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

bloodying the face, and then his hands locking about the Bird’s neck. In his fantasy, he killed the Bird slowly, savoring the suffering he caused, making his tormentor feel all of the pain and terror and helplessness that he’d felt. His veins beat with an electric urgency.
    Louie had no idea what had become of the Bird, but he felt sure thatif he could get back to Japan, he could hunt him down. This would be his emphatic reply to the Bird’s unremitting effort to extinguish his humanity:
I am still a man
. He could conceive of no other way to save himself.
    Louie had found a quest to replace his lost Olympics. He was going to kill the Bird.
    * Returning home to the postwar housing shortage, Weinstein took out a $600,000 loan, built an apartment complex in Atlanta, and offered the 140 family units to veterans at rents averaging less than $50 per month. “Priorities: 1) Ex-POWs; 2) Purple Heart Vets; 3) Overseas Vets; 4) Vets; 5) Civilians,” read his ad. “…  We prefer Ex-GI’s, and Marines and enlisted personnel of the Navy. Ex-Air Corps men may apply if they quit telling us how they won the war.” His rule banning KKK members drew threatening phone calls. “I gave them my office and my home address,” Weinstein said, “and told them I still had the .45 I used to shoot carabau [water buffalo] with.”
* As Halloran parachuted over Tokyo, the Zero that had shot him down sped toward him, and Halloran was certain that he was going to be strafed, as so many falling airmen were. But instead of firing, the pilot saluted him. After the war, Halloran and that pilot, Isamu Kashiide, became dear friends.

Thirty-six
The Body on the Mountain

    I T WAS THE FIRST WINTER AFTER THE WAR. AN AGED POLICE officer trudged through a village high in the mountains of Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, knocking on doors, asking questions, and moving on. The Ministry of Home Affairs, frustrated at the failure to track down Mutsuhiro Watanabe, was renewing its effort, sending out photographs of and reports on the fugitive to every police chief in Japan. Chiefs were under orders to report twice a month on their progress. Police officers conducted searches and interrogations nearly every day. In one prefecture alone, 9,100 officers were involved in the search for him. The officer in Nagano was part of this effort.
    It was around noon when he reached the largest house in the village, home to a farmer and his family. Someone answered the door, and the family, thinking that he was a census taker, invited him in. Inside, the policeman found an old, portly farmer, the farmer’s wife, and their live-in laborer. As the laborer prepared a plate of pickles and a cup of tea, a traditional offering to visitors, the officer pulled out a photograph of Watanabe, dressed in his sergeant’s uniform. Did they recognize the man? None of them did.
    The officer left, moving on to a neighbor. He had no idea that thefugitive he was seeking had just been standing right in front of him, holding a plate of pickles.
    ——

    The Bird had come to Nagano Prefecture the previous September, after having fled his brother’s home, then Kofu. Reaching the hot springs resort community of Manza Spa, he’d checked into an inn. He chose an alias, Saburo Ohta, a common name unlikely to attract notice or dwell in anyone’s memory. He had a mustache, which he’d begun growing in the last days of the war. He told people that he was a refugee from Tokyo whose relatives were all dead, a story that, in postwar Japan, was as common as white rice. He vowed to live by two imperatives: silence and patience.
    Manza was a good choice, trafficked by crowds in which Watanabe could lose himself. But he soon began to think that he’d be better hidden in the prefecture’s remote mountain regions. He met the old farmer and offered himself as a laborer in exchange for room and board. The farmer took him to his home in the rural village, and Watanabe settled in as a farmhand.
    Each night, lying on a straw mat on the farmer’s floor, Watanabe couldn’t sleep. All over Japan, war-crimes suspects had been captured, and were now imprisoned, awaiting trials. He’d known some of these men. They’d be tried, sentenced, some executed. He was free. On the pages on which he poured out his emotions about his plight, Watanabe wrote of feeling guilty when he thought of those soldiers. He also mulled over his behavior toward the POWs, describing himself as “powerful” and “strict when