Harvill 1
Addie Harvill
Ms. Amy Reid
English 1
29 April 2015
Louis Zamperini
Louis Zamperini was beaten, tortured, abused, and survived the impossible, and still remained unbroken. Louis Zamperini was born January 26, 1917 in Olean, New York. He grew up in Torrance, California. He was a young Juvenile delinquent. He was a smoker by age five and a drinker by age eight. He also stole anything and everything he wanted too. Zamperini quit his life of crime when some girls encouraged him to join the school track team. With the help of his brother, Zamperini got really good at running and set a high school record for four minutes and twenty one seconds. In 1936 he New York for the 5,000 meter Olympic trials, naturally he made it. At the Olympics
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While they were over the Pacific ocean their plane suffered from mechanical difficulties and crashed into the ocean. Out of eleven men on board, only Zamperini and two others survived. No one came to rescue them, so they were stranded in the ocean on a raft for 47 days. While they were stranded on the ocean, they were bleached by the sun. They had to live off little drinking water. They survived attempted shark attacks on just a blow up raft. They were also shot at by Japanese bombers. To survive they caught fish, collected rainwater to drink, and killed birds that landed on their raft. One of the survivors died at sea before they reached land. Zamperini and Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips survived long enough to wash ashore on a Pacific Island two thousand miles from the crash site in enemy territory. They were finally out of the ocean, but taken prisoners of war by the Japanese. Zamperini and Phillips were separated and subject to torture. They were tortured both physically and mentally. They were both beaten, abused, and starved, and Zamperini was singled out and abused by a camp sargent called Bird. Since Zamperini was a former Olympic Athlete, he was seen as a propaganda tool by the Japanese, which was probably the reason he didn’t get executed. He was held captive for two years, and during that time he was pronounced dead by the U.S. military. He was finally released after the war ended in 1945, and reunited with his family in the United
I agree with the statement that Louie was as much a captive as he’d been when barbed wire had surrounded him after the war. The following quote was taken from chapter 39 of Unbroken. “It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over” (386). From this quote, we can see that Louie was struggling with vengeance. Although the war was over in 1945, it toke Louie almost five years to say that the war was over for him because of the hatred and thought of revenge Louie undergo after the war. This is one of the reasons why I agree with the author’s choice to include the post-war years and explore this story of obsession for vengeance. Putting Part V into the book not only not take away the theme of survival,
During World War II American soldiers who were caught by the Japanese were sent to camps where they were kept under harsh conditions. These men were called the prisoners of war, also known as the POWs. The Japanese who were captured by the American lived a simple life. They were the Japanese internees of World War II. The POWs had more of a harsh time during World War II than the internees. While the internees did physically stay in the camps longer, the POWs had it worse mentally.
In Unbroken: A world war 2 story of survival, resilience, and redemption- by Laura Hillenbrand; young Louie Zamperini is a delinquent of Torrance, California. He steals food, runs around like hell and even dreams of hoping on a train and running away for good. However, Pete, his older manages to turn his life around by turning his love of running from the law into a passion for track and field. Zamperini is so fast that he breaks his high school’s mile record, resulting in him attending the olympics in berlin in 1936. His running career however was put on hold when World war 2 broke out, he enlisted in the the Air Corps and becomes a bombardier. During a harrowing battle, the “superman” gets hit numerous times with japanese bullets destroying
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were regarded as a threat to the U.S. President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, also know as the Exclusion Order. This Order stated that any descendents or immigrants from enemy nations who might be a threat to U.S. security will report to assembly centers for Internment. There were no trials or hearings. They were forced to evacuate and many lost their homes and their businesses. Fred Korematsu refused to go. He was a U.S. citizen. Fred Korematsu was grabbed by police, handcuffed, and taken to jail. His crime -- defying President Franklin Roosevelt's order that American citizens of Japanese descent report to internment camps
He was imprisoned from 1876-1890 by Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. He was released, but died 2 years later in his home town of Tamaulipas. (PBS, 2001)
Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927 in a small town near Yuma, Arizona near the border. Born into a poor family, Cesar grew up in Arizona and in a small adobe home along with his parents (United Farm Workers 1). In his early life Cesar experienced a lot of injustices and saw how not only his parents, but most farm workers were being mistreated and overworked. Cesar Chavez later learned a lesson in his life about injustices that he would never be able to forget (United Farm Workers 1). Cesar would say “ the love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but is also the most true to our nature” (United Farm Workers 1).
Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. He was a field worker was realizing every day the injustice they were passing through, they had no rights as other workers because the field workers were not as important at the time. Cesar Chavez wanted others to see how they were treated and how they were suffering, but at the same time he wanted fieldworkers realized that what was happening was something unfair and unequal. In his honor was left his house to represent the hope that everything can be done, to represent a new beginning for all field workers and to remember everything he did. Cesar Chavez improved every farm worker, and made a great impact. Sites representing Cesar Chavez through his success on the rights of farm workers.
prison camp by the Japanese. Only a year later were they safe in American arms
many men did not die in the crash died in a life raft from starvation and dehydration as they drifted aimlessly over the Pacific Ocean. The men that lived through the crash and survived on a raft just to be captured by the Japanese were put in POW camps for the remainder of the war. One of these men is Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete and track star from Torrance, California. His plane went down due to a malfunction
As a young male, Owens worked in groceries, loaded freight cars, and even worked in a shoe repair shop. (www.anb.org). During this time period, Jesse Owens realized he had a passion for running. He was encouraged mainly by his Junior High Track coach, Charles Riley. Riley started a rigorous training program for Owens in morning sessions before school because Owens worked. Within a year, Owens was running the 100-yard dash in eleven seconds and in 1928 he set two world records for his age group in the high jump, at six feet, and the long jump, at twenty-two feet, eleven and three-quarters inches (jesse-owens.org). However Owens did not come to full attention until High...
In the beginning, Cesar Chavez started having a hard life ever since he was young. He was born on March 31, 1927 in San Luis Arizona, near Yuma. He had two brothers and two sisters. He started working at a young age after his family lost their ranch on an economic crisis. As a consequence, they moved and started living in a barrio, which was a poor area of town in San Jose, California and they started living as immigrants. Later, he left school in order to start working with his family in fields and, in a way, start supporting his family. They used to move from farm to farm in look for more fields to harvest, so they could get more money. When he was seventeen he enlisted into the United States Navy and served for two years. At his return, in 1948, he married the love of his life, Helen Fabela, and eventually years later they had eight children together.
Based only on their Japanese ancestry over 120,000 people (half of them children), were incarcerated in these camps. Many of these families had to sell their house, cars and other belongings for the fraction of the price. Despite the fact that there was no proof of espionage or sabotage on the part of the Japanese Americans, “Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command declared, he had no confidence in the loyalty of the Japanese living on the West Coast: A Jap is a Jap is a Jap.” (Takaki, p., 343) Because of their false beliefs, the U.S. built internment camps for Japanese Americans. 150,000 Japanese lived in Hawaii at the time. When their removal came into question, General Delos Emmons rejected these anti-Japanese pleas, knowing there was no evidence of espionage. Ironically the Japan...
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, to Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway and the second oldest out of 6 children. Hemingway's childhood pursuits such as hunting and sports fostered the interests that would blossom into literary achievements. In 1918, during World War I, Hemingway served as a Red Cross volunteer in Italy, driving an ambulance and working at a canteen. "After working in Italy for six weeks, he was seriously wounded by a fragm...
I’m sorry for all the Japanese-Americans, each and every one of them, for having to go through that unfair and unjust punishment. I was told by all that we were doing the right thing and it just rubbed off on me and I started to believe them. So when I saw someone who looked like he might be thinking about escaping I would tell him to scram and to not even think about escaping, but then they would give me that look of both sadness and despair. At first, I would ignore them and tell myself I was doing the right thing and they were “criminals”, but after a while I started to second guess myself. I then realized that they probably were as good of a person as me and just as loyal to the U.S. maybe even better.
Running may be one of the oldest and most developed sports out there. According to legend, the first marathon was run unintentionally in 490 B.C. by a Greek Soldier(James). The soldier ran twenty-five miles to Athens to announce battleground victory over the persians then dropped dead(James). In 1896 the marathon was included in the Olympic games, in Greece, for the first time(James). It was there that the first gold was won by a Greek runner with a time of two hours fifty-eight minutes and fifty seconds(James). The current world record for the fastest finish is two hours three minutes and fifty-nine seconds(James). Marathoning has turned into a world wide activity and every person who participates must endure intense training.