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

rice straw. Everywhere, there were large gaps in the floor; the POWshad pulled up the floorboards and burned them in an effort to survive temperatures that regularly plunged far below zero.
    Stacked against one wall were dozens of small boxes, some of which had broken open and spilled gray ash onto the floor. These were the cremated remains of sixty Australian POWs—one in every five prisoners—who had died in this camp in 1943 and 1944, succumbing to pneumonia, beriberi, malnutrition, colitis, or a combination of these. Relentless physical abuse had precipitated most of the deaths. In a POW camp network that would resonate across history as a supreme example of cruelty, Naoetsu had won a special place as one of the blackest holes in the Japanese Empire. Of the many hells that Louie had known in this war, this place would be the worst.
    Louie lay on his plank and tried to ready himself for what Naoetsu would bring. As he fell asleep that night, halfway around the globe the world’s best runners were gathering for a track meet at Madison Square Garden. The promoters had renamed the marquee event in tribute to Louie, who was still believed dead by virtually everyone outside of his family. When the Zamperinis heard of it, they were upset: The race was to be called the Louis S. Zamperini Memorial Mile. Out of respect for the family, the name was changed to the Louis S.Zamperini Invitational, but that did little to lift the spirits of those involved. Marty Glickman, who’d been on the 1936 Olympic team with Louie, watched the race with tears streaming down his face.

    POWs at Naoetsu.
Australian War Memorial, negative number 6033201

    The race was won by Jim Rafferty, America’s best miler. His time was 4:16.4, four seconds slower than the time Louie had clocked on the sand of Oahu just before climbing aboard
Green Hornet
.
    ——

    The first weeks Louie spent in Naoetsu were almost lethally cold. Each night of shivering in his bed of straw ended abruptly before dawn, when he was shouted awake and forced outside for
tenko
in deep snow, howling wind, and darkness. By day, he huddled with Tinker, Wade, and his other friends in patches of sunlight, trying in vain to keep warm. He was soon nursing a cough, fever, and flulike symptoms, and the Naoetsu slop did nothing to help his body recover. The rations, which were halved for officers, rarely varied from millet or barley and boiled seaweed, plus a few slices of vegetable. The drinking water, which the POWs had to haul in on sleds, was yellow and reeked. Seeing the guards smoking American cigarettes, the POWs knew that the Red Cross was sending relief packages, but the prisoners got nothing.
    Watanabe was the same fiend that he’d been at Omori, prompting the Aussies to nickname him “Whatabastard.” He held a far lower rank than Naoetsu’s commander, an elfin man sporting an abbreviated mustache as an apparent homage to Hitler, but the commander deferred to the Bird, just as the officers at Omori had done. And here, the Bird had recruited a henchman, an eggplant-shaped man named Hiroaki Kono, who trailed Watanabe around camp, assaulting men with the intensity, wrote Wade, of “a roaring Hitlerian animal.”
    Louie’s transfer to Naoetsu, into the grip of the Bird, had been no coincidence. Watanabe had handpicked him and the others to come to this camp, which was short on officers. According to Wade, each chosen man had a skill or history that would make him useful. Al Mead, who had helped save Louie from starvation at Ofuna, had headed Omori’s cookhouse; Fitzgerald had been a ranking officer; Wade had been a barracks commander; and so on. The only man with no such history was Louie. Wade believed that the Bird had chosen Louie simply because he wanted to torment him.
    Wade was right. From almost the moment that Louie walked into camp, the Bird was on him, slapping him, punching him, and beratinghim. Other POWs were shocked at how the sergeant pursued Louie, attacking him, remembered one POW, “just for drill.” Louie took his beatings with as much defiance as ever, provoking the Bird to ever more violent attacks. Once again in his tormenter’s clutches, Louie descended back into a state of profound stress.
    And yet, by virtue of his rank, Louie was fortunate. Naoetsu was a factory village that generated products critical to the war effort, and all of its young workers had gone to war. The POWs were here to take their place. Each day, the enlisted POWs waded