Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (16 page)

“I have no idea,” I said. “That’s the radioman or engineer’s job.” I really did know, but it was my way out. They were not happy. I returned to my cell without a snack, drink, or cigarette.

A NEW GUARD
asked my name. “Louie Zamperini,” I told him.

“Ruie Zamperini-ka.”

“No, just Louis Zamperini.” The
L
was a tongue-twister and the
ka
a quotation mark.

Another guard said, “Ohio.”

I said, “California.” I knew
ohio
meant “good morning,” but why should I give them the satisfaction?

I STARED OFTEN
at the marines’ names carved into the wall. I memorized each one in case I had to recite them later for Allied intelligence. It was my small way of keeping hope alive. I considered these men my cell mates. I took a name each day and wondered about that person’s life. I asked myself, What did he look like? Where was he from? Did he have a girlfriend, or was he married? Did he have children? How would his family take the news of his death? I contemplated each man’s fear or emotions or resolve as the samurai sword
came swiftly down, sending his head rolling. Was he buried on the island or taken out to sea? How soon would I join them?

ONE MORNING I
heard a commotion and many voices. Suddenly soldiers lined up in front of my door. Was this it? My last day? Luckily—or unluckily—no. This was a submarine crew in for refueling, supplies, and shore leave. On a sub you never see the enemy; what a treat when they heard two POWs were on the island. Perhaps eighty men lined up as if at a movie theater. Phil and I were the feature. As each sailor passed, he cursed us, spit, threw rocks, jabbed us with sticks, and treated us like caged animals. I thought I was already in the worst shape of my life, but this dehumanization and torment proved me wrong.

THE NEXT DAY
I was again taken to the interrogation room. I found everyone chatting and grinning. My face was still caked with blood from the free-for-all. I’m sure the ranking officers considered this a clever, strategic move. After the submarine crew had humiliated us, perhaps our spirits had broken.

The new topic: the number and location of airfields on Oahu. The Japanese unfolded a large map and asked me to mark the locations and the number and type of aircraft at each. They already had the major fields circled, a result of reconnaissance during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Again, my reward for cooperating would be food and drink. My face and body may have been battered but my mind was sharp. I figured maybe I could put one over on these self-righteous son of a guns.

Part of our strategy in the Pacific was to build phony air bases. We’d already put up three; I’d seen them myself: fake runways, mock-up aircraft with expert paint jobs that looked like real P-51s and B-24s on the outside, built of plywood and sticks instead. At first I evaded the question, pretending I didn’t want to tell. They kept at me and I let them harass me. Whatever I said could only hurt them. If they bombed Hawaii again, they wouldn’t bomb the real fields.

Finally, I went, “Well, uh…” and they thought they had me. With a bit more pushing, I “broke down” and said, “Okay, okay. There’s one here”—I showed them on the map—“one here, one there, and one there.” Boy, were they happy. They looked at each other like, “Ah, we finally won a victory over this guy.”

The victory was mine. I tricked these educated men and earned a biscuit and a little glass of soda in the bargain. More important, I proved to myself that I hadn’t lost my mind on the raft.

The panel dismissed me, satisfied. But before I could leave, an officer decided to show me my place. “Well, Mr. Zamperini, big track star, you got much publicity when you were missing in action. I want you to know that when you entered USC in 1936, I was graduating.”

I bowed humbly, mocking him.

A WEEK LATER
a new guard came on duty. He motioned me to the door and whispered, “You Christian?” I nodded yes, dully, expecting the worst. He smiled and repeated himself. “You Christian. Me Christian!” His name was Kawamura, and he gave me a handful of rice and his ration of sugar candy.

Kawamura’s English was poor, but I managed to understand a few words about Canadian missionaries. Also, that he assumed
all
Americans were Christians. But the following morning
another
new guard took his pleasure by jabbing me with a stick until blood ran down my face. When Kawamura’s shift began he asked about the blood. Taking a chance, I told him who was responsible. Kawamura made an angry fist. I didn’t give it much thought. After all, I was their enemy.

I didn’t see either guard for three days, but when Kawamura returned he opened my cell door and pointed to the other guard, about fifty yards away. A bandage covered his head. Kawamura had beaten him. If not for his kindness, I might not have survived my “rescue.”

