions could be carried out in the camps.
Freed from imprisonment, Zampirini found that he was still confined by his psychological wounds. He was filled with hatred for his tormentor, who had fled into the Japanese countryside to avoid prosecution. Louie tried to settle down, marrying a lovely, well-to-do woman; but marriage only confused matters more as he could not come to terms with his obsession for vengeance. Drinking heavily, he experienced violent mood swings and nearly brought about the marriage’s dissolution.
Hillenbrand points to a Billy Graham Crusade which Zampirini attended reluctantly in California as the beginning of his “redemption.” Messages of love, forgiveness, and tearing down walls of spiritual deprivation all struck home with Louie. He seized the opportunity to cleanse himself of suffocating hatred, to renew his commitment to his family, and to fulfill a long-forgotten promise he had made while on the life raft: if he could be saved, he would dedicate his life to serving God.
This biography celebrates the struggles of a proud, defiant individual who survived incredible ordeals-emerging severely damaged in terms of his shrunken, bruised body, his drained spirit, and his “frayed” will. But he emerged as an unbroken hero whose greatness lay in his refusal to give in to the overwhelming forces of nature and the enemy.
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 40 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.