Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, was one of the most moving books I have ever read. Its incredible story would never have happened, however, except for the events of this day in 1943.
Louis Zamperini was born to Italian immigrant parents in 1917. Growing up in Torrance, California, he ran track in school, setting the national high school mile record. He went on to compete in the 1936 Olympics and was prepared to compete in the 1940 Games, but they were canceled with the outbreak of World War II.
Zamperini then enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He became a bombardier on the B-24 Liberator. In May 1943, he and a crew went on a mission to search for a pilot whose plane had gone down. On May 27, their plane suffered mechanical failure and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Of the eleven men on board, only Zamperini and two other airmen survived the crash. The men were stranded on a raft together for forty-seven days. They survived the unrelenting sun, strafing runs by Japanese bombers, and circling sharks. They drank rainwater and ate birds that happened to land on the raft.
One of the men died at sea. Zamperini and the plane’s pilot, Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips, finally washed ashore on a Pacific island two thousand miles from the crash site. They were soon taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese, who tortured them for the next two years.
Zamperini was officially pronounced dead by the US military. He was released only after the war ended in 1945, when he returned to the United States.
Scarred by his horrific ordeal, he suffered from alcoholism and came close to divorcing his wife. Then he heard a Billy Graham sermon in Los Angeles in 1949, and the grace…
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