Read Online Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Laura Hillenbrand
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their service branch. In early 1941, Louie joined the Army Air Corps.*
Sent to the Hancock Col ege of Aeronautics in Santa Maria, California, Louie learned that flying a plane was nothing like watching it from the ground.
He was jittery and dogged by airsickness. He washed out of the air corps, signed papers that he didn’t bother to read, and got a job as a movie extra. He was working on the set of They Died with Their Boots On, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havil and, when a letter arrived. He’d been drafted.
Louie in training. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini
The induction date fel before the Flynn film would wrap, and Louie stood to earn a bonus if he stayed through the shoot. Just before his army physical, he ate a fistful of candy bars; thanks to the consequent soaring blood sugar, he failed the physical. Ordered to return a few days later to retake the test, he went back to the set and earned his bonus. Then, on September 29, he joined the army.
When he finished basic training, he had an unhappy surprise. Because he hadn’t read his air corps washout papers, he had no idea that he’d agreed to rejoin the corps for future service. In November 1941, he arrived at El ington Field, in Houston, Texas. The military was going to make him a bombardier.
——
That fal , while Louie was on his way to becoming an airman, an urgent letter landed on the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. It had come from a brigadier general at the War Department, Military Intel igence Division. The letter said that a credible informant had warned military officials that a California man, believed to be working for an innocuous local Japanese organization, had in fact been an employee of the Japanese navy, on assignment to raise money for Japan’s war effort. Japanese naval superiors had recently transferred the man to Washington, D.C., the informant said, to continue acting under their orders. According to the informant, the man was known as “Mr. Sasaki.” It was Louie’s friend Jimmie.
Though the surviving records of the informant’s report contain no details of Sasaki’s al eged activities, according to notes made later by a captain of the Torrance police, Sasaki had been making visits to a field adjacent to a power station, just off of Torrance Boulevard. There, he had erected a powerful radio transmitter, which he had used to send information to the Japanese government. If the al egation was true, it would explain Sasaki’s mysterious trips to Torrance. Louie’s good friend may have been a spy.
Sasaki had indeed moved to Washington, D.C., in the employ of the Japanese navy. He worked in the Japanese embassy and lived in an apartment building popular among congressmen. He made himself wel known among the Washington elite, mixing with legislators at building cocktail parties, playing golf at the Army Navy Country Club, socializing with police officers and State Department officials, and volunteering to serve as chauffeur after parties. Just whose side he was on is unclear; at a cocktail party, he gave a congressman sensitive information on Japanese aircraft manufacturing.
The letter to the FBI set off alarm bel s. Hoover, concerned enough to plan on informing the secretary of state, ordered an immediate investigation of Sasaki.
——
Not long after sunrise on a Sunday in December, a pilot guided a smal plane over the Pacific. Below him, the dark sea gave way to a strand of white: waves slapping the northern tip of Oahu Island. The plane flew into a bril iant Hawaiian morning.
Oahu was beginning to stir. At Hickam Field, soldiers were washing a car. On Hula Lane, a family was dressing for Mass. At the officers’ club at Wheeler Field, men were leaving a poker game. In a barracks, two men were in the midst of a pil ow fight. At Ewa Mooring Mast Field, a technical sergeant was peering through the lens of a camera at his three-year-old son. Hardly anyone had made it to the mess hal s yet. Quite a few were stil
Sent to the Hancock Col ege of Aeronautics in Santa Maria, California, Louie learned that flying a plane was nothing like watching it from the ground.
He was jittery and dogged by airsickness. He washed out of the air corps, signed papers that he didn’t bother to read, and got a job as a movie extra. He was working on the set of They Died with Their Boots On, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havil and, when a letter arrived. He’d been drafted.
Louie in training. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini
The induction date fel before the Flynn film would wrap, and Louie stood to earn a bonus if he stayed through the shoot. Just before his army physical, he ate a fistful of candy bars; thanks to the consequent soaring blood sugar, he failed the physical. Ordered to return a few days later to retake the test, he went back to the set and earned his bonus. Then, on September 29, he joined the army.
When he finished basic training, he had an unhappy surprise. Because he hadn’t read his air corps washout papers, he had no idea that he’d agreed to rejoin the corps for future service. In November 1941, he arrived at El ington Field, in Houston, Texas. The military was going to make him a bombardier.
——
That fal , while Louie was on his way to becoming an airman, an urgent letter landed on the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. It had come from a brigadier general at the War Department, Military Intel igence Division. The letter said that a credible informant had warned military officials that a California man, believed to be working for an innocuous local Japanese organization, had in fact been an employee of the Japanese navy, on assignment to raise money for Japan’s war effort. Japanese naval superiors had recently transferred the man to Washington, D.C., the informant said, to continue acting under their orders. According to the informant, the man was known as “Mr. Sasaki.” It was Louie’s friend Jimmie.
Though the surviving records of the informant’s report contain no details of Sasaki’s al eged activities, according to notes made later by a captain of the Torrance police, Sasaki had been making visits to a field adjacent to a power station, just off of Torrance Boulevard. There, he had erected a powerful radio transmitter, which he had used to send information to the Japanese government. If the al egation was true, it would explain Sasaki’s mysterious trips to Torrance. Louie’s good friend may have been a spy.
Sasaki had indeed moved to Washington, D.C., in the employ of the Japanese navy. He worked in the Japanese embassy and lived in an apartment building popular among congressmen. He made himself wel known among the Washington elite, mixing with legislators at building cocktail parties, playing golf at the Army Navy Country Club, socializing with police officers and State Department officials, and volunteering to serve as chauffeur after parties. Just whose side he was on is unclear; at a cocktail party, he gave a congressman sensitive information on Japanese aircraft manufacturing.
The letter to the FBI set off alarm bel s. Hoover, concerned enough to plan on informing the secretary of state, ordered an immediate investigation of Sasaki.
——
Not long after sunrise on a Sunday in December, a pilot guided a smal plane over the Pacific. Below him, the dark sea gave way to a strand of white: waves slapping the northern tip of Oahu Island. The plane flew into a bril iant Hawaiian morning.
Oahu was beginning to stir. At Hickam Field, soldiers were washing a car. On Hula Lane, a family was dressing for Mass. At the officers’ club at Wheeler Field, men were leaving a poker game. In a barracks, two men were in the midst of a pil ow fight. At Ewa Mooring Mast Field, a technical sergeant was peering through the lens of a camera at his three-year-old son. Hardly anyone had made it to the mess hal s yet. Quite a few were stil
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