Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (35 page)

“When you were at Omori, according to Tom Henling Wade,” Simon continued, and he brought up the belt buckle, the brutality, the testimony of Wade and Frank Tinker.

The Bird denied none of it.

Watanabe’s family, however, was astonished. They didn’t know the Bird had been a prison guard during the war and were horrified by what they heard and by the old man fighting to find the words. The son and grandson were probably pretty nice people. You can imagine their shock.

“No more!” they shouted. Watanabe’s son said, “You can’t see my father anymore. Leave and do not come back.”

I can’t blame them for that. Any son, no matter whether his father is right or wrong, is going to back his father. The Bird probably wishes he’d never been interviewed, too, because it exposed his past to the family: that he was a guard accused of being the worst of all guards; that there was a reward for his capture and General MacArthur had searched for him; that he was a class-A war criminal, number twenty-three of the top forty wanted men, which means execution. This was heavy stuff.

Draggan stopped filming but asked Watanabe if he still wanted to meet with me. Again he said yes.

DRAGGAN TRIED AGAIN
to arrange a get-together, but the son adamantly refused. “Mr. Zamperini will expect my father to bow and scrape and ask forgiveness.”

When I heard, I said, “No. I’m not going to ask him to ask for forgiveness. I’ve already forgiven him.”
Draggan called back, but Watanabe’s son wouldn’t talk to him. Draggan told me, “We want you two together, but the only way we could get him again is to hide a block from the house and grab him if he walks by.”

“No, I can’t do that,” I said. “That’s not me. I’m not sneaky.”

Draggan agreed. “You’re right. It wouldn’t look good for you, and it wouldn’t look good in the story.”

Of course, I’ve thought about what I might have said or done had I just happened to be outside the house when the Bird went for his walk. What if I just said, “Mr. Watanabe? I’m Louis Zamperini.” I don’t think there would be any fuss; we’d just stand there and chat. I’d suggest we have lunch. I’d ask about his family, children, grandchildren, wife. What they’re doing. That’s all. If he brings up the war, I’d say it’s unfortunate that we even had a war. Otherwise, I wouldn’t speak of it or accuse him of crimes. The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person’s face. When you forgive, it’s like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.

WHEN DRAGGAN FOUND
the Bird, CBS gave him forty minutes of airtime and virtually a blank check. Draggan went all out. He even dropped a raft into the ocean from a helicopter and did a telephoto shot that pulled away until the raft looked just like another whitecap on the water.

He also decided to keep the story a secret until the broadcast, which, when CBS realized what an award-winning job Draggan had done, they rescheduled to air on the final day, before the closing ceremony.

THE LAST PIECE
of film Draggan needed was of me running with the Olympic torch. First I met the mayor of Joetsu, who had made my run possible, and with the Peace Park people, who said they would continue to try and get me together with the Bird.

The mayor asked, “Did anything good come out of your two and a half years as a prisoner of war?”

“Yes,” I said. “It prepared me for fifty-three years of married life.”
He roared with laughter. I could have gone into detail about being reborn, but he wouldn’t have understood. The Bible says all things work together for good, for those who love the Lord. If it hadn’t been for the Bird, I never would have been converted. My life would have never changed. But my torments about him drove me to destruction, and when my whole world completely crumbled around me, it was like on the life raft—there was nowhere else to turn. Like I’ve said, everybody looks up.

The next morning, at about eight o’clock, the mayor said, “Welcome to Joetsu, under different circumstances,” and lit my torch from his. I wore a beautiful red, white, and blue running suit, with long pants and long-sleeved jacket. It was cold.

As I ran with that symbol of international sportsmanship and cooperation held high, I kept thinking about Camp 4-B and the war, and the contrast between my life then and now. Then I was beaten almost daily and all around me people died. Now I ran with thousands of people lining the road, most of them the kids or grandkids of the war generation, cheering and screaming. Then I hated Japan and wanted revenge. Now I thought about the Bird getting away scot-free and felt no bitterness at all. I forgave and, even better, understood what forgiveness had done for me. Forgiving myself and others was the story of my life.

People called me Lucky Louie, and I knew it was true.

