8
It hurt to see James Sasaki, not only because we’d been together at USC but because I thought he, of all people, had been around Americans long enough to know that we didn’t deserve the hatred and brutality his country had shown us.
“Sit, Louis,” Sasaki said, pointing at a chair. He perched on a corner of his desk and tried to explain what he knew I was at that moment desperately trying to explain to myself. “All the time I went to colleges in the United States,” he said, “I also spoke to Japanese communities.”
“I remember you went to the Torrance Japanese district.”
“Also to Carson and Gardena and Lomita,” he added. “I lectured to the Japanese, especially the Issei—the first generation in America—to admonish them to maintain their Japanese culture, and to keep faithful to the homeland.”
“Why? They were American citizens.”
“I was never an American citizen. Japan’s a poor country, so I told them, ‘Send money home to your poor families in a country that needs your help.’ I also showed them how to save lead foil from gum and cigarette wrappers and roll it into a huge ball. Also, copper, brass, and aluminum. When the Japanese freighters came to San Pedro to buy American scrap metal, they could contribute to their country.”
I knew what he meant. I’d seen the lead balls at the Breakfast Club on Riverside Drive in Los Angeles. A close friend was the son of the owner, and I worked at huge private parties on weekends when I was in college. A Japanese gardener and cleanup man lived on the premises. I visited his shack a few times and I saw two 20-pound balls of soft lead—all painstakingly collected after each function—that he’d pressed together by hand. I even picked one up to judge the weight.
At one time I might have considered Sasaki’s ideals admirable, but now I had to think of them in terms of the war. I’m sure he never put it to his people that way, because to admit that they were helping a future war effort would have been foolhardy. I’m certain not one Japanese-American he spoke to knew of the conflict to come. I doubt the gardener had any idea the lead he’d collected would one day become bullets fired at Americans. He loved the United States and was glad to be there.
Most Americans never knew about these activities. Had they, particularly after the war began, it would only have increased the hunger for revenge we felt after the Japanese made their unprovoked, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, wiping us out without warning. That was a dangerous time; with or without reason, many Americans hated any Japanese face—or any Oriental face. That’s one reason the government relocated the Japanese to internment camps: absolute necessity. Had they been left among the people, their homes might have been set on fire, and lives lost. I’m not saying that the property of American citizens of Japanese origin being confiscated by the government was right, because they were defenseless. Some were even my close friends, Japanese kids with whom I went to school. Others were patriotic citizens and proved that many times over fighting in Europe as part of the 442nd, the highest-decorated combat group ever. Internment, sadly, was just the best of many imperfect choices made at a time of national shock, fear, and disbelief.
Sasaki chuckled and interrupted my memories. “Oh, how I used to love having breakfast at the student union,” he said. “Ham and eggs, bacon, sausage, coffee. I enjoyed American food.” So did I, and here he was, making a seventy-pound skeleton drool.
We spoke a bit more about USC, then he asked for a rundown of my raft experience and spoke with calm confidence of Japan’s successful aggression in the Pacific. “We shall see each other from time to time,” he added. Despite our earlier friendship we were now on opposite sides not only of the desk but of the war. I expected no personal favors and no special treatment, and wouldn’t ask for anything. As far as I was concerned, I could call him friend no longer.
Sasaki dismissed me and I returned to my cell. As soon as the guard on patrol was out of earshot the other prisoners peppered me with questions: Who are you? Where were you based? What outfit? How were you captured? But when we fell silent, a suspicion gnawed at my gut, grew, and wouldn’t let up. Not once had Sasaki asked me a military question. I knew that Ofuna was a high-level interrogation camp. If a pilot was shot down Tuesday, he could be at Ofuna Wednesday for an intense grilling. What’s more, Sasaki had told me he not only held a civilian rank equivalent to admiral but was the head interrogator for the Japanese prison-camp system; he traveled the country, visiting one or two camps a day. Had he simply not bothered because he knew that after forty-seven days on a raft, forty-three in a Kwajalein dungeon, and nearly a month in transit to Yokohama, any information I had was more than stale, more than obsolete? Probably. It made perfect sense. Whatever I could say would be useless.
What didn’t add up, then, was why I’d been brought to Ofuna in the first place.
SET IN THE foothills at the junction of two valleys, Ofuna in September was much like New York in the winter, layered with thin crusts of snow and cold, very cold.
