Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (34 page)

To this day, people ask me how, after all I’ve been through, I managed to do it. It’s a valid question. I say I eat right and exercise—both are necessary and true—but really, it’s all about attitude. The war, the raft, prison camp, drinking—they took ten years off my life. I simply made up my mind to get those ten years back.

For instance, in 1957 Olympic ski jumper Keith Wageman and I climbed 14,000-foot Gannett Glacier, the largest ice field in the North American continent, in the Wind River area of Wyoming, and almost got killed in the process.

We figured it would take all day long to climb, but a storm delayed us until noon, so we had to hurry, and go without much of our safety gear. Between the rope, the crampons, and the ice ax, we had to decide which we’d use the most. We picked the ice ax. Our clothes were khakis and army boots.

Unfortunately we got caught in an electrical storm and nearly froze, but when we got to the top after eight hours, the clouds lifted, and we could see the glory of the ice field and the Grand Tetons seventy miles away. It seemed like heaven. The beauty of the vistas far outweighed the struggle and the cold. There was only one problem: the sun was setting. We’d have to scramble down quickly by boot-skiing and glissading. Keith and I made it in thirty minutes, and shot footage on the way. At the bottom we found the mule and the gear we’d left behind, but by then it was dark and, worse, overcast. We struck a match, tied a rope to each other and to the mule, then tried to find our way back to Cynthia. We fell into streams and slipped on rocks—it was pretty terrible—until we saw a big blaze in the distance. Cynthia had started a bonfire, and when she saw us she came running up with tears in her eyes. Later she told me she’d thought we were dead.
Two days later we climbed the glacier again, this time taking our skis. The return trip took only minutes. At the bottom, the ranger said he’d “never heard of anyone skiing Gannett before. You two are most likely the first to do so.”

LATER I PUT
those same survival techniques to good use one summer at Squaw Valley, where for two weeks I’d been given free food and lodging plus use of the facilities for the Victory Boys Camp program.

Large sheets of ice still covered the north slopes, and one morning I taught the kids how to use an ice ax both for climbing and as a survival weapon when slipping and sliding on the floes. In the middle of the class I heard a man’s voice call frantically for help. I saw him up the mountain, outlined against the sky, waving his arms and shouting. “My girlfriend’s fallen over the cliff!” Turning the kids over to an assistant, I grabbed the ice ax, and headed for the summit.

Panicked, the young man explained the situation as we made our way to where his girlfriend had fallen. I could see her on a rock out-cropping. “Don’t move!” I shouted. “Take a deep breath, relax. I’m coming to get you.” I also told her to protect her head from the rocks that might come her way during my descent.

I had only the ax; what I really needed was my climbing rope. Nonetheless, I clambered down to the rock, gripped her arm, and lowered her onto a narrow ledge. From there I led her along the ledge to safety. She was one grateful girl. Meanwhile, my assistant had moved the class across the mountain so they could watch. Seeing the girl saved had a profound impact on the kids. And that, of course, is what I’ve always been and always hope to be about.

I COULD GO
on and tell you about other adventures, personal triumphs, difficult situations, inspirational moments, emotional struggles, and best of all the everlasting rewards of helping others. After all, this story stops when I was about forty years old. I’m eighty-six now. But that’s another book. Let’s just say that I took my place as, I hope, a respected member of the community. I stayed active as a former
Olympian and serviceman. I cherished my family. That’s the way life is and is supposed to be. I’ve probably had enough excitement for one man. Smooth seas aren’t so bad. However, one day, in early 1997…

THE PHONE RANG
at my house in the Hollywood Hills, and Cynthia answered. Draggan Mihailovich, an Emmy Award–winning senior producer with the Olympic Features Unit of CBS Sports, was on the line—and for some reason he wanted to speak with me.

But I’ll let Draggan tell it:

My story? For nearly fifty years I’d lived my life the way God wanted me to. I’d been active in the church and sports and raising my family. I’d also been honored to run with the Olympic Torch before the Los Angeles Games in 1984 and the Atlanta Games in 1996, and occasionally the newspapers did a nostalgia piece about me.

I’d even unearthed new facts about my war story, among them, why I could never help get James Sasaki out of prison.

A couple of years earlier, at the Zamperini Field air fair, a young policeman came up to me while I greeted pilots. He said, “Oh, Mr. Zamperini, I have your book. Could you autograph it for me?”

When I opened it I saw it was already autographed “to Ernie Ashton,” a guy I went to high school with, who later became a policeman. The young man said Ernie had died and he’d come by the book and read it. I signed it again, and then he said, “Oh, by the way, Ernie wrote something on another page.” I flipped through the book, and on the page where I mentioned Sasaki, this is what he’d written at the bottom: “Jimmy Sasaki had a powerful radio transmitter in a field off Torrance Boulevard near a Southern California Edison substation, which was in constant radio contact with the Japanese government. He left the USA by boat before a raid by the FBI and CIA.”

Sasaki had been a spy.

No wonder he had bragged so often at Ofuna about his fondness for Long Beach and San Pedro. He’d go there, then to his transmitter, and broadcast a report about ship movement in the harbor.

