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

——

Louie wasn’t smiling for long. The B-29, and what it portended, fed the Bird’s vitriol. One day Louie was in his barracks, sitting with friends far in the rear, out of sight of the door, in case the Bird came in. As the men passed around a cigarette rolled in toilet paper, two guards banged in, screaming “Keirei!” Louie leapt up in tandem with the other men. In bounded the Bird.

For several seconds, the Bird looked around. He took a few steps into the room, and Louie came into his view. The corporal rushed down the barracks and halted before Louie. He wore the webbed belt that Louie had seen on him his first day in Omori. The buckle was several inches square, made of heavy brass. Standing before Louie, the Bird jerked the belt off his waist and grasped one end with both hands.

“You come to attention last!”

The Bird swung the belt backward, with the buckle on the loose end, and then whipped it around himself and forward, as if he were performing a hammer throw. The buckle rammed into Louie’s left temple and ear.

Louie felt as if he had been shot in the head. Though he had resolved never to let the Bird knock him down, the power of the blow, and the explosive pain that followed, overawed everything in him. His legs seemed to liquefy, and he went down. The room spun.

Louie lay on the floor, dazed, his head throbbing, blood running from his temple. When he gathered his wits, the Bird was crouching over him, making a sympathetic, almost maternal sound, a sort of Awwww. He pulled a fold of toilet paper from his pocket and pressed it gently into Louie’s hand. Louie held the paper to his temple.

“Oh, it stop, eh?” the Bird said, his voice soft.

Louie pulled himself upright. The Bird waited for him to steady himself. The soothing voice and the offer of the paper for his wound were revelations to Louie: There was compassion in this man. The sense of relief was just entering his mind when the buckle, whirling around from the Bird’s swinging arms, struck his head again, exactly where it had hit before. Louie felt pain bursting through his skull, his body going liquid again. He smacked into the floor.

——

For several weeks, Louie was deaf in his left ear. The Bird continued to beat him, every day. As his attacker struck him, Louie bore it with clenched fists and eyes blazing, but the assaults were wearing him down. The sergeant began lording over his dream life, coming at him and pounding him, his features alight in vicious rapture. Louie spent hour after hour in prayer, begging for God to save him. He lost himself in fantasies of running through an Olympic stadium, climbing onto a podium. And he thought of home, tormented by thoughts of what his disappearance must have done to his mother. He longed to write to her, but there was no point. Once, a Japanese officer had announced that men could write home, and everyone in camp penned letters to their parents, wives, children, and steady girls. When the Bird learned of it, he called in Commander Maher, handed him the letters, and forced him to burn them.

One day in mid-November, Louie was sitting in his barracks when the Bird walked in and approached him, accompanied by two Japanese strangers. Louie expected a beating, but instead, the strangers were friendly. They told Louie that they were producers from Radio Tokyo and that they had something they thought he’d like to see. They handed Louie a piece of paper. Louie looked at it: It was a transcript of an NBC radio broadcast announcing his death. The transcript was real. Louie’s death declaration, delivered in June, had reached the American media on November 12, that same week.

The Radio Tokyo men wanted Louie to come to their studio to announce that he was alive on the Postman Calls show. They wanted Louie to do this, they said, for his sake and that of his suffering family. He was free to write his own message. Louie didn’t trust them, and gave them no answer. They told him to take a day to think about it. Louie consulted Martindale, who told him that several POWs had made such broadcasts, and as long as Louie didn’t read propaganda, there was no harm in accepting.

So Louie said yes. The Radio Tokyo men brought him pen and paper, and he set to work. Knowing that his family might not believe that it was really he, he added details that he hoped would convince them. To ensure that his message got through, he decided to speak positively about his captors. He included the names of other POWs who feared that their families thought they were dead, and also mentioned Bill Harris, whom he’d last seen a month and a half earlier, at Ofuna. He opted not to mention Phil. He hadn’t seen the pilot for eight months, and didn’t know if he was still alive.

Louie was driven to the Radio Tokyo studio. The producers greeted him as if he were a beloved friend. They read his speech and gave it a hearty approval. It would be taped for broadcast two days later. The producers planned to use that evening’s broadcast to tease the audience, then wait before presenting his voice to the world, proof that they were telling the truth.

Louie was taken to the microphone and given his cue. He read his message, to the pleasure of the producers. As the officials prepared to drive him back to Omori, Louie went to a producer who had been especially kind. He said that there was a man in camp named Watanabe who was beating the POWs. The producer seemed concerned and told Louie that he’d see what he could do.

——

In San Francisco at half past two on the morning of November 18, 1944, a young woman named Lynn Moody was alone in the Office of War Information, working the graveyard shift. Across the hall in the Federal Communications Commission station, one of her colleagues was listening to Japanese radio and typing up broadcasts for review by propaganda analysts. Moody was bored, so she crossed the hall to say hello. The colleague asked if Moody could fill in while she took a break.

Moody slipped on the earphones and began typing. The show airing was Postman Calls. As she typed, Moody was startled to hear a name that she knew well: Louis Zamperini. Moody was a member of the USC class of 1940, and Louie was an old friend. The announcer was speaking about the October 18 message that had been broadcast, supposedly from Louie, but in fact written without Louie’s knowledge. Giddy with excitement, Moody typed, placing unclear words within parentheses:

Exactly one month ago we broadcast a message. This message over the same station, same program, “Postman Calls,” was from First Lieutenant Louis (Silvie) Zamperini, United States Army Air Corps. Recently a news report has been brought to our attention in which it is stated that First Lieutenant Louis Zamperini is listed as dead by the United States War Department. According to the report, Lieutenant Zamperini was reported missing in action in the South Pacific in May, 1943. The apparently uninformed source of this item is a broadcasting station in California quoting the War Department of the United States of America. We hope we can rectify this mistake on someone’s part by saying that Louis Zamperini is alive and well as a prisoner of war here in Tokyo.

This is one of the many examples of the men missing in action erroneously reported and later being established