The love and graciousness I experienced on that trip to Japan was unbelievable. Being treated like a king had always blown my mind, but this felt different from before. I had, after all this time, learned to live with my “fame” and get comfortable with recognition. That’s what had made me a runner in the first place: I wanted to be acknowledged for something besides getting into trouble. My fans made me; I’ve always known that. My classmates cheering for me when I didn’t even think they knew my name, when I didn’t think I had the energy to go all the way, spurred me on as I came down that first of many final stretches and finished the race.

I’d always finished the race.

The Olympic spirit is like the wind. We don’t see it coming or going, but we do hear its voice and feel the power of its presence, and
we enjoy the results of its passing. Then, it becomes a memory, and echoes of our Days of Glory.

In Nagano I didn’t set any records.

For once, I didn’t need to.

AFTER WHAT I’VE
lived through it’s easy to understand that it’s almost impossible to get the better of me. Yet on April 10, 2001, when my flight from Hawaii to Manila landed for a routine refueling stop on Kwajalein chills went up my spine and it was tough to control my emotions.

Even though I’d forgiven the Japanese long before, any mention of Kwajalein was still like hearing the name of someone who had killed my entire family. The thought of going back to that hellhole, even after fifty-eight years, was almost unbearable. It didn’t matter that the island was no longer the Kwajalein I remembered, the place where, to put it as plainly as possible, I’d been treated like a sewer rat and spent the most miserable days of my life.

By the way, Kwajalein today is not on
any
regular tourist itinerary. Set a few degrees north of the Equator and about fifteen hundred miles east of Guam, the island is a seven-square-mile U.S. military installation, home to a “Star Wars” intercept launch site that’s part of our antimissile defense program. Huge antenna dishes track the skies, and the entire area is highly restricted. None but the handful of security-cleared passengers who already lived and worked on the island would be allowed off the plane.

Except for me. And as much as I had hated the place, I’d come of my own accord.

A few months earlier, a woman who attends my church told me that her sister worked on Kwajalein. When she came to Los Angeles to visit, she discovered that I’d been imprisoned there and saw a video of my life story that aired on CBS’s
48 Hours
. The sister left me a Kwajalein magazine and her phone number. I called, and she told me that she’d shown the tape on the island and everyone was very excited. The colonel in charge invited me to return to speak at a Vet
erans Day ceremony. I didn’t want to, but Cynthia told me I should go, and she’d come, too. As usual, she made sense.

We’d planned to go in November 2000. Unfortunately, Cynthia began to lose her battle with cancer. I canceled the trip, and a few months later she died. Everybody who loved her—and there were many—came to the service in her honor. It was a beautiful day, with beautiful words about Cynthia offered both in private and from the podium. I miss her terribly, but I have faith I’ll see her again someday.

Now ground workers rolled a huge staircase up to the jet door, and over the intercom the pilot said, “Mr. Zamperini will be the last one to leave the ship.”

Cissy—she’d come with me in Cynthia’s place—smiled and said, “Daddy. They’re going to have a greeting for you.”

I stepped out of the plane and stood at the top of the steps. The day was perfect. Balmy trade winds ruffled the American flag. I could see homes and buildings in the distance. Someone took my bags. A pipes-and-drum band marched on the field. The commanding officer and his assistant stood at attention, as if I were royalty. Suddenly I felt sheepish. Real sheepish. I folded my hands in front of me and thought, I’m eighty-four. I long ago forgave the Japanese for what they did to me, not only on Kwajalein but during the war. It’s just that I never wanted to come back to this place, and now I’m here. Is it too late for me? Can I really shake off the past and see Kwajalein in a different light?

Ignoring the handrail—and my age—I came down snappy. I knew I had to try.

I walked briskly onto the tarmac. The colonel in command saluted and shook my hand, then escorted me and Cissy to a room and presented us with a book on Kwajalein.

“This is our gift to you,” he said.

I thanked him and reached into my bag and brought out a bottle of French champagne. They’d had a little contest among the four hundred passengers on our flight over: “We’ve been flying at a certain air speed, head winds have been this much—how long have we been aloft?” Easy. I wrote down two hours and twenty-eight minutes. Half
an hour later they announced, “The French champagne has been won by the person sitting in seat 41-E.”