The camp was built of flimsy wood and consisted mainly of three plain, crackerbox structures called One, Two, and Three—Ichi, Ni, and San. The layout looked like the letter E. Each barrack was set apart from the other by twenty yards; all were connected to a main building that housed the officers’ headquarters, the latrines, and the kitchen.
Inside, each cell was as wide as the tatami mats on which we slept. My blanket was made of paper; we got two and had to learn how to fold them—tightly, to get layer after layer—for maximum warmth. The pillow was straw. I slept in my clothes and shoes. All I had was the uniform I’d crashed in, now a sleeveless khaki shirt and torn pants. A Norwegian named Thor Bjorn Christiansen, a crewman on a captured merchant ship, went through his belongings and gave me his extra coat. Without his kindness I’d probably have frozen to death.
Despite the icy temperatures, the guards wouldn’t let us stay inside during the day. I spent every hour of sunlight outside, huddling against the elements. Fortunately, we’d worked out a system in which we lined up and walked slowly, wound around like a serpent. The men on the outside moved inside, got warm, and moved out again.
Our cells had small square windows with wooden bars through which anyone could easily escape; but then what? Japan was not like Europe, where most people looked alike. What’s more, the guards made it clear: “If you escape, we line up ten men and shoot.”
Frank Tinker, a captured pilot who’d gone to the Juilliard School of Music, and I had a plan anyway. We could always hear airplanes, and they didn’t sound too far away, maybe two or three miles from Ofuna. I said, “Can you fly a Japanese plane?”
“Louie,” he said, “I can fly anything with wings.”
I thought we’d sneak to the airport and grab a plane. Of course, we wouldn’t know if the fuel tank was full, if we’d end up flying to China or crash in the Sea of Japan. Still, we plotted for several weeks, then decided to abandon our crazy idea.
One guy did escape, though, but within twenty-four hours got caught hiding in the hills. Luckily, everyone knew he was crazy, even the Japanese, so they didn’t shoot him or anyone else.
Not everyone was so fortunate. When men left the camp I often watched them exit. If they turned to the left, that usually meant they didn’t live. If they turned to the right, that meant they went to another camp. Every time, other men arrived to take their place.
RUNNING THE LENGTH of each barrack was a long, narrow walkway about four feet wide and made of smooth wood that we had to mop continually. The cells, on either side, were one step up from ground level. My day began at sunrise when the guards rang the morning bell. Sometimes I’d do calisthenics. Then, after going to the head, I’d sit on the step below my cell, my feet sticking into the walkway, and wait for breakfast. Utensils clanging in the kitchen became like music to me. Sometimes I’d smell the food on the wind and salivate. Even today, I can’t kick that habit.
Two prisoners, Duva and Mead, worked in the kitchen doing the serving and cleanup. Duva had survived after the Japanese crippled his submarine. Mead flew for the navy and was captured after his plane ran out of fuel during the battle of Midway. Both were strapping fellows and impressive physical specimens—and stayed that way because on kitchen duty they could always sneak an extra mouthful.
Every day, with big wooden ladles, they scooped rice into our tiny bowls. A few guys liked their rice dry, but dry rice never made me feel nourished, especially when I’d find straw in it. Other times it was too moist and had rat droppings in it. When all you get is rice, it’s funny how you’re always conscious of the way it’s prepared. Sometimes we also got a small cup of water with a piece of daikon radish, the Japs’ version of soup. If we were lucky, we’d get miso paste.
Lunch was the same. Dinner, too.
ALTHOUGH I WAS starving, sometimes I preferred hunger to eating what the Japanese served. A few of the prisoners—we had Americans, British, Australians, Norwegians, even Italians captured from merchant ships—knew international law required that we get meat rations once every week or so. We mentioned that to the guards, and a few days later a truck backed up to the big cement trough outside the barracks, where we washed ourselves and spit. The truck was packed with fish that had been frozen but had spoiled. Even before the driver dumped it in the trough, the smell overpowered us and the whole mass seemed to move. In fact, it was moving, it being infested with thousands of maggots.
The guards told us to wash the “fish.” Looking at it made me sick, but I hosed it down and tried to get the maggots off and kill the stench. Then I helped shovel the mess into big soup tureens. We all got the result, hot, the next morning. (They had to serve us hot food or we’d die. Japan was contaminated with human feces, which they used liberally as fertilizer.) The maggots floated lazily on top, as if in their own private swimming pools. I half expected to see them wearing sunglasses and drinking lemonade. Some guys considered the maggots nutritious, guzzled, and threw up. At no more than eighty pounds I was probably the hungriest guy in camp, but I just shook my head no.
