This is one of the most compelling true stories that I've read. We last heard from Laura Hillenbrand almost a decade ago when she published "Seabiscuit." Now she's back with the story of Louis Zamperini, whom I had never heard of before this book.
Zamperini grew up in Torrance, California. He ran in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin in front of Hitler, and actually got to meet The Fuherer. Then came the war where he was drafted and his plane where he was a gunner was shot down over the Pacific.
He and a colleague survived for weeks in an open boat in the shark-infested waters of the Pacific before they were captured by the Japanese. Zamperini spent the last years of the war in various POW camps in Japan. He survived the beatings and torture of the prison camp and was freed in August of 1945 when Japan unconditionally surrendered.
Bothered by post traumatic stress syndrome after the way, Zamperini got relief from religion and ended up going back to Japan to confront and forgive some of his POW tormentors. He is still alive today at age 93.
It's quite a compelling story, told by a master storyteller in Laura Hillenbrand.
I was amazed to read about how brutal the Japanese prison camps were. There were trials and reckonings after the war, but the case is the Japanese treatment of prisoners was far worse than German treatment. The Japanese broke every intermational rule in the book.
Today they are our friends. It's amazing to think about given what is described in this book about the brutality of the Japanese in this war.
It's a great story, and one day we'll hear about the hoopla of a movie I'm sure.
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