April 14, 2026 • 50 mins
Could a single act of forgiveness rewrite a life shattered by war, pain, and betrayal?
On this extraordinary episode of The Greg Laurie Show, Pastor Greg Laurie sits down with the legendary Louis Zamperini—Olympic runner, WWII hero, and the subject of the best-selling book and film Unbroken. From his childhood as a self-proclaimed “rotten kid” in Torrance, California, to facing sharks and starvation adrift in the Pacific for 47 harrowing days, and enduring years of brutal captivity in a Japanese POW camp, Louis Zamperini shares his story in his own captivating words.
But survival is only the beginning. In a conversation filled with wit, candor, and deep vulnerability, Louis Zamperini reveals how trauma after the war nearly destroyed him—until a pivotal moment at a Billy Graham crusade transformed anger and nightmares into a life of peace, faith, and radical forgiveness.
Key Moments You Won’t Forget:
- The chilling truth about survival at sea—including a moment when Louis Zamperini turns the tables on circling sharks.
- His face-to-face encounter with Adolf Hitler after an electrifying race at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
- The astonishing night forgiveness replaced hatred—ending years of torment and shaping the rest of his life.
This is more than a war story. It’s a powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, the possibility of redemption, and the freedom found in forgiveness. Whether you’re familiar with Unbroken or discovering Louis Zamperini's legacy for the first time, you’ll be inspired by his journey from bitterness to forgiveness, and the profound faith that anchored it all.
Subscribe for more conversations that will challenge and uplift your faith journey.
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 "God Help Me"—Facing Death in a Plane Crash
00:38 Louis Zamperini: The Unbroken Story Unveiled
05:16 Qualifying for the 1936 Olympics Against All Odds
11:19 Meeting Hitler After the Olympic Race
13:28 Stealing a Nazi Flag—A Risky Souvenir
15:13 Surviving the Green Hornet Plane Crash
19:01 Fighting for Life—Miraculous Escape from Underwater Wreckage
24:09 Mental Exercises for Survival on the Life Raft
25:25 Shark Attack—Turning Predator Into Dinner
32:09 POW Camp Recognition—Japanese Know Zamperini’s Olympic Fame
34:15 The Bird—Facing His Cruelest Captor
40:41 Nightmares & Post‑War Trauma: The Bird Haunts Home Life
42:40 Billy Graham Crusade—Life‑Changing Faith Decision
43:01 Forgiving the Bird—Conversion Ends Nightmares
44:01 Reading the Forgiveness Letter to Watanabe
48:07 Experiencing Instant Transformation Through Christ
49:16 How Anyone Can Accept Jesus—Zamperini’s Simple Explanation
50:36 All Things Work Together for Good—Faith Tested
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life audio. I have to laugh when people say I
thought I was gonna die and my whole life went
before my eyes. You don't have time for your life
the faster before your eyes. You only have time to
say God help man.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, welcome to the Greg Glory Show. I'm glad you're
with us for this very special episode. Every now and
then hear a story it almost sounds too incredible to
be true. A troubled kid turned Olympic athlete, a war
hero lost at seat for forty seven days, a prisoner
of war who endured unimaginable cruelty and lived to tell
(00:54):
about it. The man I'm talking about is Louis Zamporini.
His life is so remarkable. There's a best selling book
and movie made of out of this life called Unbroken. Today,
we're going back into the archives for a remarkable conversation
recorded live, where Louis shares his story in his own words.
(01:14):
From his early days is what he called a rotten kid,
to becoming the Torrents Tornado, to competing in the nineteen
thirty six Olympics and even meeting Adolf Hitler. But that's
only the beginning. Louis opens up about surviving a plane
crash in the Pacific, drifting at sea for weeks surrounded
by sharks, and then facing years of brutal treatment in
(01:37):
a Japanese pow camp. Yet the most important and powerful
part of his story is in how he survived. As
significant as that is, it's what happened after, because everything
changed when Louis Zamporini encountered Jesus Christ at a Billy
Graham crusade. Louis went to be with the Lord in
(01:59):
twenty fourteen at the age of ninety seven, but his
story and his testimony still speaks powerfully today. So I
had the privilege of sitting down with Louis and hearing
firsthand how God took a life filled with pain, anger
and trauma and transformed it into a story of forgiveness,
purpose and unshakable faith. So join us for this where
(02:23):
an unforgettable conversation. It's a story you won't hear just anywhere,
and one that might change the way you look at
your own life. I present to you now, Louis Zamparini. Louis,
thank you for being with us here tonight. We're so
glad to see you, and so many people have been
(02:43):
so looking forward to this time you've met lived such
an amazing life, But you know, you didn't start off
with a lot of promise. You were a bit of
a troublemaker living there in Torrents, a little bit of
a hoodlu wouldn't you say?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They called me a rotten kidd.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And you got into trouble a lot with the law
and were kind of a little bit of a troublemaker, right.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Well, yeah, I formed a little gang and we in
the movie theaters with the dime they get in the movies.
