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

wondering what was happening. Isolated on their chilly mountain, the POWs had been told nothing of the momentous events of recent days. All they knew was that the camp commander had been gone for five days, and in his absence, the guards had been leading the POWs on ominous walks through the forest.
    That afternoon, the Japanese commander slogged back up the mountain, looking wilted. He walked into the barracks and approached the ranking American, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Unruh.
    “The emperor has brought peace to the world,” he said.
    The commander surrendered his sword to Unruh, who gathered his men and told them that the war was over. The POWs immediately gathered for a thanksgiving service. They were told that they must not seek revenge; they were officers and gentlemen, and they were to behave that way.
    The POWs promptly threw a party to end all parties. They demolished the camp fence and built a gigantic pile of wood, described by one POW as fifty feet tall. They asked the Japanese interpreter if he could get them
sake
, and a barrel full of it soon arrived. The men jacked the lid off the barrel, imbibing began, the pile of wood was set on fire, an Alabaman transformed a huge can into a drum, and inebriated men began dancing. A conga line of crazy drunk POWs wrapped around camp and through the barracks, and one partier did a striptease, flinging off his clothes to reveal an emphatically unattractive body. The revelry, which went on all night, was so riotous that one man marveled at the fact that all the POWs were still alive when the sun came up.

    POWs celebrate the war’s end.
Naval History and Heritage Command

    The following day, the hungover POWs walked down the mountain to the nearest villages. They found mostly ghost towns. The civilianshad seen the bonfire, abandoned their homes, and fled. The POWs hiked back up and waited for help to come.
    ——

    At Naoetsu, most of the guards stayed in camp, their haughtiness replaced by gushing obsequiousness. There was almost no food and no tobacco. Fitzgerald went to the Japanese commander three times a day to demand more food, and was rejected each time. POWs left camp in search of something to eat. Someone came back with a cow. Someone else herded in pigs. It wasn’t enough. Fitzgerald wrote a dispatch to the Swiss consul in Tokyo, telling of the terrible conditions in camp and asking for immediate help, but the Japanese commander refused to send it. Livid, Fitzgerald threatened to inform the American forces about the commander’s behavior, but the commander still refused.
    At about ten in the morning on August 26, six days after the war’s end was announced in Naoetsu, Fitzgerald was just stepping out of the commander’s office when a crowd of American fighter planes, sent from the carrier
Lexington
, shot overhead and began circling. The POWs charged outside, yelling. They hastily cleared an area, fetched some white lime, and painted two giant words on the ground: FOOD SMOKES . Messages dropped from the cockpits. The planes had been hauling emergency supplies to POW camps but had exhausted their loads. The pilots promised that food would soon come.
    Unable to feed the POWs, the pilots did the next best thing, putting on a thirty-minute air show while the prisoners shouted their approval. Fitzgerald stood among his men, moved by their joyful upturned faces. “Wonderful?” wrote J. O. Young in his diary. “To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has not spent all but 16 days of this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see ‘Old Sammy’ buzzing around over the camp.”
    The fighters had a persuasive effect on the Japanese commander. He called for Fitzgerald, complained that Fitzgerald had not behaved “like a gentleman,” and accused him of bluffing when he had threatened to tell the American forces about him.
    “I meant every word I said,” Fitzgerald replied.
    Ninety minutes later, Japanese trucks drove into camp, and out came rations, biscuits, and canned fruit.
    That afternoon, more planes from the
Lexington
flew over, and sea bags began thumping down all over camp. The POWs ran for their lives. One man, leaping from a fence to avoid getting clobbered, brokehis ankle. One bag missed the camp altogether, splashing down in the river. The POWs ventured out, tore into the bags, and split up the loot. Each man received half a tin of tangerines, one pack of hardtack, two