Louis Zamperini was born on January 26, 1917, and was to live a life that epic movies are made of, a life that was far from easy.
Italian by heritage, American by birth, he spoke next to no English when his family moved to Long Beach, California in 1919. Those Italian roots made bullying par for the course as he grew up, as was getting into trouble, an unpaid bottle of beer following him out of a shop on more than one occasion.
Boxing lessons followed, not only to instill confidence in him but as a means of self-defense. As a result, his English improved, and the bullies learned to keep their distance. Trouble, however, was always just around the corner.
What set him on the straight and narrow wasn’t another brush with the law, but his older brother, Pete.
Being something of a track star in high school, he convinced Louis to try out for the team. It was perhaps this one moment in time, when he could have rejected the opportunity, that his life changed, that turned Louis Zamperini away from going further down the wrong path.
As it was, this simple decision was to prove a pivotal junction in his life, one that would amazingly lead to him competing in the 1936 Olympic Games.
Running, it seemed, was in his blood, and as soon as he started winning races his early dedication turned into an obsession. Bad habits were dropped, a new strict diet was adopted and he trained like he wanted to run away from the past, and race into the future.
For the final three years at high school, he went on a record-breaking spree that followed him into college in 1934, his potential to go even further realized two years later. The Olympic Games were firmly set in his sights.
Trying out for the Olympic team in 1936, he decided to go for the 5,000 meters, qualifying in joint first position in a heatwave that saw top athletes collapse from heat exhaustion.
But he had made it, had achieved his dream of going to the Berlin Olympic Games, the same Games that would see Jesse Owens win four gold medals, and that would be hosted by Adolph Hitler.
Awed by the experience, he ran against the best in the world, managing to set a new lap record on his way to finishing in 8th position. That record brought him to the attention of Adolph Hitler himself who insisted on congratulating Zamperini on his achievement and shaking his hand
Further record-breaking competitions and studying followed at the University of Southern California after the Olympics, but Louis Zamperini’s life was to take another turn in 1941. A few months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December, he enlisted as a lieutenant with the US Air Force to oppose Adolph Hitler’s attempt at world domination in World War II.
The Pacific Island, Funafuti, was his first posting as a bombardier on the aptly named bomber, Super Man. From April 1943 he was to experience a series of events that, just one of them, would have broken a lesser man.
First, after completing a successful mission against the Japanese on Nauru island, three enemy planes riddled the Super Man with bullets, wounding five of the crew, one of who died from his injuries. Barely intact, the bomber limped back to base, more holes than metal, and was never to fly again.
Even before the dust had settled, or bullet fragments removed from their hair, Zamperini and several of the Super Man crew were reassigned on a rescue mission on the Green Hornet, a plane that didn’t exactly have a good reputation for airworthiness.
That dubious reputation led to the death of 8 of the 11 airmen onboard when mechanical difficulties caused the bomber to plunge into the ocean halfway through the mission, far from land, in the middle of a war zone.
The three survivors, Zamperini, Russell Philips, the pilot, and Francis McNamara managed to salvage the plane’s life rafts, but they were in for an ordeal that would reduce their numbers to two.
Japanese fighters overhead strafed them at any given opportunity, the terrified airmen defenseless, no way to protect themselves, yet miraculously unharmed after each pass.
A rescue party, the cavalry, didn’t appear over the horizon no matter how hard they stared at it, not the next day, nor the following. They were on their own, left adrift to survive or die on the meager rations they had managed to scrounge together. When what little food they had was gone, they had to rely on their wits, and do whatever it took to survive.
Captured rainwater was used to wash down the raw fish they caught sporadically. That unappetizing diet was supplemented by any birds they could tease close enough with the remnants of the fish, and again they were eaten raw.
After being stranded for 33 days at sea with no hope of being found, McNamara died. Zamperini and Philips, themselves in bad shape, were left with no choice but to consign the body of their friend to the sea. It was a somber moment when either man, haunted looks in their eyes, knew that they could be next for a watery grave.
Unfortunately for Zamperini and Philips what they had endured so far, being strafed, stranded at sea, at the mercy of the elements, and even attacked by sharks, was nothing compared to what was about to happen to them. In truth, their most trying ordeal was just 14 days away.
Day 47 at sea saw the two desperate survivors wash up on the shores of one of the Marshall Islands, relief turning to horror when they were quickly surrounded by menacing Japanese faces.
For the next two years, Zamperini was tortured, beaten, subjected to both mental and physical abuse. He was transferred between prison camps within this period, the only consistency the brutal mistreatment at the hands of his captures, designed not to elicit information but simply to break him.
Somehow, he managed to hold on to his sanity for the months, for the years that he was beaten until he lost consciousness, tortured until he couldn’t manage another step. He remained a prisoner of war until the end of World War II, finally released late in 1945 after all hostilities had ceased, his seemingly never-ending ordeal over.
Louis Zamperini classed himself as a Depression-era kid whose early childhood was far from easy, yet somehow, he had managed to live an incredibly full life, accomplishing more than most, surviving where many had or would have died.
From setting records in college, from competing in the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, surviving a harrowing plane crash, enduring 47 torturous days lost at sea, and then being captured and brutalized by the Japanese in World War II, he emerged an unbeaten man. Mentally scarred, yes, but unbeaten.
Unsurprisingly, post-traumatic stress haunted him for years after the war, but it never stopped him from getting married, having two children, and living a full life.
One of the most memorable achievements that he would be remembered for was his love of running. To commemorate that, at the age of eighty-one, he was given the honor of carrying the Olympic Torch in a relay leg for the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. The leg he ran happened to be close to the POW camp where he had been ruthlessly tortured during the war. It stirred memories, but he was now a different man, forgiveness in his heart.
Years earlier he had found evangelism and that helped to smooth the scars on his soul. This specific honor to carry the Olympic Torch in Japan of all places, allowed him to finally put to rest the last vestiges of the demons that lingered on the outer edge of his memories.
Three films were made of his incredible life before he passed away from pneumonia on July 2, 2014, at the tender age of 97.
Each of them were epic.
