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

Then the bomber was right over them. On each side of the fuselage and on the underside of each wing, there was a broad white star in a blue circle. The plane was not Japanese. It was American.
    The plane’s red code light was blinking rapidly. A radioman in the water near Louie read the signals and suddenly cried out:
    “
Oh! The war is over!
”
    In seconds, masses of naked men were stampeding out of the river and up the hill. As the plane turned loops above, the pilot waving, the POWs swarmed into the compound, out of their minds with relief and rapture. Their fear of the guards, of the massacre they had so long awaited, was gone, dispersed by the roar and muscle of the bomber. The prisoners jumped up and down, shouted, and sobbed. Some scrambled onto the camp roofs, waving their arms and singing out their joy to the pilot above. Others piled against the camp fence and sent it crashing over. Someone found matches, and soon, the entire length of fence was burning. The Japanese shrank back and withdrew.
    In the midst of the running, celebrating men, Louie stood on waveringlegs, emaciated, sick, and dripping wet. In his tired mind, two words were repeating themselves, over and over.
    I’m free! I’m free! I’m free!
    ——

    Down on the riverbank, a battered Australian POW named MattClift sat at the water’s edge. His eyes were on the torpedo bomber, which was swooping overhead, alternately crossing over the river, then the camp. As Clift watched, something flitted out of the cockpit, trailing a long yellow ribbon. It carried through the air westward, directly toward the river. Clift stood up, leaned over the water, and reached out so far that he was on the verge of falling in. The object, a little wooden packet, dropped right into his hands. Regaining his balance with the treasure in his grasp, Clift had a delightful thought:
Chocolate!
His heart filled with gratitude for the “damn good bloke” of a pilot above.
    Clift spent some time trying to twist the packet open, and at some point realized, to his crushing disappointment, that it wasn’t chocolate. When he finally got it open, he found a handwritten message inside:
    OUR TBFS * HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET THROUGH THIS STUFF TODAY. WILL LEAD THEM BACK TOMORROW WITH FOOD AND STUFF LT. A. R. HAWKINS, VF-31, FPO BOX 948, LUFKIN, TEXAS . *

    Before he flew off, Hawkins dropped two gifts: a candy bar with a bite taken out of it and a twenty-count packet of cigarettes with one missing. Fitzgerald had the candy bar sliced into seven hundred slivers, and each man licked a finger, dabbed it on his bit of chocolate, and put it in his mouth. Louie’s portion was the size of an ant. Then Fitzgerald had the men form nineteen circles, each of which received one cigarette. Each man got one delectable puff.
    Another American plane thrummed over, and a man fell out of it. Down and down he fell, and his parachute didn’t open. Everyone gasped. Then they realized that it wasn’t a man; it was a pair of pants, stuffed full of something, the waist and leg holes tied shut.
    The officers retrieved the pants, and Louie stood among them as the waist was opened. Inside, sitting atop a pile of goods, was an American magazine. On the cover was a photograph of an impossibly voluminous bomb cloud. The men fell silent, piecing together the rumors of one giant bomb vaporizing Hiroshima and the abrupt end to the war.
    Below the magazine were cartons of cigarettes and candy bars, and very soon, the compound was littered with wrappers and naked, skinny, smoking men. In a pocket, Fitzgerald found a letter belonging to the pants’ owner. The man had been busy: He had a wife in California and a girlfriend in Perth.
    ——

    The rock still sat at the foot of the barracks window, Louie’s rope tied around it. But the conspirators were too late; the Bird was nowhere to be found. Sometime that day, or perhaps the day before, he had taken off his uniform, picked up a sack of rice, slipped into the Naoetsu countryside, and vanished.
    * Torpedo bombers.
* The TBF pilot, Ray Hawkins, was a legend. In World War II, he shot down fourteen Japanese planes, making him an ace nearly three times over, and was awarded three Navy Crosses. He went on to fly in the Korean War, then became a Blue Angels flight leader. He was the first man to eject from a jet at supersonic speed. He survived.

Thirty-two
Cascades of Pink Peaches

    O N AUGUST 22, PHIL AND FRED GARRETT SAT IN THE Rokuroshi POW camp,