Athena Mekis
Staff Writer
The Long Beach Area Council for Boy Scouts of America held its annual appreciation/recognition event Sept. 15, this time honoring American hero Louis Zamperini.
Laura Hillenbrand has reignited attention to Zamperini’s story due to the release of her book Unbroken, which has been on the New York Times’ best seller list for 43 weeks.
Unbroken is a nonfiction book that covers Zamperini’s life from troubled teen to messenger for Christ.
“Oprah hasn’t approved Unbroken,” said Pamela Bumgardner, development director for the Boy Scouts of America, who put together the event, but there have been numerous calls to her office from readers.
Book clubs, USC event coordinators, church event coordinators, veterans, and Olympians have all called Bumgardner in attempts to get Zamperini to speak at their events. He has been on a speaking tour for several months.
Bumgardner attributes the interest in Zamperini to people being “really hungry for inspiration.”
And the book is currently being made into a movie. James Franco and Ryan Gosling are being considered to star as Zamperini. If it were up to Zamperini, he would chose Tony Curtis, the actor who played Spartacus, to star in the movie.
Hillenbrand only signed over the movie rights to Universal after they agreed to give Zamperini a say in the movie.
Swimming Olympian John Naber met Zamperini at a USC Olympic party in 1983 and has been a good friend and coworker with Zamperini ever since.
Naber introduced Zamperini during the Boy Scout event and asked by a show of hands who had read the book Unbroken; a majority of hands in the room of over 400 shot up.
Naber describes Zamperini as having impeccable retention and timing.
It would seem that this is so because Zamperini has been retelling his American-hero stories ever since they happened.
Zamperini qualified for the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, Germany by tying with the faster runner in the 500-meter race. He placed eighth in the overall race.
While Zamperini was in Germany, he decided to take home a swastika flag as a souvenir and shimmied up a flagpole 50 feet tall. He still has it.
And after the race, Hitler said to him: “You’re the boy with the fast finish.”
Many expected him to place first in the 1940 Olympics, but his chance never came because World War II began in 1939.
Zamperini joined the U.S. Air Corps (the previous title of the Air Force) as a bombardier in Hawaii.
Zamperini was flying on a reconnaissance mission in a faulty airplane and crash-landed into the South Pacific Ocean. Of the 11 people on the plane, three survived the crash.
While on a raft, they survived on rainwater and small fish, but only Zamperini and Russell Phillips survived after their 47 total days at sea. The two set the record for longest oversea survival.
Zamperini spoke of his efforts to keep himself and the others sharp while on the raft: “I would describe breakfast, lunch and dinner,” he said. “Eventually they got greedy and would ask for brunch.” The crowd laughed.
They drifted for 2,000 miles until they reached the Marshall Islands where Zamperini and Phillips were taken as prisoners of war.
Zamperini was then taken to Tokyo, where he met Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a “psychopathic” guard that the prisoners called The Bird, Zamperini said.
The Bird knew that Zamperini was an Olympian and that he was valuable to Americans, so he tried desperately to break his spirit.
After two years of daily beatings, Zamperini was taken home as a hero when the war ended.
He married one year later, but his life was not heading in the right direction. He had post-traumatic stress disorder before the condition became more widely understood.
He had nightmares of strangling The Bird every night; one day he awoke while strangling his wife and soon after he conceded to attending Evangelist preacher Billy Graham’s service because his wife threatened to file for divorce.
“When you’re at the end of the rope, you turn to God,” Zamperini recalls Graham telling him as he was walking out the door.
Suddenly, Zamperini thought of his days on the life raft when he was praying to God. He promised to serve the Lord if he got off the raft alive, but he wasn’t carrying out his promises.
“It was a miracle,” Zamperini said. He asked God into his life that night and he never had a nightmare of The Bird again. “Because the Bible says that when you convert, you become a new person,” he said.
Furthermore, he returned to the prison camp in Tokyo seven years after his imprisonment to forgive the guards that held him there.
“Is there anything that the war prepared you for later in life?” Naber asked.
“Fifty-five years of marriage,” Zamperini responded. Once the laughter subsided, he added, “I didn’t hear any women laughing.”
Zamperini has been an inspirational speaker ever since he asked Christ into his life.
He joined the Boy Scouts to get out of trouble as a teenager, and it helped him survive throughout the war. For example, he learned how to fend off sharks by putting his hand out and snubbing their nose, which saved his life multiple times on the life raft.
“The best survival training is Eagle Scout training,” Zamperini said.
A scout builds leadership and character.
First Class Boy Scout Ben Brady, 13, explained how merit badges, leadership badges and wilderness survival badges are good to know in tough times. Still, he was humble enough to admit that he couldn’t do what Zamperini has.
Eagle Scout, Assistant Scout Master, Crew Advisor and Aquatics Director John Alvarado, 22, shared a story similar to Zamperini’s. He enrolled in the Boy Scouts when he was 14 years old.
“It saved my life,” Alvarado said. “I was a troubled kid, heading down the wrong path.”
Zamperini and Hillenbrand have never met each other; Hillenbrand almost never leaves her home because she has chronic fatigue syndrome.
“I was a prisoner of war for two years; she’s been a prisoner in her own body all of her life,” Zamperini said about giving her his Purple Heart.
To see more photos of the event, visit glennarthur.com/LBBoyScouts/Welcome.html.
Louis Zamperini was raised in Torrance, California and now lives in the Hollywood Hills.
To find out more about Zamperini, visit LouieZamperini.com. ß
