Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (37 page)

The one good thing about being an officer in Omori was that one was exempt from slave labor, albeit at the painful cost of half of the standard ration.

But soon after Louie’s arrival, the Bird cal ed out the officers and announced that from now on, they’d labor at the work sites alongside the enlisted men.

When a man protested that this violated international law, the Bird swung his kendo stick straight into the man’s head. The Bird approached the next man, who also said he wouldn’t work. Again the kendo stick banged down. Louie was the third man. Trying to avoid getting his head cracked open, he blurted out a compromise idea. They’d love to work within the camp, he said, making it a better place.

The Bird paused. He seemed to feel that as long as he forced the officers to work, he was winning. He sent them into a shack and ordered them to stitch up leather ammunition pouches, backpacks, and equipment covers for the Japanese military. Louie and the other men were kept there for about eight hours a day, but they worked only when the Bird was around, and even then, they deliberately stitched the leather improperly.

The Bird’s next move was to announce that from now on, the officers would empty the benjos. Eight benjos were no match for nine hundred dysenteric men, and keeping the pits from oozing over was a tal order. Louie and the other officers used “honey dippers”—giant ladles—to spoon waste from the pits into buckets, then carried the buckets to cesspits outside the camp. The work was nauseating and degrading, and when heavy rains came, the waste oozed out of the cesspits and back into camp. To deprive the Bird of the pleasure of seeing them miserable, the men made a point of being jol y.

Martindale created the “Royal Order of the Benjo.”

“The motto,” he wrote, “was unprintable.”

——

As the officers finished each day of abuse, honey-dipping, and errant sewing, the enlisted slaves were driven back to camp. The first time Louie saw them return, he learned where that sock of sugar had come from.

At the work sites, Omori’s POWs were waging a guerril a war. At the railyards and docks, they switched mailing labels, rewrote delivery addresses, and changed the labeling on boxcars, sending tons of goods to the wrong destinations. They threw fistfuls of dirt into gas tanks and broke anything mechanical that passed through their hands. Forced to build engine blocks, American Milton McMul en crafted the exteriors wel enough to pass inspection but fashioned the interiors so the engines would never run. POWs loading at docks “accidental y” dropped fragile items, including a large shipment of wine and furniture en route to a Nazi ambassador. (The broken furniture was sent on; the wine was decanted into POW canteens.) Coming upon the suitcases of the German envoy, POWs shredded the clothes, soaked them in mud and oil, and repacked them with friendly notes signed “Winston Churchil .” They drank huge quantities of tea and peed profusely on nearly every bag of rice they loaded. And in one celebrated incident, POWs loading heavy goods onto a barge hurled the material down with such force that they sank the barge, blocking a canal. After a Herculean effort was put into clearing the sunken barge and bringing in a new one, the POWs sank it, too.

Emboldened by the thought that he was probably going to die in Japan and, thus, had nothing to lose, McMul en joined several other POWs in committing an act that was potential y suicidal. While enslaved at a railyard, they noticed that a group of track workers had neglected to put their tools away. When their guard became absorbed in wooing a pretty girl, the POWs sprinted from their stations, snatched up the tools, dashed over to a section of track, wrenched the pins and bolts out, and rushed back to their work. The guard, stil talking to the girl, noticed nothing. A switch engine chugged in, pul ing several boxcars. The engine hit the sabotaged strip, the rails shot out from under it, and the entire train tipped over. No one was hurt, but the Japanese were frantic. They looked to the POWs, who kept working, their faces devoid of expression. The Japanese began screaming accusations at one another.

As dangerous as these acts were, for the POWs, they were transformative. In risking their necks to sabotage their enemy, the men were no longer passive captives. They were soldiers again.

What the POWs couldn’t sabotage, they stole. They broke into shipping boxes, tapped bottles, lifted storage room doors off their hinges, raided ships’

gal eys, and crawled up factory chutes. Scottish POWs who worked in the Mitsubishi food warehouse ran the most sophisticated operation. When the Japanese took their shoe sizes for work boots, the men asked for boots several sizes too big. They knitted special socks, some four feet long, and hoarded hol ow bamboo reeds. Once at the sites, they leaned casual y against sugar sacks, stabbed the reeds in, then ran the reeds into the socks, al owing sugar to pour through the reeds until the socks were ful . Others tied up their pant cuffs, stuck the reeds in their waistbands, and fil ed their pants with sugar. Each load was deposited in a secret compartment in the latrine, to be retrieved at day’s end.

