9
On September 30, 1944, just over a year after my arrival at Ofuna, a dozen prisoners marched through the camp’s wooden gate, turned right—toward life—and headed down a narrow country road.
I was one.
At last, they’d transferred me to a recognized POW camp, inspected by the Red Cross, where they might more strongly acknowledge my value as a human being. I’d be free to write letters, and my loved ones at home would soon discover to their great surprise that I still lived. I wanted that more than anything. As badly as I’d been treated, I knew their sorrow must be worse. I missed them so.
After a few hours and a short train ride, I crossed a small bridge and walked through oversize wooden gates into Omori, the Tokyo headquarters for perhaps thirty other POW compounds, and home to more than six hundred prisoners. As Tom Henling Wade, an Omori prisoner I’d soon meet, would later write in his book, Prisoner of the Japanese, “Omori meant great forest, but there was no forest now.”
Two guards with rifles motioned for the new prisoners to form a line. Wearily, we snapped to attention as best we could, and I stood waiting in a cold, barren quadrangle on a man-made sand-and-gravel spit—not even as long or wide as a football field—dredged from and protruding into the bay halfway between Yokohama and Tokyo.
During my journey I’d been told how lucky I was to be assigned here. After the barbarism of Ofuna, I prayed that was true; I’d heard of other camps with horrid conditions equivalent to Ofuna, like 3-B, under the Yokohama baseball stadium, and the various Kempeitai (Japanese secret police) prisons.
The group stood shivering for ten minutes until a flat-faced, frog-headed sergeant with the cruelest eyes I’d ever seen strutted out, more prima donna than martinet, to meet us. About five-feet-seven and in his midtwenties, he wore the usual enlisted man’s outfit: the little cap you see in all the movies, khaki green uniform with baggy pants, coat with a belt, boots, sword. He paced slowly in front of the line, pausing to push his face within inches of each prisoner.
Stopping in front of a seaman from the submarine Grenadier, he stuck his finger in the man’s face and said, “You do not stand at attention. You move!” The sergeant’s face contorted and he shook with uncontrolled rage. He unstrapped his sword and was about to strike the seaman across the face but hesitated, replaced the strap, and instead hit him full in the mouth with his fist. The sailor staggered back but remained standing. The sergeant adjusted his sword and resumed pacing.
Soon it was my turn. When I looked into those black and indelibly sadistic eyes I had the eerie feeling that the sergeant knew me. That was impossible, of course, but I couldn’t take the intensity of his stare and looked over his shoulder. Whack! He knocked me down.
“Why you no look in my eyes?” he barked. He stared again, and this time I stubbornly met his gaze. Whack! “You no look at me!” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I immediately hated the little bastard—and feared him.
This was my introduction to Sergeant Matsuhiro Watanabe, disciplinary NCO and, although he had superiors, functional head of Omori. The prisoners called him “the Bird.” The practice with guards and camp officials was always to label them with the worst and dirtiest names we could invent. Watanabe was the Bird not because of any physical or personal characteristic but just because he was so rotten that no one could think of a name derogatory enough to match his irrational behavior. Also, if we’d called him an insulting name and he found out about it—Watanabe could speak broken English—he might punish the whole camp.
Deranged, brutal beyond belief, vicious like someone who tortured animals as a child before turning his evil talents on people, the Bird by his mere existence allowed me to focus all the hatred I’d accumulated and let fester since my capture.
Later, I would learn that even Omori’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Kato, was simply a puppet. He’d see the Bird mete out punishment and look away. The Bird’s beatings went beyond doing his duty; he seemed to get personal satisfaction from causing pain. We thought he had almost too much authority; perhaps he belonged to the Kempeitai, the secret police. Tom Wade thought he might be in the Black Dragon Society, a secret, patriotic group. No one knew.
Compared with the Bird, the Ofuna guards were country gentleman.
I SPENT MY first three days in a quarantine shed. I’m being generous; it was more like a carport: a roof and posts without walls, surrounded by an inch of snow and camp debris. I still wore my original, ragged clothes and the Norwegian’s coat. I slept on the dirt with nothing to keep me warm but a thin paper blanket. At only ninety pounds, with little meat on my bones to protect me, I nearly froze and I knew I couldn’t spend another night that way. But maybe I wouldn’t have to. I had an idea. I scoured the area and found an abandoned apple crate, old mats, driftwood—plenty of kindling, if only someone had a match.
Thank goodness for my Boy Scout training.
I took apart the box and made a base, a stick, and tinder. I borrowed leather shoestrings from another guy in the shed. Everyone chuckled while I worked, but pretty soon smoke streamed upward and no one laughed. I used bits of an old tatami mat to feed the embers, then I began to blow, blow, blow. Before long I had a small flame. I put it under the apple-box kindling, and soon we had a fire to warm ourselves. We moved in close, only to have each man immediately pull out a long-stashed cigarette butt and light up. Priorities. Only in wartime.
When word got to the Bird that we had a fire without permission he wanted to know who’d built it. I took responsibility. “Where you get the matches?” he screamed. We weren’t supposed to have matches, and we didn’t. I explained what I’d done. I thought he’d admire my resourcefulness. Instead, he beat me. Later a guard told me that this was part of my introductory “training.”
