War is serious stuff. Life is, too. Laughter helps us make it through.
When I was based at Hickam Field in Hawaii during World War II, the soldier in charge of the base Officers’ Club had to keep the billiard tables and the slot machines in good repair. He also cashed our paychecks. For some reason he was always irritable when we showed up; later we found out that although he was a lieutenant, we made more than he did because of flight pay. He complained every time we went in. “I put up with more stuff than you do,” he told me. “You go up there, you enjoy flying, and you get paid extra money for it.” Right. I really enjoy flying and getting shot at, I thought.
I said, “Why don’t you come up with us and fly the plane, and see how difficult it is.”
Of course it’s not that difficult—takeoffs and, especially, landings are more dangerous.
He agreed. We put him in the copilot’s seat. I had to crawl through the nose to go down to the navigator’s table. Right in front of the navigator’s table are the chains that connect to the pilot’s foot pedals. They work on something like a motorcycle chain, up and down. We’re on the intercom and the pilot says, “Okay, I’m turning it over to …”
The minute the lieutenant took the controls, I pulled down on the pedal chain from below. Then I suddenly pulled up on the chain. The plane jerked, and he screamed. I did this a couple of times until he gave up and the pilot took over.
The pilot asked him, “What’s wrong? This flies almost by itself.”
“Well, give me another try,” the lieutenant said.
I pulled the same stunt.
He finally gave up and said, “Well, I guess you guys really do earn your flight pay.”
After he was gone, we had a good laugh. Sure, we wanted to put him in his place, but we weren’t trying to be mean. We’d lost so many planes. Eleven in one year just around the islands. We could go down in a raid at any time. We had to have a sense of humor and an outlet for the anxiety lest it get the better of us.
One of my best stunts only involved a bit of chewing gum.
At Hickam, we were supposed to take off and follow various headings to test the accuracy of our plane’s compass. While the ground crew readied the aircraft, and before any crew showed up, I walked around the ship, casually chewing gum, like I was doing an inspection. My destination was the two small holes near the nose that were the drain openings for hoses in the cockpit that connected to the pilot relief tubes; in other words, funnels into which the pilot and copilot peed while flying. The urine ran down the hoses and the wind sucked it out.
I plugged both holes with gum. It was revenge because some of my private rations had gone missing.
When the crew showed up, I went to my post in the bomb bay and we taxied to the end of the runway for takeoff.
Procedure called for closing the bomb-bay doors just prior to hitting the gas. Before the doors shut I dropped onto the tarmac and dashed off the runway. Russell Philips took off assuming I was on board. Instead, I headed for Honolulu.
Later, the engineer gave me a blow-by-blow description of all the fun I’d missed. When Phil had to pee he used his funnel. Instead of emptying, it filled to the brim. Phil needed one hand to balance the funnel so it didn’t spill. He had no idea why there was a problem so he called the engineer, who decided he should pour the excess into the copilot’s funnel. The copilot didn’t mind, but first he wanted to take his leak. When his funnel filled as well, no one could believe it. Two malfunctions simultaneously?
There they were, balancing their funnels and trying to fly. When they hit some turbulence it was all over.
The engineer found the problem after landing, and pulled out the gum. By then everyone realized I wasn’t aboard. They came looking for me. But I was already gone.
When I got back they were half pissed, half laughing. My punishment was to pay for a few beers, after which they felt much better.
WE ALSO HAD to find ways to laugh in POW camp—anything to keep away the dread.
At Camp 4-B, in Naoetsu in northwestern Japan, the place was infested with rats. I slept on the upper deck of a two-tier bunk, and the rats—sometimes as big as rabbits—had no fear. Occasionally I could feel them at night, running over my stomach, stopping, moving on to the next man. If you tried to push them away, they’d bite you.
Enough was enough. I made a crude paddle and slept with it right across my throat. Sure enough, one night a huge rat walked onto my belly and stopped there. I gripped the paddle and went WHACK! Everybody heard that—and the loud, surprised squeak that followed. The whole place broke into laughter. I didn’t kill the rat, but I must have stunned him as he was a little slow in scrambling away. We’d scored one for our side and it felt good.