Each evening, Louie saw the slaves tramping back in, their clothes packed with booty. The critical moment came when inspection was cal ed. Men would deftly pass contraband, or the men bearing it, around during the searches, while the guards’ backs were turned. McMul en would hide fish in his sleeves; when patted down, he’d hold his arms up and grip the fish tails so they wouldn’t slide out. The biggest trick was hiding the POWs who arrived fal -

down drunk after chugging down any alcohol that they couldn’t smuggle. The drunken men were shuffled into the center of the lineup, their shoulders pinched between the shoulders of sober men, so that they wouldn’t pitch face forward into the guards.

When the men were safely in the barracks, Louie watched them unpack themselves. Under the men’s clothes, sugar-fil ed socks hung from necks or arms, dangled under armpits and down pant legs, in the necks of turtleneck sweaters, in false pockets, under hats. Two-foot-long salmon would emerge from under shirts. Louie once saw a thief pul three cans of oysters from a single boot. Legs would be swaddled in tobacco leaves. One American built a secret compartment in his canteen, fil ing the bottom with stolen alcohol while the top, upon inspection, yielded only water.

Men were caught al the time, and when they were, al the men of the work party were beaten with fists, bats, and rifle butts. But the men were fed so little and worked so hard that they felt they had to steal to survive. They set up a “University of Thievery,” in which “professors”—the most adept thieves

—taught the art of stealing. The final exam was a heist. When men were caught stealing, POW officers suggested that the culprits be transferred to sites that didn’t carry food. The Japanese agreed, and the POW officers then replaced the inept thieves with University of Thievery alumni.

Though Louie, as an officer, had no opportunity to steal, he was quickly integrated into the thieving system, rol ing tobacco leaves for drying and putting them up in secret “wal safes” to cure. Once the leaves were properly aged, Louie would return to shave them into smokable shreds.

Thanks to the stealing, a black market with a remarkable diversity of goods flourished in camp. One group stole al the ingredients for a cake, only to discover, upon baking it, that the flour was actual y cement. Because there were so many men, there wasn’t a lot of loot to go around, but everyone benefited in some way. Whenever the thieves had something extra, they gave it to Louie, who stil wasn’t managing to gain weight. A few times, they even smuggled him smoked oysters. Louie devoured them and tiptoed to the fence to pitch the cans into Tokyo Bay.

Stolen food, especial y the Scots’ sugar, was the camp currency, and the “sugar barons” became the rich men of Omori, even hiring assistants to do their laundry. The Scots drove hard bargains, but they also donated one-quarter of the loot to sick POWs. One night, when he found Frank Tinker deathly il , Louie waited for the guards to pass, snuck to the Scots’ barracks, and told them that Tinker was in trouble. The Scots sent Louie back to Tinker with a load of sugar, no charge. Tinker would later say that Louie’s sugar run “saved my soul.” According to Martindale, Tinker wasn’t the only man saved. Deaths from il ness and malnutrition had once been commonplace, but after the thievery school was created, only two POWs died, one from a burst appendix.

And in a place predicated on degradation, stealing from the enemy won back the men’s dignity.

——

As the weeks passed, the Bird didn’t relent in his attacks on Louie. The corporal sprang upon him randomly, every day, pounding his face and head. Any resistance from Louie, even shielding his face, would inspire the Bird to more violence. Louie could do nothing but stand there, staggering, as the Bird struck him. He couldn’t understand the corporal’s fixation on him, and was desperate for someone to save him.

During one of the Bird’s attacks, Louie saw the camp commander, Kaname Sakaba, step out of his office and look toward him. Louie felt relief, thinking that now that Sakaba had seen this abuse of a POW by a lowly corporal, here at a show camp, he’d put a stop to it. But Sakaba watched indifferently, then walked back inside. Subsequent beatings, of Louie and of others, were no different. Other Japanese officers watched, some looking on approvingly, others looking dismayed. Sometimes, when they issued orders, they al owed the Bird, a mere corporal, to overrule them right to their faces.