So everybody went to the movies on Saturday night, and
we knew who made the beer and the wine and
the liquor. So when they went to the movies, we'd
get in their house and get the loot and hide it.
We had a cave out in the trees and we'd
(03:31):
hide it there, and then the next day we'd go
to the beach and lay on the beach and drink
beer or whatever we had wine. But the lifeguards were
like policemen then, and they came down and you know,
reprimanded us. So I worked at the diairy part time,
So I filled the milk bottles full of white paint,
(03:51):
left it upside down at night and then left it
in the sun first here four days. And then we
poured our wine or our beer into the milk bottle
and then and of course the lake guards thought we
were drinking milk. Wow, reformed kids, that's what we were.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. So, but you, your brother p was quite a runner,
and he got you into running, and running helped you
to get out of this lifestyle, didn't it and kind
of changed the course of your life somewhat.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, yeah, my brother knew I had no interest, only
gang related interest. And uh so, I'm a great believer
in getting young people started in different things. Felt that
when they were bored and said, hey, let's go play tennis,
so let's go do this. But I had none, so
I just said, hey, let's go do this. And it
was a wrong thing. And uh and so the police
(04:43):
were they got so bad when something happened in town,
they just park in front of my house and wait
for me to come home. Like my brother said, he said,
when the police car went south, I went north.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah. So, but you were so fast, you were such
a skilled runner that you had a nickname there the Torrents,
what was George Tondo, tornch Tornado and you qualified to
run for the United States of America in the nineteen
thirty six Olympics in Germany. Ye, So tell us tell
(05:19):
us about that experience. How old were you when you
were on your That was your first time out on
a big ship, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, Well, I was a teenager eighteen years old and uh,
and I was a champion high school miler, had the
nothing home the national or world record, but that didn't
compare to the five great miners who were in college
or graduated, and so I just decided it's hopeless. So
I didn't decide to train. And then because the second
(05:50):
best five thousand meter runner came to Compton to run,
and my brother, who was the coach, she said, you
got ten days to train for that longer race. Now,
in those days, they didn't want kids to run that far,
And so I trained for ten days and he just
he said, I just want to see how close you
(06:11):
can get to a fellow we know who will make
the Olympics. And I passed him two the laps before
we finished. He couldn't take it. He passed me. I
passed him and people were going crazy, and nobody expected
me to be in the race. With this guy, and
down the home stretch, I passed him about fifteen yards
(06:32):
and then we were lapping another runner from San Pedro,
and the officials were still shocked at my performance. They
didn't expect it, and I started passing. They motioned him
off the track the wrong way. He ran right in
front of me. We collided and went down out of
my knees. Got up, and now my opponent is a
(06:52):
head again. I caught him at the tape, but he
beat me about an inch, so I knew that I
could beat him. So on strength of that performance, the
Olympic Committee sent me an invitation to go to New
York for the tryouts. But it's funny because those days
a depression. All these athletes are invited when they qualify,
(07:13):
but how do you get to New York. There was
no money. We had some people hit shiked. A guy
took a motorcycle from Seattle all the way there to compete.
But my dad worked for the Pacific Electric Red Cars
and he was allowed one pass a year on the
Southern Pacific Railway. So I got my round trip. And
then I had nothing to wear, no suitcase, and so
(07:36):
the merchants in town got together and gave me everything
I needed, and they took a little offering around town
so i'd have spending money to eat on the train.
And then in New York, I had a room with
another buddy and we ran on the hottest day in
New York had for about ninety years, and boy, people
were dropping like flies. And anyway, my brother said, you're
(07:59):
going to run against the world's record holder in a
two mile John Lash and once they get behind him,
and just keep your eye on the back of his head.