OMORI WAS MOSTLY sand. The camp, surrounded by a six-foot fence, took up most of the man-made island. On the other side of the fence I could see big holes in the “beach,” where the prisoners charged with cleaning the latrines dumped the human excrement. Thousand of flies hovered over this sickening, open sewer. The smell never went away.
Inside the fence, Omori consisted of eight barracks, five on one side of the main walkway and three on the other, plus some administrative buildings like the camp office and infirmary. The bathrooms and kitchen were at the far end.
The barracks were long and narrow, with double-deck sleeping areas on either side of the central aisle. All the old-timers had the bottom bunks; the lowest-ranking men slept on top—my spot. In the woodwork behind my bunk someone showed me a nailed panel. He pulled out the nail and opened a wood slat. “That’s where you can hide stuff from the Japs,” he explained.
Once squared away, I got a cup of tea made from the leaves already used by the camp officers. It tasted weak and watery. A Royal Scots soldier a few bunks away noticed and walked over carrying a sock and spoon. He introduced himself as Blackie, and he seemed quite cheerful for a POW. He put two teaspoons of sugar from the sock in my tea.
Oh, what a treat that was.
Blackie was one of the Royal Scots who lived in Number Two, my barrack. The Scots were former criminals doing time in England who, when the war broke out, were given the choice of staying in prison or serving the queen in battle. They chose the latter.
Most of the able prisoners, excluding officers and the sick, had to work all day outside the camp, at the local railway yards, factories, and warehouses. Each location provided great opportunities to steal goods to sneak into the camp: rice, sugar, canned oysters, canned sardines, dried fish, whale meat, dried egg powder, coconut, chocolate, even grain alcohol. The contraband kept the men healthier not only physically but mentally, because the game of pilfering sharpened their minds and sustained their hopes.
The Scots worked at a Mitsubishi warehouse and specialized in smuggling sugar. According to Tom Wade, they averaged ten pounds of sugar a day, or three tons a year. That’s why we knew them as the “Sugar Barons.”
At first I couldn’t figure out how they did it; we were regularly frisked. But rather than hide contraband in their jackets, waistbands, or other obvious places, they’d tie off their pant cuffs and fill the legs. Even more creatively, they’d ordered bigger work boots. The Japanese would say, “American crazy. Big shoes. Japanese wear tight shoes.” The reason was so they could fill the shoes with goodies and walk into camp with stolen items under their feet and no one the wiser.
The Scots also requested wraparound leggings like the Japanese had worn in World War I. This appealed to the Nippon ego, and it allowed the Scots to smuggle tobacco into Omori to supplement our meager ration. Again, they were quite inventive; they had to dampen at least every other leaf and stack them. By the time they were through working, the leaves were all soft, so they could wrap them around their legs. Then they’d put on the leggings and pull their pants down to cover the evidence.
Back at the barracks, the Scots would dry the leaves in secret compartments above their bunks until they hardened like wood. As a finishing touch, they’d somehow obtained a piece of steel, bent it at an angle, and used it to shave the dried wads. The result was more tobacco for everyone, free.
Not everyone smuggled contraband successfully. Guards searched prisoners when exiting work and entering camp. Guilty parties received beatings and limped back to their bunks with bruises, missing teeth, black eyes, and broken bones—but rarely broken spirits.
TO FURTHER HELP the war effort the Scots drank excessive amounts of tea on the job. Seems strange; even the guards didn’t understand. They’d question the Scots and hear, “Never drank tea in my life, but you Japanese have the secret. It’s the greatest.” In truth, this was an elegantly simple form of sabotage. Every ship they loaded had rice. The Scots would drink tea all day, then take turns peeing on the rice so by the time it reached its destination it had spoiled. The same with oysters; they’d puncture the cans and pee on them. If they found a crate addressed to the German chancellor, they’d take great delight in ruining it as well.
The Japanese also shipped bricks to build fortifications. When the Scots loaded the bricks, the last guy would catch two bricks and bang them together, creating four “bricks” instead of two, then stack them carefully to look whole. By the time anyone found out, it was too late.
MY FIRST DAY out of quarantine I immediately reported to the American officer in charge, naval commander Arthur L. Maher, gunnery chief and most senior crew member to survive when the Houston sank in March 1942. Maher had been at Omori since December 1943.
We looked to our leaders and to those who had the gift of fluency in foreign languages as our spokesmen. Besides Maher, Tom Wade, an Englishman of mixed parentage, knew Japanese; Lempriere, who’d been with me at Ofuna, knew a bit of many languages and picked up Japanese quickly. Martindale, an air corps second lieutenant from Arizona, also had a fair knowledge of Japanese. This didn’t necessarily ensure better treatment, just better comprehension of what our captors wanted from us each day, and the ability to follow directions when told—often by the Bird, usually screaming—that we must obey “all Japanese orders.”
