Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

angry bite marks. The Japanese offered a rice ball to the man who killed the most flies, inspiring a cutthroat swatting competition and hoarding of flattened corpses. Then, in July, the men were marched outside and into a canal to bail water into rice paddies. When they emerged at the day’s end, they were covered in leeches. Louie had six on his chest alone. The men became frantic, begging the guards for their cigarettes. As they squirmed around, jabbing at the leeches with cigarettes, one of the guards looked down at them.
    “You should be happy in your work,” he said.
    On August 5, a truck bearing the month’s rations arrived. As Fitzgerald watched, camp officials stripped it nearly clean. Curley announced that the rations were again being cut, blaming it on rats. Fitzgerald noted in his diary that after officials were done “brown bagging” their way through the seventy pounds of sugar allotted to the captives, one teacup of sugar remained. On August 22, a truck backedup to the kitchen door, and the captive kitchen workers were told to leave. Fitzgerald went to the
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, from which he could see the kitchen. He saw sacks of food being piled into the truck, which then left camp. “Someone must be opening up a store and really getting set up in business,” he wrote.
    The beatings went on. The Quack was especially feral. One day, Louie saw some Japanese dumping fish into the trough in which the captives washed their hands and feet. Told to wash the fish, Louie walked up and peered into the trough. The fish were putrid and undulating with maggots. As he recoiled, the Quack saw him, pounded over, and punched him a dozen times. That night, the same fish was ladled into Louie’s bowl. Louie wouldn’t touch it. A guard jabbed him behind the ear with a bayonet and forced him to eat it.
    And then there was Gaga. Something about this affectionate little duck, perhaps the fact that he was beloved to the captives, provoked the guards. They tortured him mercilessly, kicking him and hurling him around. Then one day, in full view of the captives, Shithead opened his pants and violated the bird. Gaga died. Of all the things he witnessed in war, Louie would say, this was the worst.
    Louie’s mind fled Ofuna and carried him home. He hadn’t seen his family in two years. He thought of the little white house, Virginia and Sylvia, his father and dear, devoted Pete. Most poignant were his memories of his mother. Fred Garrett had told Louie that he’d been given up for dead. Louie couldn’t bear the thought of what this news must have done to his mother.
    It was the accumulation of so much suffering, the tug of memory, and the conviction that the Japanese wouldn’t let them leave Ofuna alive that led Louie to listen to the nearby planes and wonder if they could be a way out. Examining the fence, he, Tinker, and Harris concluded that it might be possible to get around the guards and over the barbed wire. The thought hooked all three of them. They decided to make a run for it, commandeer a plane, and get out of Japan.
    ——

    At first, their plans hit a dead end. They’d been brought in blindfolded and had ventured out of camp only briefly, to irrigate the rice paddies, so they knew little about the area. They didn’t know where the airport was, or how they’d steal a plane. Then a kind guard inadvertently helped them. Thinking that they might enjoy looking at a book, he gave them a Japanese almanac. Harris cracked it open and was immediatelyrapt. The book was full of detailed information on Japan’s ports, the ships in its harbors and the fuels they used, and the distances between cities and landmarks. It was everything they needed to craft an escape.
    In hours spent poring over the book, they shaped a plan. They discarded the plane idea in favor of escape by boat. Just a few miles to the east was the port of Yokohama, only there was nowhere to go from there. But if they crossed Japan to the western shore, they could get to a port that would offer a good route to safety.
    They’d go on foot. Harris plotted a path across the island, a walk of about 150 miles. It would be dangerous, but Harris’s earlier experience of hiking all over the Bataan Peninsula gave them confidence. Once at a port, they’d steal a powerboat and fuel, cross the Sea of Japan, and flee into China. Given that Louie had drifted two thousand miles on a hole-riddled raft with virtually no provisions, a few hundred miles on the Sea of Japan in a