Well as a kid, a world record holder to me
was Oh, it's just unbelievable. And I'm running behind him
and I had a chance to pass him the last lap,
but I didn't. I just said, well, how do you
pass the world champion? And I waited too late till
(08:21):
the last two twenty And now he's in the first lane,
his buddy's in the second lane behind, and I had
to run the third lane around a quarter of half
of the track, which put me about a twelve yards
further to run. By timing down the home stretch, we
ran neck and neck to the tape and you couldn't
(08:42):
put a I don't think there a half inch between us,
so that qualified me. I couldn't believe it. I'm on
the team and now they took care of me. They
put me in an hotel, gave me clothes, paid for everything.
Once you're on the team, and I'll never forget. I
just found the card I nailed to my mother. We're
(09:03):
in this hotel, and I wrote to her and said
that you won't believe it, mom, But they got a
radio in every room.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Wow, cutting edge technology in that time.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Now, my big problem was was not having been away
from home. The only time I ate out, I had
a a I think it was a tunic fish sandwich
with the olive arrt and that was the only time
I ever ate out. That was in a drug store.
During the depression, we had a full rage for food.
We had to go out and pick wild rabbishes, wild tomatoes,
(09:38):
and I had to shoot cottontail rabbits for rabbit consciratory.
And when we ran out of money again my mother's
they go to the beach row and bring me home
four or five abalonis. Well, that was poor man's food.
It's today's one hundred dollars a pound. So anyway, so
(10:00):
I got aboard the ship and I just when they
start bringing the food on a boat. I couldn't believe
not one sweet roll, but five different kinds of sweet roll.
My eyes just popped out of my head and I
went for the gold, but it was food.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, I think I could win that myself. So
you put on a few pounds on that boat, as
I recall, at least fourteen pounds. And who was your
roommate at the Olympics. Who is your roommate?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
My roommate was Jeffrey Orange and Mack Robinson.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So amazing. So here you are, you running the Olympics
in nineteen thirty six, there in Germany. World War two
has not started yet. You run the five thousand meter event.
You get eighth place, but you ran so fast that
there was a request sent by Adolf Hitler who wanted
to meet you. Do you remember meeting Hitler?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, it was being overweight. I couldn't keep up the pace.
But so the last lap, all the great runners are
up front. There were seven of them, and then there
was a fifty yard gap between them and us, and
I was really tired. And as the last lap, my
(11:18):
brother said, well everybody's tired, and they gave me a formula.
He said, isn't one minute of pain worth a lifetime
of glory? So I spend the whole last lap under
the one minute fifty six seconds and their grandstand people
jumped up, you know which quite a sight, I guess,
and I thought that I came in eighth. But as
(11:39):
a result of that, I got an invitation from an
officer to see Hitler, and I said, well, I didn't
win a gold. He said, well, no, he just wants
to see you. So I went over there and all
he said was the boy was a fast finish. That
was it.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So while you were there in Germany, I did a
little sight scene and you saw a Nazi flag hanging
off a flagpole, and you decided you wanted a souvenir
tell us what happened there.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Well, that was another thing I enjoyed about the Olympians.
They all collect stubners to bring home, and I had
a lot of childhood training about taking things home, so
I started my collection on the boat. And then in Germany,
(12:31):
after I competed, about two days later, I went to
Berlin with a buddy and they had what they called
beer auto match. You put in twenty fennix and you
get beer. But not a couple like is it's a
leader and not the smallest beer they had, and we
had two beers, and I got a little frisky, and
(12:54):
we walked down the street and I stalled. Limousine pull
up in front of the Chancellery and Hier got out
and I think it was general going now, not going
it with Fritz, and they went inside and the meantime,
the guards on the front walk. They'd meet at the
gate turn about walk to the corner. So I timed them,
and I knew I had plenty of time to get
(13:15):
across the street and tear this flag down. But when
I got to the flag, it was about a foot
higher than I had anticipated and I couldn't reach it.
So the guards started to scream in German, and I
I just panic. I jumped aside I could and just
barely clutched ripped it from the from the pole, and
(13:37):
I did what they do best.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I started to run, so you rip that flag down.
On what happened then?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Well, the guards started screaming at me as they ramp
toward me, and I just started to running across the
street and I heard a shot, so one of the
guards shot in the air, and then I stopped. They
came up and they handled me rather roughly at first
till they saw the Olympic in figure in the American flag,
(14:08):
and then they were more gentle. And then the guard
went in the chantellery talked to I think he talked
to General bom Fritz, I remember that name. When he
came out, and he said, but why did you tear
down to the floor Stika. Now we had two Jewish
boys abore the orimpions they were in the relay, and
(14:33):
he thought I was probably one of them, and I
tore the flag down for racial reasons, But I said no, no,
I just wanted to take the flag home to America
to always remind me of the wonderful time I had
in your country.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You live doing along with that. So let's fast forward
a little bit. So World War two breaks out. The
Japanese bomb prol Harbor. You're in the military. You're flying
missions in a plane called Superman. You're a bombed, and
later you're transferred over to another plane called the Green
(15:10):
Hornet and you're flying a special It's a rickety old plane.