Being overrun by rats is of course no laughing matter, but it was an inescapable truth. The best humor is based on truth when it lets us acknowledge an uncomfortable or unmentionable yet common experience. You feel better if only for a moment.
Besides, given our situation we knew that the rats had it nearly as bad as we did. Maybe they were laughing at the insanity of it all, as well.
Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In
The day after liberation from Naoetsu, 1945. Louie, front row, third from the left.
You Are the Content of Your Character
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After drifting almost two thousand miles west on the Pacific Ocean, Pete and I were “rescued” by the Japanese—Mac had died on the thirty-third day and we’d committed his body to the sea—and eventually shuffled from prison camp to prison camp. I spent a year at Ofuna, a secret interrogation facility near Yokohama, and was then transferred to Omori prison camp, located on a man-made island on Tokyo Bay. There I was punished relentlessly even though I’d done nothing wrong.
My troubles started on the first day when Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a brutal prison guard that had been nicknamed the Bird before I got there—if we’d called him something filthy, as he deserved, and he found out, he might have punished the whole camp—singled me out.
We were lined up and he came out strutting, acting like a god. He walked by and looked everybody over, stopping in front of each person. He looked at me. His eyes were black and sadistic. I looked away. Whack! He knocked me down. Apparently, if you looked away he punished you. “Why you no look in my eyes?” This time I did look. The problem was that if you looked he also knocked you down. I was on the ground, bleeding. He pulled out a tissue, as if he were sorry, and reached down and handed it to me. I thought, Oh, the guy can’t be all that bad. I dabbed the blood coming out of my head and I stood up. Bang, he hit me again. Down I went, and this time I had no illusions that he was a psychopath—and I was completely at his mercy.
Thereafter he always hounded me. I tried to stay in the background, but he’d find me. He’d come to the barracks with two guards and call everyone to attention. He’d look around the room and come straight for me. “You come to attention last,” he’d say, then take off his big belt with a big steel buckle, and crack me across the head.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
The Bird, a sergeant, couldn’t handle power. He had a camp full of high-ranking officers—submarine commanders, colonels, captains, lieutenants—and must have felt like a kid in a candy store. He realized he could tell us what to do, and it kind of went to his head. If we hesitated after he gave us an order we’d get beaten. He didn’t really need an excuse, though. I had it rough, but other prisoners sometimes had it worse. The bottom line is that we were all extremely obedient.
When the Bird abused me, I was angry. I have Italian blood. I wouldn’t show it, but I had revenge written all over my heart where he couldn’t see it. It wasn’t the pain, it was the humiliation. Who likes to be humiliated? You feel like a nobody. I’m a survivor and I wouldn’t give up, but I hated the Bird even more than I hated sharks. I would never say, “Oh, well, the shark’s only hungry.” “Oh well, the Bird is just doing his job.” No. Anything that’s trying to kill you is your enemy.
One day, instead of a beating, the Bird surprised me by asking if I’d consider making a broadcast at Radio Tokyo. I had no intention of participating in anything treasonous or morally suspect. On the other hand, a broadcast might be a way to let my family know that I was still alive. (I didn’t know it, but since Omori was a secret camp, no one at home knew what had happened to me. They assumed the worst. ) I talked to the senior officers at camp to find out what they thought. I was shocked when they didn’t object. Other prisoners had done the same, they explained, using the opportunity to send sly messages back home without compromising themselves. I made a plan.
I told the Bird I would do it. Two men from Radio Tokyo (or so they said; they were probably intelligence officers) asked me to write my own speech.
On November 18, 1944, they drove me to the radio station and gave me the grand tour. Radio Tokyo was in a beautiful new building. I had lunch in their American-style cafeteria. They showed me hotel-style rooms with beds and linens—very different from the plank I slept on at Omori. This was seduction at its most intense.
I made my broadcast, and managed to slip in messages that other soldiers were also alive. I wouldn’t know this for many months, but news of my broadcast brought joy to friends and my family. It seems my parents had already received the letter from President Roosevelt declaring me dead. So they were beside themselves at the news that rumors of my demise were premature, to say the least.
