Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (25 page)

On the other hand, I had also started to catch up with the world I’d left behind, and step by step I began to regain the confidence and self-esteem I’d lost under the enemy’s relentless effort to destroy my dignity. Actually, I didn’t lose it; I just couldn’t display it. I could have been the strongest and meanest guy in the world, someone who would strike back at a moment’s notice, but when you’re controlled twenty-four hours a day by an authority who will beat or kill you if you step out of line, you have to be submissive. In prison camp we all acted normal in private; only when the Japanese were around did we “act” like cowards. I don’t know if that’s a good word to use, but you either played along or paid the price. A smart guy plays along as little as possible, just enough to survive. I never saw anyone summarily shot in front of me, but there were ninety-one camps in Japan and its occupied lands, and just because I didn’t witness that kind of horror didn’t mean that the Japanese hadn’t slaughtered many men. Besides, I’d never forget the names on my cell wall in Kwajalein.

TO HELP POWS
readjust, the army passed out a small red pamphlet published by the Army Air Forces Headquarters, at the command of General Hap Arnold, for “distribution to AAF returnees.” Titled
Coming Home,
it had simple graphics and straightforward, friendly language.

Here’s how it began:

The story followed a typical soldier, John Brown, through his homecoming, through the fear, the strange feelings of having changed, of being treated differently, and gave tips on how to go along and get along. The advice pretty much came down to this:

I read my copy right away and determined that all things considered, I was doing okay. I packed away the pamphlet in the unlikely event I’d need to refer to it again.

I SPENT AS
much time as I could on Okinawa but eventually had to continue my journey home. Guam was the next scheduled stop, only I got put on the wrong plane and ended up headed for Manila, capital of the Philippines. At first I didn’t want to fly at all; the plane was a B-24 with a plywood deck and forty former POWs inside. But it was the only way home, so I climbed aboard. Midflight the pilot got a call that Manila was socked in with rain and to land instead on a little fighter strip between two mountains at Laoag, in northern Luzon. We came in from the beach side, taxied up between the peaks, and parked overnight.

The next day they turned the plane around and we sped down the runway, heading toward the water. Suddenly, I realized we had a problem. The plane should have been airborne but wasn’t. With the wind against us, the runway was too short for a big craft, so heavily loaded. I rushed to the bomb-bay window and looked out. There was the water, right in front of us, and a mound of dirt; I guess they’d bulldozed sand into a small dike to keep the ocean from flooding the runway. I thought, Oh no, after all I’ve gone through,
now
I’m dead? Then the B-24 hit that bump at the end of the runway, bounced into the air, and settled down so low that whitecaps came through the ill-
fitting bomb-bay doors and soaked us. Fortunately the plane never dipped below that level.

Not long ago, after my story was on national TV, I got a phone call. A voice said, “You’re Louis Zamperini?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How did you get from Okinawa to Manila?” he asked.

“Well,” I replied, “in a B-24, but we didn’t actually go to Manila first.” Then I told him this story.

I asked him why he wanted to know, and he said, “I was the pilot. I almost crapped in my pants. I knew we’d had it. That plane just barely, barely stayed above water.”

Nice to know that all these years later we were both still among the living.

MANILA, UNFORTUNATELY, WAS
more of the same situation I’d encountered on Okinawa—and worse. I’d gotten a bottle of rare and valuable whisky as a present on Okinawa, but someone stole it from my tent in Manila, and yet again I couldn’t get food or clothing. So I did what I’d done before: head to the Red Cross tent and tell my story. The girl there set me up with Joe Laitin, a big wheel with Reuters in the Pacific. (Clearly, the Red Cross gals in the Pacific had the system wired and knew how to work it.)

“I’ve got a big problem,” I told Joe. “I’m damn hungry, and I can’t get a meal ticket.” When I told him my story he got so uptight that he immediately took me to headquarters, talked to a colonel, and got me squared away. For a war correspondent he had lots of pull. He even had me on his NBC radio show.

