Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura HillenbrandMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon Book Description
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.
"Few societies treasured dignity, and feared humiliation, as did the Japanese, for whom a loss of honor could merit suicide. This ls likely one of the reasons why Japanese soldiers in World War II debased their prisoners with such zeal, seeking to take from them that which was most painful and destructive to lose. On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty. In places like Kwajalein, degradation could be as lethal as a bullet."
This passage of the book is a great summary as to the mindset of Japanese soldiers and officers as well as the atrocities committed by the Japanese to POWs during World War II, but it really is just the tip of the iceberg. Having read only a handful of books covering the Pacific Theater, I was in no way prepared for the the mental toll this book can take on someone unfamiliar with the lengths of depravity and cruelty that were disclosed in the course of this book. The story of men crashing into the ocean and enduring weeks in the sun with only sips of rainwater to quench their thirst and sharks circling their life raft is a harrowing experience enough for one book, let alone for men to actually survive. That was just the beginning.....Reading a story of resilience in the face of torture, loss of dignity, and at times, loss of hope, gives one pause to stop and put the obstacles currently faced into better perspective. The one thing I was a tad disappointed in was that the last part of the book didn't really address the role his parents played in supporting him during his PTSD after returning home. The story of his family was such a significant part of the beginning of the book that I was hoping for more in closing. This is a book that tells a story that needs to be told, but it is not for the faint-at-heart.
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