The boy who ran
Unbroken is Laura Hillenbrand's account of the life of Louis Zamperini, built from interviews with him over seven years, diaries, letters, military records and the memories of the men who served with him. Hillenbrand, who has chronic fatigue syndrome and rarely leaves her home, did most of the research by phone and mail. The book covers Zamperini's life from his birth in 1917 to the late 2000s. Its center is the Second World War in the Pacific.
Zamperini grows up in Torrance, California, the son of Italian immigrants. He is a thief and a brawler. He steals food, picks fights and runs from the police. His older brother Pete sees that the running could become something. Pete pushes him onto the track team, trains him and tells him that a lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain.
The running takes. In 1934 Zamperini sets a national high school record in the mile. Two years later, at 19, he qualifies for the 1936 Olympic team in the 5,000 meters, a distance he has barely raced. In Berlin he finishes eighth, but he runs the final lap in 56 seconds, fast enough that Hitler asks to meet him. Before leaving he climbs a pole at the Reich Chancellery and steals a Nazi flag. He goes on to run for the University of Southern California and aims at the mile record and the 1940 Tokyo Olympics. The war cancels the Games.
The Green Hornet
Zamperini joins the Army Air Forces and trains as a bombardier on the B-24 Liberator, a heavy bomber with a reputation for mechanical trouble. His pilot is Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, a quiet pastor's son from Indiana. Their plane is Super Man. Hillenbrand gives the full picture of air war in the Pacific: most airmen who died there died in accidents, not combat, and a crew that went down in the ocean was rarely found.
Super Man flies a raid on Wake Island in December 1942. In April 1943, on a raid on Nauru, Japanese fighters shoot the plane full of holes. One crewman dies and several are wounded. The plane lands with 594 holes and never flies again. The crew is split up.
On May 27, 1943, Zamperini and Phillips are sent to search for a missing plane in the Green Hornet, a B-24 that other crews refuse to fly. Its engines have failed before. Over the ocean south of Oahu, two engines quit. The plane hits the water and breaks apart. Of the 11 men on board, three come up alive: Zamperini, Phillips and the tail gunner, Francis "Mac" McNamara. Zamperini cuts himself free from the wreck underwater and surfaces next to two life rafts.
Forty-seven days on the raft
The rafts hold a few chocolate bars, some tins of water, flares, a fishing kit and a patch kit. On the first night Mac eats all the chocolate while the others sleep. Hillenbrand reads this as panic. Mac's despair becomes a theme: of the three, he is the one who cannot hold on.
The men drift west. They collect rainwater in cans and in their mouths. They catch an albatross that lands on the raft, and use its meat as bait for small fish. Sharks follow them the whole way and sometimes try to climb aboard. Zamperini learns to catch sharks by hand and eat the liver. A Japanese bomber finds them and strafes the rafts on several passes. No one is hit, but one raft is ruined and the other is full of holes they patch between shark attacks.
Zamperini keeps their minds working. He makes Phillips and Mac describe meals in detail and quizzes them on their lives. He prays. Mac dies on the 33rd day. Zamperini and Phillips bury him at sea. On the 47th day, after drifting about 2,000 miles, they reach the Marshall Islands. A Japanese boat picks them up. Each man weighs roughly half of what he did when he left Hawaii. Hillenbrand notes that their drift is one of the longest recorded survivals on a raft.
Kwajalein and Ofuna
The Japanese take the two men to Kwajalein, an atoll the prisoners call Execution Island. They learn that nine Marines held there before them were beheaded. Zamperini and Phillips are kept in tiny cells, starved, used for medical experiments and interrogated. After six weeks, instead of killing them, the Japanese ship them to Japan. Zamperini believes his fame as an Olympian saves his life: he is more useful as a propaganda prize than as a corpse.
He is sent to Ofuna, a secret interrogation camp near Yokohama. It is not registered with the Red Cross, so the prisoners do not officially exist. Rules forbid speaking. Guards beat men for any reason. The food is a small bowl of rice and some soup. Zamperini meets Jimmie Sasaki, a Japanese interrogator who had known him at USC. He also befriends William Harris, a Marine officer who memorizes maps and Japanese phrases and is nearly beaten to death when guards find his notes.