You're flying a special mission, a rescue mission. And the
Green Hornet goes down over the Pacific tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, well there was quite a drop force to leave
Superman because we had a good ground crew and they
said it's our plane. They took good care of it.
We have no problems with Superman. But the Green Hornet
was a lemon and we couldn't use it in combat.
It wouldn't get off the ground with a bomb road.
But if it did get off the ground without a
bomb road, instead of flying like this, it flew like it.
(15:46):
It was a musher and nobody wanted to fly it.
And we had just come back from a mission and
the report came that the B twenty five and I
radioed in that they were making a water landing north
of the islra of Palmyra, which is about seven eight
hundred miles south of Hawaii. So we're ready to head
(16:06):
into town to take our two day vacation, and the
Operations Act came out and halted us and said we
want you to take we want you to fly down
the stretch for this plane. Well, we said our planes
got to be served to take all day long. Well
you can take the green Hornet and we said, oh no,
but they said, well there's been it's been a task inspection,
(16:29):
so the commander when he talks to you and asked you,
asked you a question, it's really a command. We took
the Green Hornet and we got to the very area
where they reported going down, and we started to circle
the waters to see if we can find any to
bree or a life raft. And then number one more
to quit. And we had a whole new crew because
(16:52):
we had just got back from Nauru where we bound
the phosphate plants at naw Rule and we came back
with six hundred bullet holes and five cannon holes and
every shot up inside. Seven men laid out on the
deck and one did and so that plane, a slipperman,
was then condemned. They couldn't restore it and we crashed
(17:16):
landed when they came back to front of fooding. And
so we were assigned a new plane, which was a
good planet. And that now we're in the Green Hornets.
And uh when number one, well, we had a new
crew come over from the States. Could we lost our
crew and uh, the pilot called the engineer to come
(17:37):
up with further the motor. Well, actually it's a co
pilot's job, but it's in the book. The pilot and
co pilot by every day in the same spot. The
coal pilot who will be a number one pilot, He said,
let's switch seeth. I wanted to get familiar with, you know,
the left side. So now he's using his right hand
(17:59):
on the troddle, the co pilot the left hand. So
there's a little confusion there, and so they called the
engineer father of the motor, and there's four buttons up there,
and he comes up and he feathers the wrong motor.
So two motors out on the same wing, and the
plane drops over starts to lose an altitude, and even
(18:22):
though it's wrong, you have to do it. You push
full strodgle on the two starboard engines. And what that
does it takes the plane and pushes it around and down.
So we went heading down was full motor's going, And
that's why the plane blew up in the bit.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And so if the eleven men on board, only three survive, yourself,
the pilot Russell Allen Phillips and tailgunner Francis McNamara, who
you called mac. So, now here you are in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean in a life raft, and
did you think you would live through this? Did you
(19:01):
think this was the end when you crashed and managed
to get in that ref because I know you went
under water. Tell us about how you were wrapped in
all those cords and then that passage you mentioned, Well, you.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Know, kids asked me, do you ever think about dying?
That's a big question, the kids asked, and no, I
never thought about dying. We just thought about living, and
we focused on that, and then I had plenty of
survival training to make it work. My problem was I
was the pilot and the tail gunner were blown free
(19:34):
of the wreckage, but I was trapped in the waste section.
Why because the tripod that holds the machine gun up
is in front of me, and I hold the life
rent on my body, and then before we hit, I
jumped down low and so I ended up under the
tripod with the wrapped bromy and I was severely and
(19:55):
painfully wedged into that tripod. So there's no way I
could move. And it make matters worse. The tail snapped
off and the warriors are springing wire. They coil up,
the wires coiled around me. I'm already crashed hopelessly and
I'm completely entangled in wires, and I thought, well, this
is it. I knew I was dead, and now I
(20:18):
have to laugh when people say I thought I was
going to die, and my whole life went before my eyes.
You don't have time for your life to fast before
your eyes. You only have time to say, God help me.
And that's what I said in my mind and heart.
God helped me. I'm dead anyways, my last request, and
(20:42):
then I went down at least twenty feet when my
ears popped. Then I was down probably one hundred hundred
and fifty feet when my forehead had a severe pain
from the pressure. And then I lost consciousness. But just
before I did, I said in my heart God helped me.
