Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (32 page)

“Little trouble” was an understatement. The Communist movement was strong in postwar Japan, and over a thousand students and an equal number of policemen were at that very moment engaged in a bloody battle that lasted six hours. One hundred forty-three people were arrested, and thirty-four students and eleven policemen were injured, some critically.

I spoke at four factories instead, and three days later we decided to try Waseda again. The university president made it clear that I’d come at my own risk. “I’ll announce the event,” he said, “but I can’t guarantee anyone will attend.”

The stage at Waseda was about five feet off the floor. I was preparing for the assembly when students began to arrive. Many wore bandages; they were the radicals. That frightened me, yet again I didn’t pull any punches talking about the Bird and the torture. Everyone listened politely, and when I finished the interpreter gave the invitation to become a Christian. Suddenly a sea of students surged forward, many of them wearing bandages. It occurred to me that they might not be rushing the stage to accept Jesus. I admit that even after two years in prison camp I still found it difficult to look in a Japanese face and know whether the owner is happy or mad or about to kill me.

I turned to the interpreter and said, “Hey, what do they want?”

He asked one guy with a bandaged head, turned back to me, and said, “They want to become Christians.”
Our usual harvest was fifty or sixty. That night nearly three hundred renounced all other gods and ideologies, even communism. Beautiful!

TOKYO HAD BUILT
a huge new civic auditorium, which held about sixteen thousand people. The night I appeared, eighteen thousand jammed inside and another five thousand waited outside in a heavy downpour. To reach everyone, I did a double program. Again I told the story, and again people came forward to accept Christ.

Afterward, a shriveled old Japanese lady approached me, bowed, and got right to the point. “I’m a Christian,” she said, plainly, “and the reason your life was spared on Kwajalein was because my son was an officer in authority there.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“My son’s words saved your life,” she repeated matter-of-factly.

I had so many questions, but I asked only this: “Is he still alive?” I knew that when the Allies bombarded the island, the enemy had been wiped out.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He manages a department store in Tokyo.” She gave me the name, and I went directly there.

THOUGH I WROTE
it down, I’ve lost the piece of paper and today I don’t remember the name of the man who saved me on Kwajalein, though I have his picture. It’s the sorriest, silliest thing. Nonetheless, we met and talked through an interpreter for nearly an hour, and I got the whole story.

“When you crashed at sea,” he explained, “you made headlines in America. We knew who you were because of the Olympics and USC. Everybody did.”

Americans today might not understand, but the Japanese then knew more about American movie stars and American athletes than we did. An American athlete could walk down Hollywood Boulevard and never be bothered. In Tokyo he’d be recognized.
“When you were picked up at Wotje, we were beside ourselves,” he continued. “The officers on Kwajalein wanted to interrogate you. One had even gone to USC.”

“I know. We met.”

“After they decided you were of no more use to them, an execution date was set. All prisoners on Kwajalein were beheaded.”

“I know that, too.”

“But I went before the panel and made a suggestion. I said, ‘I have a better idea. Louie-san Zamperini is a famous American runner and an Olympian. Because of that and the publicity when he disappeared, it would better serve Japan’s purpose to send him to Tokyo as a prisoner of war, to make broadcasts. The panel agreed and contacted Vice Admiral Abe, who had given the original order that no prisoners leave Kwajalein alive—and he gave his consent.”

And so my life was saved. So simple. My destiny had been determined on Kwajalein.

I thanked him profusely and told him that the mystery of why I’d been spared had bugged me for years. “Now I know the truth, and I’m very grateful.”

We posed for pictures and shook hands all around.

MY TEAM AND
I extended our travels outside Tokyo, to the other islands—and to Hiroshima. Sections of the city were still highly radioactive, but on the outskirts of town, houses had been already been repaired.

I was met by Mayor Oye, a devout Christian who had lived in a concentration camp during the war for his preaching. He didn’t seem in the least bitter, particularly about his imprisonment. “I have no reason to complain,” he chuckled. “I had the largest congregation I’d ever had—and they couldn’t leave!”

