Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (20 page)

I stood up again, angry. I have Italian blood, and revenge was written all over my face, not because of my physical agony but because I’d been humiliated. The guards at Ofuna punished us hard but impersonally. The Bird focused on me. He knew I could only cry, not act. But I wouldn’t cry. Not for him. Not for anyone.

My best revenge was to take secret comfort in knowing that Watanabe had mental problems. Even the other guards called him a sadistic psychopath. Once, the Bird sent for ten officers—including me—who worked in a makeshift leather shop. By the time we put away our tools and walked two hundred yards to his office, five minutes had elapsed—too long for Watanabe. He came after us swinging his belt, the heavy buckle whipping through the cold air. He struck everyone more than once across the face.

Sometimes the friendlier guards whispered to us about Watanabe’s life, explaining that when he had first come to Omori he hadn’t fussed much, just observed and did his job. Tom Wade knew more. As he wrote in his book:

In other words, the Bird hated officers because he couldn’t be one, and given a camp full of high-ranking men he acted like a jealous god, abusing his power. If we defied him or hesitated, he’d beat us. A favorite punishment—even more than the belt—was making our own enlisted men beat us. We’d line up while each noncom was forced to walk down the line striking an officer with his fist. After each punch, the Bird shouted, “Next!” It became a maniacal chant: “Next-next-next…” When our men hit easy he’d club
them
on the head. We’d whisper, “Look, hit us once. Hard.” Then we’d go down and Watanabe was satisfied. So were we, preferring to be hit by our own men than by anyone Japanese.

AS AT KWAJALEIN,
one Omori guard was Christian, and he quietly performed many acts of kindness for which he could have been severely punished. His name was Kano. Sometimes he would slip us his tobacco rations, and if a man was ill, he brought him candy for the much needed sugar. Kano also risked his life to help anyone unfortunate enough to be tossed into “the barn,” a room with holes in the wall, cold and miserable at night, where men caught stealing were forced to remain for days wearing only their undershorts. Kano would wait until the other guards were asleep and cover the prisoner with a blanket, then arrive an hour before sunrise to reclaim it.

AFTER MY BELT
lashing, the Bird shouted for everyone to go outside. We lined up on the compound, and he paraded stiffly before us, as always.

“You are all officers,” he said, carefully pronouncing each word. “You should work. You should be example for all camp. Work. Now you volunteer.”

No one spoke up. We were determined not to do any work for the Japanese.

The Bird stepped in front of the first man. “You. Volunteer!”

“According to international law,” he began, but he didn’t get far. Watanabe hit him with his kendo stick, a heavy cudgel the size of a child’s baseball bat. The next man had the courage to say the same. He, too, felt the kendo stick. Another simply gestured hopelessly. The man beside me found himself on the ground after a kendo strike to the throat. Then it was my turn.

“You!” the Bird shrieked. “You da?”

Well, I’m not a fool. The Japanese knew international law as well as I did, but clearly they ignored it. “Sure,” I said, in my most soothing voice. “What kind of work? I’d love to work. But only in camp, not outside. I’d be glad to help to improve conditions
here
any way I can.”

The Bird stopped, unsure of how to react, thinking slowly, the rage draining from his face. His eyes studied mine, then darted along the row of officers, to see if anyone had moved.

“Yes, of course.
Awari
—dismissed.”

We saluted and dashed for the barracks before he changed his mind. The Bird strutted to his office, smirking. The next day he turned one of the smaller buildings into a workshop where we could make goods for the camp. The officers often spent all day inside, shoulder to shoulder, stitching scraps of leather together for later use. We must have looked too happy, though. Eventually the Bird decided we were simply lazy. His punishment was as foul an atrocity as I’d ever witnessed, as did Tom Wade, who confirms this story in his book.

David James, a British businessman and interpreter, had lived in Japan for many years, but the government had imprisoned him on the irrelevant charge that he held a reserve military status as a captain. Apparently, James had even known the Bird’s family in Kobe, before Pearl Harbor; but rather than this winning him any consideration, Watanabe singled him out. For being at ease while the rest of us stood at attention, the Bird beat Captain James and forced him to stand in front of his office for several days and nights in early winter, saluting the tree planted in front of the door—not an easy task for a starving,
sixty-three-year-old
POW. After a few days, Dr. James collapsed, nearly insane, and spent weeks in bed recovering.

ONE EVENING I
walked past the door of the little cubicle the senior American officers occupied, and they hailed me.

“Zamp,” one said. “The Norwegians managed to get their hands on another newspaper today. But if any of us are seen going over to their barracks, the Bird might get suspicious. He knows the Norwegians like you, though. Maybe you can do it.”

I knew the penalty for getting caught with contraband, remembering the episode with Bill Harris at Ofuna quite clearly. The Japanese did not want the prisoners to know how the war progressed, assuming our minds would turn immediately to espionage and to plotting against them. Of course, they were right, though every time they caught us with a measly scrap of paper we protested our innocence loudly.

“Of course I’ll get it,” I said. This began my regular job as runner between barracks, relaying important information or stolen papers to senior officers who secretly employed prisoners like David James to translate, or did it themselves. The Japanese papers, by this time—the winter of 1944/45—overstated their victories, but at least they contained accurate maps.

One story I read, in an English version of a Japanese newspaper, was so funny and unbelievable that for many years I never told anyone because people might think I was nuts, like someone who says he’s seen a flying saucer. (If you see one, keep your mouth shut!) Apparently, a Zero and a B-29 bomber were engaged at thirty thousand feet when the Zero ran out of bullets. According to the report, the Japanese pilot opened his lunch bag, grabbed a rice ball, cracked his canopy, and threw it at the B-29—and knocked it down! A picture of the smiling Zero pilot was plastered across the front page. I thought, Gee, are the Japanese people really that stupid? Would anyone, even in need of a major morale boost, believe that?