Unfortunately, Maher seemed unhealthy and low-key, not a take-charge type at all. Wade remembers him regretfully telling us he had no access to the camp command—meaning Watanabe, reportedly once a quieter, friendlier fellow—or any international agency—the Red Cross wasn’t “recognized” except for carefully selected propaganda purposes. The only advice Maher offered was that we “obey all Japanese commands, no matter how insane,” and pray along with the rest of the prisoners that they would transfer the Bird before he went completely insane and caused a mass killing. Meanwhile, he insisted that no officer was allowed to join the daily work parties. The Royal Scots said we were fools not to because we could steal goods, but we had to listen to Maher.
Our refusal to work did not please the Bird. With our group’s arrival, a surplus of unemployed officers sat around the camp all day. Although we scavenged the beach for driftwood, swept the grounds, handled sewage, and worked in the kitchen, he did not think it was enough.
One evening, while we smoked cigarettes and socialized, the Bird burst into the barracks for a surprise inspection. A prisoner by the door screamed, “Kiotsuke!” (Attention.) “Kashira naka!” (Eyes center.) He wasn’t quick enough for the Bird, who lunged at him and kicked him. Everyone else stood at attention. Waiting. Hardly breathing.
The Bird walked down the center aisle and scanned the building. Finally, his eyes found mine. “Look at me!” he screamed. “You come to attention last.” I hadn’t, and the Bird knew it. He’d entered at the opposite end of the building, and I was beyond his line of sight. Even if I had, the Japanese never punished anyone for such an offense. Yet somehow the Bird always managed to pick on me, as if he held some special grudge. Whenever he came around I did what I would do with anybody who is my superior and has a lease on my life: I was extremely nice, the model prisoner. I also stayed as far to the rear of the pack as possible, yet every day he managed to punish me. Now he’d set me up again.
Usually, he used his fists or a stick. This time he removed his thick web belt, held it like a baseball bat, and cracked me full across the temple with a steel buckle that must have weighed a pound or more. I fell to the ground, bleeding, in horrible pain. He ordered me to stand. I couldn’t. The Bird took a few squares of toilet tissue from his pocket, bent down, and gave them to me. “Ahhh,” he muttered, like he was sorry. I must have been really out of it because for a second I thought, Maybe the guy isn’t all that bad. I struggled slowly to my feet and dabbed at the blood until it stopped. When I moved my hand away from my head he hit me again, in the same place, and I woke up on the floor. This time he offered no tissue, and my only thought was, God, this guy is scary.
I stood up again, angry. I have Italian blood, and revenge was written all over my face, not because of my physical agony but because I’d been humiliated. The guards at Ofuna punished us hard but impersonally. The Bird focused on me. He knew I could only cry, not act. But I wouldn’t cry. Not for him. Not for anyone.
My best revenge was to take secret comfort in knowing that Watanabe had mental problems. Even the other guards called him a sadistic psychopath. Once, the Bird sent for ten officers—including me—who worked in a makeshift leather shop. By the time we put away our tools and walked two hundred yards to his office, five minutes had elapsed—too long for Watanabe. He came after us swinging his belt, the heavy buckle whipping through the cold air. He struck everyone more than once across the face.
Sometimes the friendlier guards whispered to us about Watanabe’s life, explaining that when he had first come to Omori he hadn’t fussed much, just observed and did his job. Tom Wade knew more. As he wrote in his book:
Watanabe was the spoilt son of a wealthy family. As he’d told us, he had a beautiful home with a swimming pool in the hills behind Kobe, unlimited money, an adoring mother and he had led a dissolute student’s life. Watanabe went to school at Waseda University in Tokyo, then worked for Domei, the Japanese news agency. When called up by the army, he had immediately taken the examination for a commission. When he failed he resented it deeply, as his brother and brother-in-law were officers. So the army made him a corporal (later a sergeant), spared him service overseas and settled him at the age of twenty-seven, in a safe berth at Tokyo Headquarters Camp.
Although the wrong rank, Watanabe was a typical member of the “Young Officers” clique, believers in Kodo, the Imperial Way—an extreme, patriotic association that dominated Army and then national policy. [Watanabe] was proud, arrogant, and nationalistic, while sheltering an inferiority complex over his failure to become an officer.
In other words, the Bird hated officers because he couldn’t be one, and given a camp full of high-ranking men he acted like a jealous god, abusing his power. If we defied him or hesitated, he’d beat us. A favorite punishment—even more than the belt—was making our own enlisted men beat us. We’d line up while each noncom was forced to walk down the line striking an officer with his fist. After each punch, the Bird shouted, “Next!” It became a maniacal chant: “Next-next-next…” When our men hit easy he’d club them on the head. We’d whisper, “Look, hit us once. Hard.” Then we’d go down and Watanabe was satisfied. So were we, preferring to be hit by our own men than by anyone Japanese.
AS AT KWAJALEIN, one Omori guard was Christian, and he quietly performed many acts of kindness for which he could have been severely punished. His name was Kano. Sometimes he would slip us his tobacco rations, and if a man was ill, he brought him candy for the much needed sugar. Kano also risked his life to help anyone unfortunate enough to be tossed into “the barn,” a room with holes in the wall, cold and miserable at night, where men caught stealing were forced to remain for days wearing only their undershorts. Kano would wait until the other guards were asleep and cover the prisoner with a blanket, then arrive an hour before sunrise to reclaim it.