I wasn’t paying attention, but Cissy said, “Daddy, you won the champagne!”

The flight attendant brought me a bottle wrapped in a white cloth napkin. I’d put it in my bag and had forgotten about it until now.

“Here,” I said to the colonel. “I won this on the flight over. My gift to you.”

THEY LEFT US
alone for a couple of hours, to relax. My room had cherry furniture with a high-gloss shine. A huge TV. Better than the Hilton. I lay on the very comfortable bed and kept thinking about the Kwajalein cell I’d once occupied. Now I was on cloud nine. It was my finest hour. The only thing missing was Cynthia.

Whatever Preston, the protocol chief, scheduled for us, I drank it all in. Would you like to play golf? Great! Can you get up at five-thirty? Sure! We had a ball. A lot happened. They found an old map of the island from before it had been bombed, pieced it together from sections, and ran it through a huge laminator. Preston asked if I could pick out my old prison quarters. I remembered coming off the boat, blindfolded, riding in a truck, driving to the right. I pointed to where I thought I’d lived for forty-three days, and Preston took me to the spot. Nothing was the same, of course. It was a well-paved street. Trees, houses, families.

Nothing was the same for me, either. I was greeted, honored, loved, fed.

Most of the workers live on Kwajalein, but a lot of people work on Roi-Namur, another island in the atoll, only a half-hour flight away. There all the old Japanese bunkers still stand, with the grass neatly mowed around them. It takes two hours to tour. We saw one building that hadn’t been hit by shells and had iron prison bars on the windows. Today the natives swear they once saw a tall, slender woman with blond hair and a work suit standing behind the bars just around the time Amelia Earhart disappeared. The old-timers today say they’ve
never heard of Amelia Earhart but that there
was
a woman there who matched her description.

If the pleasure of my arrival was a big surprise, the difficulty saying good-bye was another. It was hard to leave those people. They were so gracious and wonderful. They couldn’t do enough for us. Every night a different family threw a dinner for us. We’d have a glass of wine and a toast, and great food. The guests were always fascinating.

Kwajalein was nothing short of a utopia. Everybody rides a bicycle. Nobody’s in a hurry. When I got back to Los Angeles I kept thinking, Would I like to go back? As soon as we hit the freeway and fought rush-hour traffic back to the house, I knew the answer.

Three days later I got a call from Preston. “The people here just love you and your daughter.” He told me that just before we left he’d gone to the colonel and said, “I’ve been doing this for fourteen years. All the people who came here, I couldn’t wait until they left. But as far as I’m concerned, Louie and Cissy can stay forever.”

I NEVER THOUGHT
I’d return, but the next day I heard from a man based at Hickam Field on Oahu. “This is Tim Miles,” he said. “I’m in charge of military I.D. We have a staff of anthropologists here. We went to Makin, dug up the remains of fifteen marines there, and did a DNA test on them. Now we want to go to Kwajalein.”

“I just came back from Kwajalein four days ago,” I said.

“What!?”

It seemed Miles had a report from a Kwajalein native who’d said, “Yeah, nine marines were here. They were executed. I saw one of them killed and buried.”

“How did you know they were marines?” he’d been asked.

“Because they were all white,” the native replied.

Miles wanted to look for the remains of the men whose names were carved into my cell wall.

I also got a not especially congenial call from Washington. “How do you know the nine marines were on that island?”

I said, “I’ll quote you what I wrote in my original report.”

“Were the names written in pencil, or were they inscribed?”

I said, “They were inscribed by a sharp object.”

“What happened to them?”

I told them what the native had told me in 1943: “They were all decapitated, samurai-style,” by two guards.

“Did you get the names?” he asked.

I said, “I looked at them every day and pretty well memorized them. But after that, I never had to use the names again, so now I can’t remember whether they were first names or last names. Seems to me they were last names, but I’ve never had any reason to think of them. After that, all I did was explain why the marines were there. But here’s an idea. You’ve got a list of twenty-four missing marines. You dug up the fifteen on Makin Island, so just subtract their names and you’ve got it.”