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

brought her a telegram:
    I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THE COMMANDING GENERAL PACIFIC AREA REPORTS YOUR SON—FIRST LIEUTENANT RUSSELL A PHILLIPS—MISSING SINCE MAY TWENTY-SEVEN. IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION OF HIS STATUS ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED

    The telegram reached the Zamperinis that same evening. Louise called Sylvia, who had recently married a firefighter, Harvey Flammer, and now lived in a nearby suburb with her husband. Upon hearing that her brother was missing, Sylvia became hysterical, sobbing so loudly that her neighbor ran to her. When the neighbor asked her what was wrong, Sylvia was crying too hard to speak. Eventually she pulled herself together enough to call Harvey at the fire station. She was frantic and confused and didn’t know what to do. Harvey told her to go to her mother. Sylvia put the phone down and ran straight out the door.
    Sylvia sobbed for the entire forty-five-minute drive. Weeks before, just after the Nauru raid, she had picked up her morning paper and seen, on the front page, a photograph of Louie, looking haunted, staring through a gaping hole in the side of
Super Man
. The image had horrified her. Now, as she absorbed the news that Louie was missing, she couldn’t stop seeing that image. When she pulled up at her parents’ house, she had to compose herself before she walked in.
    Her father was calm but quiet; her mother was consumed in anguish.Sylvia, who, like the rest of the family, assumed that Louie had gone down in the ocean, told her mother not to worry. “With all those islands,” Sylvia said, “he’s teaching someone hula.” Pete arrived from San Diego. “If he has a toothbrush and a pocket knife and he hits land,” he told his mother, “he’ll make it.”
    Perhaps that day, or perhaps later, Louise found the tiny snapshot that had been taken on the afternoon Louie had left, when he had stood beside her on her front steps, his arm around her waist. On the back of the photograph, Louise wrote,
Louis Reported missing—May 27, 1943
.
    ——

    The news of Louie’s disappearance headlined California newspapers and led radio broadcasts on June 5. The
Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express
ran a feature on the “Life of Zamp,” which looked an awful lot like an obituary. Payton Jordan, now a navy officer, was driving to his base when he heard the news on the radio. Jordan gasped. He drove into the base feeling numb, and for a while did nothing at all. Then he started speaking to his fellow officers. Jordan’s job was to train cadets in survival techniques, and he and the others considered the possibilities that might face Louie. All of the officers agreed that if Louie had the right training, he might survive.
    Pete called Jordan, and they talked about Louie. As Pete spoke of his hope that Louie would be found, Jordan could hear his voice wavering. Jordan thought about calling Louie’s parents, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had no idea what to say. That evening, he drove home and told his wife, Marge, who had known Louie well at USC. They moved through their routines in a quiet fog, then went to bed and lay awake, in silence.
    In Torrance, Anthony Zamperini remained stoic. Louise cried and prayed. From the stress, open sores broke out all over her hands. Sylvia thought her hands looked like raw hamburger.
    Somewhere in those jagged days, a fierce conviction came over Louise. She was absolutely certain that her son was alive.
    ——

    On Samoa, Stanley Pillsbury and Clarence Douglas were still in the hospital, trying to recover from the wounds incurred over Nauru. Douglas’s shoulder was far from healed, and to Pillsbury, he seemed emotionally gutted. Pillsbury was in considerable pain. The doctors had been unable to remove all of the shrapnel from his leg, and he couldfeel every shard, burning. He wasn’t close to being able to walk. In his dreams, planes dove at him, endlessly.
    Pillsbury was in his bed when Douglas came in, his face radiating shock.
    “The crew went down,” he said.
    Pillsbury could barely speak. His first emotion was overwhelming guilt. “If I had only been there,” he said later, “I could have saved it.”
    Douglas and Pillsbury said little more to each other. They parted, each man swimming in grief. Douglas would soon be granted transfer back to the States. Pillsbury would linger on his cot in Samoa, hoping that he would one day walk again. *
    On Oahu, Louie’s friends gathered in a