When the Japanese vacated Manila, they left a hundred thousand dead bodies and an impoverished, bomb-ravaged shell of a city. The place was entirely unappealing. Boring. At least on Okinawa, after the POWs left, I was the only former prisoner there; I was singled out, taken care of, unique. In Manila I was nobody. I just walked around, in rain that never let up, and the world was caked with mud and misery.
I wanted out quickly, but I had to wait for a flight. Joe Laitin tried to help by getting me an application, but the functionary at headquarters said, “Are you kidding? There are eighty-one colonels ahead of him, trying to get a flight home.”

Joe took the application anyway, and I filled it out, waited a couple days, didn’t get a call. Joe and I went to headquarters. He found a stack of applications on a desk and went through them until he found mine—on the bottom. He put it on top and told the desk officer, “He goes on the next plane.” The officer didn’t argue. Reuters could ruin you, if they wanted to. (Later Joe spent years as a journalist in Hollywood and worked as a deputy press secretary under President Lyndon Johnson.)

I got off easy. Normally it took a bottle of whisky or a box of cigars—the next most precious commodity—to move up the list. The ATC—Air Transport Command—had a racket going. Their job was to haul goods for the rank and file, plus airplane parts. They also took liquor and cigars all over, charged a bundle, and got away with it because money is meaningless to a soldier in combat, stationed on some far-out atoll. A hundred dollars for a bottle of liquor? Sure! Twenty-five dollars for a cigar? Okay! The ATC got that stuff free from guys like me, who wanted to get on a plane without waiting.

The ATC also hauled commodities for the upper brass. I ran into several officers who were alcoholics. Some people believe that if the Pacific generals hadn’t gotten so much liquor, the war would have been over two years sooner.

I FLEW OUT
of Manila for Hawaii on a brand new C-54 Skymaster transport, the military version of the DC-4 that McDonnell Douglas put into commercial service in 1946.

The crew knew about me and invited me to fly up in the cockpit. That’s when I learned that Robert Trumbull’s story about me had broken on the front page of the
New York Times
and had been syndicated, running in newspapers from the
Honolulu Advertiser
and the
Detroit Free Press
, to the
Catholic Digest
and my hometown
Torrance Herald
. Later my story made
Time
and
Newsweek
and countless other publications.
Although I’d enjoyed the spotlight when I ran, now I couldn’t have cared less about being in the
New York Times
. Trumbull did a good job, but in Yokohama he had taken from me what was most precious: Coke and donuts. I know it sounds crazy, but to a POW those priorities make perfect sense.

I told the crew some stories until we landed on a small island to refuel. When we got out to stretch our legs, the pilot said, “How do you like this island?”

“Well, there’s not much here,” I said.

“Not now,” he said. “This is where you spent forty-three days. This is Kwajalein.”

“Where are all the trees?” I asked.

“Leveled by naval gunfire. There’s only one tree left.” He took me to see it, and that was that.

HAWAII WAS UTOPIA.
First I got a long-overdue promotion to captain. Then friends introduced me to the legendary waterman Duke Kahanamoku, who welcomed me into the Outrigger Canoe Club and even took me out himself. Hawaii was wide open and jubilant because the war was over. When the civilians saw us in uniform, they all wanted to buy us a drink. The place was awash in booze and girls and activity. Ignoring the future
and
the past, I drank and danced and gorged myself, and forgot to thank anyone, including God, for my being alive. Best of all, I did this while being made to “stay” in the hospital because I still had a touch of some tropical bug that didn’t really need any special treatment. Again, I felt no hurry to get home.

Fred Garrett, the POW whose leg had been amputated on Kwajalein, was at the same hospital. We bummed around together and got physically fit by wrestling on Waikiki Beach. People thought I was nuts, wrestling a one-legged guy, but Fred was big and strong and wanted to show he had no handicap.

