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

screaming, spitting on Louie, hitting him with rocks, hurling sticks like javelins. Down the hall, the men were doing the same to Phil. Louie balled himself up at the far end of the cell.
    On and on the procession went. There were eighty, perhaps ninety men, and each one spent some thirty seconds attacking each captive. At last, the men left. Louie sat in pools of spit and jumbled rocks and sticks, bleeding.
    When Kawamura saw what had happened, he was livid. He explained that the attackers were a submarine crew stopping over on the island. When Louie was taken to interrogation, he complained about the attack. The officers replied that this was what he ought to expect.
    The interrogators wanted Louie to tell them the numbers of aircraft, ships, and personnel in Hawaii. Louie told them that the last time he’d seen Hawaii, it had been May. Now it was August. He couldn’t be expected to have current information. He was sent back to his cell.
    ——

    Some three weeks after his arrival on Kwajalein, Louie was again pulled from his cell. Outside for the first time since his arrival on the island, he saw Phil. Their eyes met. It looked like this might be the end.
    They were taken to the interrogation building, but this time they were halted on the front porch, Phil on one end, Louie on the other. Two men in white medical coats joined them, along with four aides holding paperwork and stopwatches. Japanese began collecting below the porch to watch.
    Louie and Phil were ordered to lie down. The doctors pulled out two long hypodermic syringes and filled each with a murky solution. Someone said it was the milk of green coconuts, though whether or not this was true remains unknown. The doctors said that what they were about to do would be good for the prisoners. If the solution worked as hoped—improving their condition, they were told—it would be given to Japanese troops.
    The doctors turned the captives’ hands palm-up and swabbed their arms with alcohol. The needles slid in, the plungers depressed, and the aides clicked the stopwatches. The doctors told the captives to describe their sensations.
    For Louie, within a few seconds, the porch started gyrating. The doctor pushed more solution into his vein, and the spinning worsened. He felt as if pins were being jabbed all over his body. Then the blood rushed from his head, the same sensation that he used to feel when Phil lifted
Super Man
out of a dive. His skin burned, itched, and stung. The porch pitched and turned. Across the porch, Phil was experiencing the same symptoms. The doctors, speaking in sterile tones, continued toquestion them. Then everything blurred. Louie cried out that he was going to faint. The doctor withdrew the needle.
    The captives were taken back to their cells. Within fifteen minutes, Louie’s entire body was covered in a rash. He lay awake all night, itching and burning. Several days later, when the symptoms subsided, he and Phil were again taken to the porch and again injected, this time with more solution. Again they rolled through vertigo and burned with rashes. After another few days, they were subjected to a third experiment, and a few days later came a fourth. In the last infusion, a full pint of the fluid was pumped into their veins.
    Both men survived, and as terrible as their experience had been, they were lucky. All over their captured territories, the Japanese were using at least ten thousand POWs and civilians, including infants, as test subjects for experiments in biological and chemical warfare. Thousands died.
    ——

    Back in his cell, Louie felt a sharp headache coming on, and was soon dizzy and baking with fever. His bones ached. Phil was going through the same ordeal. The guards summoned a doctor. Louie picked out a familiar word: dengue. The prisoners haddengue fever, a potentially fatal mosquito-borne illness that was ravaging the tropics. The doctor offered no treatment.
    Louie drifted into a febrile fog. Time slid by, and he felt little connection to his body. As he lay there, feet tramped outside, livid faces appeared again at the door, and Louie felt himself struck with rocks, stabbed with sticks, and slapped with wads of spit. A new crop of submariners had come.
    Louie floated through it, too sick to resist. The faces streamed past, and the stones and sticks cracked off his burning bones. Time passed with merciful speed, and the abuse was soon over.
    ——

    Louie was brought to interrogation again. The officers