In a secret place inside his cell, Harris stored the tools of his clandestine translating trade. Sometime during his stay at Ofuna, he had scavenged or stolen bits of wire and string, strips of cardboard, scraps of paper, and a pencil. The cardboard had been cut from a Canadian Red Cross POW relief package; because the Red Cross didn’t know of Ofuna’s existence, the package had probably been brought from another camp by the Japanese, who routinely purloined the contents of such parcels for their own consumption. Cutting or tearing the paper into small pages, Harris had used the wire and string to bind them into two books, sewing on the cardboard as covers.
In one book, Harris had recorded the addresses of his fellow captives, including Louie. In the other, he had begun creating an elaborate Japanese-English dictionary. Inside, he had written sentences in Japanese and English—“I feel like eating melon,” “Don’t you intend to buy a piano”—followed by notes on proper phrasing, verbs, and tenses. Other pages were devoted to a comprehensive list of translations of military terms, words like “torpedo plane,” “tank,” “bomber,” “antiaircraft gun,” and “captive.” In creating the dictionary, Harris may have had more in mind than translating stolen documents; if he ever escaped from Ofuna, the Japanese translations of words like “compass,” “seacoast,” and “ashore” might be critical to know. Along with the books, Harris kept a collection of hand-drawn war maps; he’d seen the original maps in stolen newspapers, memorized them, and recreated them. He stored all of these items, along with a newspaper clipping, in a small bag that he kept carefully hidden from the guards.
Thanks to the work of thieves and translators, most captives were well enough informed on the war’s progress that they had wagers riding on when it would end. Knowing that the Allies were winning was immensely inspiring, enabling men to go on a little longer. Though the captives’ resistance was dangerous, through such acts, dignity was preserved, and through dignity, life itself. Everyone knew what the consequences would be if anyone were caught stealing newspapers or hiding items as incriminating as Harris’s maps and dictionary. At the time, it seemed worth the risk.
——
In the fall, the snow came, gliding through the gaps in the barracks walls. During the morning mopping, the water in the aisle froze. Nearly every captive fell ill. Louie, still wearing only the clothes he’d crashed in, developed an ominous cough. Shut outside all day, he and the others stood in large huddles, mixing slowly to give each man time in the middle, where it was warmest.
The rations dwindled. The central authorities were allotting scant food to Ofuna, but this wasn’t the half of it. Unloading the ration trucks, captives saw beans, vegetables, and other nutritious fare, yet at mealtime, these items were almost never in their bowls. Camp officials, including the commander, were stealing them. The most flagrant thief was the cook, a ringlet-haired civilian known as Curley. Curley would stand in full view of the captives as he hoisted their food over the fence to civilians, or packed it onto his bicycle and pedaled off to sell it on the black market, where it would bring astronomical prices. Sometimes he’d call Louie over, give him a package of the captives’ food, and order him to walk it over to the fence, where a woman would take it in exchange for barter payment. According to one captive, it was widely known that Curley had bought and furnished a house with his profits.
The stealing left Ofuna in a state of famine. “To give you an idea of how hungry we were,” wrote Commander Fitzgerald, “it can best be explained by the fact that it took an awful lot of will power to take the last part of starch from my rice bowl in order to stick a snapshot of my wife to a piece of plywood.” Commander Maher pleaded for more food. Officials punished his impertinence by slashing the prisoners’ rations and intensifying their exercise.
In search of something to occupy their hungry mouths, the captives were seized by a mania for smoking. Small allotments of foul tobacco were handed out, and Louie, like almost all captives, resumed the habit. Men became fiercely addicted. The few who didn’t smoke still received the tobacco ration; they were richer than kings. One of Louie’s friends, an aging Norwegian sailor named Anton Minsaas, became so hooked that he began trading his food for smokes. Louie urged him to eat, but Minsaas couldn’t be persuaded. He grew ever thinner.
Every man in camp was thin, many emaciated, but Louie and Phil were thinner than anyone else. The rations weren’t nearly enough, and Louie was plagued by dysentery. He couldn’t get warm, and he was racked by a cough. He teetered through the exercise sessions, trying to keep his legs from buckling. At night, he folded his paper blankets to create loft, but it barely helped; the unheated, drafty rooms were only a few degrees warmer than the frigid outside air. When camp officials staged a baseball game, Louie was sent to bat. He hit the ball, took one step, and collapsed. Sprawled on the ground, he heard laughing.
One day that fall, a Japanese newspaper editor came to camp. He had learned that a Louis Zamperini was being held there. In Japan, track was wildly popular, and international running stars were well known. The editor carried a file full of information on Louie, and showed it to the guards.
The guards were fascinated to learn that the sick, emaciated man in the first barracks had once been an Olympic runner. They quickly found a Japanese runner and brought him in for a match race against the American. Hauled out and forced to run, Louie was trounced, and the guards made tittering mockery of him. Louie was angry and shaken, and his growing weakness scared him. POWs were dying by the thousands in camps all over Japan and its captured territories, and winter was coming.
Louie went to Sasaki to ask for help. Since Sasaki was, by his own account, a bigwig, it seemed that it would be easy for him to intervene. But after talking about what “we” would do, Sasaki never followed through. The most he did for Louie was to give him an egg and a tangerine, which Louie shared with other captives. Louie began to believe that Sasaki wasn’t his ally, and wasn’t protecting him from interrogation. It now seemed that the Japanese simply weren’t interested in what he knew. They had brought him to Ofuna to soften him up for something else, but he had no idea what it was.
Where Sasaki failed Louie, the kitchen workers, Mead and Duva, came through, at considerable risk to themselves. Each day as they walked the barracks hall to deliver rations, they balled up an extra portion of rice and sometimes a bit of fish, waited for a moment when the guards glanced away, and tossed it to Louie. Mead whispered his only request: Give half to Phil. Louie would hide half the rice, inch up to Phil on the parade ground, and slip it into his hand.
In October, Anton Minsaas, still trading his food for cigarettes, sank to the ground during an exercise session. The guards dropped on him, clubs flying. Not long after, beriberi set in, and Minsaas became too weak to walk, then could no longer speak. Camp officials brought in a doctor, who injected Minsaas with a green fluid. Minsaas died immediately. Of the green fluid, captive Johan Arthur Johansen wrote, “We … believed that it was an attempt to end his life.”*
Louie sat in his cell, shivering and praying. A Norwegian sailor, Thorbjorn Christiansen, felt for him, and gave him a gift that may well have saved his life. Digging through his possessions, he pulled out a coat and passed it to Louie. Louie bundled up, hung on, and hoped he wouldn’t end up like Minsaas.
——
As 1943 drew to its end, the men in Ofuna had a taste of liberation. The veteran captives, Louie included, were allowed to speak to one another when they were outside. When new captives arrived, they were whisked into solitary confinement and banned from speaking until they were done with the initial interrogation. Veterans began loitering outside the new men’s windows, pretending to speak to each other when in fact they were grilling the
