In Conversation
Laura Hillenbrand and Louie Zamperini
Running
What did you learn from your older brother, Pete?
If it hadn’t been for Pete, I don’t know where I would have ended up. I was a thief, I was a juvenile delinquent, my whole life was to figure out how to get something for nothing. Pete pinned me down and said, “Do you want to be a bum all your life or do you want to amount to something?” He was my older brother, so I kind of worshipped him, wished I could be like him. It’s important that you have a role model. Then you have to make a decision to try to be like your role model. I loved my brother and I accepted him as my mentor.
He introduced you to running and taught you discipline.
Yeah, he taught me discipline. He said you can be a champion or you can be a flop. He kept on me until finally I started to want to be a winner, to want to be a champion. The desire I had in trying to get away with evil was channeled into running. I told my brother, “Yes, I want to be an athlete,” and after that, boy, I tell you, I was a fanatic.
Why did running appeal to you?
The most important thing to me was recognition. That’s probably why I was always in trouble: I never got any recognition for being an athlete or student or anything else, so I got mine from stealing from the bootleggers, stealing pies from the bakery, stealing whatever I could get my hands on.
In my second race, there were three runners ahead of me, and coming down the homestretch, I gunned it. I didn’t intend to win, I just wanted to pass somebody. But the students were screaming, “Come on, Louie! Come on, Louie!” I was nobody, and then all of a sudden, even though it was a race nobody had ever heard of, here were the kids calling my name, and I had no idea they even knew my name. That was recognition, and I thought, “Golly!” I looked at all these kids in the grandstand and I didn’t know them but I loved them because they were cheering for me.
When I started running and got some recognition, I wanted more recognition. So I did everything I could to get it, and I got in the best shape of my life. I kept doubling my training and got to the All City Finals. I came in fifth and got a medal, and they gave me a little pin to put on my sweater. Oh boy, that was like an Olympic gold for me. I wore that proudly around school. I had gotten self-esteem from fighting other boys, but I got more self-esteem as a runner because I was doing something legitimate and good.
The Crash and the Raft
When Green Hornet was falling out of the sky, what did it feel like to be in a plane that was about to crash?
A terrible, hollow feeling in my stomach. You’re just bracing yourself, hoping that there’s one chance in a million you’re going to survive, and that’s the way it was until we hit the water. But you’re petrified, because at that speed, and with a wing tipping over, you know the plane’s going to blow up, and you just assume that you’re going to die. But there’s always a hope that you might not, and that little bit of hope is with you until the crash. But you have a hollow feeling in your stomach when you know this is it.
After you crashed, you knew that very few raftbound men were rescued, and you knew that you were two thousand miles from land, so your chances of surviving were almost zero. But you never thought you were going to die. Why not?
That’s part of my life as an athlete. You never give up. That’s one thing that’s good about competition—you want to win no matter who you’re running against. On the raft, I was running against nature, storms, hot sun, cold nights, starvation, thirst. There are so many things that are against you, and you really have to use your mind and try to adjust the best you can and take advantage of every situation.
What were your emotions when you encountered the huge great white shark in the middle of the night?
We were there, three of us huddled, hardly breathing. That great white, he had to be eighteen to twenty feet long, and he kept splashing water in on us to see if we were something he could eat. He kept throwing water on us at both sides of the raft, and we just kept silent until he decided that we were nothing edible, gave up, and disappeared. But boy, you talk about being frightened. That shark was so big he would only have had to bite through the raft once.
Historically, a lot of starving castaways have resorted to cannibalism, deciding that the only way that anyone will survive is if someone is sacrificed. Why was that something you could never consider?
I think that as a human being you have a respect for other human beings, whether they’re alive or dead. Cannibalism never, ever crossed my mind. I’d rather be dead than live with that on my conscience. To me it was repulsive. We all thought the same way.
What are your thoughts about Mac, who panicked and ate all the chocolate on the raft on the first night but later tried hard to help out?
At first, I thought, wow, I’ve got a real problem with him. But every time he did something right I knew I had to compliment him, and he just kept changing and changing. One day the sharks were jumping on the raft trying to take me out, two of them, one right after the other. I’m pushing them back into the water with my hand on the ends of their noses. And then Mac grabs an oar and the two of us were punching them out with the oars, and they finally gave up. Well, boy, I really complimented Mac, and he kept getting better and better. He just turned out beautifully, and it was breaking my heart to see him dying.
He asked me if he was going to die, and I said, “Yeah, Mac, you’re going to die tonight.” I gave him a swig of water, and he lay back and waited. He died that night. It was pathetic. He finally became a real man, a hero, and then he’s dying. But it was precious to me to see the radical change in him, how he was willing to help doing everything now, which he wasn’t to begin with.
Prison Camp
When you were in Kwajalein and the POW camps, the guards, especially the Bird, treated you in a terribly dehumanizing way. What does it do to your spirit to be stripped of your dignity?
It’s the worst thing of all. You can’t believe another human being can treat you so subnormally, like you’re some kind of creeping thing on the ground. We had never run into anybody that would dehumanize you like the Japanese. They treated us like dirt. You feel like you want to kill these guys. It’s the worst feeling ever. But what can you do? You just lay there, helpless.
