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

it.
    The guards thought they had taught him a lesson. Another runner, his girlfriend in tow, arrived. Louie was ready to beat him too, but before the race, the runner spoke to him kindly, in English, offering to give him a rice ball if he’d throw the race. It would mean a lot to him, he said, to win in front of his girlfriend. Louie lost, the girlfriend was impressed, and the runner delivered one rice ball, plus a second as interest. The payment, Louie said, “made me a professional.”
    ——

    In March, Phil was taken away. It seemed that he had at last gotten lucky; officials said that he was being sent to a POW camp calledZentsuji. Every captive longed to be transferred to a POW camp, where, it was said, men were registered with the Red Cross and could write home and enjoy vastly better living conditions. Of all POW camps, Zentsuji was rumored to be the best. The interrogators had long dangled this “plush” camp before the captives as a reward for cooperation.
    Phil and Louie had only a brief good-bye. They spoke of finding each other again someday, when the war was over. Phil was led through the gate and driven away.
    The Zentsuji story was false. Phil was sent toAshio, a camp north of Tokyo. The POWs of Ashio were handed over to a wire-and-cable firm, which herded them underground to mine copper in conditions that were almost unlivable. This work was usually, but not always, restricted to enlisted POWs. Whether or not Phil was forced into slavery is unknown.
    There was, it seemed, one good thing about Ashio. Phil hadn’t seen Cecy or his family in well over two years, and knew that they probably thought he was dead. At Ashio, he was told that he could write home. Given paper and pen, he wrote about his days on the life raft with Zamp, his capture, and his yearning for home. “The first night home will hear some interesting tales,” he wrote. “Much love til we’re together again. Al.”
    Sometime after Phil turned in his letter, someone found it in a garbage heap, burned. Though the edges were charred, the text was still visible. Phil took back his letter and tucked it away. If he got out of this war alive, he’d deliver it in person.
    * Future Indiana governor Edgar Whitcomb.
* They may have been right. Later, two other captives were given similar injections, and both died. The doctor’s intent may have been compassionate; mercy killing was then an accepted practice in Japan.

Twenty-one
Belief

    B EHIND TORRANCE HIGH SCHOOL STOOD A HUDDLE OF trees. On many evenings in the months after her brother went missing, Sylvia Zamperini Flammer would drive to the school, turn her car under the trees, and park there, then sit in the quiet and the dimness, alone. As the car cooled over the pavement, tears would stream down Sylvia’s cheeks. Sometimes she’d let herself sob, knowing that no one would hear her. After a few minutes, she’d dab away her tears, straighten herself, and start the car again.
    On the drive home, she’d think of a lie to explain why her post office trip had again taken so long. She never let anyone know how frightened she was.
    ——

    In Torrance, the June 4, 1943, telegram announcing Louie’s disappearance was followed by excruciating silence. Many weeks passed, and the military’s search yielded no trace of Louie, his crew, or his plane. In town, hope dissolved. When the Zamperinis went out, they saw resignation in their neighbors’ faces.
    Inside the white house on Gramercy Avenue, the mood was different. In the first days after the telegram arrived, Louise Zamperini had been seized with the conviction that her son was alive. Her husbandand children had felt the same. Days passed, then weeks; spring became summer; and no word came. But the family’s conviction remained unshaken. To the family, Louie was among them still, spoken of in the present tense, as if he were just down the street, expected at any moment.
    What the Zamperinis were experiencing wasn’t denial, and it wasn’t hope. It was belief. Louise, Anthony, Pete, and Virginia still sensed Louie’s presence; they could still
feel
him. Their distress came not from grief but from the certainty that Louie was out there, in trouble, and they couldn’t reach him.
    On July 13, Louise felt a wave of urgency. She penned a letter to Major General Willis Hale, commander of the Seventh Air Force. In it, she begged Hale not to give up searching; Louie, she wrote, was alive. Unbeknownst to Louise, on that same day,