In Front | Modern-Day Dishonor and Vindication: Louis Zamperini

We have talked at length about Plot #2, a cycle where a person experiences crisis, abandonment, a reversal and vindication. 

Louis Zamperini is a modern-day example of someone who lived out the dishonor and vindication plot pattern. Let’s get acquainted with his story and consider how it can inspire us. 

Immortalized in several biographical movies and books (including a New York Times bestseller), Louis Zamperini’s life offers moving examples of crises overcome.

Zamperini was born on January 26, 1917 in New York. He would later describe his childhood-self as a “nasty kid.” He was bullied and in turn became a bully himself. To direct Louis away from his delinquent lifestyle, his older brother Pete pushed Louis to clean up his act and take up track-and-field athletics. After much training and hard work, he became a successful runner. He went on to become the youngest distance runner ever for a U.S. Olympic team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

In 1941, Zamperini joined the U.S. Army Air Forces for World War II, serving on the infamously dangerous and accident-prone B-24 bombers. He survived many close scrapes and lost many crewmates and fellow service members. In May 1943 while on a search mission, the B-24 he was on crashed into the ocean and killed all but three of those onboard. Zamperini and his two remaining crewmates drifted in a life raft at sea, subsisting only on rainwater, a couple albatrosses, and the small fish they managed to catch. They survived storms and strafing from a Japanese bomber. One crewmate, Francis McNamara, died after 33 days; Zamperini and the remaining crewmate, pilot Russell Phillips, survived at sea for 14 more days. They were captured by the Japanese navy on their 47^th day at sea.

Zamperini and Phillips were treated harshly aboard the Japanese ship that picked them up. They were eventually transferred to a secret interrogation center in Ofuna, where they were starved and tortured. Meanwhile in America, Louis and the rest of the crew of his crashed B-24 were pronounced killed in action and their families were notified of their deaths.

In 1944, Zamperini was transferred to Omori POW camp where he faced the obsessive attention of the sadistic Corporal Mutsuhiro Watanabe (known to the prisoners as “the Bird”). Watanabe was given complete freedom to torture and humiliate the POWs. Because of Zamperini’s Olympic fame, he was singled out for harsh treatment. He was refused the right to register with the Red Cross as a prisoner and was forced by means of torture to produce a propagandist message. Instead of complying with the script, he read only a message telling his parents he was alive. The continued squalid and abusive conditions Zamperini and his fellow prisoners had to endure were horrendous. 

Finally, in the fall of 1945, when the Japanese authorities surrendered, Louis’ POW camp was spared the fate of tens of thousands of prisoners—mass execution. Instead, Zamperini was allowed to return as part of the surrender. After hospitalization, he arrived home in October to a hero’s welcome. He later married Cynthia Applewhite in 1946 and began training again for the next Olympics.

Louis’ physical and psychological scars were extensive. He suffered from frequent nightmares and waking anxieties from his experiences as a Japanese prisoner. His mind frequently returned to desires of revenge on the Bird, who remained at-large and unpunished for his war crimes. Even his former passion for athletic competition was taken from him as multiple injuries prevented him from participating in competition. He soon took to drinking, and his marriage to Cynthia started to deteriorate. 

Faced with these difficulties and an impending divorce, Louis reluctantly gave in to Cynthia’s petitions that they attend a Los Angeles preaching crusade together—the 1949 event that marked the beginning of Billy Graham’s public prominence as an evangelist. Zamperini went back several nights in a row and eventually committed his life to following Christ. He immediately gave up drinking, and found that, along with his desires for vengeance on his former captors, his post-traumatic nightmares had ended. 

True to his commitment, Zamperini went on to become a Christian speaker and evangelist and founded a camp for troubled youth. Perhaps most movingly, he went back to Japan to seek out his former captors. He was able to locate a number of them and forgave them in person. He shared the gospel, and several of them responded to his invitation to become Christians. He and his wife Cynthia remained married till her death in 2001.

For further research: 

Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, 2010. 

Louis Zamperini and David Rensin, Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian’s Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II, 2003.

https://reasonabletheology.org/the-rest-of-the-story-louis-zamperini-after-unbroken/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/world-war-ii-isnt-over-talking-to-unbroken-veteran-louis-zamperini/382616/