My first book review!

“On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.”

Hardcover, 473 pages
Published November 16th 2010 by Random House (first published 2009)
Original title: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
ISBN: 1400064163 (ISBN13: 9781400064168)
<Above information from Goodreads >

Source & Format: Purchased; Nook e-book

Rating: $$$$$ No, not that it’s expensive, but that it’s worthy of the book budget!

Susan’s Review:

Well, I didn’t intend for this to be my first book review on the blog, but…reasons: (1) This was one of the first, if not the first, books I purchased on my Nook Color in 2010. (2) The subject of the book, Louis Zamperini, passed away recently (July 2, 2014), at the age of 97. And (3) There is a movie based on the book that is to be released in December 2014.

I first heard about this book in a review in the Wall Street Journal. I am a sucker for personal-interest historical accounts, especially of the WWII era, so this seemed right up my alley. Most of what I have read concerns the European theatre, but I have read a few books about the Eastern Front (The Zookeeper’s Wife) and some of the Pacific Theatre (The Rape of Nanking) but it seems as if these are relegated to red-headed stepchild status in light of the atrocities of the Nazi hell. Unbroken reminds us in vivid detail that the Nazis weren’t the only murderers on rampage in World War II.

History and social studies in school were snooze-fests for me. The textbooks go out of their way, it seems, to be as dry as possible. They are so busy regurgitating dates, events, and places that the people get lost, and so we lose the story. Not so in this book. Hillenbrand’s personal interviews of Zamperini and the people in his life makes them real, lets us experience what they are feeling, and puts the reader in the time and place. She makes it come alive in a way that textbooks never can do!

The first part of the book is about Louie’s coming-of-age in California. At high school age in the early 1930s, Louie was on the road to juvenile delinquency or incarceration. The nation was suffering from The Great Depression and, given his poor school history and lack of job skills, Louie’s future was not looking bright. To make matters worse, as the book mentions and I found fascinating, the eugenics movement was quite popular in California in the 1930s. Eugenicists hoped to strengthen the human race by removing the “undesirables” from the gene pool. Some eugenicists favored euthanasia, but forced sterilization was more common. According to the book, California ended up sterilizing about twenty thousand people. This hit home with Louie when a neighborhood boy was targeted, put away, and was “barely saved from sterilization through a frantic effort by his parents.” This made Louie turn his life around. His brother Pete tutored him academically and coached him in sports, specifically running.

Running seemed to be the salvation of Louie’s youth. He progressed through local and state track competitions, and ended up qualifying for and competing in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. In one of those “it must be real because no one would believe a fictional account” events, Louie stole a Nazi flag from the Reich Chancellery and met Adolf Hitler. Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up… As war clouds were gathering, Louie went to college and continued running, with the 1940 Olympics in sight. The 1940 Olympics were originally to be held in Tokyo, Japan, but after launching war on China, Japan withdrew. The Olympics were then awarded to Helsinki, Finland. Louie’s Olympic dreams died when the Soviets invaded Finland and they decided to cancel the Games altogether. Louie enlisted in the military.

The next section of the book discussed Louie’s experience in the life of the Army Air Forces, training and flying missions from bases in the Pacific. The accounts of terrifying missions, interspersed with the practical jokes of the men, brought the fighting men to life. I liked how Hillenbrand included other events, like the Wake Island POWs, in the story to bring out the atmosphere that Louie lived in. The incidents they lived through made for many MacGyver moments, which ultimately helped in Louie’s survival.

Part III of the book begins with the crash at sea of Louie’s plane, the Green Hornet. It was May 27, 1943. The narrative switches between the three survivors, family at home, and former crew members, but mostly the survival of the men lost at sea. The trials these men encountered – unreal. Sharks, no drinkable water, no food. Burning sun, cold nights. On July 14^th, after 46 days at sea, they sighted land. Captured by Japanese sailors, they found they had drifted to the Marshall Islands, some 2,000 miles from the crash. At this point, I had to look up maps of the area. That is a big body of water to float on.

Part IV recounts Louie’s Japanese POW experience. Beatings. Starvation. Injected with unknown substances. Tropical illnesses. Interrogations. Hillenbrand wrote descriptively about the Japanese society, its racism and belief of the Japanese people about their purity and the subhuman status of everyone else. This almost brainwashing of the Japanese people contributed to the idea that committing atrocities against POWs was good. Hillenbrand does a nice job of explaining this mentality, in that the culture considered capture to be weak – it was much preferable to die, as being captured was cowardly, and tainted not just the Japanese soldier, but his entire family. The camp guards, usually the lower ranks of Japanese military, had power over the prisoners, and used it. The Japanese had a kill-all policy in that, if an Allied rescue was likely, the guards were to kill all of the POWs. Today, as we know the many details of the Holocaust, we have forgotten the horrors of the Pacific Theatre of WWII. We need to be reminded of man’s inhumanity to man, so it will not be repeated. As for Louie and his fellow prisoners, well, God gives you the graces you need when you need them. The men found some hope in little acts of rebellion and subversion that bonded them together. In my opinion, this was the hardest part of the book to read because of the atrocities the POWs suffered.

The fifth and final part of the book covers the period after Louie was rescued and his post-war life at home. No spoiler here; if he had not survived, the book couldn’t have been written! This section was heartbreaking as Hillenbrand recounted Louie’s PTSD, alcoholism, marriage problems, and difficulties in working and re-entering society. After the things he went through…it’s no wonder! The turning point came when Louie went to an old-style tent revival; in an effort to save their marriage, his wife made him attend the Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angeles. For Louie, it was the right Word at the right time. He underwent a conversion of heart so profound that it helped him turn his life around, even to the point of forgiving his Japanese torturers.

To conclude –this is a great book. Well written, well documented. If you are interested at all in personal WWII accounts, you must read this book! When I grow up, I want to be as faithful and brave as Louie Zamperini.