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

Chapter 6: The Flying Coffin

1

Pancakes: Ken Marvin, telephone interview, January 31, 2005.

2

“

Calm!”:

William Manchester,

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972

(New York: Bantam Books, 1974), p. 258.

3

Eleanor Roosevelt writes Anna: Doris Kearns Goodwin,

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt—the Home Front in World War II

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 289.

4

Butler overheard president: Ibid., p. 290.

5

Japanese staffers burning documents: “Japanese Embassy Burns Official Papers,”

Wisconsin State Journal

(Madison), December 8, 1941; Manchester, p. 258.

6

Days after December 7: Carl Nolte, “Pearl Harbor Was a Close Thing for the City in 1941,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, December 7, 2006; Stanley Pillsbury, telephone interview, August 25, 2004; “Entire City Put on War Footing,”

NYT

, December 8, 1941; “U.S. Cities Prove They Can Swing into Action,”

Wisconsin State Journal

(Madison), December 8, 1941; Adam Fjell, “ ‘A Day That Will Live in Infamy’: Buffalo County and the Attack on Pearl Harbor,”

Buffalo Tales

, November–December 2002, vol. 25, no. 6; Goodwin, pp. 295–96.

7

Wake’s defense: Lieutenant Colonel R. D. Heinl, Jr., USMC,

The Defense of Wake

, Marines in World War II: Historical Monograph (Historical Section, Division of Public Information Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1947).

8

Men on Wake singing: Ken Marvin, telephone interview, January 31, 2005.

9

Louie’s test scores: Certificate of Proficiency, Air Force Preflight School (bombardier, navigator), Ellington Field, from papers of Louis Zamperini.

10

Norden bombsight: William Darron, Army Air Forces Historical Association, Oradell, N.J., interview and bombsight demonstration, courtesy of Robert Grenz, 2004; Louis Zamperini, telephone interview; “Bombardiers’ Information File,” War Department, Army Air Forces, March 1945.

11

Twice the price of a house: “The Year 1942,” The People History,

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1942.html

(accessed September 11, 2009); “The Norden M-1 Bomb Sight,” Plane Crazy,

http://www.plane-crazy.net/links/nord.htm

(accessed September 11, 2009).