AFTER MY BELT lashing, the Bird shouted for everyone to go outside. We lined up on the compound, and he paraded stiffly before us, as always.
“You are all officers,” he said, carefully pronouncing each word. “You should work. You should be example for all camp. Work. Now you volunteer.”
No one spoke up. We were determined not to do any work for the Japanese.
The Bird stepped in front of the first man. “You. Volunteer!”
“According to international law,” he began, but he didn’t get far. Watanabe hit him with his kendo stick, a heavy cudgel the size of a child’s baseball bat. The next man had the courage to say the same. He, too, felt the kendo stick. Another simply gestured hopelessly. The man beside me found himself on the ground after a kendo strike to the throat. Then it was my turn.
“You!” the Bird shrieked. “You da?”
Well, I’m not a fool. The Japanese knew international law as well as I did, but clearly they ignored it. “Sure,” I said, in my most soothing voice. “What kind of work? I’d love to work. But only in camp, not outside. I’d be glad to help to improve conditions here any way I can.”
The Bird stopped, unsure of how to react, thinking slowly, the rage draining from his face. His eyes studied mine, then darted along the row of officers, to see if anyone had moved.
“Yes, of course. Awari—dismissed.”
We saluted and dashed for the barracks before he changed his mind. The Bird strutted to his office, smirking. The next day he turned one of the smaller buildings into a workshop where we could make goods for the camp. The officers often spent all day inside, shoulder to shoulder, stitching scraps of leather together for later use. We must have looked too happy, though. Eventually the Bird decided we were simply lazy. His punishment was as foul an atrocity as I’d ever witnessed, as did Tom Wade, who confirms this story in his book.
David James, a British businessman and interpreter, had lived in Japan for many years, but the government had imprisoned him on the irrelevant charge that he held a reserve military status as a captain. Apparently, James had even known the Bird’s family in Kobe, before Pearl Harbor; but rather than this winning him any consideration, Watanabe singled him out. For being at ease while the rest of us stood at attention, the Bird beat Captain James and forced him to stand in front of his office for several days and nights in early winter, saluting the tree planted in front of the door—not an easy task for a starving, sixty-three-year-old POW. After a few days, Dr. James collapsed, nearly insane, and spent weeks in bed recovering.
ONE EVENING I walked past the door of the little cubicle the senior American officers occupied, and they hailed me.
“Zamp,” one said. “The Norwegians managed to get their hands on another newspaper today. But if any of us are seen going over to their barracks, the Bird might get suspicious. He knows the Norwegians like you, though. Maybe you can do it.”
I knew the penalty for getting caught with contraband, remembering the episode with Bill Harris at Ofuna quite clearly. The Japanese did not want the prisoners to know how the war progressed, assuming our minds would turn immediately to espionage and to plotting against them. Of course, they were right, though every time they caught us with a measly scrap of paper we protested our innocence loudly.
“Of course I’ll get it,” I said. This began my regular job as runner between barracks, relaying important information or stolen papers to senior officers who secretly employed prisoners like David James to translate, or did it themselves. The Japanese papers, by this time—the winter of 1944/45—overstated their victories, but at least they contained accurate maps.
One story I read, in an English version of a Japanese newspaper, was so funny and unbelievable that for many years I never told anyone because people might think I was nuts, like someone who says he’s seen a flying saucer. (If you see one, keep your mouth shut!) Apparently, a Zero and a B-29 bomber were engaged at thirty thousand feet when the Zero ran out of bullets. According to the report, the Japanese pilot opened his lunch bag, grabbed a rice ball, cracked his canopy, and threw it at the B-29—and knocked it down! A picture of the smiling Zero pilot was plastered across the front page. I thought, Gee, are the Japanese people really that stupid? Would anyone, even in need of a major morale boost, believe that?
What I did believe I’d seen with my own eyes.
One afternoon the air-raid sirens wailed. “I don’t think this is any more than a practice run,” said a soldier with whom I was discussing the state of the war. “We don’t have a base near enough to launch an attack.” Still, we both backed away from the windows, just in case.
Suddenly we heard a big gun fire. We dashed back to the windows and looked outside, where in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention and the rules of war there was an antiaircraft battery that the Japs had just uncovered on a small sandy spit not more than a hundred yards from our compound. (No one could take it out without hurting the prisoners.) In camp the guards roamed, rifles ready, shouting “Bi-ni ju-ku!” I knew I had to get away from the window or be shot, but I could not resist finding out what had caused the commotion. By sliding on my back along the floor I could see the sky straight up through the narrow windows. There, floating through a high-altitude haze, leaving vapor trails from each end of its huge wingspan, was the largest aircraft I had ever seen, flying at thirty thousand feet like some sort of white angel. I knew it was a messenger from home, a harbinger of imminent revenge. It took my breath away.
The word spread, and when the day’s work parties returned we found out from a pilot who’d recently arrived at Omori that it was “the latest thing out,” a B-29. (Bi-ni ju-ku, in Japanese.) Then I remembered seeing those words scrawled as graffiti on a slaughterhouse wall when my group went to pick up some horse guts for dinner.