A guard barked a command. “Eat!”
“I can’t eat it,” I said.
“You eat,” he said, and stuck me with the point of his bayonet, behind my ear, right on the muscle. I bled. He repeated himself. “You eat.” I ate.
We’d asked for meat; they’d given us “meat.” Two weeks later, we each got a little whale steak, about the size of a fifty-cent piece and as thick, cooked with teriyaki. Now, that was tasty.
ONE SPRING DAY, when the ice broke in the little reservoir between the barracks that served as a fire-fighting supply, the guards took turns throwing a little puppy high in the air and watching it splash in the water. When, inevitably, the puppy missed the pool, he showed up in the stew the next day. I passed.
I wasn’t the only one who shied away from the rations. One old Norwegian would regularly trade his food for cigarettes. We told him he’d die if he didn’t eat. “I think maybe the tobacco is better for me,” he joked. He finally died of malnutrition.
Our food should have been better. In fact, it was supposed to be, except that the cook, Hata, had a racket. He stole rations meant for the prisoners and traded them through the fence to civilians. He wrapped the booty in bandanas and had me and others wait with them by the edge of camp until a tiny Japanese farm woman came along. I gave her Hata’s package and got a package in return. I’d give that to Hata. Sometimes he got chestnuts to boil with the rice—not that the prisoners ever got any. He also got gifts to share with the officers; in other words, insurance that let him conduct his illegitimate business so openly.
AFTER BREAKFAST I sat outside with the men on long wooden benches. Since we couldn’t speak to one another or hold anything in our hands—so no reading—each day seemed like a month. (When, after many months, we were allowed to read, we got basic books about an English girl named Pam, titled Pam’s Own Story, Pam’s Little Box, and Pam Visits Her Grandmother.) Any communication we managed was by Morse code. When the guards were far enough away, I’d shield one hand and tap out messages. Everyone did the same after lights-out, when the night patrol had moved to a different barrack.
For anyone caught breaking the rules, the reward was a severe beating, and the various guards—Shimizu, Yamazaki (“Swivel Neck”), Kumagai (“the Canary”), Asoma (“Metal Mouth”), Hirayama, and others (these aren’t translations, just nicknames)—took great delight in turning offenders in to the head man, whom we called “Conga Joe,” just to get a feather in their cap. Kitamura, the medic (“the Quack”), especially wanted to know who’d broken the rules, and not because he was interested in caring for them after the beating.
AFTER THREE MONTHS, Phil left for an officers’ camp in south Honshu, where he was trotted out as a display piece for the Red Cross and other international agencies. It was plush, with no punishment. All anyone did was garden to grow their own food. We had no time for final words, but I was glad for Phil, even though I’d miss him. Unlike Ofuna or Kwajalein, his new home did stick to a few international rules for prisoners of war because it was a show camp for the Red Cross.
IN SPRING 1944 Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the famous flying ace of the Marine Corps “Black Sheep Squadron” and, earlier, volunteer with the Flying Tigers in China, showed up at Ofuna. He’d crashed in January, during a raid, and been captured by a Japanese submarine. After a brutal interrogation they moved him to Truk, and eventually to Ofuna.
They put Pappy in the small cell next to mine. Of course, I knew who he was, and he had read that I was missing in action. Boyington had shrapnel in his thigh and was almost a cripple. I used to massage his leg every morning to loosen up the tendons so he could walk. Later, the Quack claimed he could find the shrapnel with a magnet and cut it out. I don’t know what he used for a painkiller, but he did what he promised.
Though I was twenty-six and Boyington was probably thirty, he and I became pretty close friends. Fortunately, by the time he arrived, the rules had loosened up a bit and we could talk to each other. He was braggadocious and liked to throw the bull a lot. I’d already heard about his problems at home and in the service, but since I was now his number-one outlet for conversation, he began to unload his marriage troubles on me. I tried to be a good listener as he unraveled the story of the incredibly painful divorce process that still tore him apart. “There are times when I don’t care if I live or die,” he said, “and that’s the way I feel when I’m up there shooting down those yellow bastards. Yet the moment we tangle I have this strong desire to win. You, being a runner, probably know what I mean.”