And then I'm conscious again. And this is strange because
(21:04):
the first second that I became conscious, I thought this
is the afterlife, and it wasn't like the Bible said.
Then I started fighting for air, but I was completely
away from I never felt the tripod again ever, fell
to wires. I'm free in the way section of the
(21:27):
ship and floating upwards. My body's buoyant with the plane
is sinking rapidly. I'm going up rapidly, and I tried
to get out of the plane. I kept floating around
the darkness, and my USC ring caught onto the white
waste window and the pressure was so severe with the
plane sinking and my buoyanty that I couldn't let go,
(21:47):
and thank God for that. So I had to pulled
myself down and arched my back out. The window took
skin off my back, and it seemed like forever to
get to the surface, swallowing gasoline and oil and blood.
And I got up there and I just threw her
thing up, and then the pilot, the tail gunner had
been up there. They said I was down about two
(22:09):
or three minutes, and they thought everybody was dead, but
they screamed at me, help, help, Well, the life draft
is drifting away from the plane and I was fully closed,
and so I tried to swim to catch it, but
the current took it faster than I could swim. But
when it extended from the plane, it had a hard
(22:30):
foot cord and I had a pin on it. So
when it goes out there, the pin, the pressure of
the pin causes the seal two cartries to inflate the raft.
Then when the raft inflated, it pulled the pin out
of the ship. When I looked back at the pilot
and Chaim gunner and thought, well, we're all dead. But
the last three feet of that cord was going by
(22:51):
my face, so I grabbed it, reeled in the life
raft and that's what saved us. I got to the
pilot and it fled. He had artial blood shooting out
of his head. So I made a compress put it
tight on his head, and then we settled back in
the raft and I but within thirty minutes the tailgunner
(23:14):
panicked and start screaming and he lost control completely. We're
going to die. We're all going to die, and I said, mac,
nobody's going to die. Settle down. He kept screaming, and
of course that wasn't good for the pilot, who lost
a lot of blood, and so I tried to use well,
I took psychology in college, so I tried that. That
(23:36):
didn't work. So then I threatened to report him. I said,
we're going to be picked up tomorrow today and I'm
making a report to the commander. And that didn't work.
So I just turned my back on him and came
round and was knuckles and I crashed him across the face,
knocked him on his pandy and he was completely content Well, wait,
(24:04):
I had the five days they were had to do
it again and again. He was contentious, lay there with
you know, happy. But after that he settled down. But
we thought he would fall apart and hallucinate or something.
But we had these mental exercises every day, songs, teaching
(24:24):
each other works of songs, reminiscing what'd he go after
the war? I told him about physiology by major, and
so we exchanged things like that mentally every day to
keep our mind sharp. Right. My professor at college said,
if your mind is like a muscle, if you don't
exercise it, it will atrophy. So actually he died on
(24:46):
the thirty third day, but he was he was far
from hallucination. He was sharper. After thirty three days a
day crash.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And here you were out in the middle of the Pacific.
You ended up. Now you were at sea. It drift
at sea for was it forty seven days? And here's
a description from your book written by Laura Hildebrand, about
what happened. Looking over the side of the raft, they
saw it swelling up from under the water. Came a leviathan,
(25:20):
a vast white mouth, a broad back parting the surface,
and a long dorsal fin ghostly in the moonlight. The
animal was some twenty feet long, more than three times
the length of the raft. Louis recognized its features from
a survival school training. It was a great white shark,
so that wasn't the only shark. The sharks were circling.
(25:42):
They were coming up underneath the raft, and pretty soon
they were coming into the raft. But you took care
of one of those sharks. Are a few now there.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The thing is, I was never scared on the raft,
except for that great white because he actually we were
trying to sleep well. We put four inchant of water
in the raftic our body warmed. That little bit felt
better than the ocean. The shark came up, slapped us
on the bottom, lifted us out of the water. Three
(26:11):
guys in a raft. I thought it was a submarine.
And then I saw the sharks swimming around, and oh
my god, don't make a sound.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
The shark was like a human being. Every time he
runs a long way of the raft, he would take
his tail and flip water on us, just see what
we were. He did that about eight or ten times,
and we just sat motionless, no sound, And he finally
disappeared just like he came. That was scary because if
he was big enough to bite the raft in two
(26:44):
and take us all.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, but you you had to eat, and these sharks
were trying to eat you, and so you decided to
turn the tables on the sharks, say you ate them.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
That was really ironic. That the other two guys were sleeping,
and I was awake, and I kept watching these there's
always too sharks for some reason, and they kept circling,
or asked, circling, that's all they do. And so I thought, well,
it can't be like one with nature if I could
touch one of them. So I put my hand over
(27:16):
his head when he went by, and Mike hand went
over his door, so fin and I thought, hey, that's neat.