The plane flew over casually, around the Tokyo industrial complex, in a big lazy circle, taking pictures. No Zeroes chased it, but a few days later the Japanese papers reported that Zeroes took off to attack the bomber. The exact headline read: THEY FLED IN CONSTERNATION.
ON A BRIGHT, crisp November morning the Bird burst into barracks Number Two and without resorting to the usual subterfuge called my name. I thought surely I’d been chosen for some awful detail or, worse, another beating.
Instead, he paced in front of me, hand on his chin and said, “You run, eh?”
“Hai (yes), Watanabe-san,” I said, wondering what he had in mind.
“Olympics, eh?”
“Hai.”
“Your mama and papa worried maybe you dead?”
“Hai.”
Tom Wade had set up a post-office operation at Omori that was responsible for many letters from home reaching their destinations, but when I tried to write—I was desperate to contact my family, to let them know I was still alive—the Bird forbade it. I never understood why.
“Maybe you make a—ah, nan deska?” He cupped his hands in front of his mouth, as if he were talking into a microphone.
“A broadcast?” I asked. I was instantly on guard. I knew about the bunka, the special “culture camp” in Tokyo that housed those who made pro-Japanese (or anti-Allied) propaganda broadcasts from Radio Tokyo. No one in his right mind wanted to participate. Not only was it morally wrong, but soldiers too weak to resist would pay for their treason, however rationalized, with a court-martial after the war. On the other hand, I wanted my family to know I was alive.
“Yes, broadcast,” the Bird said. “You broadcast. Okay? Na?”
I shook my head from side to side. “I have to think about it,” I told him. I wanted to say that international law would not permit me to do more than give a basic greeting for identification purposes, but I had no doubt he’d punish me for my boldness. However, the Bird accepted my reluctance with amazing good humor, and I sensed then that he must have been acting on strict instructions not to hurt me, rather than his own twisted desires.
I WENT IMMEDIATELY to the senior camp officers and asked their opinion on the question of broadcasting. To my surprise I discovered that they had given other prisoners the same opportunity to send home their names, status, and a simple message. No one would object if I only did the same. They had just one request: perhaps I could find someone in authority to whom to complain about the Bird. As a rule, you never spoke up about the treatment at camp. When the Red Cross came to Omori, the other prisoners had cautioned me, “Don’t say a word about the beatings because when they leave, there’s no protection and you’ll get a double dose.” But the Bird was different. I had to take the chance.
I TOLD THE Bird I’d make the broadcast. A couple of days later two men from Radio Tokyo, both in their fifties, gave me a pad and pencils and said, “Write what you want to say.” While I wrote, other prisoners urged me, “Mention my name!”
The men from Radio Tokyo read my speech and said, “Oh, very good, very good.” Like Sasaki, they didn’t wear uniforms. Of course, they probably didn’t really work for the station either, but were propagandists like Goebbels was for Hitler.
On November 18, 1944, I rode with them to Radio Tokyo. We arrived early, and with time to kill they gave me a grand tour. The place was beautiful. “This is a new building,” they explained. “We have an American-style cafeteria; we will have lunch.” The food amazed me, but after the camp rations, I’d have been happy with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. They also showed me hotel-style rooms with beautiful beds and white sheets. At Omori I slept on a plank where each night the bedbugs swarmed out of the cracks and over my body, and I’d wake up covered with bites.
I knew they wanted to seduce me with the promise of a better life to become a radio propagandist. I suspected they also wanted credit with our government for having rescued me and kept me alive. They could say, “Hey, we had your boy,” as if they’d saved me. I suppose the Japanese figured that one day soon they might need all the goodwill they could get.
Eventually, I was ushered into a studio and placed in front of a microphone. The program was Japanese Postman. My nerves kicked in for a moment, but I didn’t mind. For the first time in a long time my anxiety had nothing to do with starvation or deprivation or a beating. The announcer introduced me as “Louis Philby Zamperini”—my middle name is Silvie, so it was an innocent mistake—and cued me. I clutched my prepared text, took a deep breath, and read:
Hello Mother and Father, brothers and friends, this is your Louis talking. Through the courtesy of the authorities here I am broadcasting a special message to you. This will be the first time in one and one half years that you will have heard my voice. I am sure it sounds the same to you as it did when I left home. I am unwounded and in good health and can hardly wait until the day we are together again. Not having heard from you since my most abrupt departure, I have been somewhat worried about the condition of my family. As far as health is concerned. I hope this message finds all of you in the best of health and doing well. I am now interned in the Tokyo prisoners’ camp and am being treated as well as can be expected, under wartime conditions. The Jap authorities are kind to me and I have no kick coming. Please write as often as you can and, when doing so, send snapshots of everyone. In my lonesome hours nothing would be more appreciated than to look at pictures of the family. If you are forgetting, Pete, I would be very pleased if you would keep my gun in good condition for we might do some good hunting when I return home. Mother, Sylvia and Virginia, I hope you will keep up your wonderful talents in the kitchen. I often visualize those wonderful pies you used to bake. Did Miss Florence take a visit to San Diego? I hope they are sending her home. Give my best regards to Gordon, Harvey, Eldon, and Henry, and wish them the best of health. I send my fondest love to Sylvia, Virginia, and Pete and hope they are enjoying their work at the present. I miss them very much. Since I have been in Japan, I have run into several of my old acquaintances. You will probably remember a few of them. Paul Maurin is here and enjoying good health. Lawrence Stoddard, Sammy Manier, and Peter Hyriskanich are the same. You must remember William Payton of Bakersfield. We have been living together for the past two months. He is looking fine. I know that you have taken care of my personal belongings and savings. Long ago, you have no doubt received the rest of my belongings, the phonograph and records, from the Army. Say hello to all my hometown friends. And before closing, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Your loving son, Louie, First Lieutenant Louis S. Zamperini, Tokyo Camp.
