“The dead weren’t numbers on a page. They were their roommates, their drinking buddies, the crew that had been flying off their wing ten seconds ago.”
Rating: 5 stars
WOW. I am completely in shock over the contents of this book. Louie Zamperini’s amazing story is beautifully crafted by Laura Hillenbrand, and the detail that it is told in is absolutely stunning. The seven years of research that Hillenbrand conducted in preparation for this book are very apparent.
The book gives a complete overview of Louie’s life, divided into five parts.
The first part recounts his time before he was drafted into the Air Force and his early military days, when he was growing up as a rambunctious child and succeeding as a record-setting Olympic runner. Even this early life biography had me enraptured, despite it not being the more thrilling part of the book. Hillenbrand’s storytelling abilities in this respect are spectacular.
The second part of the books reviews Louie’s more dangerous military missions, including the ones that his crew and plane survived, and the mission that sent his aircraft into the sea. Even as someone who is not super interested in war stories and military events, I was still captured by this part of the book.
The third part of the book is the story of Louie and two of his crewmates lost at sea, afloat in a tiny life raft that was extremely inadequately stocked for extended periods of isolation on the ocean. It recounts Louie, Phil, and Mac’s struggle to survive against starvation, thirst, frenzies of incessantly pursuant Pacific sharks, insanity, heat, enemy fighter planes, and illness resulting from a combination of these factors. This section of the book had me constantly holding one hand to my temple, actually in fear over what was happening and what was going to happen to Louie (especially during the shark parts!!). I knew he was going to survive because parts 1-3 aren’t even half the book, but HOW could he??? It was truly exhilarating.
The fourth part of Unbroken, the longest of the four parts, centers around Louie’s time in as a POW after he is captured by the Japanese military (47 days after his plane crashed). If the previous part had be terrified, this part had me angry and fuming over the events that nearly killed Louie multiple times. The author’s emphasis on the dehumanization aspect, the stripping of dignity, and the emotional turmoil of being constantly demoralized, belittled, and humiliated, really consolidated these emotions in me as I read. I was still enthralled, but it was fueled by an anguished need to finish the book and find out that it had a happy ending. This part also really enlightened me on aspects of WWII that I had never been taught in school. While in Germany POWs were kept in war camps that were under the regulations of the Geneva Convention, Japan was an unrestricted horror show for POWs. After reading books like Night (Elie Weisel), I had assumed Nazi Germany was the worst of the worst in WWII, but I was clearly not well informed on the role of Japan during the war. I think it’s common to be taught more about the European Theatre during WWII (and about the Holocaust without mention of the war itself) than to learn about the Pacific side of it, so this story opened my eyes in addition to having a clear emotional impact on me.
The fifth part of the story is the resolution, after Louie is liberated from the Japanese war camp and returns home to his family. I was unsurprised by a lot of the events of this part, but what stood out to me was how Hillenbrand consistently wove different stories together, and how those stories all fit. Louie’s retribution is recounted, but part 5 also talks about the fate of one of the war camp torturers in detail, along with giving general facts and statistics about life after being a POW for WWII veterans. This interweaving style of storytelling is done consistently throughout the whole book but it stood out to me here.
“If they were going to die in Japan, at least they could take a path that they and not their captors chose, declaring, in this last act of life, that they remained sovereign over their own souls.”
This book consistently provides contexualization, relevant statistics, and a captivating storytelling tone that will leave readers hypnotized by Louie Zamperini’s story. Five stars, and I recommend this book to everyone.
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