Of course, I got busted for having too good a time. I was a bit of a celebrity, the “hero” returning home and all, and someone in General Arnold’s office found out I was goofing off, boozing and partying every night. Beset by queries from my family, friends, and reporters,
Arnold sent a red-letter order: “Get your ass back here with every available dispatch,” meaning: come home, even if you have to row.

I left immediately, wondering what I’d done wrong other than try to make up for a few years of hell.

ON OCTOBER 2,
1945, I flew straight to San Francisco and went to Letterman Hospital, where I got another physical, found out I still had a touch of something tropical, and agreed to spend a week under loose observation. In the meantime Fred Garrett and I shared a room and tried to see as much as possible of the city.

Because of Robert Trumbull’s story of my return from the “listed dead,” I was constantly hounded by a gaggle of reporters. I quickly understood the pressures that had forced General Arnold to put a halt to my island holiday, as well as that once again the army could make public relations hay from my reputation and adventures. The limelight was bright. Phone lines were jammed with interview requests and calls from well-wishers. Organizations wanted me as an after-dinner speaker. What a pain. Of course, I quickly decided it was better to love the attention than to hate it. I’d been here before, and it felt good being back.

To control the situation, I met the press in the hospital lobby. The reporters were generally nice, and the interviews weren’t too extensive, though it could get overbearing. If an interview is ten or fifteen minutes, that’s fine, but if they want to hear your whole story, well, hey, you got a month? I told them to read the Trumbull piece.

A banquet held in my honor by the San Francisco Press Club was a taste of life to come and a nostalgic reminder of my glory days as a runner. In fact, this time around was better because an awestruck respect was part of the package, coupled with an eagerness to help me forget my ordeals. Just as training hard for a race had paid off, I soon found it tough to deny that I’d “earned” whatever attention now came my way. Sitting there on the dais, I experienced a gratifying, exciting warmth, a flush, part adulation, part liquor. Fred filled our glasses the moment we emptied them, my eyes turned redder, and I grew expan
sive. When finally called on to speak, I not only touched on the past but made promises about the future.

“Before I crashed at sea,” I said, “I told you there were still many miles left in these legs. That hasn’t changed. I’ll be running again. In fact, I hope to qualify not just for the next Olympics in 1948, but for the next three!”

A brash promise, not to mention a direct contradiction of what I’d said on Joe Laitin’s radio show from Manila. Thinking about my injury from being pushed off a plank with one hundred pounds of coal on my back, I’d said, “I’m through with competitive racing, thanks to the Japanese.”

Leave it to Fred, though, to neatly express our great joy at being on native soil again. Rising unsteadily to his foot, hands on the table for support, he grinned amicably and said, “Boy, it’s sure nice to be home and see a bunch of fat people again.”

His comment also made me look at myself, now nearly 160 pounds—of spongy, limp flesh, not toned muscle.

A COUPLE OF
days later I answered the phone for what seemed like the hundredth time. A dry voice drawled in my ear: “I
told
them you were too ornery to die.”

I was silent for what seemed like forever, then, “Pete! Where are you?”

“Just forty miles away, Toots. Be there soon.”

“You on a pass?”

“Nope. Went AWOL. See you soon as I can hitch a ride.”

As Pete later explained, a navy friend ran into his quarters and said, “Pete, look at this. Your brother’s home!” Pete wanted to see me so much that he just left San Diego without permission and flew to Frisco on a navy plane. I was very touched that he took such a huge risk—and relieved that he also got away with it.

Within the hour we were hugging each other unashamedly. “I knew you were all right,” he said, over and over. “Everyone thought I was crazy. I told Mom, ‘If Louie can get his feet on solid ground, he’s
okay. Just give him a toothbrush and a scout knife, and he can take care of himself.”

I beamed and let him carry on.

“You know what we were going to do, Dad and I, if you didn’t show up?” he continued. “We were going to save up enough money to buy a boat and go from island to island and until we found you. I just knew you were alive somewhere out there!”