I’d added the part about my gun so that if my family heard the broadcast, they would know it was authentic. I also mentioned Pete Hyriskanich’s name so his folks would know he was still alive.
Before returning to Omori I brought up the prisoners’ complaints about the Bird. I thought, Whoever these guys really are, they have authority to take me out of prison, so maybe they can help us. I explained that I’d never talked about this to the Red Cross for fear of a beating. They said, “Oh, well, we’ll see what we can do about it.”
“We” again. I should have known better.
ONLY DAYS AFTER my broadcast, the United States government sent my parents a telegram reading: “Following enemy propaganda broadcast from Japan has been intercepted”—with the text of my statement. They refused to confirm it had been my voice; that would have to wait. But at least the telegram made official what my parents had already been told by their friends who’d heard the program and recognized my voice. Of course, not that long ago the army had also advised my parents that I was also officially dead. It was nice to be sure.
My parents would later tell me that they’d never lost hope, but ironically, as part of their effort to support the war, the day after my broadcast they had been interviewed at their house by producer Cecil B. DeMille for a coast-to-coast live broadcast on CBS Radio. Hollywood had from the beginning signed on to support the war any way it could, and this was part of the Sixth War Loan Drive—a bond drive. Here are a few selections from the script sent to my parents:
DEMILLE: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Cecil B. DeMille and I’m speaking to you tonight from a modest American home where a gold star hangs in the window. This is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Zamperini and their children. They are a typical American family. In this home live the things our soldiers are fighting for.
One member will not return to this family because he treasured the simple and sacred rights of this home—more than his life. There are many mothers who wear gold stars in their hearts, mothers who have paid a price perhaps as high as that given by their fighting sons themselves. One of those mothers—I want you to meet—the hearthstone of this home—Mrs. Anthony Zamperini. Mrs. Zamperini, when did you learn that your son, Louis, was lost?
MRS. Z: Last Sunday. But Louis had been listed as missing in action since May of 1943. He was just twenty-five, Mr. DeMille.
DEMILLE: Your son was one of the first to enlist, wasn’t he?
MRS. Z: Yes, Mr. DeMille. He sent in his enlistment early in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. He had been to Berlin as a member of the Olympic Games team and he saw what was coming before we did.
And later…
MRS. Z: Louis did win many medals for his sports activities, Mr. DeMille.
DEMILLE: I know he did, but I’m sure that of all his medals you are proudest of his Oak Leaf Cluster and the Air Medal he won for gallantry in battle.
MRS. Z: That’s right. He won the Air Medal for giving first aid to five other wounded boys while their damaged bomber was returning from a raid.
And finally, after my sister Sylvia told how our dad came from Italy but owed much to America…
DEMILLE: That is a thrilling tribute to America, Miss Zamperini. Everyone in America is a European—or the descendant of a European. We become Americans when we leave behind us all the ancient prejudices and manners of the Old World and when we accept new ones from the way of life in the New World. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into one race of man…. Your brother has given his life so that America will remain free. We won’t ever forget that. We are on the front and have a job to do…. Thank you for letting us come into your home this evening to speak to you. The people of the United States have seen the gold star in your window. You and your family are America.
My family, especially my mother, would never give up hope that I’d come home. After the war I found out she’d even written General Hale—the same one who hadn’t reported accurately about the Nauru raid—asking him to search for me. His reply was, “It’s better you give him up like we have.” A tart letter from a callous person, as far as I’m concerned. It made her furious. He’d tried to dim her hope, but when my brother found out he helped restore her faith. “I still believe my son’s alive,” she wrote to the general. Then, when I made my radio broadcast she said, “I know there was a lot of static. But there are things he said that make me sure it was Louie.”
TWO WEEKS AFTER my visit to Radio Tokyo, three men came to Omori and asked me to make another broadcast.
“You have a beautiful radio voice,” they said, with obsequious and encouraging smiles. “You did such a good job that we want to let you do it again.” Well, I thought, why not? I’ve got more to say to my parents.
To brave the icy weather they gave me a new, heavy, U.S. Army overcoat they’d confiscated after some battle. I wore it to the station, savoring each moment of warmth because I knew from their blatant, graceless patronizing to be very wary.
At the station we ate in the cafeteria again, and then they said, “By the way, we want you to meet three nice fellows.” They introduced me to one American and two Australians.