“Pappy,” I said, “that’s the deadly combination that makes you an ace—not caring and hating to lose. Maybe that’s why the divorce is so tough: you hate to lose.”
Taking it out on the enemy was one way to handle the pain, but it was only temporary. Same as climbing into a bottle. When you sober up, the problems are still staring you in the face.
Pappy was stubborn and wanted things his own way; he caused some trouble in camp and suffered the same mistreatment and starvation as the rest of us. After being caught smoking during a nonsmoking period, he was beaten pretty badly. It took a few bumps on his head, but he finally began in his own bulldog way to conform to the submissive POW lifestyle.
In his book, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Boyington wrote that the only qualification to become a guard or officer at Ofuna was passing “a minus-one-hundred I.Q. test.”
My opinion, exactly. They were dummies.
A guard once called three of us to peep through a knothole in the headquarters shack at one of his buddies who was inside, masturbating. That same guard also had intercourse with a duck. A fuller description of their odd sexual experiment is in Boyington’s book. It made me sick and I had to turn away. All I’ll say is that the duck died.
Another time a guard called me into the kitchen. There stood a nice-looking Japanese girl, maybe twenty-five years old. She worked cleaning pots and pans. The guard told me to stand behind her. Then he moved behind me, reached around and grabbed her, and thrust his hips into me, forcing me back and forth into her. Man, it was embarrassing. The poor girl.
The guards and officers were third-rate guys because Japan needed their good men so badly on the front lines. Those who worked in the camps were mostly moronic farm kids and misfits not fit for combat. Not that they didn’t try to simulate the experience. One afternoon they brought in a B-24 pilot on a stretcher, with a crushed chest. After he died that night the guards staged a mock bayonet drill using the corpse as a target.
The Japanese did all they could to break our will and self-respect. They’d taunt us by saying, “Hey, we just invaded San Francisco!” or “Shirley Temple had an abortion and died!” or “Clark Gable got killed over Africa!” Brutal beatings, with fist or club, were the daily rule, not only for infractions of unknown camp regulations but for the merest suspicion that we might be contemplating any disobedience.
WE ALL PERFORMED slave labor, usually in the kitchen and on cleanup patrol. The guards also needed someone to cut their hair and shave their faces—and what better way than forcing someone to do it? When I was a kid, we all got a quarter for a haircut at Tansy’s barbershop. I’d stand around and watch the barbers at work and eventually figured I could do it, too. So I started a racket: I would cut neighborhood kids’ hair for the quarter their mothers gave them so we could go to the beach and use the money to ride the roller coaster and get a hamburger. This went on until one boy’s mother thought the barber did a “bad job.” Determined to improve and keep the business going, I hung out at Tansy’s every chance I had.
With all that experience, I thought I should volunteer to be the camp barber. It wasn’t out of kindness or to prepare for a postwar career. For each haircut and shave I’d get a rice ball: wet rice baked to a golden brown in the oven.
I never had such an easy job. I just clipped the guards’ hair as close to their scalp as possible. As for the shave: I’d never used a straightedge razor, and it scared the hell out of me, especially when one guard said, “You bring blood and…” But I couldn’t get out of it, so I practiced on myself first. I still nicked a few guys—without consequence—and soon learned how to use the razor.
The guards also asked me to shave their foreheads. I couldn’t figure out why. They had no hair there, nor on their chests, but they wanted their foreheads shaved down to the top of the eyebrows. Were these men masochists, or did they just like how the blade felt?
Every guard paid the rice ball, except the Weasel. He needed to show his superiority, and it made me mad. Whenever he came around, I’d say, “You didn’t pay me last time.”
“Yeah? I pay you later.”
So I’d shave him again—I couldn’t really refuse—figuring that maybe he’d keep his word. He didn’t. Finally, I got wise. The next time I cut his hair and shaved his forehead, I cut his eyebrows down real thin, just like a pencil line. He was relaxed, in another world, and didn’t pay attention. When I finished I asked for my rice ball and, as expected, he stiffed me and went back to the honcho shack. Suddenly I heard cussing and screaming, then laughter from the other guards. Next I heard two words I’ll never forget: “Marlene Dietrich! Marlene Dietrich!”
I expected a beating, but he loved it. The Japanese idolized American movie stars, and when his pals approved of his new style, he left me alone.