I learned one thing: Accept everything and try to stay alive. But I was just totally humiliated. The Bird treated me like a nonentity, and that is the hardest thing in the world to accept. That’s the way he treated me and that’s the way I felt. It strips you of your dignity. The only way we could maintain our dignity was among ourselves; that’s why there was so much cooperation among the POWs. We didn’t fall apart in prison camp because we knew if we didn’t support one another, they had us.
In camp, you played a trick on a particularly vicious guard called the Weasel, shaving his eyebrows so he looked like a woman. You took a huge risk in doing this. Why did you do it?
I loved humor, and I saw a chance to draw some humor with the Weasel and it worked. It raised morale. If you’re ill and you go to a doctor, he gives you a shot and puts you back on your feet, so that was like a shot. It really put me back on my feet.
When you were at your lowest moment, what thought helped you go on?
In running, you’re at your lowest moment coming down the homestretch, but you just get yourself to think, “I’ve got to win.” If you know you can’t win, you’ve got to think, “I’ve got to finish.” I think being an athlete is a great asset to a prisoner of war because you always have that desire to come out on top. Your mind is always working to see what you can do to stay alive. You just have to go on. On the raft, there was no way I was going to give up. In prison camp, I was the same way.
What else helped you survive?
Survival training. I advise people to take survival training on land, sea, and in the air. Because when you wind up against a real foreign situation, it’s so important to be able to adapt. Taking survival courses makes you more adaptable to something foreign, even when the training is not directly related to the survival moment.
What did you miss most about home?
The first thing you think about is freedom and food. I thought of the love and concern of my family. And I thought of my mom, the greatest cook in the world. I thought of all those great dinners where she’d make her dishes—lasagna, risotto, and her pasta, her cookies.
The Bird wanted you to give in to him, and if you had, maybe he would have punished you less. But you couldn’t bring yourself to give in, keeping your fists clenched, looking the Bird straight in the eyes, refusing to fall down when he hit you. Why couldn’t you give in?
Pride. I think we all have pride. I’m an Olympic athlete. I’m congratulated constantly on my athletic ability. I’ve earned the love and affection of students in school. And then I came up against a guy like Watanabe and it was hard for me to take.
When I was a kid, being punished, I wouldn’t let anybody make me cry. I wouldn’t show fear in my eyes, and that was a big mistake. But that’s the way I was. I would never give anybody the satisfaction of seeing me cry. If I cried, then they might stop punishing me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got punched more and more, I said, “They’re not going to make me cry.”
It was the same way with the Bird. My buddies said, “Hey, what are you clenching your fists for?” and I said, “I want to punch the guy and I want to strangle him.” All the other prisoners told me to give in. But I looked defiantly at him and he’d just keep working me over. I would stand my ground, too proud to fall down.
How far would you have gone to avoid becoming a propaganda prisoner or giving away military secrets in interrogation?
I would have died before I’d give in. I couldn’t. I’d rather be dead, because if I did it, I couldn’t live with myself the rest of my life. And I’d rather end it and not have the shame embedded in my mind and my heart.
Coming Home, Forgiveness, and Looking Back at a Remarkable Life
How did you feel when you were free, you stepped off the plane in California, and you finally saw your family again?
I had a fantastic family. We were a big family of helping one another and loving one another. When I got off the plane and there was my mom, my dad, my two sisters, and my brother, my emotions almost cracked. That’s an emotion I can never explain. It was just phenomenal.
If you had killed the Bird, do you think you would have gotten over the war?
I don’t think so. He treated me so brutally that I thought, “I’ve got to get even,” and I figured I could get away with it. But I don’t know what kind of satisfaction that would be.
I’m glad that I got over my post-traumatic stress and forgave all the guards, including the Bird. That was a great moment in my life. I’ll never forget it. Since then, I’ve never had a slight inkling of post-traumatic stress, no visions of the war at all. Everything has left my mind. I can think now, “Yeah, I remember the bombing mission,” but those visions never enter my mind. I can sit down and reminisce.
Why is it important to forgive the people who hurt you?
Because if you don’t forgive, that’s eating at your soul. Forgiveness must be completely a hundred percent, with everything. If you haven’t forgiven, that’s gnawing on you, that’s gnawing on your soul, and it’s going to keep gnawing on you. And that’s why, when I forgave all the guards, including the Bird, I felt like I had just had a nice, clean shower.
How do you feel about the Bird now?
I feel sorry for him. I think he had a miserable life. I really feel sorry for him because he knows what he did and I think it got into him. When the amnesty was signed, he came out a free man. But to me he never could feel free because of all the damage he did, taking out his frustrations and his failures on prisoners of war.
Are you a hero?
I don’t like that word, hero. I’m a survivalist. If I can help somebody along the way, I’ll help them. That is a reward to me, a big reward. A survivalist will use his survival skills to help somebody else who needs help, and that’s the most gratifying thing in the world. To me a hero would be somebody who gave his life on the spot to save somebody else. All I was doing was using my training and my talent to survive and along the way helping everyone I could.
If the war hadn’t happened, it’s very likely that you would have been the world’s first four-minute miler and the 1940 Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist. When you look back, do you feel frustrated that the war took those chances from you?
Well, it’s a thing of the past, and all we can do is think about it, dream about it. I’ve had a great life, no matter what, no matter if I had won at the Olympics or not. I don’t think anybody in the world has had as adventurous a life as I have.
Louie Zamperini died peacefully in his sleep on July 2, 2014.
He was ninety-seven years old.