National Affairs: The Endurance of Lou Zamperini

A year ago the War Department announced the death of Louis Zamperini, onetime University of Southern California track star and 1936 Olympics miler—an announcement which his mother, in Torranee, Calif., refused to believe. Last week Lou Zamperini turned up. From Yokohama, Correspondent Robert Trumbull cabled the New York Times the story of what Zamperini had endured.

In May 1943, 200 miles from Palmyra Island, the B-24 in which Zamperini was a bombardier dived into the Pacific and exploded.

Zamperini, tangled in the wreckage of the cabin, some 40 feet (he estimated) under the sea, yanked the cord which inflated his lifebelt, wrenched a window open and shot up to the surface. Two others, Lieut. Russell A. Philips, of Princeton, Ind. and the red-headed tail gunner, whom Zamperini remembered only as “Maclntyre,” were the only survivors.

Miraculously two rubber rafts had also floated up. The three men got in and lashed them together. They took inventory: six lbs. of chocolate and enough water in emergency cans for a few swallows apiece for two days.

Dream of Eating. They caught two small fish and once Zamperini grabbed a baby shark by its tail and flipped it into the raft. By the same kind of desperate alertness they caught three small birds and four albatrosses which lit innocently on their rubber boats.

But in the weeks that followed weeks, that was all they had. Morbidly Philips and Maclntyre made Zamperini prepare imaginary meals for them, “describing the preparation of each dish, even to the exact quantity of each ingredient.” “How Long Will I Last?” On the 27th day a Jap plane spotted them, dived and raked them with machine-gun fire. Philips and Maclntyre, too weak to move, lay in the rafts feigning death. Zamperini went overboard, ducking under each time the Jap plane made a pass, until it finally went away. Unscathed, the three men floated on.

When Maclntyre’s mind began to wander, Zamperini threatened “to report him,” which brought the red-headed gunner back to normal for a few days. On the 33rd day he whispered in his agony, “How long will I last?” and Zamperini said gently, “You’ll die during the night.” Zamperini was a good prophet.

In the bright dawn Zamperini said the Lord’s Prayer and for half an hour, while Philips listened, delivered a eulogy of the young gunner, prayed again for his fellow Catholic and then gently, easily — so wasted was the body — pushed it over board. Zamperini and Philips floated on into the sixth week of their ordeal.

They began to see more planes, which they identified in the distance as Japanese. Then one day a storm broke over them, flung them up on the crest of a wave and gave them a sudden, unbelievable view of a patch of green. By that time, incapable even of joy, Zamperini could only say flatly: “There’s an island over there.” They paddled weakly all that day and night, until a second storm swept them inside a coral-ringed lagoon in the Marshalls. It was the 47th day. Spotted by Japanese fishermen, Zamperini and Philips were lifted from the sea.

Prisoners of War. One ordeal was over. The fishermen treated them decently. And when Zamperini and Philips were delivered to the base at Wotje, Japs there also treated them decently. But when they were moved again to Kwajalein, another ordeal began.

Guards, jabbing them with pointed sticks, made them sing and dance for their amusement, hurled them food — gobs of rice — so that they had to scramble for the grains on the filthy cell floor. Learning that Zamperini was a famous miler, they forced him to compete against healthy Jap runners, bribed him (with food) to stall so the Japs could score a glorious victory.

They were shifted to Truk, put aboard a transport for Japan. Men in the crew, infuriated when the flyers said they thought Japan would lose the war, punched them in the face, broke Zamperini’s nose. For weeks he held the broken bones in place until they had healed.

In September, they arrived in Yokohama, where a Jap officer struck Zamperini’s nose with a flashlight because, when they were transporting him in a sedan, he could not get his long legs under a jump seat.

Then they were dumped into the prison camp at Amomori.

“The Bird.” The man Zamperini will never forget was Sergeant Watanabe, who made prisoners do “pushups” over latrine troughs until they collapsed with their faces in the excrement, who beat Zamperini on the head until he bled, gave him bits of paper to staunch the wounds and when the blood stopped, said “Oh, it stop, eh?” and beat him again. Watanabe had a head like a frog’s. The prisoners called him “The Bird.”

Zamperini was shifted to Naoetsu and to Naoetsu went The Bird, still practising his cruelties and abominations. When prisoners came out of the glutted, maggoty toilets, he forced them to lick clean their fouled shoe soles. At other times he lined up a handful of U.S. officers, ordered U.S. enlisted men to go down the line, punching each officer in the face, while he stood there crying, “Next, next” until it became a chant that haunted prisoners’ dreams.

It was at Naoetsu that Zamperini finally heard the news that Japan had surrendered. The Bird had already flown. Solicitous guards bowed Zamperini and Philips to freedom.

Last week, almost 28 months after he had crashed, Zamperini was headed home. If he knew he had to go through it again, he said bitterly, “I would kill myself.”