Then at one with nature, as they say, And I
did that to both sharks twice, and then all of
a sudden, and this was unusual. I never happened before
they both disappeared. There was always two sharks, nothing scared
(27:39):
them away. But these two disappeared. Now on my knees,
looking to see where they are, and this head comes
up out of the water, mouth open, and it was
like a demon out of hell. I mean, it just
scared me and I just inadvertently put my hands up. Well,
I had it high enough. So the shark's mouth is
(28:01):
when he opens his mouth, it's snoop is about a
foot ahead of his mouth, and he turns up. I
got him on the top of the nose and pushed
him back in, and then the tail gunner couldn't figure
out what was happening. He woke up, grabbed an oar.
I grabbed an oar, and I'll tell you for the
next ten minutes, they kept trying to jump in the raft.
We kept jabbinging with the ore, and they finally gave
(28:22):
up and they left. Well what that did to me,
it made me really mad, and being Italian, I wanted
to get even, and so I decided to make them
part of our food chain. And I lived with there,
(28:44):
I mean, finding off more than we could chew. But
so I waited for a small shark. The next day,
a five footer came by, and I thought, well, I
stopped small, but I'll drive my luck. So when he
came by the raft flow circling, I reached in and
grabbed him by the tail. But I didn't get his
tail out of the water. Fast enough, and he pulled
(29:05):
me in and I got out fast out, And so
then I waited. The next day, a four footer was
there and I thought, well, he's still pretty big, but
I'll make it try. So we have a pair of
shute flare cartridge. When you pull a shock out of
the water, immediately their mouth opens. And so I said,
(29:28):
I'm going to pull his head out quickly pull him
into the raft, and before he biss the raft or
any of us, put the cartridge in his mouth and
you have to perfectly pulled him in. And the pilot
shoud the casing into his mouth and he clamped down
on it and wouldn't let go. And then I had
a pair of plyers on the raft. Now, after forty
(29:49):
seven days, we couldn't figure out what the plyers were for.
And we had a patching kit like a bicycle patching kit,
and you use sand paper to rough up the rubber
to make the patch stick. That's what they had, sand paper,
and the sand was on the bottom and the paper
was blank. They should have had waterproof emery cloth. Everything
(30:11):
was wrong about this raft and we and so we
began to look around for the trademark. We thought they
had to be made in Germany or Japan.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So I took the brass mirror and I made three
teeth teeth marsh on the edge of the mirror. It
took me about ten or fifteen minutes to open a
hole in the ability of that four foot or five
foot shark. And they are tough. So we had a
lovely dinner of row liver. Twenty percent of the shark
(30:44):
is liver, though you got a lot of liver. Before
World War Two, all vitamin filts were made from shark liver,
and I knew how many shushes it was. But survival
school said, you don't eat the meat unless it's cooked.
It smells like ammonia. And then about a week later
when we called another shark, a little small four footer
(31:06):
and trump, we have two luscious meals on the raft.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
But as you were out at sea, a plane came by.
You thought it was an American plane. It turns out
to be a Japanese plane. It fires on you. Ultimately
you make it to the Marshall Islands where you are
rescued ironically by the Japanese. And now you are, ultimately,
after being beaten, being recognized as an Olympian. They seemed
(31:37):
to know who you were. And how did they know
that you were Louis Zamparini, the American Olympic athlete.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, i'll tell you, the Japanese knew more about American
athletes than we did, and more about our movie stars.
That's all they talk about. And we heard that in
President camp oh, Shirley Temple had an abortion and died.
Stuff like that. They kind to discourage it, and but
they yeah, when I was missing it made had lines
(32:05):
from America and so then they picked it up on
the radio and they were really surprised and they knew me.
In fact, when I was for four days, we couldn't walk,
so we had to be carried over their shoulders.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And how much did you weigh at this point, Louis,
I lost.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, I was one hundred and sixty five. I went
down to sixty five, so I was a skeleton. And
so we're now. The situation for the next forty three
days on land was far worse than being on the
life raft. So I used to pray there, God get
me out on that right, and I want to die
(32:42):
out there was clean and beautiful sky, but here we
were in this filth, constant, permanent diarrhea, and then all
kinds of things happened. They injected us and submarine launched there,
and eighty men we'd come ashore and you know, change
us and spit on us and fell rocked at us.
