Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand
During the US Civil War, the Union’s famous Gen. Sherman once said that war is “all hell.” Many military commanders, as well as the countless victims of warfare, have echoed this sentiment down through the ages. Certainly, warfare reveals humanity to sometimes be far less than humane. The worst characteristics of human kind are often brought to the forefront by the nature of war and its relentless objectives. But as horrible as warfare can be for the average soldier in the trenches fighting next to his comrades, it can be (and often is) even more nightmarish and unimaginably brutal for those soldiers unlucky enough to be captured by the enemy as POWs. This has never been more fully illustrated than in an extensively detailed in a remarkable book by Laura Hillenbrand entitled “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.” It was deemed as 2010’s best book of that year by Time magazine. The following will review the life and times of the principal character of the story and analyze the underlying meaning of this work.
During World War II, the German Army largely avoided committing atrocities against Allied POWs. This is in stark contrast to how they treated prisoners in their concentration camp’s. Presumably, the German military knew early on in the war that they were going to lose and wanted to avoid the retribution they would face if they violated (in a meaningful way) the Geneva conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war.
However, the Japanese military had a very different view about the treatment of POWs. In the bushido culture of the Japanese military that existed during World War II in Japan, a military officer or soldier who chose to surrender rather than die in battle had totally stripped himself of honor. Such an individual, in allowing himself to be captured, was in the eyes of the Japanese Army and Navy at the time less than a dog.
At the height of WWII, a young Second Lieutenant named Louis Zamperini crashed in the Pacific (Hillenbrand 119). After being captured by the Japanese and sent to a brutal prison camp, like so many others Zamperini faced terrible suffering at the hands of cruel and sadistic guards. Prior to this, Zamperini had already had a life of excitement, hope and bitter disappointment.
In his youth, Zamperini Had been (somewhat surprisingly considering his later life) a juvenile delinquent. Growing up in the small town of Torrance, California, Zamperini was smoking cigarettes by five and drinking alcohol by eight. He was a thriving criminal soon after this, stealing from businesses and nearby neighbors. The reason for doing these things seem less to do with poverty or an attempt to get out of a difficult family life than it did the fact that Zamperini was just an unusual boy with a strong and dynamic personality.
Nevertheless, everyone in Zamperini's family was certain he was on a fast track to jail, prison or an utterly worthless life on the streets. However, some local teenaged girls managed to convince him to join the school track team. With his brother’s encouragement, Zamperini he quickly became one of the best track and field stars in all of California. He specialized in the mile run (Hillenbrand 73). He quickly became one of the most respected milers in the United States and a great deal was anticipated from him.
Although he was extremely young at the time and wasn't really a threat to medal, Zamperini did participate in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Zamperini did very well at the 36 Olympics. Ironically, he even had the dubious honor of shaking at all Hitler’s hand following his race. It was generally assumed that Zamperini would do even better in the 1940 Olympics and that he might also be the first man in history to run the mile in less than four minutes. As it turned out, this would be achieved by Roger Bannister in 1954.
Unfortunately for Zamperini, WWII intervened with the cancellation of the games. No one was interested or able to engage in Olympic festivities in the middle of a global catastrophe. Zamperini was devastated on a personal level, but ultimately pulled himself out of the deep depression he was in. He joined the military once US participation in the war began following the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. However, this decision also would ultimately lead to hardship and disaster for Zamperini (Hillenbrand 102).
At first, things went well for Zamperini in his new military career. As a bombardier stationed in the Pacific theater of war between 1940 to 1943, Zamperini had a number of highly successful missions that largely went without incident. Zamperini’s depression caused by his inability to take part in the 1940 Olympic Games had largely subsided by the close of 1942.
However, in early 1943 while engaging in a standard mission in which Zamperini and his crew were searching for a missing aircraft, Zamperini’s own aircraft encountered major mechanical difficulties which caused it to crash into the Pacific about 800 miles from the islands of Hawaii. This was a situation bad enough, but during the endless 46 days that Zamperini and two other crewmembers floated around on a raft in the Pacific without food and virtually no water, they were also drifting in the general direction of Japanese controlled areas (Hillenbrand 131).
