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

Watanabe let him in.

Sitting in his apartment, his pawlike hand clutching a crystal wine glass, he finally spoke about the POWs.

“I understand their bitterness, and they may wonder why I was so severe,” he said. “But now my feeling is I want to apologize. A deep, deep apology … I was severe. Very severe.”

He made a fist and waved it past his chin. “If the former prisoners want, I would offer to let them come here and hit me, to beat me.”

He claimed that he’d used only his hands to punish POWs, an assertion that would have riled the men who’d been kicked, clubbed with his kendo stick and baseball bat, and whipped in the face with his belt. He said that he’d only been trying to teach the POWs military discipline, and asserted that he’d been acting under orders. “If I had been better educated during the war, I think I would have been kinder, more friendly,” he said. “But I was taught that the POWs had surrendered, and this was a shameful thing for them to have done. I knew nothing about the Geneva Convention. I asked my commanding officer about it, and he said, ‘This is not Geneva, this is Japan.’

“There were two people inside me,” he continued. “One that followed military orders, and the other that was more human. At times I felt I had a good heart, but Japan at that time had a bad heart. In normal times I never would have done such things.

“War is a crime against humanity,” he concluded. “I’m glad our prime minister apologized for the war, but I can’t understand why the government as a whole doesn’t apologize. We have a bad cabinet.”

After the interview, a Daily Mail reporter tracked down Tom Wade and told him that Watanabe had asked for forgiveness. “I accept his apology and wish him contentment in his declining years,” Wade said. “It’s no good hanging on to the hatred after so long.”

Asked if he’d like to accept Watanabe’s offer to let the POWs beat him, Wade said no, then reconsidered.

“I might just have one good blow,” he said.

The Daily Mail article apparently ran only in England. It wasn’t until almost a year later that Louie learned that Watanabe still lived. His first reaction was to say that he wanted to see him.

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In the decades after the war, the abandoned Naoetsu campsite decayed, and the village residents didn’t speak of what had transpired there. Over time, the memory was largely lost. But in 1978, a former POW wrote a letter to teachers at Naoetsu High School, beginning a dialogue that introduced many locals to the tragedy that had taken place in their village. Ten years later, former POW Frank Hole journeyed back to the village, which had joined another village to form Joetsu City. He planted three eucalyptus seedlings outside city hall and gave city leaders a plaque in memory of the sixty Australians who had died in the camp.

As they learned the POWs’ stories, Joetsu residents responded with sympathy. Residents formed a group dedicated to building a peace park to honor the dead POWs and bring reconciliation. Among the founding members was Shoichi Ishizuka, a veteran who’d been held as a POW by the Americans and treated so kindly that he referred to the experience as “lucky prison life.” When he learned what his Allied counterparts had endured in his own village, he was horrified. A council was formed, fund-raising began, and exhibits were erected in town. If the plan succeeded, Joetsu would become, among the ninety-one cities in Japan in which POW camps once stood, the first to create a memorial to the POWs who had suffered and died there.

Though 85 percent of Joetsu residents donated to the park fund, the plan generated heated controversy. Some residents fought the plan vehemently, calling in death threats and vowing to tear down the memorial and burn supporters’ homes. In keeping with the goal of reconciliation, the memorial council sought the participation of relatives of the guards who’d been convicted and hanged, but the families balked, fearing ostracism. To honor the grief of families on both sides of the war, the council proposed creating a single cenotaph for both the POWs and the hanged guards, but this deeply offended the former POWs. At one point, the plan was nearly given up.

Eventually, the spirit of reconciliation prevailed. In October 1995, on the site of the former Naoetsu camp, the peace park was dedicated. The focal point was a pair of statues of angels, flying above a cenotaph in which rested Hole’s plaque. In a separate cenotaph a few yards away was a plaque in memory of the eight hanged guards. At the guards’ families’ request, no names were inscribed on it, only a simple phrase: Eight stars in the peaceful sky.

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In early 1997, CBS TV’s Draggan Mihailovich arrived in Tokyo to search for Watanabe, armed with an address and a phone number. CBS’s Japanese bureau chief called the number and reached Watanabe’s wife, who said that her husband couldn’t speak to them—he was gravely ill and bedridden. Mihailovich had the bureau chief call again to convey his wishes for Watanabe’s recovery. His wishes did the trick: Mrs. Watanabe said that her husband had left the country on business and she didn’t know when he’d return.

Seeing that he was being dodged, Mihailovich staked out Watanabe’s apartment building and office. He waited for hours; Watanabe didn’t appear. Just as Mihailovich was losing hope, his cell phone rang. Watanabe had returned the bureau chief’s call. Told that the producers had a message from Louis Zamperini, Watanabe had agreed to meet them at a Tokyo hotel.

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Mihailovich rented a room at the hotel and set up a camera crew inside. Doubting that Watanabe would agree to a sit-down interview, he rigged his cameraman with a tiny camera inside a baseball cap. At the appointed hour, in walked the Bird.

They sat down in the lobby, and Watanabe ordered a beer. Mihailovich explained that they were profiling Louis Zamperini. Watanabe knew the name immediately. “Six hundred prisoner,” he said. “Zamperini number one.”

Bob Simon, CBS’s on-air correspondent for the story, thought that this would probably be his only chance to question Watanabe, so there in the lobby, he began grilling him about his treatment of Louie. Watanabe was startled. He said something about Zamperini being a good man, and how he—Watanabe—hated war. He said that his central concern had been protecting the POWs, because if they had escaped, civilians would have killed them. Asked why he’d been on the list of most wanted war criminals, he puffed with apparent pride. “I’m number seven,” he said. “Tojo number one.” Exile, he said, had been very painful for him.

They asked Watanabe if he’d come upstairs for an on-camera interview. Watanabe asked if the interview would air in Japan, and Mihailovich said no. To Mihailovich’s surprise, Watanabe agreed.

Upstairs, with cameras rolling, they handed Watanabe a photograph of a youthful Louie, standing on a track, smiling. Simon dug in.