Since I have been in Japan I have run into several of my old acquaintances. You will probably remember a few of them.
The tall Marine, William Harris, from Kentucky is here and enjoying good health. Lorren Stoddard Stanley Maneivve and Peter Hryskanich are the same. You must remember William Hasty from Bishopville? We have been rooming together for the past two months. He is looking fine.
I know that you have taken care of my personal belongings and saving long ago. You have no doubt received the rest of my belongings from the Army.
Hello to Bob Lewellyn and all of my home town friends. Before closing I wish you a merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.
Your loving son, Louie
——
Later that day, the phone rang at the Zamperinis’ house. The caller was a woman from the nearby suburb of San Marino. She said that she’d been listening to her radio when the station had aired an intercepted broadcast of an American prisoner of war speaking on Japanese radio. The broadcast had been scratchy and indistinct, but she was sure that she had heard the name right. The POW she had heard, she said, was Louie.
The Zamperinis were shocked and wary. The woman was a stranger, and they were afraid that she was a prankster. Sylvia and Louise asked for her address and drove to her house. The woman told them everything she had heard. Sylvia and Louise thanked her and left. They believed the woman, but they didn’t know if they could believe the broadcast itself. It could easily have been faked. “I was thinking, ‘Could it be true? Could it be true?’ ” Sylvia recalled.
After Sylvia and Louise got home, a Western Union telegram arrived from the provost marshal general. It read, FOLLOWING ENEMY PROPAGANDA BROADCAST FROM JAPAN HAS BEEN INTERCEPTED. Below were Louie’s words, as typed by Moody. The telegram ended with a disclaimer: PENDING FURTHER CONFIRMATION THIS REPORT DOES NOT ESTABLISH HIS STATUS AS A PRISONER OF WAR.
Messages began pouring in, from friends and strangers all over the country, telling the Zamperinis of the broadcast, which had been intercepted and re-aired on several stations. And Louie’s uncle Gildo Dossi called from Wilmington, Iowa. He had clicked on his radio and heard a voice that he felt certain was that of his nephew.
The messages relaying the content of the broadcast were varied, but a common thread ran through several of them: a request that they take care of Louie’s guns. Louie had grown up hunting, shooting rabbits in the fields around Torrance and on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, and he was especially careful with his guns. To the Zamperinis, this was the fingerprint, the detail that the Japanese could not have known. Louise and Sylvia dissolved in tears, then began shouting with joy.
Pete picked up the phone, dialed Payton Jordan’s number, and shouted three words into the receiver:
“Payt!
Madness
THE RADIO TOKYO MEN WERE BACK AT OMORI, SMILING. What a lovely voice Louie had, what a brilliant job he had done. How about another broadcast?
As long as he wrote his own copy, Louie saw no reason to decline. He composed another message to his family, then rode with the producers to Tokyo. When he reached the studio, the producers announced a change of plans. They didn’t need the message he’d written; they had one all ready. They handed Louie a sheet of paper. This is what it said, exactly as written:
Well, believe it or not … I guess I’m one of those “Lucky guys”, or maybe, I dunno, maybe I’m really unlucky … Anyway … here’s me, Louis Zamperini, age 27, hometown Los Angeles, California, good ole United States of America speaking. What I mean by lucky is that I’m still alive and healthy … Yes, and it’s a funny thing … I’ve heard and also saw with my own eyes that I’m washed-up that is I was reported to have died in combat.… Yes, one of those who died gallantry [
] fighting for the cause … I think the official report went something like this … ‘First Lieutenant Louis S. Zamperini, holder of the national interscholastic mile
record, is, listed as dead by the War Department … The former University of Southern California miler was reported missing in action in the South Pacific in May 1943’… Well, what do you know?… Boy.… that’s rich.… Here I am just as alive as I could be.… but hell I’m supposed to be dead.… Yeah and this reminds me of another fellow who’s in the same boat as me or at least he was.… Anyway he told me that he was officially reported as ‘killed in action’ but in reality was a prisoner-of-war.… After several months he received a letter from his wife in which she told him that she had married again since she thought he was dead … Of course, she was astonished to hear that he was safe and held in an internment camp.… She however, consolated him by saying that she was willing to divorce again or marry him once again when he gets home.… Boy, I really feel sorry for a fellow like that.and the blame lies with the official who allow such unreliable rports [
].… After all the least they can do is to let the folks back home know just where theri boy are [
]…
Anyway thats not my worry but I hope the folks back home are properly notified of the fact that I am alive and intend to stay alive … It’s certainly a sad world when a fellow can’t even be allowed to live, I mean when a fellow is killed off by a so-called ‘official report.… How about that?…
Louie was aghast. He had long wondered why he’d been spared from execution on Kwajalein, after the nine marines had been killed, and why he’d been subjected to the will-weakening torment of Ofuna yet not interrogated, even though everyone else had been. At last, the Japanese had made their intentions clear. On Kwajalein, after Louie’s execution had been ordered, an officer had persuaded his superiors to keep Louie alive to make him into a propaganda tool. A famous American Olympian, he’d reasoned, would be especially valuable.* The Japanese had probably sent Louie to the crucible of Ofuna, then to Omori under the Bird, to make his life in camp unbearable so he’d be willing to do anything, even betray his country, to escape it. They had hidden him from the world, keeping his name off Red Cross rosters, and waited until his government had publicly declared his death