During this endless time of waiting, they faced extreme thirst, heat, starvation, raging seas, threatening sharks and even an aerial attack from a Japanese plane. They hoped to be spotted by an American aircraft and rescued by an American ship, but as day after day went by without any sign of anyone else, they started to lose hope. After a full month of this, one of the other men died from exposure and starvation. This left two desperate and nearly starving men barely clinging to life on a flimsy raft the middle of a war zone. The men managed to occasionally grab a fish or a bird that they then ate raw. They gathered rainwater whenever they could, which was seldom.
As Zamperini would later relate after the war, as great as the suffering had been while on the raft out at sea, it would come to seem greatly preferable to what he would experience at the hands of the Japanese soldiers who found him. The Japanese captured Zamperini close to the Marshall Islands after 47 days at sea. Already in a weakened and starved state after a month and a half on the water, Zamperini was further starved and tortured by his Japanese tormentors, who felt no sympathy for him or his situation (Hillenbrand 219).
After this initial capture, Zamperini was transferred to an infamous Japanese run POW camp known as Ofuna Prisoner of War Camp. This camp engaged in extreme violations of the terms laid out in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war. At this camp, Zamperini and countless others engaged in backbreaking slave labor under the threat of terrible punishment from the Japanese Army officers and soldiers that were operating the camp. It became a living nightmare.
As made clear in the novel, by far the most cruel of the Japanese soldiers at Ofuna was a Sergeant by the name of Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Despite the countless other atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers and camp guards throughout the war, as well as similar cruelties and murders committed by the Nazis against civilians during World War II, it can be argued that Watanabe was the darkest and most sadistic guard of the entire war (Hillenbrand 251).
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Watanabe directed a staggering degree of hostility and hate against the prisoners under his control. His hatred seemed to go beyond even that of the usual bushido code. Unfortunately for Zamperini, he became a particular target for Watanabe’s appalling brutality. As revealed in the novel, Watanabe seems like an almost satanic figure in the pleasure he takes in the suffering of the prisoners over whom he had power.
Sgt. Watanabe was also given to frequent outbursts of fury in which he would beat prisoners on a daily basis, starve them and force them to carry out humiliating or highly excruciating acts. If any of the prisoners became ill, their illnesses went untreated. One of Watanabe’s favorite character tactics was to expose the prisoners to extreme cold (Hillenbrand 266).
After the war, the barbarism that Watanabe exhibited against POWs in this camp was so extreme that Allied authorities classified him as a Class A war criminal. This put him in the same category with those who operated the concentration camps in Germany. American POWs in the German POW camps lived a life of relative ease and comfort as compared with POWs in Japanese operated camps. And thanks to Watanabe, the camp that Zamperini was in may have been the worst in the Pacific.
The suffering that Watanabe inflicted on Zamperini’s body and mind is both extraordinary and extremely disturbing and painful to read about. In fact, unless one happens to be one of those people who enjoys the suffering of others, those sections of the novel that expand on the tortures inflicted on the prisoners are very difficult to read. In one incident recounted in the book describing Watanabe’s sadistic impulses, the author relates an incident in which Zamperini was forced to hold a massive and very heavy wooden beam over his head (Hillenbrand 301).
At this point of his imprisonment, Zamperini (like virtually all of the other prisoners in the camp) was a shadow of his former self. Most of the prisoners were virtually walking skeletons. Zamperini could hardly lift the large beam off the ground, but Sgt. Watanabe ordered a guard smash Zamperini in his face with the butt of his gun the moment Zamperini dropped the heavy beam. In Zamperini’s tortured, emaciated state, neither the Japanese guards or the other prisoners thought that he would be able to hold the beam up for very long. They were in for surprise.
Watanabe stood by waiting to punish Zamperini for what he expected would be an inevitable and rapid failure. But Zamperini continued holding the beam up for minute after minute. Eventually, more than half an hour had passed without Zamperini dropping the beam. In all likelihood, for a sadist like Watanabe, this was a situation full of conflict. On the one hand, and he enjoyed watching someone suffer for as long as possible, but on the other he couldn’t tolerate defiance.
