Justne Zamperini Unbroken Sparknotes

Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

In 2010, Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit would once again take the world by storm with her latest novel, Unbroken. The story follows Olympic runner Louie Zamperini through his troubled youth and later life. Without doubt, the story of Louie Zamperini is a story of survival, resilience, and redemption, covering the greatest feat of the human spirit, pushing him to the breaking point all the while testing his endurance in fatal situations.

Life wasn’t easy for Louie Zamperini, born to Italian immigrants Anthony Zamperini and Louise Dossi on January 26, 1917 in Olean, New York. Born before him was his older brother Pete, who would later save his troubled life,

and born after him, two younger sisters, Sylvia and Virginia, who would be left to grieve and mourn in the wake of his disappearance. From a young age, Louie was a incorrigable delinquent. It is said that when his mother wasn’t carrying him, she had no idea where he was. After a run in with pneumonia in 1919, and with urging by his peditrician, the Zamperini’s packed up and moved out to Torrance, California, where Louie and this three siblings would grow and mature. Unfortunately for the Zamperini’s, Torrance was not the most welcoming place for immigrants, especially since the family could not speak solid English when they moved there. This prompted bullies to target Louie and his family and lead to Louie’s first lesson in self defense, being taught how to box by his father Anthony. Louie would later take pride in his ability to beat others down and close family friends have said that he became addicted to the idea of getting even with his tormenters.

Throughout Louie’s youth, he was troubled. When things went missing, the police knew who’s door to knock on. Despite various methods of punishment, Louie continued to steal and argue and cause trouble in the town. When there was a fight, adults would give money to both parties involved to stop the fight and walk away, as a result Louie would start random fights just to scam some money out of the spectators. As Louie began High School, a new trend swept over California, the practice of eugenics. By definition, eugenics is “the practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population.” Those who were seen as genetically impure were imprisoned and neutered to keep them from reproducing, forced abortions and forced pregnancies were very common at the time. Louie began to fear being affected when a boy in the neighborhood was taken and narrowly escaped by his parent’s suing the state. He realized that he needed to change his ways in order to avoid being taken and tortured in the insane asylums. Of course, it would still take one last incident to convince Louie to change and become a better person. In one of his last crimes, Louie discovered that keys had a 1 in 50 chance of working on all locks. He found that one of his keys would unlock the backdoor to the Torrance High School Gym, and he took the opportunity to sneak himself and a few other people into basketball games without paying for a ticket. It went unnoticed for a long while, until more and more people began using the method and over time, the staff and faculty started counting more people than the ticket reigster had accounted for. When Louie was caught as the culprit, the principal banned him from attending and partaking in all activities, whether they be academic or physical. This prompted Pete, his older brother, to take up for him and explain that he did these bad things to get attention, and if he could be noticed for something good, he would be able to see the error of his ways and change.

In light of this, the principal allowed Louie to join the track team. With the urging of his brother Pete, Louie would train on a day to day basis. Louie would run while Pete rode his bike behind him, swatting at him if Louie was not running fast enough or if he stopped. In his first season of track, Louie was humiliated. He couldn’t run as fast as the others and therefore finished near last. He kept going, and he began improving, until he was finishing races at first place. He was finally accepted and was able to attend parties with the more popular crowd. He was once an outcast, but now, he was being elected for class president. After his first year, Louie became the first person to compete in the All-City Finals. Despite this change of personality and growth of character, Louie was still a rebellious teen. One day he decided to run away from home with a friend of his. His mother gave him a sandwhich and his father gave him two dollars, which at the time was a lot, especially since they didn’t have much. They caught a train leaving Torrance, but didn’t make it far. They were forced to jump off of the train by a railroad detective who held them at gunpoint. The two boys returned home, hungry, exhausted, and glad to be safe.

In 1933, Louie moved up in the ranks, at only 16 years old, he began competing with college runners, winning two UCLA meets. A year later, in 1934, Louie set a high school record, clocking the mile in at 4:21.3 minutes. He now had his eyes set on the Berlin Olympics, and being the youngest runner to ever attempt to join the US Olympic Team, he would need all the luck in the world. When he made the team, he embarked on a transatlantic journey that would end in Berlin, Germany, the home of the 1936 Olympic Games. After his performance in Berlin, he became known as “the boy with the fast finish”. He was famous, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi party, was humbled to shake his hand. He returned home to set more records, some that would leave an impression for the following fifteen years. When the world plunged into the depths of war, Louie voluntarily joined the Air Corps. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Louie was sent in with a crew of men to fight back. Major Johnathan Coxwell, James Carringer, George Moznette, along with Louie, took off on January 8, 1943.