When Draggan called, I saw an opportunity to complete the record. We met, he took some notes, realized he’d found more than he expected. He put together a little outline and proposed a segment about me to air during the Winter Olympics. CBS loved it and allotted ten minutes.

As part of his research—Draggan loves research—he flew to Japan and started digging. He went to Wotje and filmed. He went to Naoetsu, now renamed Joetsu, and discovered that in October 1995 the site of Camp 4-B had been turned into a Peace Park, with a memorial dedicated to the Allied prisoners of war who died there. Kids who were in school when I was a prisoner had grown up, made some money, pooled their resources, pitched in to buy the land, and created the park. They didn’t want their kids or their kids’ kids to forget what had happened.

He also wanted me to go to Japan and carry the Olympic Torch again, this time for a kilometer at the 1998 Winter Games in nearby Nagano. I suggested I do it right alongside the old prison camp, but as it didn’t exist, I ran through town just a few miles away, and later he filmed me visiting the Peace Park memorial.

I’m a die-hard pack rat, and as the piece took shape Draggan and I spent days going through so much of the stuff I’ve kept all my life: letters, documents, magazines, newspapers, films, pictures, scraps of this and that, and finally, my World War II diary. He didn’t mind. “Everything has to be authentic,” he said. “We have to confirm everything.”

For instance, when I told Draggan about the Bird and the time I had to hold up the wooden beam, he asked, “Who else saw that?” Most of the guys were dead, but Draggan got ahold of Tom Wade in England, and Wade gave him
his
book,
Prisoner of the Japanese,
in which he just happened to write that very story.

I also told Draggan, “My whole life is serving God. If you want this to be authentic, you have to have my conversion in there.”

“There’s no story without that,” he said immediately. “We’re basing this all on a theme of forgiveness.”

I was greatly relieved. “Besides my conversion,” I said, “I want you to show a picture of Billy Graham to confirm it. When people hear the name Billy Graham they think of one thing: the gospel.”

He said, “You got it,” and he took care of everything.

Based on the material I’d archived, and the proof of events from his research, CBS gave Draggan five more minutes of airtime. Then another five. Lucky me. After all I’d been through, I thought it couldn’t get better than that.

I WAS WRONG.

While I was answering mail in my office at the church, the phone rang. Draggan was on the line from Tokyo, where he’d gone to verify more of my story and to shoot footage. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, hold on to your chair.”

I grabbed the edge of my seat. “Okay. What’s up?”

“We found the Bird,” Draggan said. “And he’s alive.”

When I could finally speak, all I said was, “What!?”

“Yeah, we found him. He’s retired and wealthy from selling life insurance. We’re going to try and get an interview.”

“Really?”

“Would you like to see him?”

“Absolutely.”

AFTER WE HUNG
up I flashed back to the final week at Camp 4-B. The Bird had left two days before we knew the war was over, and no one had seen him since. Even his mother, when questioned, said the family hadn’t heard from him. Eventually she built a shrine to her son and we assumed Watanabe was simply dead.

Draggan had somehow tracked him down, called the Bird’s home, spoken to his wife, and asked for an interview. She said he was sick. A couple of days later he tried again, and this time she said, “He’s on a trip.”
Draggan and his crew, including veteran CBS reporter Bob Simon, who fronted the story, decided to hide and watch the house. They discovered that Watanabe took long walks, so they set up a camera across the street and hid another in someone’s hat, just in case. When the Bird came out, they approached him and, speaking through a translator, asked if he was Watanabe.

“Yes, I’m Matsuhiro Watanabe,” he said. After the usual formalities he agreed to speak.

“When you were in charge of Omori do you remember Tom Henling Wade?” Simon asked.

“No, I don’t remember. So many prisoners.”

I don’t know why he didn’t. Wade spoke Japanese and was always interpreting for us. “No, I don’t remember Wado,” he said.

“Do you remember Louis Zamperini?”

“Ah, Zamperini-ka. Orympi-ka. I remember him well. Good prisoner.”

“Would you like to see him?”

To my surprise the Bird said yes.

They also solved the mystery of Watanabe’s whereabouts after the war. He said he’d hidden in a mountain cabin way back in the hills of Nagano, which was wilderness before it became a big ski area. He stayed for seven or eight years, until the general amnesty. I don’t understand how he could have survived that long without a job or at least supplies. The story just increased my suspicion that his parents
had
known where he was. Where had he gotten the mountain cabin? They had money; they probably owned it. Besides, what kind of man would let his parents think he was dead for seven years?

In the middle of the interview/confrontation, Watanabe’s son and grandson came out of the house and discovered what was going on. They listened in and heard Bob Simon say, “Well, if [Zamperini] was such a good prisoner, why did you beat the hell out of him?”

Watanabe spoke very little English, but he understood. “He said that?”

“Zamperini and the other prisoners remember you in particular as being the most brutal of all the guards,” Simon asked. “How do you explain that?”
“Beating and kicking in Caucasian society are considered cruel, cruel behavior,” the Bird explained. “However, there were some occasions in the prison camp in which beating and kicking were unavoidable. I wasn’t given military orders, but because of my own personal feelings…I treated the prisoners strictly as enemies of Japan. Zamperini was well known to me. If he says he was beaten by Watanabe, then such a thing probably occurred at the camp, if you consider my personal feelings at the time.”