What I
did
believe I’d seen with my own eyes.

One afternoon the air-raid sirens wailed. “I don’t think this is any more than a practice run,” said a soldier with whom I was discussing
the state of the war. “We don’t have a base near enough to launch an attack.” Still, we both backed away from the windows, just in case.

Suddenly we heard a big gun fire. We dashed back to the windows and looked outside, where in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention and the rules of war there was an antiaircraft battery that the Japs had just uncovered on a small sandy spit not more than a hundred yards from our compound. (No one could take it out without hurting the prisoners.) In camp the guards roamed, rifles ready, shouting
“Bi-ni ju-ku!”
I knew I had to get away from the window or be shot, but I could not resist finding out what had caused the commotion. By sliding on my back along the floor I could see the sky straight up through the narrow windows. There, floating through a high-altitude haze, leaving vapor trails from each end of its huge wingspan, was the largest aircraft I had ever seen, flying at thirty thousand feet like some sort of white angel. I knew it was a messenger from home, a harbinger of imminent revenge. It took my breath away.

The word spread, and when the day’s work parties returned we found out from a pilot who’d recently arrived at Omori that it was “the latest thing out,” a B-29. (
Bi-ni ju-ku
, in Japanese.) Then I remembered seeing those words scrawled as graffiti on a slaughterhouse wall when my group went to pick up some horse guts for dinner.

The plane flew over casually, around the Tokyo industrial complex, in a big lazy circle, taking pictures. No Zeroes chased it, but a few days later the Japanese papers reported that Zeroes took off to attack the bomber. The exact headline read:
THEY FLED IN CONSTERNATION
.

ON A BRIGHT,
crisp November morning the Bird burst into barracks Number Two and without resorting to the usual subterfuge called my name. I thought surely I’d been chosen for some awful detail or, worse, another beating.

Instead, he paced in front of me, hand on his chin and said, “You run, eh?”

“
Hai
(yes), Watanabe-san,” I said, wondering what he had in mind.

“Olympics, eh?”

“Hai.”

“Your mama and papa worried maybe you dead?”

“Hai.”

Tom Wade had set up a post-office operation at Omori that was responsible for many letters from home reaching their destinations, but when I tried to write—I was desperate to contact my family, to let them know I was still alive—the Bird forbade it. I never understood why.

“Maybe you make a—ah,
nan deska?”
He cupped his hands in front of his mouth, as if he were talking into a microphone.

“A broadcast?” I asked. I was instantly on guard. I knew about the
bunka,
the special “culture camp” in Tokyo that housed those who made pro-Japanese (or anti-Allied) propaganda broadcasts from Radio Tokyo. No one in his right mind wanted to participate. Not only was it morally wrong, but soldiers too weak to resist would pay for their treason, however rationalized, with a court-martial after the war. On the other hand, I wanted my family to know I was alive.

“Yes, broadcast,” the Bird said. “You broadcast. Okay?
Na?”

I shook my head from side to side. “I have to think about it,” I told him. I wanted to say that international law would not permit me to do more than give a basic greeting for identification purposes, but I had no doubt he’d punish me for my boldness. However, the Bird accepted my reluctance with amazing good humor, and I sensed then that he must have been acting on strict instructions not to hurt me, rather than his own twisted desires.

I WENT IMMEDIATELY
to the senior camp officers and asked their opinion on the question of broadcasting. To my surprise I discovered that they had given other prisoners the same opportunity to send home their names, status, and a simple message. No one would object if I only did the same. They had just one request: perhaps I could find someone in authority to whom to complain about the Bird. As a rule, you never spoke up about the treatment at camp. When the Red Cross came to Omori, the other prisoners had cautioned me, “Don’t say a word about the beatings because when they leave, there’s no protection and you’ll get a double dose.” But the Bird was different. I had to take the chance.

I TOLD THE
Bird I’d make the broadcast. A couple of days later two men from Radio Tokyo, both in their fifties, gave me a pad and pencils and said, “Write what you want to say.” While I wrote, other prisoners urged me, “Mention my name!”

The men from Radio Tokyo read my speech and said, “Oh, very good, very good.” Like Sasaki, they didn’t wear uniforms. Of course, they probably didn’t really work for the station either, but were propagandists like Goebbels was for Hitler.

On November 18, 1944, I rode with them to Radio Tokyo. We arrived early, and with time to kill they gave me a grand tour. The place was beautiful. “This is a new building,” they explained. “We have an American-style cafeteria; we will have lunch.” The food amazed me, but after the camp rations, I’d have been happy with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. They also showed me hotel-style rooms with beautiful beds and white sheets. At Omori I slept on a plank where each night the bedbugs swarmed out of the cracks and over my body, and I’d wake up covered with bites.

I knew they wanted to seduce me with the promise of a better life to become a radio propagandist. I suspected they also wanted credit with our government for having rescued me and kept me alive. They could say, “Hey, we had your boy,” as if they’d saved me. I suppose the Japanese figured that one day soon they might need all the goodwill they could get.

Eventually, I was ushered into a studio and placed in front of a microphone. The program was
Japanese Postman.
My nerves kicked in for a moment, but I didn’t mind. For the first time in a long time my anxiety had nothing to do with starvation or deprivation or a beating. The announcer introduced me as “Louis Philby Zamperini”—my middle name is Silvie, so it was an innocent mistake—and cued me. I clutched my prepared text, took a deep breath, and read: