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

told a remarkable story.
    Before Christmas, the Americans had gone after the Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands, sending waves of bombers. Flying on one such mission, Garrett was shot down over the ocean, incurring a compound ankle fracture. After floating for ten hours on a raft, he was picked up by a Japanese tugboat crew. They took him to an island, where Japanese soldiers took turns kicking his dangling ankle. Then Garrett was flown to another island and thrown into a cell block where nineteen other downed American airmen were being held. His ankle festered, maggots hatched in it, and Garrett began to run a high fever. He was told that he’d be given medical care only if he divulged military secrets. If not, he’d be killed. Garrett lied in interrogation, and the Japanese knew it.
    Two days after Christmas, Garrett was tied down, given a spinal anesthetic, and forced to watch as a Japanese corpsman sawed at his leg, then snapped it off. Though the infection was limited to the ankle, the corpsman cut the entire leg off, because, he told Garrett, this would make it impossible for him to fly a plane again. Garrett, delirious, was dumped back in his cell. The next morning, he was thrown onto a truck and taken toward mainland Japan with two other captives. Their journey brought them to Ofuna. The seventeen Americans who were left behind were never seen again.
    Garrett then told Louie why he had sought him out. As he had lain in fevered agony in his cell on the second island, he had looked up to see ten names scratched into the wall. He had asked about them and had been told that the first nine men had been executed. No one had told him what had happened to the tenth man. Garrett had spent much of his time mulling over that last name on the wall, perhaps thinking that if this man had survived, so might he. When he had arrived at Ofuna, he had asked if anyone had heard of that man, Louis Zamperini. Garrett and Zamperini, both Los Angeles–area natives, had been held in the same tiny Kwajalein cell almost five thousand miles from home.
    ——

    Plodding around the parade ground that winter, Louie and Harris befriended FrankTinker, a dive-bomber pilot and opera singer who had been brought from Kwajalein with Garrett. The three spent most of their outdoor time together, sitting on benches or tracing the edges of the compound, distracting one another from the tooth-chattering cold with mind exercises. Harris and Tinker were experiencing the sparkling mental clarity, prompted by starvation, that Louie had first known onthe raft. Tinker became conversant in Norwegian in a single week, taking lessons from his cell neighbors. He saw Harris arguing with another captive about medieval history and the Magna Carta, and he once found the marine sitting with his hands parted as if holding a book, staring at them and mumbling to himself. When Tinker asked what he was doing, Harris said he was reading a text that he had studied at Annapolis many years earlier. Harris could see the book in front of him, as if its words were written across his outspread fingers.
    With the help of Christiansen’s coat, Duva and Mead’s rice, and Harris, Tinker, and Garrett’s friendship, Louie survived the winter. Buoyed by the extra calories, he strengthened his legs, lifting his knees up and down as he walked the compound. The guards began goading him into running around the compound alone.
    When spring arrived, Ofuna officials brought in a Japanese civilian and ordered Louie to race him. Louie didn’t want to do it, but he was told that if he refused, all captives would be punished. The race was about a mile and a half, in laps around the compound. Louie had no intention of winning, and lagged behind for most of it. But as he ran, he found that his body was so light that carrying it was surprisingly easy. All around the compound, the captives watched him, breathless. As the finish approached, they started cheering.
    Louie looked ahead at the Japanese runner and realized that he had it within himself to pass the man. He knew what would happen if he won, but the cheering and the accumulation of so many months of humiliation brought something in him to a hard point. He lengthened his stride, seized the lead, and crossed the finish line. The captives whooped.
    Louie didn’t see the club coming at his skull. He just felt the world tip and go away. His eyes opened to the sight of the sky, ringed with the faces of captives. It had been worth