ONE MORNING THE
guards took Phil and me to the infirmary porch and told us to lie down. Two doctors came out and injected us
with a smoky fluid. “Tell us when you get dizzy,” one said. He scribbled notes, while the other held a stopwatch.

It took about five seconds. The disorientation and nausea were accompanied by the rapid appearance of red, itchy pimples. Had they injected us again I would have passed out. Instead I went back to my cell, where in addition to the usual discomforts my body burned throughout the night.

They repeated the experiment the next day.

Soon Phil and I came down with dengue fever.

Dengue fever is caused by one of four related viruses transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical and subtropical regions. It comes on quickly, with a high fever, severe headaches, joint and muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and a rash. The illness can last up to ten days, but complete recovery can take two to four weeks. Afterward, you’re immune to the specific virus but only partially protected from the other three. Dengue is commonly confused with other infectious illnesses such as influenza, measles, malaria, typhoid, and scarlet fever.

The good news about most dengue is that it rarely causes death; the bad news is that I felt so terrible I wished I was dead.

The first week was intense. I was already mentally, physically, and emotionally shattered. The fever made it worse. And yet, it was in one way a small blessing: disorientation made the time pass more quickly and made the fear of decapitation more tolerable. I just thought, Well, so I’m going to die. Now or later. Accept it. It was as if a guy had come up and said, “I’m going to shoot you in the head,” and I’d said, “So, shoot me.”

The fever lasted three or four weeks, during which another submarine crew arrived and we had to go through more of the same barbarous treatment. I just didn’t seem to notice or care as much this time.

PHIL AND I
had been prisoners for nearly forty days, expecting each to be our last, when the interrogation panel summoned me for another session. They wanted to know the number of ships, troops, and planes transported to the Pacific through Hawaii. They probably expected me to finally break down, but I’d had enough. “We have
spent forty days here, and more on a raft,” I said. “What could I possibly know? We are obsolete. My information was obsolete the day after I left my home base. Whatever you want to know, you already know. I can’t tell you anything else.”

No cookies for me that day.

ON THE FORTY-SECOND
day the guards gathered outside our cell block and talked in low voices.

An officer burst in and said, “Tomorrow you will”—I held my breath—“be put aboard a ship and go to the island of Truk, and from there to Yokohama as prisoners of war.”

My God, I thought, we’re going to live through this.

WHAT HAD CHANGED
their minds? Maybe they thought it better to save the life of a famous American athlete and Olympian than wantonly destroy me. But why? Did they think showing me mercy would help their cause? It made no sense.

Whatever the rationale, I didn’t argue. Who would? As an official prisoner of war, I was under the jurisdiction of international law. I wasn’t really sure what it would be like under Japanese authority, but I thought, At least they have to feed us properly and bed us down.

Phil and I left Kwajalein on a vessel that was part of the Japanese fleet and sailed due west for Truk, in the Carolines. We spent about a week in the harbor. Every time I went to the rest room, I looked out the window to count the ships. If I ever escaped, at least I’d have some information about this big Japanese naval base.

(Six months later, at 06:00 hours on February 17, 1944, in Operation Hailstone, the American Allied force attacked the Japanese naval and air force fleet in Truk Lagoon. More than seventy planes and forty ships were destroyed and hundreds of lives lost. The raid helped win the war. Today, Truk Lagoon attracts many divers because of the undersea wrecks and multicolored reefs and marine life growing on them.)

After Truk, on the way to Yokohama, my shipboard hosts couldn’t
contain their excitement at seeing the enemy face-to-face. They rifled through my wallet and found an illustration of me in my running suit against a backdrop of the planes bombing Wake Island. It was a patriotic “Stars in Service” ad for the war effort that told about my participation in that raid. In big letters, at the bottom, it read:
THEY GIVE THEIR LIVES—YOU LEND YOUR MONEY. BUY SECOND WAR LOAN BONDS.
Evidently our Christmas Eve attack had killed many of the crewmen’s buddies, as I discovered when five or six sailors burst into the cabin Phil and I shared.