According to camp accountant Yuichi Hatto, this strange situation was the result of a wrinkle in rank. Sakaba was ravenous for promotion. The appearance of order in his camp and the productivity of its slaves furthered his interests, and Watanabe’s brutality was his instrument. While it is unknown whether Sakaba ordered Watanabe to abuse POWs, he obviously approved. According to Hatto, some camp employees were offended by Watanabe’s treatment of POWs, but because those acts pleased Sakaba, the Bird was untouchable, even by those who outranked him. In consequence, the Bird flaunted his impunity and virtual y ran the camp. He viewed the POWs as his possessions, and he sometimes attacked other Japanese who interacted with them. Watanabe was, said Hatto, “not a mere guard, but an absolute monarch of POWs at Omori.”

Some Japanese, including Hatto, tried to help POWs behind Watanabe’s back. No one did more than Private Yukichi Kano, the camp interpreter.

When sick men were taken off work duty, losing half their rations, Kano found them easy jobs to keep them official y “at work” so they could eat enough to get wel . When he saw prisoners violating the rules by eating vegetables in the garden area, or pocketing mussels at low tide outside the camp, he talked the guards into looking the other way. In winter, he hung blankets along the infirmary wal s and scrounged up charcoal to heat the rooms. He snuck sick men away from the sadistic Japanese doctor and into the hands of a POW who was a physician. “There was a far braver man than I,” wrote POW Pappy Boyington, winner of the Medal of Honor. Kano’s “heart was being torn out most of the time, a combination of pity for the ignorance and brutality of some of his own countrymen and a complete understanding of the suffering of the prisoners.” But for Louie, the Bird’s pet project, Kano could do nothing.

When Louie saw Red Cross officials being taken on a careful y staged tour of camp, he thought that help had final y arrived. But to his dismay, the Bird tailed the officials and stood by, listening intently, as POWs answered the officials’ questions about life in camp. No POW was foolish enough to answer truthful y, knowing the retribution that would fol ow. Louie had no choice but to keep his mouth shut.

Louie was on his own. As the attacks continued, he became increasingly angry. His experience in childhood, when bul ies had sent him home bloody every day, was repeating itself. His interior world lit up with rage, and he couldn’t hide it.

Each time the Bird lunged for him, Louie found his hands drawing into fists. As each punch struck him, he imagined himself strangling the Bird. The Bird demanded that Louie look him in the face; Louie wouldn’t do it. The Bird tried to knock Louie down; Louie wobbled but wouldn’t fal . In his peripheral vision, he could see the Bird looking furiously at his clenched fists. Other prisoners warned Louie that he had to show deference or the Bird would never stop. Louie couldn’t do it. When he raised his eyes, al that shone in them was hate. To Watanabe, whose life was consumed with forcing men into submission, Louie’s defiance was an intolerable, personal offense.

More and more now, the POWs could hear air-raid sirens echoing across the bay, from Tokyo. They were al false alarms, but they raised the prisoners’

hope. Louie searched the empty sky and hoped that the bombers would come before the Bird put an end to him.

——

At half past six Greenwich mean time on Wednesday, October 18, 1944, a program cal ed Postman Calls began its evening airing on Radio Tokyo. It was one of twelve propaganda programs conducted in English and broadcast to Al ied troops. The broadcasters were POWs known as “propaganda prisoners,” usual y working under threat of execution or beating.

This evening, the program made an announcement: “This is the postman cal ing California and Mrs. Louise Zamperini, 2028 Gramercy Street, Torrance, California. Here is a message from her son, First Lieutenant Louis Silvie Zamperini, now interned in the Tokyo camp. ‘My darling family, I am uninjured and in good health. I miss you al tremendously and dream of you often. Praying that you are al in good health and hope to see you again someday. Love to al relatives and friends. Hold my belongings and money for me. Love, Louis.’ ”

A few miles away at Omori, Louie knew nothing of the broadcast. The Japanese had written it themselves or forced a propaganda prisoner to do so.

The broadcast wasn’t aired in America, but in the town of Claremont, South Africa, a man named E. H. Stephan either picked up the signal on shortwave radio or received a report of it. Stephan worked for a service that monitored broadcasts and sent news of POWs to family members. He fil ed out a card with information about the broadcast. Louie, the card said, was a POW in an Axis camp.