(33:02):
And but I tell them, the most disappointing thing was
when we went before the interrogation panel. Six naval ulcers
and white uniforms with gold braid medals all that, And
before the interrogation started, one of the ulcers said, mister
(33:22):
Zamprin or Lieutenant Zamparty, when you were entering USC in
nineteen thirty six, I was graduating, and this guy said
he was a trojanman, and that was hard for me
to believe. He was the most obnoxious of the six,
and I just couldn't figure it out. I finally had
(33:43):
to come to the conclusion that he was a third
year transfer from UCLA.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
So but ultimately you were to meet the cruelest of
all men. His nickname was the Bird.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
What was his actual name, missus Cheryl Watson Nabby.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
This man singled you out and beat you, mercilessly, tormented you,
just gave you the worst treatment imaginable, and it became.
He became like a plague to you, didn't he.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, well, it all started when I was put into Ofuna.
That's a secret camp and it's for high profile prisoners.
People they like Pappy Boynen was shot down Friday. He's
there Saturday. He's got a current information. And now the
head interrogator there, what's the sc with me? And I
(34:47):
asked him, I said, I'm not a high profile presner.
Forty seven days on the raft, forty three days in
the cell. I once getting to Yokohama, he wouldn't tell
me anything. But after a year and a month, I'm
transhferred to headquarters. O'morey and I found out the reason
(35:09):
why it takes a year and a month to be
declared dead. And they were waiting for me to be
cleared dead so they could condemn America. And they and
the first propaganda they had on the radio and I
think it's in the book. And then the purpose was
because on Quadalon we were a day of execution was set.
(35:31):
But another ulser came there and said it would better
serve Japan's purpose to send Louis on to Tokyo to
make propaganda broadcast, so that saved on life. But when
day I made this broadcast to my parents, that was
just the ruse, the first step, and it's the time
I went to the radio. They provided me with the
(35:52):
script that they wrote, and it was propaganda and they
were subtle, but then that's the way they get. You said, well,
it's not that bad. Then the next time it's a
little stronger. And I refused to read it and I
was able to steal a copy, which is in the book.
I think and uh and I so then the bird
(36:20):
was mean enough as it was, but I think they
gave him orders to make my life miserable so I
would accept the better life of a cafeteria, food and
radio Tokyo. In a hotel room, I met two Australians
and an American that were doing that. And when I
shook their hands, they couldn't look in my eyes, and
I think they were sending me a message there's no
(36:42):
way I could do it. I may not have to
live with that the rest of my life. And so
I was sent to a slave labor camp and I thought,
thank god, I'm getting away from mister showatsonaby the bird,
but then he was transferred to another camp. There's a
ninety camps in Japan, proper, Well, he's one of those
camps there Jewish. Later, I'm transferred to another camp, told
(37:05):
to stand the attention and faced the guard shack, and
I did, and the door opens and outsteps watch the knobby.
And I my knees buckled, and I thought, I'm useless, useless,
and I'll start all over again. And so he worked
me over right right to the end. But he knew
the war was over two days before we did. And
(37:26):
so he's the bird flew the coop.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, and you're what you would eat some days you
would be given a ball of rice right thrown on
the ground. In your book Unbroken, it says the food
was infested with rat droppings, maggots, and so much stand
in grit that Louis's teeth were soon pitted, chipped and cracked.
(37:48):
The men nicknamed the Russians all dumpo. Yeah, it's just horrible.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well that's why I think guys were dying. We lost
eighty eighty guys in one winner, in one camp, and
that happened all over Japan. And the food was right,
it wasn't rice. Rice was a luxury. It was I
think it was Miller some kind of red grain, but
it had grit in it and stuff like that that
(38:15):
chipped our teeth. And then they gave us a toothpowder
which was pomis with mint in it, and that wore
the enamel off of our teeth. So that's prison life.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah. So World War two finally comes to an end.
The Japanese really are not willing to surrender. President Chuman
gives the order and the atomic bomb has dropped in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan finally surrenders, and Louis Zamparini, who
is thought dead but is alive, returns home to a
(38:49):
heroes welcome. Is that how it was when he came
home again.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, everybody was startled and I was alive. I mean,
the official distin is happy that I had had home.
And my parents wouldn't They wouldn't believe it. They just
had a lot of parents had home. But my brother
said to my mom and dad, don't worry about RUI.
