Who is louis zamperini

Not underneath, even. Roosevelt signed a condolence letter, his mom knew he was still alive and that she would see him again, one day. She was right. In May , his B crashed into the Pacific. For 47 days, he floated on a raft in the ocean.

He was then captured by the Japanese, who held him prisoner until August The book has remained on the bestseller lists since it was published in , and in December, Universal will release a film adaptation, directed by Angelina Jolie. Zamperini was a revered figure in Southern California, and died last July at age I interviewed him twice, in and This is the first time our conversations have appeared.

They were edited for length and clarity. John Meroney: What did you learn from the publication of Unbroken? People are still suffering from it. I wish he were still alive so I could tell him I love him. Unbroken was published as a help to society. Given your expertise in this area, who do you regard as the best examples of courage today? Zamperini: The injured soldier who comes back from Afghanistan and says, I want to go back. He could get out of the service with a wound, but instead he says, I want to go back and be with my buddies.

Meroney: Do you get to meet with many of the troops? Zamperini: Yes. And then they go off to Afghanistan. Meroney: When you address soldiers, what do you say? Zamperini: I tell them my war story. When I was on that life raft, I was the only one who was prepared. Two weeks before we crashed, there was an expert on the South Pacific who gave a lecture on survival. When I got there to hear him, there were only about 15 out of thousands who could have attended.

What he said helped me on the raft. Every soldier should learn survival on land, sea, and in the air. If that night had never happened, how do you think your life would be different? I was going downhill, fast. But Billy Graham came to town. Meroney: What did he say that got your attention? All I did was pray to God, every day. Meroney: After the war, you had nightmares about being a prisoner of war.

Zamperini: Those nightmares came every night. I looked good, had my weight back, but I had nightmares. I thought I was strangling the Bird. Meroney: And your life was never the same after Billy Graham. Zamperini: Well, that night I went back to his prayer room and made my profession of faith in Christ. I asked God to forgive me for not being conscious that He answered my prayer requests. While I was still on my knees, I knew there was a change. It happened within seconds. Zamperini: I felt this perfect calm, a peace.

The Bible calls it the peace that passeth all understanding. The race ended in a dead heat between the two runners, and the finish was enough to qualify Zamperini for the Olympics in Berlin, while he was still a teenager. In , Zamperini was back setting records at the collegiate level, this time breaking the mile record of He ended up a bombardier on the B Liberator, and in May , Zamperini and a crew went out on a flight mission to search for a pilot whose plane had gone down.

Of the 11 men on board, only Zamperini and two other airmen survived the crash, but help was nowhere to be found, and the men were stranded on a raft together for 47 days. The month and a half at sea proved harrowing for the survivors, as they were subjected to the unrelenting sun, strafing runs by Japanese bombers, circling sharks and little drinking water.

To survive, they collected rainwater and killed birds that happened to land on the raft. They found themselves on a Pacific island 2, miles from the crash site and in enemy Japanese territory. While saved from the ocean, the men were soon taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese, beginning the next leg of their horrific experience. In captivity across a series of prison camps, Zamperini and Phillips were separated and subjected to torture, both physical and psychological.

They were beaten and starved, and Zamperini was singled out and abused repeatedly by a camp sergeant called the Bird, who would tear into fits of psychotic violence.

Yet Zamperini, as a former Olympic athlete, was seen as a propaganda tool by the Japanese, a scenario that likely saved him from execution. The captivity lasted for more than two years, during which time Zamperini was officially pronounced dead by the U. Zamperini was released only after the war ended in , and he returned to the United States. In , a year-old track star from Torrance, California, placed eighth in the meter dash at the Berlin Olympics.

The Olympics were ultimately canceled when war broke out on the European continent. His journey first began in January , thousands of miles away, when he was born to Italian immigrants in Olean, New York. Soon thereafter, his family moved to Torrance, California, where, in school, Zamperini would join the track team and discover a talent and passion for running. At the Los Angeles Coliseum in , Zamperini set the national high school mile record with a time of 4 minutes and In , Zamperini ran in the U.

He finished in a dead heat with the then-world record holder Don Lash, which qualified him for the Olympics in Berlin. Soon after the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, Zamperini enlisted in the U. During an air raid on Wake Island in December , Zamperini, whose plane was slowly running out of fuel, managed to make it back to Midway Atoll. Another time, during a bombing run over the island of Nauru, Japanese Zero fighter planes attacked his B, wounding several crewmen and killing one.

While hydraulic fluid leaked from the battered plane, the crew made an emergency landing on the island of Funafuti. They later learned that their plane endured holes from enemy gunfire and shrapnel. It was on the search and rescue mission of May 27, , that Zamperini would survive the power failure of two engines while aboard the Green Hornet, but at the cost of his freedom.

The crash killed eight of 11 crewmen. Among the three survivors were 1 st Lt. Zamperini, pilot 2 nd Lt. Russell Allen Phillips and tail gunner Sgt. Francis McNamara. The three men stayed afloat in a pair of life rafts, surviving on rainwater and albatross, and warding off machine gun strafing from passing Japanese planes.

McNamara died after 33 days while Zamperini and Allen were captured two weeks later by the Japanese off the coast of the Marshall Islands— miles away from the crash site.

The then pounds Zamperini was held for six weeks on Kwajalein Atoll and transferred to multiple interrogation centers and Prisoner of War camps.