All three shook my hand, but not one met my eyes. They stared at the floor instead. I got the message: “Hey, I’m sorry I got into this mess. They tortured me. I’m ashamed. Don’t you do it.”
I understood but still couldn’t condone their actions. I’d suffered, too—daily; from their look I wasn’t sure these guys had had it rough in some time. Yes, prison camp was rotten, but the Japanese had just found the right guys to give in.
Before I could speak up my chaperones hustled me to a nearby office. Seeing paper and pencils on the desk, I asked, “Do you want me to write another broadcast?” Even if they didn’t, I knew I could speak off the cuff.
“No,” said one, handing me a typewritten sheet of paper. “We already have something written for you. Make broadcast with this.”
They stood silently while I read.
After a few sentences I knew it stunk.
The speech was casual and in what the Japanese supposed was an offhanded American vernacular, but it still had the unmistakable smell of propaganda; if I read it, it would be the beginning of a career I’d regret. The third time would be even stronger, and I’d get stuck like those guys I’d met in the hall. Once you join the Mafia, you can’t get out. (After the war I heard that the American serviceman I’d met at Radio Tokyo was thrown overboard on his way home; men who knew he’d made propaganda broadcasts lay in wait for him.) Plus, I was familiar with the Tokyo Rose broadcasts and their aim of demoralizing the enemy. The Japanese imagined themselves samurai warriors, aggressive fighting men dedicated to the death. They figured Americans were weak, so they always picked on guys on the front lines: “Do you know where your girlfriend is today? Is she in the arms of somebody else? Is she faithful to you?” If you could make a man go into battle worried and not concentrating, he’d get killed. The Japanese considered the poor soldiers on the front lines akin to morons, easily influenced.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t read this.”
“But you must read it.”
“Nah. Besides, it doesn’t sound like me. No one in America will believe it’s me.”
I shouldn’t have said that because they just offered to change the words.
“No, sorry. I just can’t do it.”
“You are a great athlete,” one man said, taking the tone he might take with a child. “Do you want to eat in the cafeteria and have a nice clean room?”
I gave them an emphatic no.
They spoke in Japanese and walked into another room to confer further. I looked at the desk and saw four or five copies of the speech just lying there. I stuck my hand in my overcoat pocket and stood close to the desk. Then I slipped my hand through the slit all overcoats have in the pocket so that you can put your hand into your pants pocket without opening the coat—and snatched a copy of the speech. I quickly folded it with one hand and prayed they wouldn’t miss it, because then I’d really be in trouble.
The men returned and asked me again to cooperate.
“No. I positively can’t do it.”
That seemed to make up their minds. “Because you will not read this, I think you go to punishment camp.” Those are the exact words he used: I think, meaning a moment of hesitation in case I wanted to change my decision.
I didn’t. I’d taken an oath as an officer. What’s more, my immediate thought was, Great. This will get me away from the Bird. I couldn’t stand to be around that guy.
But then, they knew that.
By the way, here’s what they wrote, exactly as typed.
Well, believe it or not…I guess I’m one of the 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 inter-scholastic 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 he 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 interment camp…she however, consolated him by saying that she was willing to divorce again and 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 reports…After all the least they can do is to let the folks back home know just where their boys are…Anyway that’s not my worry but I hope the folks back home are properly notified of the fact that I am still 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?…
Yes, how about that? I don’t think it sounds like me at all.
BACK AT OMORI, I hid the pilfered speech in the wall and later gave it to the War Crimes Commission.
Of course, the Bird and his guards were mad. I guess I’d made him look bad. They beat me for a week.
Around Christmas, Bill Harris arrived from Ofuna, with some other prisoners I knew. Now my friends were all in one place: Harris, the Scots, Lempriere, Lieutenant Green, who flew for New Zealand, and others. Suddenly, I wanted to stay instead of be transferred to the punishment camp.
For the holiday, the Bird distributed Red Cross packages from America. Actually, he allotted three packages for every five prisoners. Typical. I was hungry, as always, but I gave my part to Harris. He was still haggard and sick and in the infirmary with a temperature of nearly 105. “You’re a fool,” he said, when I handed it over. “Your life depends on that box.” Ever since his pummeling at Ofuna, Harris had been slightly off. He didn’t know that he needed the nourishment more than I did. I also convinced the Royal Scots to donate some sugar, and Harris pulled through.
After the war Harris returned to Camp Lejeune and planned to get married and leave the service. Then he wrote me and said he’d decided to re-up. The marines sent him to Korea. During a battle he was surrounded, captured, and later executed. It was war, we knew it could happen, but no one deserves that. The poor guy.
AS 1944 TURNED into 1945, the Germans were close to defeat in Europe and the Japanese knew their end was near. The more desperate they became the more they relied on propaganda to motivate their troops and citizens, and to paint a better picture of themselves for the world.
At one point a film crew came to the camp and asked the huskiest guys to step forward. About fifty did. Not me, of course; skin and bones was not what they were after. They told the group to go to the beach and whoever did would get all the food they could eat. But first they had to put on American marine uniforms and take rifles with no bullets.