As a gift, he presented me with a rifle hit by the atomic bomb while in the hands of a soldier. It had melted and curled, and I couldn’t believe he had given me this symbol of horror and defeat. Talk about forgiveness. I was touched.

I talked to burn victims in the rebuilt hospital, going from bed to
bed with my interpreter. One guy showed me his back, burnt from the blast, and said, “I feel honored that this happened to me, to save millions of lives.”

Honored? Save lives? Was he crazy? No. Though thousands were lost in the atomic-bomb blasts, students of the war know the statement makes sense. Still believing in the “divine wind” of old, the Japanese would have waited for a miracle and never surrendered, forcing us to storm their shores. The fierce, prolonged battle for Okinawa had been an example. In Ofuna, James Sasaki had told me that if the Allies ever invaded Japan, 10 percent of the 75 million population would die—plus untold numbers of the invading forces, most of whom weren’t real soldiers but part of the Youth Corps: teenagers taken out of college, trained for the final assault, likely destined to die. After the war, when some people condemned the A-bomb, a former Youth Corps kid wrote to the newspaper saying, “Hey, I was one of those guys who got six weeks of training on how to handle a gun and a bayonet. I knew I was going to die. Without the bomb we might have lost half a million men in the invasion (code-named “Downfall”), and the Japanese ten times that.”

I ALMOST RAN
out of money on the way back to Tokyo, but during lunch at a hotel outside Hiroshima, a navy ensign who’d heard my talk introduced himself. Before leaving Hiroshima I’d discovered I wasn’t allowed to ship home the rifle I’d received. The ensign said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You come out to the ship with me, talk to some of the guys, and I’ll not only give you two hundred and fifty bucks so you can stay in Japan, I’ll take your rifle home and give it to you when you return.” He was as good as his word, and I extended my stay.

The money allowed me to go into the Japanese countryside. After living at Ofuna and Naoetsu, I felt more at home there than in the cities. The men and women who now struggled along dirt roads carrying their loads of dried fish and bean paste seemed like old friends. On an overcast, cold and miserable day we stopped an old man pulling a loaded two-wheeled cart through a barley field. He listened to us long enough to know we were talking about God, then he
looked up and pointed at the sky and said, “I worship the Sun Goddess.” Just then the clouds parted and the sun shone through, warming us all. He smiled and said, “Is there anything better?” What could I do but smile back? When I handed him a Christian booklet, he bowed and thanked me, then trudged on his way, enjoying the sunshine.

IN TOKYO I
received word through a missionary couple that a former Japanese navy recruit who had heard me speak had approached them with a question: “I was one of those who beat Zamperini on the ship to Yokohama and broke his nose,” he’d confessed. “Do you think he has truly forgiven me?”

He was assured I had but urged to ask me in a note. I replied in a way that left no doubt about my pardon, but as I scribbled I thought, Writing is easy. Would it be as easy to say it in person?”

The time had come to find out.

LIFE
MAGAZINE HAD
kept in touch with me every few days, asking if I had made any progress toward being allowed to visit Sugamo Prison. I hadn’t and said I’d try again. But first I wanted to visit the camps where I’d been confined. Call it training, a prerace warm-up.

At Ofuna I walked the long narrow road, now slippery with rain, to discover that the camp was still there. Scavengers had stolen the wood fence, probably for lumber or fuel, and two barracks had been replaced by planted fields. A third barrack housed squatters, one of whom slept in the arbor where the Mummy had read his paper. The cemetery, where we’d said good-bye to so many of our buddies, had been burned over.

Today Ofuna is a resort. Then it was just a painful memory.

Omori was much the same story, except that as I drove across the bridge to the man-made island, I was more afraid than sad. Would I remember the thrill of watching B-29s streak toward Tokyo, bomb bays pregnant with destruction? Or would I see the Bird’s leering frog face and feel the sting of his buckle hitting my head?

The island was a shambles. The fences had vanished, but the deep
holes once filled with human excrement remained. I tracked through the weeds and looked in the window of a collapsing barrack to find the same two planks where I’d slept. Three tramps now called it home, and poverty-stricken Japanese families huddled in the cubbyholes for warmth, picking at the sand fleas that still swarmed unchecked.

