I am so excited to review one of my all time favorite books: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. To be honest, I’ve been intimidated to write this one because of how much I love the book. I want to do it justice! Where to even begin?
Unbroken is the incredible true story of Olympic athlete Louie Zamperini and his survival as a POW in Japanese prison camps during World War II. Hillenbrand does an exquisite job capturing his life – from a young troublemaker in Torrance, CA, to a runner fighting for his spot in the Olympics, to a man dedicated to serving his country as a fighter pilot, to a prisoner in the most brutal of circumstances, and finally in his triumph over the trauma he endured… and everything in between.
Zamperini (1917 – 2014) was born into an Italian-American family and had an older brother and two sisters. He was, in a word, untamable. He stole, pranked, and fought. And despite his parents’ attempts, nothing discouraged Louie’s behavior. “Confident that he was clever, resourceful, and bold enough to escape any predicament, he was almost incapable of discouragement. When history carried him into war, this resilient optimism would define him” (7).
Louis’ older brother Pete is the one who turned his brother’s attention to running. It was Pete who convinced the Torrance High principal to even let Louie try out for sports. Hillenbrand writes, “Pete was all over Louie, forcing him to train, then dragging him to the track to run in a second meet. Urged on by kids in the stands, Louie put in just enough effort to beat one boy and finish third. He hated running, but the applause was intoxicating, and the prospect of more was just enough incentive to keep him marginally compliant … Louie started winning” (14).
Louie became the fastest high school miler in American history. He latched onto the goal of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. By the time 1936 rolled around, Louie was 19 and had only five years of experience in running, but he made the team. Not only did he run in the Olympics, he made such an impression that he was personally introduced to Adolf Hitler. They shook hands, and Hitler said to him, “Ah, you’re the boy with the fast finish” (35). Fast was an understatement. Louie had run his last lap of the 5,000 meter in 56 seconds. By the time Louie got home from Berlin, he had already set his sights on the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
Of course, we all know where the story must go from there. WWII erupted and changed the course of world history. The Olympics were canceled, and Louie joined the U.S. Air Force in 1941. He was sent to the Pacific and assigned to a B-24 liberator as a bombardier. B-24s (nicknamed flying coffins) had a host of mechanical issues that made them a total death trap for its crew. Louie, along with their B-24 Super Man’s pilot Phil and crew, made it through a number of incredible missions. By all accounts, there is no conceivable reason that this plane and these men survived what they did except by God’s protection.
We have to flash-forward some or this review will be twenty pages long. Eventually, through a series of events, Louie, along with pilot Phil and a few other crew members, boarded an unfamiliar B-24 called the Green Hornet for a rescue mission. It was on this rescue mission to find another downed plane that their B-24 finally failed them. It was mechanical failure that plummeted them into the Pacific, not the countless near-misses of their military action before.
Thus began an unbelievable, incredible tale of survival, starting with floating on a raft with little to no provisions in the middle of the Pacific. Louie fought off sharks as they rammed into his raft. Japanese planes shot at them from the sky. He killed albatrosses to eat. For forty-seven days – at the time, the longest record for survival being adrift in a raft – he and the other survivors (three total) floated in the Pacific with grossly inadequate provisions. Eventually, they arrived at an island, only to be ushered into brutality by the Japanese military. He remained a prisoner until the end of the war.
Louie was held at camps in Kwajalein, Ōfuna, Ōmori, and Naoetsu. He faced unbelievable cruelty in the forms of starvation, hard labor, beatings, great illness, and dehumanization. Much like the Jews and other prisoners in Hitler’s death camps, the POWs were stripped of their humanity. Hillenbrand writes, “The guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind” (182). She continues, “Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. Without dignity, identity is erased” (182-183).
In Naoetsu, Louie met the man who was determined to break him: Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The prisoners called him the Bird. He was known to both victims and his fellow Japanese as extremely erratic, unstable, and sadistic. A true tyrant. I couldn’t begin to summarize this man and his cruelty. For no apparent reason, the Bird singled Louie out. Randomly, daily, he would pounce on Louie and beat him. If Louie attempted even to shield himself, the Bird became more violent. The Bird stalked Louie and haunted his thoughts – Louie could not escape waking or sleeping.
Eventually, Louie and his fellow POWs were rescued. The war was over. Japan had held over 132,000 POWs from America and the other allies. Nearly 36,000 died (37% of the American POWs were killed). Hillenbrand summarizes that the Japanese murdered thousands on “death marches, and worked thousands of others to death in slavery… Thousands of other POWs were beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism. And as a result of being fed grossly inadequate and befouled food and water, thousands more died of starvation and easily preventable diseases” (315). Heart-breaking. Somehow, through it all, Louie Zamperini made it home.
Hillenbrand walks us through Louie’s return to the States, his marriage to Cynthia Applewhite, and his post-traumatic experiences in a time when PTSD didn’t yet exist as a diagnosis. “The central struggle,” Hillenbrand says of these men, “was to restore their dignity and find a way to see the world as something other than menacing blackness… And for some men, years of swallowed rage, terror, and humiliation concentrated into… ‘a seething, purifying thirst for revenge’” (349). Louie became an alcoholic. He was never able to run again due to a war injury. And he became solely fixated on one mission alone: to kill the Bird. His alcoholism and wild behavior began to destroy his marriage. After one particular nightmare in which he rose up and strangled the Bird, he awoke and realized he was strangling his own pregnant wife.
The most powerful part of the story is Louie’s conversion to Christianity. Under Billy Graham’s teaching, Louie accepts Jesus Christ and is born again. I don’t want to give it all away; I want every reader to experience the profound moment in this true story for themselves. I can say, though, that I rarely am moved to tears in books. At this point, Hillenbrand had me sobbing on my couch. After all the action of Louie’s story, it was this moment that was the most impactful to me. God is good: “In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept” (376).
Louie and Cynthia reconciled and remained married until her death in 2001. At the age of 80, Louie ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay in Japan, very near where he had been imprisoned. He died at the age of 97 in Los Angeles, CA.
I realize most of this “review” has been re-capping the story. It really is just a taste, a scratching of the surface, of this amazing book. Louie’s life and testimony of faith is one of the most powerful I have ever heard or read.
Hillenbrand is a gifted author, tastefully capturing the horrific experiences of these POWs and faithfully expressing Louie’s resolve through it all. She is simply profound. There was not a dry, slow, or boring moment in this book. Even paragraphs about B-24 mechanics were fascinating. She expertly conveys Louie’s character and qualities as he struggles not to break. A host of interesting, historical photographs are also included throughout the story.
I encourage everyone to read Unbroken. Learn Louie’s story. He is only one of many who went through this. Be horrified at what they experienced, be amazed that they survived, and be in awe at the life-changing grace of God given to man. This thrilling story of survival, resilience, and redemption will not disappoint.
Jessica
Copyright Laura Hillenbrand and Random House Publishing Group. Image from Amazon.com.
4 thoughts on “UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand”