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

Two things separated Watanabe from other notorious war criminals. One was the emphasis that he placed on emotional torture. Even by the standards of his honor-conscious culture, he was unusually consumed by his perceived humiliation, and was intent upon inflicting the same pain on the men under his power. Where men like the Quack were simply goons, Watanabe combined beatings with acts meant to batter men’s psyches. He forced men to bow at pumpkins or trees for hours. He ordered a clergyman POW to stand all night saluting a flagpole, shouting the Japanese word for “salute,” keirei; the experience left the man weeping and out of his mind. He confiscated and destroyed POWs’ family photographs, and brought men to his office to show them letters from home, then burned the unopened letters in front of them. To ensure that men felt utterly helpless, he changed the manner in which he demanded to be addressed each day, beating anyone who guessed wrong. He ordered men to violate camp policies, then attacked them for breaking the rules. POW Jack Brady summed him up in one sentence. “He was absolutely the most sadistic man I ever met.”

The other attribute that separated Watanabe from fellow guards was his inconsistency. Most of the time, he was the wrathful god of Omori. But after beatings, he sometimes returned to apologize, often in tears. These fits of contrition usually lasted only moments before the shrieking and punching began again. He would spin from serenity to raving madness in the blink of an eye, usually for no reason. One POW recalled seeing him gently praise a POW, fly into a rage and beat the POW unconscious, then amble to his office and eat his lunch with the placidity of a grazing cow.

When Watanabe wasn’t thrashing POWs, he was forcing them to be his buddies. He’d wake a POW in the night and be “nice as pie,” asking the man to join him in his room, where he’d serve cookies and talk about literature. Sometimes he’d round up anyone in camp who could play an instrument or sing, bring them to his room, and host a concert. He expected the men to respond as if they adored him, and at times, he seemed to honestly believe that they did.

Maybe he held these gatherings because they left the POWs feeling more stressed than if he were consistently hostile. Or maybe he was just lonely. Among the Japanese at Omori, Watanabe was despised for his haughtiness, his boasts about his wealth, and his curtness. He made a great show of his education, droning on about nihilism and giving pompous lectures on French literature at NCO meetings. None of his colleagues listened. It wasn’t the subject matter; it was simply that they loathed him.

Perhaps this is why he turned to POWs for friendship. The tea parties, wrote Derek Clarke, were “tense, sitting-on-the-edge-of-a-volcano affairs.” Any misstep, any misunderstood word might set Watanabe off, leaving him smashing teapots, upending tables, and pounding his guests into oblivion. After the POWs left, Watanabe seemed to feel humiliated by having had to force friendship from lowly POWs. The next day he would often deliver a wild-eyed whipping to the previous night’s buddies.

Like any bully, he had a taste for a particular type of victim. Enlisted men usually received only the occasional slapped face; officers were in for unrelenting cruelty. Among those officers, a few were especially irresistible to him. Some had elevated status, such as physicians, chaplains, barracks commanders, and those who’d been highly successful in civilian life. Others he resented because they wouldn’t crawl before him. These he singled out and hunted with inexhaustible hatred.

From the moment that Watanabe locked eyes with Louie Zamperini, an officer, a famous Olympian, and a man for whom defiance was second nature, no man obsessed him more.

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In POW memoirs, Watanabe’s first name is almost always listed as Matsuhiro. Official documents confirm that the correct spelling was Mutsuhiro.

Twenty- four

Hunted

AFTER A DAY SPENT SHIVERING IN OMORI’S QUARANTINE area, Louie was led into the main body of the camp, an enormous compound crowded with some nine hundred prisoners. He wandered down a long row of barracks until he found the one to which he was assigned. As he walked in, several POWs came forward to greet him. One of them slipped a cup of piping hot tea into his chilled hands. A Scottish prisoner approached, carrying a spoon and a bulging sock. He dipped the spoon into the sock and ladled out two heaping teaspoons of sugar into Louie’s cup. To any POW, sugar was a treasure of incalculable value, and Louie couldn’t understand how this man could have acquired an entire sock full of it.

As he sipped his tea, Louie was introduced to two barracks commanders, British lieutenant Tom Wade and American lieutenant Bob Martindale, who began filling him in on Omori. They spoke about the corporal who had attacked him at the gate. His name was Watanabe, they said, but Louie should never refer to him by his real name. Such was Watanabe’s paranoia that he often hid outside the barracks, trying to catch men speaking of him so he could beat them for it. The men referred to him by a host of nicknames, including the Animal, the Big Flag, Little Napoleon, and, most often, the Bird, a name chosen because it carried no negative connotation that could get the POWs beaten.

It was the Bird’s favorite pastime to send guards bursting into a barracks ahead of him, screaming Keirei! He would then race in to choose his victim. Sitting far from the door didn’t ensure safety; the Bird loved to leap through open windows. Men were told to always be ready, speak of him only in whispers, and agree in advance on a subject to switch to if the Bird ran into the room demanding to be told what they were talking about. Men were advised to say that they were speaking of sex, because the subject interested and distracted him.

The Omori barracks were arranged in two lines separated by a central avenue. At the avenue’s end stood the Bird’s office, placed so that the corporal could see the entire avenue through his large front window. To get anywhere in camp, other than the benjos behind the barracks, POWs had to step into the Bird’s view. One of his demands was that men salute not only him but his window. He often left the office vacant and hid nearby, baseball bat in hand, ready to club men who failed to salute the window.

Among the POWs, there was an elaborate sentry system to monitor the Bird’s movements. When he was in his office, men would say, “The Animal is in his cage.” When he was out, they’d say, “The Animal is on the prowl.”

“Flag’s up!” meant that the Bird was coming. Men were so attuned to the Bird’s presence that they instantly recognized the clopping sound his clogs made in the sand. The sound usually triggered a stampede to the benjos, where the Bird seldom went.

As he absorbed the advice on coping with the Bird, Louie learned something else that surely sank his heart. He had thought that since this was a POW camp, he would be able to write home to let his family know he was alive. Once, Omori POWs had been allowed to write letters, but no longer. The Bird didn’t allow it.

When new POWs arrived at Omori, they were registered with the Red Cross, and word of their whereabouts was forwarded to their governments, then their families. But Omori officials didn’t register Louie. They had special plans for him, and were apparently hiding him. In the absence of Louie’s name on a Red Cross roster, the American government had no reason to believe that he was alive, and Louie’s family was told nothing.

For Louie, the shared lessons about the Bird did no good. No sooner had Louie stepped outside than the Bird found him, accused him of an imaginary infraction, and attacked him in a wild fury. The next day came another