I saw the room where we were allowed an occasional bath while an inquisitive audience of girl cooks giggled and pointed at our physical merits or shortcomings.

I stood in the barn with the holes in the wall where I saw another POW shiver for days, surrounded by ankle-deep snow, for stealing rice. I remembered Kano, the kindly guard, who’d risked his life to bring him blankets in the night.

I wandered through the courtyard, memories coming hard and fast: me, a virtual skeleton forced to run, stealing newspapers, beatings, depression, death, and the Bird—watching, never missing anything, grinning as he unburdened his rage on yet another prisoner. My chest tightened at how real it all seemed. Soon I would see my guards face-to-face. My forgiveness was so authentic and total that I looked forward to seeing each of them. I longed to look into their eyes and say not only “I forgive you,” but to tell them of the greatest event of forgiveness the world has ever known when Christ on the Cross, and at the peak of his agony, could say of his executioners, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.”

I took one more look as I left and to my surprise was overcome with a wave of…nostalgia? I had lived here. It had been my
home
. I missed my former buddies. Hell, I even missed the guards.

And the Bird? For so long I had wanted to kill him. Now only a mental picture of Watanabe as a lost soul remained. Maybe if the military would let me into Sugamo, I could find the Bird and talk to him. I had already helped myself; maybe I could even help him.

I crossed the bridge to the mainland and turned my back to the past. All that remained was the most difficult part, the test: Sugamo.

ENTRY TO SUGAMO
was highly regulated. It was almost impossible to get a pass, since none but the captives’ immediate families and those
who had specific and worthy business were allowed inside the wooden walls.

I called the GHQ chaplain again, and he told me my only hope was to appeal directly to General MacArthur at SAC headquarters. “That’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?” I said.

“Maybe,” he responded, “but
he
’s the one who asked for ten thousand Bibles and twenty-five hundred missionaries. Give him a ring.”

When the fellow I reached in MacArthur’s office gave me a little runaround, I played my best and only card: “I’m calling because my former guards are there,” I explained, “and because MacArthur asked for twenty-five hundred missionaries and ten million Bibles.” I let that sink in for a moment. “I know I’m only one, but I’m
here
and I’d like to get in.” MacArthur was apparently in the same room, and the guy put his hand over the mouthpiece and talked to him. I waited and waited. Finally he came back on the line and said, “Okay. Tomorrow at ten
A.M
. you can visit Sugamo Prison.”

ON A COLD,
dreary morning I stood under the archway with the red letters
SUGAMO
across the top. Before I walked through the gate, my imagination ran wild. Who would be there? Sasaki? Shithead? The Weasel? Kono? The Bird?

The colonel in charge of Sugamo welcomed me cordially. “Your guards are here and the overseers of your prison camps are here,” he said, and assured me that he’d be pleased to have me speak to
every
prisoner, if possible. He said to talk openly and not hold back. He also told me a bit about the camp, which housed 850 prisoners, every single war criminal in one place. He said this was the only way to control them, and they had to be close to Tokyo because of the war-crime trials.

“The inmates vote for their own officers, and those elected run their affairs as a model village,” he explained. “Food is their own kind and there is plenty. We don’t practice physical coercion or punishment. All the prisoners are missing is their freedom and self-respect. But many are getting those back, too, month by month.”

A bell rang out, signaling the meeting. I stood on a platform and watched the men quietly file in. I wondered if those who knew me
recognized my face, now older and fuller, but I couldn’t see their faces well enough in the stage-light glare.

I gave my usual talk but never with more conviction. When I came to the part about how I’d been treated in Japanese prison camps, I again thought to temper the details and emotions so as not to appear too angry, but I didn’t because otherwise my forgiveness would lack true meaning.

Afterward, I invited the men to become Christians and asked for a show of hands. Sixty percent raised them high. “This will in no way shorten your sentence,” I explained. “I am not a part of the army and not part of SAC headquarters. It will not help you that way in the least.” Then I asked for hands again. Some who had been tempted or misunderstood withdrew, but many others in search of a new life persisted.