TWO WEEKS LATER the two “employees” of Radio Tokyo brought me back to the station. They complimented my “beautiful radio voice,” gave me a heavy winter overcoat, and took me to the cafeteria. There I met one American and two Australian soldiers who the Japanese said were also doing broadcasts—and enjoying the benefits of cooperation. All three shook my hand but kept their eyes downcast at the floor. To me, that read clearly as, “Hey, I’m sorry I got into this mess. I’m ashamed. Don’t do it.”
I wish they’d taken their own unspoken advice. But I now knew that the whole rationale behind being singled out almost daily for the Bird’s brutal attention was to soften me up to be used as a propaganda pawn. Why? Because I wasn’t simply an unknown soldier. I was well-known at a time when winning athletes were like movie stars. (Nothing’s changed.) When the miserable are offered a better life, most will accept it. The three soldiers I’d met were willing to exchange cooperation for a clean bed and some food.
Had I been allowed to write my own script again, or speak off the cuff—anything that wouldn’t compromise me or smell of treason—I might have taken the opportunity to be on the radio again. But this time the intelligence agents wanted me to read what they’d written.
I read a few sentences to myself. It stunk.
I said, “No, I can’t read this.”
“But you must read it.”
“No. First of all, it doesn’t sound like me.” I shouldn’t have said that because they thought they just had to change a few words to make me happy. I declined their offer. “No. I positively cannot read this.”
Here’s how their script began, exactly as they typed it: “Well, believe it or not … I guess I’m one of those ‘lucky guys,’ or maybe I’m really unlucky … Anyway … here’s me, Louis Zamperini, age, 27, hometown Los Angeles, California, good ole United States of America speaking. What I mean by lucky is that I’m still alive and healthy …”
They walked out of the room and had a conference. While they were gone I snuck a copy of the speech into my pocket and prayed they wouldn’t miss it. When they returned one said, “Because you refuse to read this, I think you go to punishment camp.”
I think? Did he mean that I had one last chance to reconsider?
“No, I positively can’t do it,” I insisted. I’d taken an oath as an officer and made a promise as an American to be loyal and defend my country. The Japanese could punish me all they wanted to, but they couldn’t change my character. Without it, I was nothing.
I also realized that despite being threatened with punishment camp, saying no to the second broadcast might actually work in my favor. If I had to switch camps, then at least I’d be away from the Bird. Anything would be better than the way I currently lived.
To my surprise, the Bird was transferred before I was—maybe he’d been punished because I wouldn’t cooperate. Eventually, my turn came. On March 1, 1945, I was sent by train to Naoetsu, 250 miles northwest of Tokyo.
We lined up in the courtyard of camp 4-B for an inspection. Snow covered the ground in ten-to twelve-foot drifts. The icy minutes dragged by. Finally, the company commander emerged from a tin shack. It was the Bird.
As I wrote in Devil at My Heels, “I steadied myself on the man next to me in line. But inside I gave up all hope. I thought, Oh, what they’ve done to me! This is futile. There’s no escape. It was the lowest ebb. The cruelest joke. The kiss of death. I realized I’d never get away from the Bird.
“Watanabe marched down the line and found me. His black eyes bored into mine. It was impossible to look at him, and impossible to look away. His face twisted into a sick, sardonic smile. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.”
But I couldn’t give up hope. Not my style. I would do what I had to do to survive. From that moment until the end of the war, when we were freed, I would really come to understand the meaning of “Don’t give up, don’t give in.”
Never Let Anyone Destroy Your Dignity
_______
During the two-plus years I lived in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, I noticed that the soldiers who suffered the most were the ones who wouldn’t accept their situations. We needed all our meager strength and mental energy simply to get through the day. Those guys drained their personal resources by refusing to accept our (we all hoped) temporary lot. I decided to consider my incarceration as a challenge—like winning a race. That gave me purpose. Sure, I wished I was home with my family, but I had to deal with the reality.
