Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Audio Book
Tom Arthur
Rating: 10 of 10

On the surface, Unbroken is a story about survival, but deeper down it’s a story about forgiveness.  Hillenbrand tells the amazing tale of Louis Zamperini, a track and field star in high school and college.  Zamperini was on the verge of going to the 1940 Olympics and breaking the four-minute mile barrier when WWII caused the Olympics to be canceled.  Instead of heading to the Olympics Zamperini ended up in the Air Force on a B-24 bombing team.

On one standard flight Zamperini’s plane lost power and went down in the Pacific Ocean.  He and two others in various states of wellbeing survived the crash and pulled themselves into life rafts.  Setting a new record, but not the one that Zamperini had his eyes on, they drifted for 47 days surviving on sheer ingenuity and raw grit before being picked up by the Japanese Navy.

After being picked up by the Japanese, Zamperini was moved to a POW camp where he and other Allied POWs were treated beyond description.   He was eventually moved to another camp where Sergeant Watanabe, who the prisoners nicknamed “The Bird,” treated him even worse.  The Bird took a special interest in breaking down Zamperini.  Watanabe’s behavior was so atrocious that while I tend very heavily toward non-violent active resistance, I found myself rooting for someone to kill him and end the great evil that he was perpetuating on these prisoners.  When the war came to an end, The Bird deserted the camp and spent several decades hiding out in rural Japan eluding hundreds, even thousands of police who were hunting down war criminals.

Meanwhile, when Zamperini and the rest of his fellow POWs were liberated from prison camp after the end of WWII, he and many other POWs experienced a very difficult time transitioning back into normal life back in the States.  Zamperini married, but his life went downhill quickly due to the effects of PTSD.  His attempt to “medicate” through alcohol led him into heavy alcoholism while The Bird continued to show up and terrorize Zamperini in his dreams.  Zamperini set his mind on returning to Japan, hunting down The Bird, and killing him for revenge.

Many years later during the Cold War, Japan and The United States signed a treaty of peace that effectively ended the hunt for war criminals and Watanabe came out of hiding and began to build a very prosperous business and live a very luxurious lifestyle.

Back in the States, Zamperini and Cynthia, his wife, conceived and gave birth to a daughter.  Eventually Zamperini treated them both so badly that Cynthia decided to move out.  After moving out, she went to a Billy Graham crusade and ended up dragging Louis back to hear Graham speak.  Zamperini was incredulous at first but eventually gave his life to Christ.  He immediately went home and threw away, among many other things, all his alcohol.  That night Zamperini slept peacefully for the first time since leaving the POW camp.  The Bird never showed up again in his dreams.

In 1998 Zamperini was invited to run one leg of the Olympic torch ceremony being held in Nagano, Japan, the location of his POW camp.  He decided to try to meet The Bird and offer him forgiveness.  The Bird refused to meet, but Zamperini wrote him a very moving letter of forgiveness inviting him to become a Christian.  The Bird never responded.

Hillenbrand tells this story masterfully.  I found myself looking for reasons to get in the car so that I could listen to more.  I first read about this book in Time magazine, and had no idea that it would turn out to include a Christian conversion in the end.  I found myself on a parallel emotional ride to Zamperini.  I wanted The Bird dead.  I wanted to take my own shot at The Bird, but by the end of the book, Zamperini reminded me that as a Christian, we are all called to something much better than revenge: forgiveness.

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