Their first mission nearly killed them, they landed a plane with over 500 shots in it, and it would never fly again. The crew took time to relax until they were called upon for their next mission, a search and rescue. With only one available plane, The Green Hornet, they took to the skies. They flew side by side with another B-24 called The Daisy Mae, until they could no longer keep pace and parted ways. As they began the search, one of the engines failed and only the right side of the plane had power. There was no time to even out the aircraft before they hit the water and the crew braced for impact. The engineer had to release the life boat right before they hit the water, otherwise it would be cast out to sea and they would never find it. As the plane hit the water, Louie found himself wrapped in wires. He went on to say that he believes he passed out during the ordeal, woke, and swam to the surface, where he threw up the seawater and oil he had swallowed as he struggled to breathe. He described the ocean as being a mix of oil and fuel, with an occasional patch of blood here and there. It wasn’t long before the sharks came, rubbing against the raft, hoping for a feast. Louie, Phil, and Mac were the only three survivors and they knew they had a rough few months ahead of them. Old rafts didn’t have a mast or a sail, so they were forced to sit back and hope that they made it to land. The next few weeks were full of patching holes, reinflating rafts, fighting sharks with bare hands, and telling stories about food. They managed to kill and eat two sharks during their voyage, as retribution, they would go on to say. On the 33rd day adrift, Mac passed away as he said he would that very first day on the raft. When they first crashed into the ocean, Phil and Louie weighed roughly 150lbs. At the time of their capture, they weighed around 85lbs. They were fed a large meal to help them gain back the weight they lost before being shipped off to the next place.

On July 16th, Louie and Phil arrived on Kwajalein island and were greeted with beatings and interrogations.

They had still not gained back much weight, and their rations of three golf sized balls of rice weren’t helping either, and they had to pick it up off the floor when the guards tossed it in. Not only this, but they had to survive on two swallows of water a day, all while dealing with stomach ailments. After they had given the Japanese all of their false information on the B-24 Bombers, they were sent to Yokohama, Japan on August 23rd. Three weeks later, they arrived at Ofuna, a secret holding camp for unarmed combatants. Here, they were interrogated again, and Louie’s first interrogator was an old friend from college, Jimmie Sasaki. The two reminisced about college and Louie was never actually interrogated, but the guards made up for it with other cruel and unusual punishments. One of the most commonly used and referred to was the “Ofuna Crouch” where the inmates would be forced to stand with their knees bent halfway and their arms stretched above their heads for as long as the guards wanted them to. Aside from the crouching and the beatings, there was the lingering fear of death. The Japanese excercised a “kill-all” rule and a “no prisoners can go home” mentality. If the prison camp was threatened to be taken over by the Allied forces, all prisoners of war inside would be killed before they could be rescued. Louie still had a rebellious spirit in him, as he kept a diary that recorded his life leading up to the crash and what was happening at the time. He hid it under one of the floorboards in his cell to bypass the daily cell searches conducted by the guards. Despite everything, an escape plan began to spread through the prison. Another inmate, Harris, had been stealing and drawing up maps and invited Louie and Frank Tinker to join him. All seemed to be going well until his plans were unfoiled, and the punishment followed shortly after. The inmates

assumed the Ofuna Crouch position while Harris took a nasty beating from the guards. Soon after, Louie and Frank were released and sent to a real POW camp, where it was said that they were hooked up with the Red Cross and prisoners were permitted to send letters home to their families. They hoped that what they had heard was true, and their lives would be better.

Life could be anything but better at the camp, beatings doubled and letters sent home were burned and crumpled into a garbage can. They were forced to eat a strange assortment of intestines and horse meat, left overs from the butchers nearby. As B-29 Bombers closed in around the city, Japan surrendered, and the American planes began dropping supplies to the prisoners of war. They were released from the camps and sent to Japan’s biggest port, awaiting the evacuation team. Louie had made it, and he was now on his way home after three long years.

Louie went on to marry Cynthia Applewhite on May 25, 1946 and continued his running. While sprinting a two mile, his ankle gave out, and his career ended. Louie sank into depression and began to drink heavily, he wasted money on terrible investments and when the 1948 Olympics came about, it only brought more stress to the lives of Louie and his wife. His car was repossessed and he forbid Cynthia to go to church, blaming God for all of his problems. He continued to spiral downhill until Cynthia announced that she was pregnant with their first child. It seemed like Louie would step up to the plate to become a good father, but one night he had a dream about the Bird, one of the Japanese camp leaders. He had beat him to the ground and he was choking him, but when he woke, he was strangling his wife. Their daughter was born and although Louie was intent on being a good father, his drinking was out of hand, and in fear for herself and her daughter, Cynthia took her and left.

Heartbroken by the loss of his family, Louie attended a sermon. The first time, he angrily stormed out, and refused to return. The following Sunday, he came back, this time, he had a flashback to the day on the raft, when he was baffled at God’s creation, and he remembered a promise he made to God, that if he should survive he would serve the Lord for the rest of his days. Louie sat through the sermon this time, and in the fall of 1950, he willingly returned to Japan, to visit his tormentors. When he learned of the Bird’s suicide, he felt compassion and was saddened by the loss. As he walked into the cell block, the guards from the camps Louie stayed at were asked to come forward, and in the wake of his new born Christianity, Louie ran to greet them.

The tale of Louie Zamperini is no ordinary tale, it is a tale that expresses the strength of mankind. We all sit and wonder how we can change the world, we all wish we could do something to make the world a better place. Some of us will never find the answer, some of us will marvel at the good doings of others without giving a second thought to what we could do. Louie Zamperini found the answer, and he stood up and fought for it. He showed us that no matter what the odds, we can accomplish what we set our minds to. Much like the key had a 1 in 50 chance of fitting into that lock, we have a 1 in 50 shot of making something of ourselves. Without doubt, the story of Louie Zamperini is a story of survival, resilience, and redemption, covering the greatest feat of the human spirit, pushing him to the breaking point all the while testing his endurance in fatal situations.