Lou Zamperini grew up in Torrence, California to immigrant Italian parents. Adjusting to life is California was not easy for the Zamperinis as they struggled to make ends meet and often depended on hunting rabbits for survival. But this is not the story that Laura Hillenbrand is going to tell you in Unbroken.
Unbroken is the story of willful and often wild, little Lou Zamperini, grown up. Lou Zamperini went from being a scourge for the local Torrence residents – damaging property and stealing things from their kitchens – to putting Torrence, California on the international map as Lou joined the US Track & Field Olympics team.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (July 29, 2014)
ISBN: 0812974492, 978-0812974492
Willfulness was inherent in Lou. Track & Field training and his older brother taught him perseverance and determination. And it was perhaps these string of events in his childhood and youth that allowed this man and his B-24 bomber mate to survive nearly seven weeks adrift at sea.
Afraid of flying and planes as a kid, Lou became part of one of the most successful B-24 teams in the Pacific theater. Experimenting on new planes and flying missions that were almost suicidal, Lou Zamperini’s story is one of the many brave soldiers who gave up their life for equality and freedom when drafted into the Army or Air Force.
Laura Hillenbrand captures Lou Zamperini’s life as a kid and a young ambitious, hopeful athlete who travels to Germany just before the war. Through numerous interviews with Lou and his relatives the author stitches a 360 degree view of his life before and after the war in a compelling narrative.
But the crux of the book is Lou’s mammoth effort to survive for weeks at sea, only to be captured by the Japanese. Discussed much less than Hitler’s Germany, the Japanese army was equally brutal and at one time had declared to kill all American POWs. The sea didn’t kill Lou and so couldn’t the sadistic Japanese soldiers who relentlessly tortured him. The end to the ordeal in Japanese captivity ended with Hiroshima bombing. But the return to the US marked the beginning of a new struggle.
A young boy who once dreamed of winning glory for his country, found that he was too damaged physically to grace the tracks again. With a series of wrong moves, and nightmares from the troubled past life, Lou had a new fight on his hands.
So how do you emerge Unbroken from a trauma that took every last bit of energy and determination to survive and then return to a life that doesn’t really measure up to the glory of growing up as a national athlete? Must be that willful child hidden deep inside that refused to give up.