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

radiant smile on his face.

EPILOGUE

    O N A JUNE DAY IN 1954, JUST OFF A WINDING ROAD IN California’s San Gabriel Mountains, a mess of boys tumbled out of a truck and stood blinking in the sunshine. They were quick-fisted, hard-faced boys, most of them intimately familiar with juvenile hall and jail. Louie stood with them, watching them get the feel of earth without pavement, space without walls. He felt as if he were watching his own youth again.
    So opened the great project of Louie’s life, the nonprofitVictory Boys Camp. Beginning with only an idea and very little money, Louie had found a campsite where the bargain-basement rent compensated for the general dilapidation, then talked a number of businesses into donating materials. He’d spent two years manning backhoes, upending boulders, and digging a swimming pool. When he was done, he had a beautiful camp.
    Victory became a tonic for lost boys. Louie took in anyone, including one boy so ungovernable that Louie had to be deputized by a sheriff to gain custody of him. He took the boys fishing, swimming, horseback riding, camping, and, in winter, skiing. He led them on mountain hikes, letting them talk out their troubles, and rappelled down cliffs beside them. He showed them vocational films, living for the days when a boy would see a career depicted and whisper, “That’s what I want to do!” Each evening, Louie sat with the boys before a campfire, telling them about his youth, the war, and the road that had led him to peace. He went easy on Christianity, but laid it before them as an option. Some were convinced, some not, but either way, boys who arrived at Victory as ruffians often left it renewed and reformed.

    Louie demonstrates rappelling to his campers.
Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

    When he wasn’t with his campers, Louie was happily walking the world, telling his story to rapt audiences in everything from grade school classrooms to stadiums. Improbably, he was particularly fondof speaking on cruise ships, sorting through invitations to find a plum voyage, kicking back on the first-class deck with a cool drink in hand, and reveling in the ocean. Concerned that accepting fat honoraria would discourage schools and small groups from asking him to speak, he declined anything over modest fees. He made just enough money to keep Cissy and her little brother, Luke, in diapers, then blue jeans, then college. On the side, he worked in the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, supervising the senior center.
    Over the years, he received an absurd number of awards and honors. Lomita Flight Strip, which had been renamed Zamperini Field while Louie was languishing in Naoetsu, was rededicated to him not once more, but twice. A plaza at USC was named after him, as was the stadium at Torrance High. In 1980, someone named a great big barge of a racehorse after him, though as a runner, Zamperini was no Zamperini. The house on Gramercy became a historic landmark. Louie was chosen to carry the Olympic torch before five different Games. So many groups would clamor to give him awards that he’d find it difficult to fit everyone in.
    His body gave no quarter to age or punishment. In time, even his injured leg healed. When Louie was in his sixties, he was still climbing Cahuenga Peak every week and running a mile in under six minutes. In his seventies, he discovered skateboarding. At eighty-five, he returned to Kwajalein on a project, ultimately unsuccessful, to locate the bodies of the nine marines whose names had been etched in the wall of his cell. “When I get old,” he said as he tossed a football on the Kwajalein beach, “I’ll let you know.” When he was ninety, his neighbors looked up to see him balancing high in a tree in his yard, chain saw in hand. “When God wants me, he’ll take me,” he told an incredulous Pete. “Why the hell are you trying to help him?” Pete replied. Well into his tenth decade of life, between the occasional broken bone, he could still be seen perched on skis, merrily cannonballing down mountains.

    Louie on the torch run for the 1984 Summer Olympics.
Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

    Louie, skateboarding at eighty-one.
Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

    He remained infectiously, incorrigibly cheerful. He once told a friend that the last time he could remember being angry was some forty years before. His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him a laughing equanimity even in hard times. In late