NOW AND THEN Sasaki called me into his office. Interrogation was pointless, but that’s never what he seemed to want. He was nostalgic for the old days.
Although I could no longer muster friendship for him, I could sense it in him for me. At first he was self-confident and cocky, bragging that Japan would win the war. When they started losing battles—and he knew that we knew it after they’d captured Pappy Boyington and he told us the truth—Sasaki’s attitude changed. He even called Emperor Tojo a son of a bitch and cussed a blue streak. Perhaps he wanted to get on my good side. I don’t know. But always, when I’d ask why I, an officer, was still at a camp in which I was clearly out of place, he never answered.
Sometimes I told Sasaki about the men’s hopes for better food and less punishment. “Oh, Louie, you know him,” they’d say. “Tell him what’s happening here.” Sasaki would say, “Well, we’ll see what we can do.” Then he’d leave and a couple of days later we’d all be beaten. The next time I’d see him I’d complain about the beatings, and he’d say, “Well, they have to keep rigid discipline in the camps, but we’ll see what we can do.” That was always his way. Never “I,” but “we,” meaning it was always “unfortunately” out of his hands. Sasaki never had to take any responsibility for what happened. Or didn’t.
BOYINGTON RELAYED THE information he brought back from his frequent interviews with Sasaki to two prisoners. The first was Geoffrey Lempriere, an Aussie lieutenant captured in the jungle near Rabaul, or New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea. A wealthy wool merchant in his private life, Lempriere hustled around the camp in a ragged black coat, acting as official chaplain. The second was my close friend Lieutenant Bill Harris, the six-foot-ten son of marine general Fielding Harris, who ran the marine air corps. They had captured Bill in the Philippines several years earlier, but he’d remained mentally sharp by reading every scrap of paper available and conducting vigorous memory exercises. As a result, all information, including newspapers that we could occasionally steal from the guard shack, we rushed to Bill. He had a photographic memory, could look at a map and sketch it later with complete symbols for the rest of the group.
BY SPRING I’D gained a bit more weight but was still weak and, as usual, hungry. I constantly thought of ways to pilfer rations, though I was aware and afraid of the terrible consequences; stealing food in wartime was punishable by death.
Sometimes Duva and Mead would walk by my cell after dinner and throw me a rice ball, knowing the serious trouble they’d catch if caught. Mead called the Los Angeles area home, so he knew about me from my USC running days. However, his kindness had little to do with special treatment. Because of my ordeal, I most needed the food. (As did Phil, when he was still at Ofuna. I’d always split my rice ball with him.) Otherwise, everybody was in the same boat. We all pulled together. When you’re trying to survive, you cooperate.
Eventually my desperation overcame common sense. I knew I had to take a chance, even with my life. I studied the patrol habits, and one night at about 1 A.M. the camp was asleep except for a single guard, who had all three barracks to cover. The main passageway tying all the buildings together went through the kitchen. I snuck in and quietly stuffed my face with Japanese navy food. I lost track of the time until suddenly I sensed a presence to my left. I turned slowly, and there stood a guard we called Shithead. He was the worst of the bunch, a sneaky pipsqueak always trying to catch us at fault so he could report us and impress his superiors. I knew I was in deep, deep trouble.
He held his rifle at his side, butt on the floor, stepped out of the shadows, and faced me. I waited for him to raise the weapon, but he didn’t move. He just stared. It was bizarre. So I inched slowly away, our eyes locked together, figuring he’d take me out any moment, saying I had tried to escape. He certainly looked like he wanted to shoot me, but I kept backing up anyway, my eyes glued on him until he was out of sight.
The next day I waited, nervously, to suffer my fate. No one called me out. I’m certain he had reported my crime—it had to be Shithead’s greatest trophy—but for some reason the commandant ignored or dismissed it. Why?
WHEN THE WEATHER warmed, the commandant began to take his morning tea under the cherry tree in front of the barracks next to the road. He also read his newspaper there. An old gentleman, he only held a warrant officer’s rank. We called him “the Mummy.” His world was spare and he seemed detached.
One morning, while I swept the yard around him, I noticed him studying his paper, the Mainichi Shinbun, with a furrowed brow and great concern. Occasionally he muttered to himself. I realized I had to get that paper because it might hold valuable information.
I kept sweeping, looking for an opening. I worried less about the commandant catching me than about being spotted by the cook, Hata, or the Quack. Though not in any way responsible for camp discipline, both frequently administered punishments.