On the beach the film crew explained that they wanted to make a little movie. After the group went through some sort of exercise, everyone stood around wondering what would happen next. The Japanese pointed out tables set with fruit and rice balls and other foods, about a hundred yards away. They said, “Okay, we’re through shooting here. Like we promised you, you can have all you can eat. See those tables? There’s your food. The first one there gets more food.”
You’d have thought a starter’s pistol went off. The men were so hungry they literally raced to the food tables—and what footage that made! “American marines” running desperately, carrying rifles, losing ground, throwing down their rifles, running. Later, the Japanese spliced in ten little Japanese soldiers with rifles and bayonets so it looked like they were chasing the marines along the beach, forcing a coward’s retreat. And not a sign of the food anywhere in the movie, of course.
IN FEBRUARY 1945 sirens wailed again and the camp came alive. I ran out of my barracks and looked up to see the beginning of a raid, probably from a carrier ship. There were planes all over the sky: navy Hell Cats and Zeroes. Three F-4U fighters streaked over the camp and dived in on the Japanese navy airstrip about two miles south. Above, I could see Zeroes exploding, popping like little firecrackers.
Suddenly, a navy Hellcat flashed by, chasing a Zero. He was so close I could have hit him with a brick. The Zero finally veered over Tokyo, where he knew he had protection, and the navy pilot turned right and went out over the ocean. That was my first real taste of the victory to come. The Bird and the camp guards had all run outside to watch, and I could hear them saying, “Nippon skokey!” In other words, the Japanese air force is no good. “Dah may!”
Then I saw a B-29 in flames. The crew bailed out, but two Zeroes strafed the survivors all the way down to the water. That was a sickening sight, and I thought I could hear a cold moan of frustration and vengeance rise up from the prisoners.
I turned to Bill Harris. “It’s going to be a pleasure to watch them squirm when the pressure really mounts,” I said. “I think it won’t be long before our planes come over by the hundreds and turn Tokyo to rubble.”
Not a week later we heard sirens again, saw vapor trails, and smoke rising from the city as our bombs found their targets.
Had we cheered as we watched, the sullen guards would surely have shot us on the spot, but we satisfied ourselves with whispers and nudges and bets on when we’d finally head home. We knew from stolen scraps of newspaper that MacArthur had returned to the Philippines, headed for Manila. The German lines in Western Europe had all but crumbled in the face of irresistible Allied forces.
DESPITE OUR VICTORIES, the reality of my transfer was only a matter of time. But even as I wondered when I’d be forced to leave Omori, the entire camp got a big surprise: the Bird had been transferred. Perhaps his new assignment was another move by the Japanese command to appease prisoners who might shortly be free, by ridding them of the scourge of Matsuhiro Watanabe. I’m certain I wasn’t the only one who’d complained.
Overjoyed does not begin to describe my state of mind, but my celebration was cut short on March, 1, 1945, when my own transfer came in. My destination: Camp 4-B in Naoetsu, 250 miles northwest of Tokyo, on the other side of the country. A few other prisoners, like Tom Wade, moved with me. The rest came to say good-bye.
NINETEEN SQUARE MILES of Tokyo had burned in the recent fire-bombing raid, and our train to Naoetsu went right through the devastation. I’d seen the area before the destruction, home to huge power lines, electrical transformers, and generators, factories, private houses. Now all I could see was charcoal for miles as thousands of buildings were reduced to ash. Only one silhouette stuck up repeatedly through the waste: lathes, the machines used to make airplane and ship parts. What a sight, these charred metal monsters framed against an overcast Tokyo sky.
Then we slid into a tunnel and a cold, depressing blackness.
Twelve hours later the train arrived in Naoetsu, a city about forty miles outside of Nagano, where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held. Snow blanketed the ground in huge ten-to twelve-foot drifts, reaching to the rooftops. How the hell would we walk through this stuff? People actually tunneled down to get into their homes. The guards herded us through gloomy streets. In the distance I could see the dirty smokestacks of a factory perched on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Japan and the prison camp.
We shuffled into Camp 4-B’s main courtyard, and the gate closed behind the last man. A guard shouted for everyone to stand at attention and wait for inspection. And wait we did, in the bone-numbing, frigid wasteland: five minutes, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty. I could hardly move my half-frozen hands and feet. If this was “punishment camp,” then the penance had already begun—and I expected it would soon get worse.
Finally, the door of a rusty, corrugated tin shack by the main gate opened. The camp commandant stepped out onto the icy parade ground, moved briskly into the light, and surveyed his new arrivals.
I felt my knees buckle and my heart collapse.
The Bird.
I steadied myself on the man next to me in line, but inside I gave up all hope. I thought, Oh, what they’ve done to me! This is futile. There’s no escape. It was the lowest ebb. The cruelest joke. The kiss of death. I realized I’d never get away from the Bird.
Watanabe marched down the line and found me. His black eyes bored into mine. It was impossible to look at him, and impossible to look away. His face twisted into a sick, sardonic smile. He didn’t seem surprised at all to see me.
In his book, Tom Wade put perfectly exactly how I also felt at that moment: “If someone had given me a pistol then, I would have just blown my brains out.”