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

hills, the POWs believed that the Japanese planned to dump their bodies in a mountain forest, where no one would ever find them. They discussed defending themselves, but they had no answers to twenty-five guards with rifles. Escape, too, was impossible; the camp was cornered against the sea and two rivers, and with no way to get boats for seven hundred prisoners, the only route out was toward the village, where the sickly, weak men would be caught easily. They were fish in a barrel.
    Louie lingered in his bunk, fading, praying. In his nightmares, heand the Bird fought death matches, the Bird trying to beat him to death, Louie trying to strangle the life from the sergeant. He’d been staying as far as he could from the Bird, who had been whipping about camp like a severed power line, but the sergeant always hunted him down.
    Then, abruptly, the violence stopped. The Bird had left camp. The guards said that he had gone to the mountains to ready the promised new camp for the POW officers. The August 22 kill-all death date was one week away.
    ——

    On August 15, Louie woke gravely ill. He was now having some twenty bloody bowel movements a day. After the month’s weigh-in, he didn’t record his weight in his diary, but he did note that he’d lost six kilos, more than thirteen pounds, from a frame already wasted from starvation. When he gripped his leg, his fingers sank in, and the imprints remained for long after. He’d seen too many men die to be ignorant of what this meant: beriberi.
    In late morning, after the night work crews had dragged in and the day crews had headed off, Louie crept out of the barracks. With the Bird away, it was safer to walk in the open. Crossing the compound, Louie saw Ogawa, his overseer at the potato field. Ogawa had always been an innocuous man, one of the few Japanese whom Louie had never had reason to fear. But when he saw Louie, Ogawa yanked out his club and struck Louie in the face. Louie reeled in astonishment, his cheek bleeding.
    A few minutes later, at noon, the compound was suddenly, eerily silent. The Japanese were all gone. At the same moment, in the factory mess halls, the POWs looked up from their bowls and realized that they were alone. The guards had left.
    In camp, Tinker walked through the compound. Passing the guardroom, he glanced inside. There were the guards, crowded around a radio in rapt attention, listening to a small, halting Japanese voice. Something of great importance was being said.
    At the factories, at half past one, the guards reappeared and told the POWs to get back to their stations. As Ken Marvin returned to his station, he found his overseers sitting down. One of the Japanese told him that there was no work. Looking around, Marvin spotted Bad Eye, the one-eyed civilian guard he’d been teaching incorrect English, and asked him why there was no work. Bad Eye replied that there was no electricity. Marvin looked up; all of the light bulbs were burning. Heturned quizzically to Bad Eye and told him that the lights were on. Bad Eye said something in Japanese, and Marvin wasn’t sure he understood. Marvin found a friend fluent in Japanese, pulled him into the room, and asked Bad Eye to repeat what he’d said.
    “The war is over.”
    Marvin began sobbing. He and his friend stood together, bawling like children.
    The workers were marched back to camp. Marvin and his friend hurried among the POWs, sharing what Bad Eye had said, but not one of their listeners believed it. Everyone had heard this rumor before, and each time, it had turned out to be false. In camp, there was no sign that anything had changed. The camp officials explained that the work had been suspended only because there had been a power outage. A few men celebrated the peace rumor, but Louie and many others were anticipating something very different. Someone had heard that Naoetsu was slated to be bombed that night.
    The POWs couldn’t sleep. Marvin lay on his bunk, telling himself that if they were sent to work in the morning, Bad Eye’s story must have been false. If they weren’t, maybe the war was over. Louie hunkered down, miserably ill, waiting for the bombers.
    No B-29s flew over Naoetsu that night. In the morning, the work crews were told that there was no work and were dismissed.
    Upstairs, Louie began vomiting. As he bobbed in a fog of nausea, someone came to his bunk and handed him five letters. They were from Pete, Sylvia, and his parents, all written many months earlier.