The commandant began to doze, and let his paper slip beneath his tea table. I edged closer, reached out, and snagged the paper with my broom, crumpling it as if it were trash. I swept it around the corner and to the latrine. There I undid the wad. I couldn’t read the Japanese scrawl, but it didn’t matter. I saw a map with arrows showing major troop movements.
I gave it to Bill Harris to decipher.
Harris read the text and said, “How do you spell the name of the island you were on when you came in from the Marshalls?”
“K-W-A-J-A-L-E-I-N,” I said. “Why? Have we taken it?
“Long ago, I think,” he said, “because we’re apparently launching attacks from there on all the other islands, leading right to Japan.”
Kwajalein taken! Where Phil and I had suffered, our forces now played gin rummy. We never had a doubt about winning the war. It just took time for our country, an industrial giant, to get rolling. But with the war split between two enemies and continents, we could understand the slower pace.
Harris returned the newspaper, and I took it outside to the trash pile. Meanwhile, he made a rough sketch from memory depicting the Allied advances. Later he showed it to the ranking officers. The men in our little espionage group were overjoyed. We imagined imminent victory and speculated about when they might release us.
Our joy was brief.
Harris should have destroyed his map, but he hid it instead. The next day, when we were outside, the Japanese went through everyone’s stuff and found it.
The cry went out. “Line up! Inspection.”
The Quack called Harris out and started punching him, then grabbed a heavy cherrywood bludgeon and hit him repeatedly, knocking him out. We all wanted to jump in and stop the sadistic medic, but the guards had their rifles ready because they knew it was a serious situation. The Quack kept jumping on Harris even as he lay helpless on the ground. He totally lost control. It broke our hearts to watch and not be able to intervene.
Afterward, the Quack leaned against a bench, ecstatic, breathing hard, like a guy just finished having intercourse with a woman. We thought Harris was dead, and I hated the Japanese then even more than I had hated them on Kwajalein. I felt angry and helpless. Had it been possible I would gladly have torn the Quack to bits with my own hands and shot those who leered from the doorways and giggled behind the kitchen windows.
Meanwhile, the commandant had acted like he couldn’t care less. He’d let the beating continue uninterrupted. And Conga Joe walked up and down the line of men left standing at attention—two had fainted—belting anyone who blinked or looked suspicious.
No one could touch Harris. We had to let him lie there until, thankfully, he stirred. Then one of our ranking men got permission to take him back to his cubicle. I helped. We lay him facedown on his tatami mat and ripped away his clothing. When we saw the spare flesh of his back, now reduced to pulp, and his buttocks, all one purple-black bruise, it was hard not to cry. We were sure the Quack had crushed Bill’s vertebrae. Maybe still being alive wouldn’t be so great after all.
The next morning, rather than give his captors the satisfaction of having eliminated him, Harris, with the pride of an American marine, walked stiffly to roll call. Afterward he returned to bed, where he stayed for days. Even when he could move again, it was months before he could focus mentally.
The attack was so savage, making me wonder what I would have done in his place—and why I had gotten away with my “crime” in the kitchen.
NOT LONG AFTER Harris’s beating, a B-24 pilot shot down in the Pacific joined us at Ofuna. His name was Fred Garrett. I watched as the guards brought him in, sitting in a special wooden chair because he only had one leg. Word quickly spread that he had lost the other on Kwajalein, and that he’d been asking if anyone named Louie Zamperini was at the camp.
I went to see Garrett. He told me that after his plane crashed the Japanese had imprisoned him and his men on Kwajalein. His crew was executed, but Garrett was spared. He didn’t know why. In addition, he had an ankle injury, which didn’t receive proper treatment and got infected, so they decided to amputate. Garrett was bitter, especially about the operation. I couldn’t blame him. For a mere ankle injury they’d cut off his leg above the knee, without using anesthetic or antiseptic—he said—with an ordinary crosscut wood saw. I couldn’t imagine the pain Garrett had endured. And I didn’t want to.
But why did he want to see me?
“I saw your name carved into the wall in my cell,” he explained. “Right under the names of the marines. I knew who you were because you got a lot of publicity when you went missing in action.” That was great. He was the second American, after Boyington, to confirm that, and we became close friends.