As Zamperini recounts it, he suffered terrible pain in the incident but was absolutely determined that he would (even in this small way) finally defeat his nemesis, Sgt. Watanabe. After almost 40 minutes had passed, Watanabe in his frustration attacked Zamperini. As they both tumbled to the ground in a pile, Zamperini had his victory (however limited) over his tormentor.
But such moments of victory and inspiration were extremely rare in the hellish nightmare in which Zamperini and thousands of others were trapped in at the Japanese POW camps. By the time the war ended in August 1945 with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrender soon afterward, Zamperini was close to death (Hillenbrand 324).
Those POWs who did survive this treatment at the hands of the Japanese were clearly not the same men they were before their entry into the POW. They were virtually walking automatons and required months or even years to rebuild themselves physically. Some never recovered from the physical problems resulting from their imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Japanese soldiers.
However, as the book makes clear the most serious injuries these men suffered because of their brutal treatment were the psychological scars they would carry around with them for the rest of their lives. These scars were invisible on the outside, but just as debilitating. Despite his remarkable courage, Zamperini was no exception to this. Because of the way he had disappeared in the Pacific in a plane crash, it had been assumed by the military and Zamperini’s own family that he was dead. So in the novel we get a moving and heartfelt reunion when his family finally sees him (Hillenbrand 349).
Over time, Zamperini slowly recovered his physical strength and health. But like many soldiers returning from war after particularly traumatic experiences, Zamperini suffered from what is now described by experts on war trauma as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Zamperini began having regular nightmares about Watanabe controlling and torturing him again. This is a very common thing for soldiers, police officers, firefighters and others who have experienced traumatic and life-threatening incidents. However, in the 1940s, people did not understand the psychological problems that can result from warfare.
Zamperini spiraled into depression, alcoholism and unemployment. He was absolutely consumed by the desire for vengeance and fantasized about going back to Japan to kill Sgt. Watanabe, who Zamperini he sees as having destroyed his entire life. As a reader, this section of the novel is in many ways even more disturbing than what actually happened to the character during the war. To an extent, he seems far more defeated and broken here than he did when he was in the POW camp.
Fortunately for the character (as well as for the reader), even during the turmoil Zamperini experienced during this time he was able to meet and fall in love with a woman named Cynthia. By 1946 they were married, despite the fact that Cynthia was deeply concerned about Zamperini’s obvious emotional pain and personal upheaval. She looked for a way to help him, and eventually found it.
In 1948, a turning point in Zamperini’s life occurred when Cynthia convinced him to go to a religious gathering and listen to a sermon given by an up-and-coming preacher named Billy Graham. Zamperini found himself transformed by the powerful message of forgiveness Graham was presented. Zamperini was able to release the weight he had been carrying since the war and finally move on with his life.
Because of this epiphany, he embraced Christianity in a way he had not before and even chose to offer forgiveness to his Japanese tormentors, including Sgt. Watanabe. To do this, Zamperini in 1950 traveled back to Japan to personally forgive each of the former prison guards who had made his life a living hell. In a nice twist of fate, these former prisoner guards were now prisoners themselves. However, Watanabe was not there, since he had avoided capture (Hillenbrand 391).
In conclusion, for many readers this story is one of inspirational courage and redemption through faith. However, personally I have a very difficult time accepting the concept that one should forgive virtually any evil or cruelty committed by anyone. In the end, faith, redemption and forgiveness are (at least from a societal standpoint) far less important than justice. People who commit terrible wrongs and simply get a pat on the head for doing so have little or no motivation for not doing it again. While Zamperini’s is inspirational is an example of courage in the face of terrible suffering and a hopeful message for those who are currently suffering, the end of the novel in which the character forgives everyone who has wronged him to a certain extent negates the courage he earlier exhibited. There is nothing wrong with anger if it is justified and controlled.