I had taken the Bird’s daily beatings at Omori, and then at Naoetsu. I had to. I never complained. I just got knocked down, bled, got up, got knocked down, bled, got up. I expected it. I wouldn’t let it get me down. Sometimes it took me two days to recover, but I always had a positive attitude. Steely, but positive. No way would he break me.
One day the Bird asked me to take care of a goat and warned, “If the goat dies, you die.” The goat died. I knew he could kill me, but he chose instead to humiliate me. Maybe he thought he would finally break me, but I can’t really guess what was in his head. My punishment: hold a heavy wooden plank above my head while he watched—and watched, and watched.
I lasted thirty-seven minutes. A camp-mate timed it. Brutal. No one could believe, least of all the Bird, that I didn’t give in. I might have gone longer but the Bird punched me in the stomach, causing me to drop the plank.
The great lesson of my life is perseverance. Never give up. It’s like my brother said, “Isn’t one minute of pain worth a lifetime of glory?”
I wasn’t reaching for glory at Naoetsu. I just wouldn’t give the Bird the satisfaction of destroying my dignity. Don’t let anyone take yours away, either.
Hate Is a Personal Decision
_______
Long after I’d come back from the war, I spoke at a middle school near my home. A few days later, I got a stack of letters from the students. In one, a girl wrote, “After you left I went to a girl in my class who I’ve hated for two years and asked her to forgive me. Now we’re the best of friends.”
Beautiful.
When I counseled troubled kids, I found that they had lots of serious hate: for their situations, sometimes their families, society, the rules, and often themselves. I knew from my own experience that there is a twisted kind of satisfaction that comes from hating. You hate and hate and hate, and think you’re getting even by hating. But it’s a ruse. It’s a cover-up. Hate destroys—but not the object of your hatred. It destroys you.
Hate is more damaging than alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease.
Hate is a personal decision.
A war buddy lost a leg in Japan, but he survived the conflict and the prison camp. After the Japanese surrender, we traveled home from Manila and stayed together in the hospital in Hawaii. Sometimes we’d go to the beach. He never wanted anyone to think of him as handicapped because he was a one-legged-man, so sometimes, just for the heck of it, we’d wrestle. He was heavier and stronger and people seemed to get a big kick out of watching us having fun.
Back in the States he was fitted with a prosthetic leg, and we’d go out on the town—to the Florentine Gardens and other dinner clubs in Hollywood. He’d have a great time, even dancing. In those days, because we were veterans, we could get dinner, drinks, and almost everything for free if we’d just get up and say a few words during intermission. This happened a lot to me because thanks to the press and the photographers who trailed me, I was something of a celebrity.
It sounds like fun, right? But my friend was falling apart inside, and it gradually became apparent from the outside. He wouldn’t eat rice in the prison camp, and he never touched it after the war. He grew increasingly bitter, and his hate became more and more intense. He ended up working in the control tower at LAX, and I used to drop by. It didn’t take long before he’d get on to how he hated the Japanese because they’d cut his leg off when it wasn’t necessary. Maybe so, but that was the past. He had his whole life ahead of him, but he couldn’t embrace the present or the future. His hate had destroyed his spirit.
If you cling to the axe you’re grinding, eventually you’ll only hurt yourself.
The True Definition of Hero
_______
I never think of myself as a hero. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say, but I always keep in mind a verse from Proverbs: “Let others boast of you, but not with thine own mouth.” (I guess even God thinks it’s better to have someone else be your PR man.)
“Hero” is an easy word for people to use and maybe over-use. These days anyone who does anything that involves encountering danger is called a hero. I understand the sentiment, and I support the brave men and women on the front lines as police and firefighters and soldiers. I have nothing but the greatest respect for someone who puts themselves in harm’s way for another, and for those who do good deeds above and beyond the call of duty, like being a teacher or a doctor where most fear to tread. I suppose we can’t have enough heroes among us, but I don’t apply that word to myself. When I speak somewhere, say at a Veterans’ Day or Memorial Day observance, and I’m introduced as an “Olympian and a war hero,” I correct that. The heroes are the guys and gals sitting in the audience with missing legs or arms, or a mother or dad who lost their kid in the war, or a brother or sister.
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