“Who’s going to win the war?” they shouted.

“America.”

That was all they needed to beat us, still skeletons, to the floor. They also broke my nose, which I had to set myself. Finally an officer came in, stopped the fight, and made everyone leave. He took me topside to an officer’s cabin. It was a nice room. For the rest of the trip I slept there on a long, padded bench.

I spent most of my time alone in that cabin. Occasionally an older sailor came in and thumped me in the head. He was a weird and funny guy. He’d say, “Thump you in the head for a biscuit?”

“Hey, go ahead.” For a biscuit, he could thump all he wanted. He’d thump me once, give me the biscuit, and leave. He did this every other day. I ate well; he felt better.

WE HAD A
submarine scare on the way to Yokohama. Alert bells rang and I was suddenly afraid. I thought, Boy, I’ve had it now. Our navy is out there and they’re going to let these Nips have it—and me, too. After all this time I’ll be killed by my own people. But as much as I was frightened, I was thrilled, too. Sirens blared. Sailors screamed and ran for battle stations. This continued for about thirty minutes, but we were never attacked.

WITH NOTHING TO
do but sit in someone’s cabin all day, waiting for a thump in the head and a biscuit, I decided to poke around. I didn’t search in vain; I found a magnum of sake hidden under another
bench. Apparently the owner didn’t want anyone to know he had it. The bottle was open, otherwise I would have left it alone. I took one swallow and felt heavenly. I hummed inside. Glowed. I waited a day and thought, Well, they won’t miss another swallow.

This went on for two weeks, until we arrived at Yokosuka Naval Base. By then the bottle was nearly empty, and I thought, Ah, the hell with it, and drank the rest.

On September 15, 1943, we docked. Two crewmen blindfolded us again and took us off the ship. The blindfold was loose and through a crack at the bottom I could see a Chevrolet hubcap. I recognized the model. It had a jump seat behind the backseat.

Phil and I had to wait for a ship’s officer to take us to our next destination. He arrived mad as a hornet. “Get in there!” he shouted, shoving me into the jump seat. I tried to maneuver, but my legs were too long and gave me trouble. He kept pushing. Finally, he hit me across the face a few times with his flashlight. My nose was a two-time loser.

To this day I believe with all my heart that he was the officer whose room I’d lived in and whose sake I’d finished. He didn’t have to wonder who drank it, or that I had paid for my indulgence.

OUR NEW HOME
would be a prison camp named Ofuna, in the hills just outside of Yokohama. I felt a strange combination of joy and reassurance at the prospect of seeing Western faces again. For the first time since crashing, Phil and I would no longer feel completely alone.

At the camp I could smell the damp coolness of the coastal valley as we entered the gates and walked into a cinder-strewn central compound. Gray barracks bordered an open common area. Prisoners stood against the walls, huddled together for warmth, their faces long, silent, hungry. Even so, I looked forward to their company. I tried to attract the attention of one or two, but they would not speak. I soon learned that prisoners at Ofuna were not allowed to talk to one another.

That made me angry. I had finally arrived in Japan, dreaming of better treatment, and this was my payoff? Beyond the fourth wall, which
closed off the camp’s far end, stood a large hill covered with bamboo and forest. I pictured trying to disappear into its darkness some night.

A guard prodded me into the barracks and my solitary cell. That night, in furtive whispers and at risk of a beating or worse, I learned the terrible truth: Ofuna was
the
secret, high-intensity interrogation camp run by the Japanese Navy, hidden from the populace and all relief agencies. There would be no Red Cross supervision, no improved treatment. No humanity. I wouldn’t be registered as an official prisoner of war. Men left the camp to be either executed or relocated. If you died there, no one would know but your brothers in arms.

The next day, after a hot bath, a guard escorted me into the headquarters building and ushered me to a door. “When you enter the room there will be a man sitting behind the desk,” he said. “You bow, stand at attention, and wait for orders.” Then he opened the door and shoved me in. The room was lit only by the afternoon sun. The man did not sit at the desk but stood in front of it, his back toward me. He wore civilian clothes. I bowed, as instructed, stood straight, and waited. He turned around and smiled.