Hillenbrand explains why the camps were so brutal. Japan's military culture treated surrender as shameful, so surrendered men had no standing. Guards were often the lowest men in the army, and the camps gave them power over men they despised. She also documents the rations, the slave labor and the death rates: more than a third of American prisoners of the Japanese died, compared with about one in a hundred held by Germany.
The Bird
In September 1944 Zamperini is transferred to Omori, a camp on an island in Tokyo Bay. Its disciplinary officer is Corporal Mutsuhiro Watanabe, whom the prisoners call the Bird. Watanabe is the son of a wealthy family, resentful at being refused an officer's commission, and he takes it out on the prisoners. He is unpredictable. He beats a man until the man is bleeding, then brings him a sweet and weeps. He chooses Zamperini as his favorite victim because Zamperini will not show fear.
In the United States, Zamperini has been declared dead. His family refuses to believe it. The Japanese learn who he is and take him to Radio Tokyo to read a message home, which proves he is alive. When they ask him to read a propaganda script attacking America, he refuses. They send him back to the Bird.
The Bird is transferred in late 1944. In March 1945 Zamperini is sent to Naoetsu, a camp on the coast of the Sea of Japan, and finds the Bird waiting for him. At Naoetsu, officers are forced into slave labor. The Bird orders every enlisted prisoner to punch each officer in the face, about 220 blows for each man. When Zamperini is too sick to work, the Bird makes him hold a heavy wooden beam over his head. Zamperini holds it for 37 minutes before the Bird knocks him down. He begins to dream of strangling the Bird.
The prisoners know about the kill-all order: Japan's policy of executing prisoners if the Allies invade. Rumors say the Naoetsu men will be killed on August 22. Japan surrenders on August 15. The Bird vanishes. American bombers drop food and supplies, and the prisoners eat until they are sick. Phillips, held in other camps, survives too and comes home to the woman who waited for him.
Coming home
Zamperini returns to Torrance a hero. He meets Cynthia Applewhite in Miami Beach and marries her in 1946. Then he comes apart. He has nightmares in which the Bird beats him. He wakes strangling his pregnant wife. He drinks heavily. He has flashbacks on the street. He loses money on bad business deals. Hillenbrand describes what the era did not yet name as post-traumatic stress disorder, and shows that many Pacific prisoners had it.
Zamperini decides that the only cure is to go back to Japan and kill the Bird. He trains and saves money for the trip. Cynthia files for divorce. In 1949 she attends Billy Graham's tent revival in Los Angeles and persuades Zamperini to go. He walks out the first night. On the second night he remembers a promise he made on the raft: if God saved him, he would serve him. He converts. By his account, he never has the nightmare again and never drinks again. Cynthia withdraws the divorce.
He becomes a Christian speaker and founds a camp for troubled boys. In 1950 he visits Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, where Japanese war criminals are held, and tells his former guards that he forgives them. The Bird is not there. Watanabe was one of the most wanted war criminals in Japan, but he hid for years, and the amnesty of 1952 ended the hunt. He became a wealthy insurance salesman.
In 1998, at 81, Zamperini carries the Olympic torch past Naoetsu on its way to the Nagano Games. He asks to meet Watanabe. Watanabe refuses. Zamperini writes him a letter of forgiveness. Hillenbrand's subject throughout is dignity: she argues that the loss of dignity, more than hunger or pain, is what destroys prisoners, and that Zamperini's refusal to submit to the Bird kept him alive and almost killed him.
What the critics say
Reviewers praised the research but some noted that Hillenbrand relies on Zamperini's own memory for scenes no other witness survived, such as parts of the raft ordeal. Some Japanese commentators objected to the book's portrait of the guards and to its references to wartime cannibalism, and the 2014 movie drew protests in Japan. Hillenbrand cites her sources for those claims in the notes.
Who should read it
Read it if you want a detailed, sourced account of the Pacific air war and the Japanese prison camps told through one life. It also suits readers interested in trauma, recovery and forgiveness, and anyone who wants a survival story that does not stop at the rescue.