ONE DAY THE commandant decided to stage a track meet, featuring me. It was weird. My muscles had atrophied; I couldn’t run. I entered the high jump instead, and won it. I guess I was so skinny, I didn’t have much to lift. After that, I made a point of exercising to get in better shape.
Soon, with great fanfare, they brought in a local runner because what they really wanted was for me to run and lose. I told the grinning officers that the race would be unfair, that the track was hardly adequate for going distances. Most important, I had no desire to run. I shouldn’t have said that. They told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t run, not only I but the whole camp would suffer. My pride was not worth that, so I ran, and surprised myself at how light and comfortable I felt, considering my condition. I let the local runner set the pace and allowed him to stay ahead even as the finish line loomed. Then I stretched out and passed him; I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t resist.
Moments later I woke up on the ground. Someone had hit me on the head from behind with a cherrywood club.
They brought up another runner a few weeks later, and I beat him, too. After the race he took me aside and said, “Next week I bring my girlfriend. Let me win, so I can say I beat an Olympian, and I’ll give you a rice ball.”
No problem. I let him win. Instead of giving me a rice ball, he left with his girlfriend. But two days later he came back and gave me two rice balls. I guess I’d helped him win with his girlfriend, too.
THOUGH I HAD thought often of my family and friends, the running and meeting Fred Garrett brought back stronger memories of life before the war and made me wonder again how everyone was back home. I’d been gone almost a year, and according to Garrett, everyone thought I was dead. (I would later discover that because Ofuna was a secret camp, the Japanese had never registered me as a prisoner of war with the Geneva POW Convention.) I felt sorrier for my loved ones than I did for myself.
After the war I would confirm what Garrett had told me, that my disappearance had quickly made the papers. No more than a month after the crash, even as I drifted on the raft, a UPI story began, “A little flag hangs today in the ‘memory corner’ of a Pacific air base barracks for Lieut. Lou Zamperini and his dream of future miles.” Another paper described me as having “turned in [his] Service wings…Zamperini—as far as can be determined—has made the supreme sacrifice.”
In June 1943 my mother received a letter from friends that read in part:
We heard over the radio and read in our paper that Louie was reported missing May 27, 1943. We were all so distressed and do hope that news will come of Louie’s whereabouts and that somewhere, somehow, he is all right.
Another letter, this from a stranger, read:
Dear Mrs. Zamperini,
I had read of your son being missing, then gone. I am praying and hoping for you that there may be good news yet. My son, Howard, was killed January 23, 1942, off the Atlantic coast…
Most touching, at least to me, was learning later that my mother had kept a list in her daily reminder book of who had called after I disappeared. She filled three pages, in her beautiful handwriting, with at least one hundred names.
IN NOVEMBER 1943 the army listed me as tentatively killed in action, but you had to be missing for a year and a month before they’d make it official. In June 1944 my parents received the country’s condolences. It read:
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF First Lieutenant Louis S. Zamperini, A.S. No 0-663341,WHO DIED IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY AT in the Central Pacific Area, May 28, 1944.HE STANDS IN THE UNBROKEN LINE OF PATRIOTS WHO HAVE DARED TO DIE THAT FREEDOM MIGHT LIVE, AND GROW, AND INCREASE ITS BLESSINGS. FREEDOM LIVES, AND THROUGH IT, HE LIVES—IN A WAY THAT HUMBLES THE UNDERTAKINGS OF MOST MEN
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America.
After an all-too-brief summer, the first fall chill filled the air. Before long it would be colder still, and I didn’t relish another winter trying not to freeze standing outside on the cinder-strewn campgrounds.
Each night, just outside the gate, I could hear the local people on their way to a nearby shrine. Every morning a heavy mist covered the paddies and hills, and through it I could hear the voices of children walking to school, singing. Now it seems idyllic; then it irritated the heck out of me. Lempriere translated for me. They sang a marching song, the lyrics a stark and bitter contrast to the innocence of school-books and fresh faces. It would make sense to someone who’d fought in a war, but to the children?
One day I knew the war would be over, but I wondered how long the remains of war would last in me and in them even after the bombs had stopped falling and the guns were silent. What I feared most was that my generation would teach the hatred and resentment I was learning at the hands of the Japanese to our own children and the cycle of disaffection and violence would never stop.
But when I turned my attention back to the camp, to its filth, squalor, and inhumanity, I knew in my heart that the war—this war—was right. If it took my hatred to support it, to win it, and most important, to get me through it alive, so be it.