Read Online Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Laura Hillenbrand
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sleeping in their bunks in the warships, gently swaying in the harbor. Aboard the USS Arizona, an officer was about to suit up to play in the United States Fleet championship basebal game. On deck, men were assembling to raise flags as a band played the national anthem, a Sunday morning tradition.
Far above them, the pilot counted eight battleships, the Pacific Fleet’s ful complement. There was a faint sheet of fog settled low to the ground.
The pilot’s name was Mitsuo Fuchida. He rol ed back the canopy on his plane and sent a flare skidding green across the sky, then ordered his radioman to tap out a battle cry. Behind Fuchida, 180 Japanese planes peeled away and dove for Oahu.* On the deck of the Arizona, the men looked up.
In the barracks, one of the men in the pil ow fight suddenly fel to the floor. He was dead, a three-inch hole blown through his neck. His friend ran to a window and saw a building heave upward and crumble down. A dive-bomber had crashed straight into it. There were red circles on its wings.
——
Pete Zamperini was at a friend’s house that morning, playing a few hands of high-low-jack before heading out for a round of golf. Behind him, the sizzle of waffles on a griddle competed with the chirp of a radio. An urgent voice interrupted the broadcast. The players put down their cards.
In Texas, Louie was in a theater, on a weekend pass. The theater was thick with servicemen, taking breaks from the endless dril ing that was the life of the peacetime soldier. Midway through the showing, the screen went blank, light flooded the theater, and a man hurried onto the stage. Is there a fire?
Louie wondered.
Al servicemen must return to their bases immediately, the man said. Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor.
Louie would long remember sitting there with his eyes wide, his mind floundering. America was at war. He grabbed his hat and ran from the building.
B-24 LIBERATOR
* Because indoor tracks are shorter than outdoor ones, forcing runners to make more turns to cover the same distance, indoor records are general y slower. In 1940, the outdoor mile world record was one second faster than the indoor record.
* Höckert’s teammate Lauri Lehtinen, the 1932 5,000-meter Olympic champion, gave his gold medal to another Finnish soldier in Höckert’s honor.
* Many other great runners also enlisted. When Norman Bright tried to sign up, he was rejected because of his alarmingly slow pulse, a consequence of his extreme fitness. He solved the problem by running three miles, straight into another enlistment office. Cunningham tried to join the navy, but recruiters, seeing his grotesquely scarred legs, assumed that he was too crippled to serve. When someone came in and mentioned his name, they realized who he was and signed him in.
* One hundred and eighty-three planes were launched in this first of two waves, but two were lost on takeoff.
S ix
The Flying Coffin
AS JAPANESE PLANES DOVE OVER OAHU, MORE THAN TWO thousand miles to the west, a few marines were sitting in a mess tent on Wake Atol, having breakfast. Extremely smal , lacking its own water supply, Wake would have been a useless atol but for one enormous attribute: It lay far out in the Pacific, making it a strategical y ideal spot for an air base. And so it was home to one runway and about five hundred bored American servicemen, mostly marines. Aside from the occasional refueling stopovers of Pan American World Airways planes, nothing interesting ever happened there. But that December morning, just as the marines were starting on their pancakes, an air-raid siren began wailing. By noon, the sky was streaked with Japanese bombers, buildings were exploding, and a few startled men on less than three square miles of coral found themselves on the front in the Second World War.
Al over the Pacific that morning, the story was the same. In less than two hours over Pearl Harbor, Japan badly wounded the American navy and kil ed more than 2,400 people.
Far above them, the pilot counted eight battleships, the Pacific Fleet’s ful complement. There was a faint sheet of fog settled low to the ground.
The pilot’s name was Mitsuo Fuchida. He rol ed back the canopy on his plane and sent a flare skidding green across the sky, then ordered his radioman to tap out a battle cry. Behind Fuchida, 180 Japanese planes peeled away and dove for Oahu.* On the deck of the Arizona, the men looked up.
In the barracks, one of the men in the pil ow fight suddenly fel to the floor. He was dead, a three-inch hole blown through his neck. His friend ran to a window and saw a building heave upward and crumble down. A dive-bomber had crashed straight into it. There were red circles on its wings.
——
Pete Zamperini was at a friend’s house that morning, playing a few hands of high-low-jack before heading out for a round of golf. Behind him, the sizzle of waffles on a griddle competed with the chirp of a radio. An urgent voice interrupted the broadcast. The players put down their cards.
In Texas, Louie was in a theater, on a weekend pass. The theater was thick with servicemen, taking breaks from the endless dril ing that was the life of the peacetime soldier. Midway through the showing, the screen went blank, light flooded the theater, and a man hurried onto the stage. Is there a fire?
Louie wondered.
Al servicemen must return to their bases immediately, the man said. Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor.
Louie would long remember sitting there with his eyes wide, his mind floundering. America was at war. He grabbed his hat and ran from the building.
B-24 LIBERATOR
* Because indoor tracks are shorter than outdoor ones, forcing runners to make more turns to cover the same distance, indoor records are general y slower. In 1940, the outdoor mile world record was one second faster than the indoor record.
* Höckert’s teammate Lauri Lehtinen, the 1932 5,000-meter Olympic champion, gave his gold medal to another Finnish soldier in Höckert’s honor.
* Many other great runners also enlisted. When Norman Bright tried to sign up, he was rejected because of his alarmingly slow pulse, a consequence of his extreme fitness. He solved the problem by running three miles, straight into another enlistment office. Cunningham tried to join the navy, but recruiters, seeing his grotesquely scarred legs, assumed that he was too crippled to serve. When someone came in and mentioned his name, they realized who he was and signed him in.
* One hundred and eighty-three planes were launched in this first of two waves, but two were lost on takeoff.
S ix
The Flying Coffin
AS JAPANESE PLANES DOVE OVER OAHU, MORE THAN TWO thousand miles to the west, a few marines were sitting in a mess tent on Wake Atol, having breakfast. Extremely smal , lacking its own water supply, Wake would have been a useless atol but for one enormous attribute: It lay far out in the Pacific, making it a strategical y ideal spot for an air base. And so it was home to one runway and about five hundred bored American servicemen, mostly marines. Aside from the occasional refueling stopovers of Pan American World Airways planes, nothing interesting ever happened there. But that December morning, just as the marines were starting on their pancakes, an air-raid siren began wailing. By noon, the sky was streaked with Japanese bombers, buildings were exploding, and a few startled men on less than three square miles of coral found themselves on the front in the Second World War.
Al over the Pacific that morning, the story was the same. In less than two hours over Pearl Harbor, Japan badly wounded the American navy and kil ed more than 2,400 people.
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