THE TERRIBLE STORY OF LOUIS SILVIE "LOUIE" ZAMPERINI A PRISONER OF WAR SURVIVOR "WWII VETERAN.

 WWII veteran, prisoner of war survivor, and Olympic distance runner Louis Silvie "Louie" Zamperini  passed away yesterday at the age of 97. 


A film about his experiences, Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie and adapted from Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book, is due for release in December 2014.

Rest in peace, Sir.

Mr. Zamperini was born January 26, 1917 in Olean, New York to Italian immigrants Anthony Zamperini and Louise Dossi. The family moved to Torrance, California in 1919, where he attended Torrance High School. Mr. Zamperini and his family spoke no English when they moved to California, making him a target for bullies. His father taught him how to box in self-defense. 

To counteract his knack for getting into trouble, his older brother Pete got him involved in the school track team. His skills took him to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he finished eighth in the 5,000 meter distance event, but his final lap of 56 seconds was fast enough to catch the attention of Adolf Hitler, who insisted on a personal meeting. As Mr. Zamperini tells the story, Hitler shook his hand, and said simply "Ah, you're the boy with the fast finish." According to a profile on Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel radio program, Mr. Zamperini climbed a flag pole during the 1936 Olympic games and stole the personal flag of Hitler. 

Mr. Zamperini enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1941 and earned a commission as a second lieutenant. He was deployed to the Pacific island of Funafuti as a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator bomber. 

In April 1943, the plane was badly damaged in combat and the crew were assigned to conduct a search for a lost aircraft and crew. They were given another B-24, The Green Hornet, notorious among the pilots as a defective "lemon plane." While on the search, mechanical difficulties caused the plane to crash into the ocean 850 miles west of Oahu, killing eight of the eleven men aboard.

The three survivors (Zamperini and his crewmates, pilot Russel Allen "Phil" Phillips, and Francis "Mac" McNamara), with little food and no water, subsisted on captured rainwater and small fish eaten raw. 

They caught two albatrosses, which they ate and used to catch fish, all while fending off constant shark attacks and nearly being capsized by a storm. They were strafed multiple times by a Japanese bomber, puncturing their life raft, but no one was hit. McNamara died after thirty-three days at sea.

On their 47th day adrift, Zamperini and Phillips reached land in the Marshall Islands and were immediately captured by the Japanese Navy. They were held in captivity and severely beaten and mistreated until the end of the war in August 1945. 

Mr. Zamperini was held in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp at Ōfuna for captives who were not registered as prisoners of war. He was tormented by prison guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe (nicknamed "The Bird"), who was later included in General Douglas MacArthur's list of the 40 most wanted war criminals in Japan. 

Held at the same camp was then-Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington, and in his book, Baa Baa Black Sheep, he discusses Mr. Zamperini and the Italian recipes he would write to keep the prisoners' minds off the food and conditions. Zamperini had at first been declared missing at sea, and then, a year and a day after his disappearance, killed in action. When he eventually returned home he received a hero's welcome.

In 1946, he married Cynthia Applewhite, to whom he remained married until her death in 2001. After the war and suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Zamperini became a born-again Christian after attending a crusade led by evangelist Billy Graham in 1949 in Los Angeles.

 Graham later helped Mr. Zamperini launch a new career as a Christian inspirational speaker. One of his favorite themes is "forgiveness," and he has visited many of the guards from his POW days to let them know that he has forgiven them. Many of the war criminals who committed the worst atrocities were held in the Sugamo prison in Tokyo. 

In October 1950, Mr. Zamperini went to Japan, gave his testimony, and preached to them through an interpreter (a missionary named Fred Jarvis). The colonel in charge of the prison encouraged any of the prisoners who recognized Mr. Zamperini to come forward and meet him again. Mr. Zamperini threw his arms around each of them in forgiveness.

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