Book 14 - Unbroken

Normally (at least in my country) when people are in their late twenties, they would have graduated from university with a bachelor or master degree, married, probably have a child or two, have a career or running their own business to pay the mortgage on the house and cars they have.

When Louis Zamperini was in his late twenties, he had quitted college, unemployed, had failed investments, and spent most night drinking to oblivion. But that’s not all who he was.

Before he reached my age, he had also raced in Olympic game, had his picture taken in Germany with Hitler by none other than Goebbels, stole a nazi flag, went to war, was one of only two people who survived a plane crash, stranded at sea for 46 days and to survive he had eaten raw birds, raw fish, and battle sharks with oar and fists – yes, you read it correctly, fists. He had been a POW in Japan and was eventually transferred to the most brutal prisons and endured the most unimaginable hardship. He survived the war, and came home two years after he was declared dead.

Unbroken is a story of survival; Most of the 400 pages of the book described in harrowing details Zamperini’s experience as a Prisoner of War in the Pacific where more than 37% of the American prisoners held by Japan died, “By comparison, only 1% of Americans held by the Nazis and the Italians died” (315)

But it was the last few chapters of this book that affected me in a very unexpected way.

After returning from war as a hero, Zamperini suffered from severe case of PTSD, or battle fatigue as it was known then. He became so bitter and enraged with God, convinced that the Almighty had been playing with his life. When he was emotionally at his lowest point in his post-war life, his wife dragged him to attend a sermon by Billy Graham.

It was then that realization dawned.

{page 375}

“ Louis found himself thinking of the moment at which he had woken in the sinking hull of Green Hornet, the wires that had trapped him a moment earlier now, inexplicably, gone. And he remembered the Japanese bomber swooping over the rafts, riddling them with bullets, and yet not a single bullet had struck him, Phil, or Mac. He had fallen into unbearably cruel worlds, and yet he had borne them….

What God asks of men, said Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of faith…A memory long beaten back, the memory from which he had run the evening before, was upon him…Louis was on the raft…the cunning bodies of the sharks, waiting, circling. He was a body on a raft, dying of thirst. He felt words whisper from his swollen lips. It was a promise thrown at heaven, a promise he had not kept, a promise he had allowed himself to forget until this just instant: If you will save me, I will serve you forever.”

In the most unexpected ending I’ve ever read, Louis Zamperini found peace in God and through Him, he was able to overcome his nightmares, to defeat his personal demon, and to forgive his tormentor.

I certainly did not expect it, but Unbroken may be the best Christian literature I’ve ever read, even if it’s not meant to be one.