If he's got a toothbrush, he can survive anywhere.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, and you did, and you married Cynthia Applewhite. You
told me a story last night where you said that
all the hardship you went through in the war helped
prepare you for marriage. Do you remember.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
How did that go? Well? I don't know why I
said that, but after I carried the torture, now I know,
the mayor and had me up to answer a questions
at the city council. And that was the question he
asked me, did anything good come out of her being
a pergram war for two and a half years? And
I just said, yeah, prepared me for fifty five years
(39:49):
of married life. But actually, if it hadn't been for
the war, or watch the nabby and the post traumatic stress,
that's what drove me to Christ. When I got on
my knees and accepted Christ, what a relief to know
that I'd passed from one life into another.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So, but prior to your commitment to Christ, said the
Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angeles, you started drinking heavily.
You were experiencing what we now call post traumatic stress syndrome,
but back then they didn't have a name for it.
You were having nightmares about the bird. One night you
(40:37):
woke up with your hands around your wife's throat, thinking
you were choking the bird. Correct, well, we.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Were both scared. I just I couldn't figure out what
was happening. But the nightmares started in prison because every
day when he would punish me, I'd clinch my fist
and he knew I wanted to hit him, and he said,
if I grow on my short I must use it.
So I had nightmares there all the way home. And
there was never a night I didn't dream about getting
(41:05):
the and uh so, but when I woke up in
a coach with my hand around my wife's throat, that
really scared me, and of course it scared her. And
and then she and we were a young couple in
the apartment. Came to our apartment and knocked on the
door and started telling us about a young advangelist coming
(41:27):
to LA and he started to quote scripture and boy
that and that hit me. I said, hey, I'm out
of here. And my wife listens. And then when Billy came,
they talked her to going down with them, and she
in the meantime, she had already filed for divorce. And
then when she came home and tried to get me
to go down, I fought her. Uh but then she
(41:50):
said something that softened me up. She said, because of
my conversion, I'm not going to get a divorce. Well,
that really stopped me up a bit, and so she
was able to persuade me to go down here Billy.
But then again he was quoting scripture, and that really
hit me between the eyes, and I said, I don't
need anybody to tell me I'm a sinner. I know
I have. And so I got mad, pulled her on home.
(42:13):
But the next day she's all over me again, and
I said, okay, okay, I'll go back on one condition.
When he says every head bound and every eye clothes
were out, and so back again we went, and Billy's
finishing his sermon and I said, let's go. And then
he said something like when people come to the end
of their rope and they have no wh else to turn,
(42:35):
they turn to God. And I thought, yeah, that's what
I did. And on the raft in prison camp, all
the printers were praying about the same prayer, get me
home alive to my family, and I'll seek you and
serve you. Well, he got me home alive, and I
didn't keep my promise, and that really hit me between
the eyes. So instead of leaving the tent, and went
back to the prayer room and made a confession of
(42:57):
my faith in Christ.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
In an interview you did Louis, you made this statement
about your conversion quote. I got off my knees, and
somehow I knew I was through getting drunk. I knew it.
I knew that I forgave all of my guards, including
the bird. I think proof of that is that I
had nightmares every night about the bird since the war,
and I haven't had a nightmare since the night I
(43:28):
made my decision for Jesus Christ nineteen forty nine till now.
That's right, it's still true. So now you wanted to
kill the bird. You've made a commitment to Jesus Christ
at a Billy Graham crusade, and you've been able to
(43:49):
forgive him. So you return to Japan and you want
to actually talk with him and meet him. And you
actually wrote a letter to him because you were told
that he was no longer alive, but you wrote a
letter in hopes of meeting, in which you read that
letter to us, to.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Missus Sieur Watsonaby as the results of my prisoner of
war experience, under your unwanted and unreasonable punishment, my post
war life became a nightmare. It was not so much
due to the pain and the suffering, as it was
to the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me
to hate with the vengeance. Under your discipline, my rights
(44:36):
not only as a prisoner but also as a human
being were stripped from me. It was a struggle to
maintain enough dignity and hope to live until the war's end.
The post war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but
thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham,
I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate
(44:58):
I had for you. Christ said, forgive your enemies and
pray for them. As you probably know, I returned to
Japan in nineteen fifty two and was graciously allowed to
address all the Japanese war criminals at Sugamo Prison. I
asked them about you and was told that you probably
had committed Harry Kirey, which I was sad to hear
(45:21):
at that moment. Like the others, I also forgave you
and now would hope that you would also become a Christian. Now.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
As it turns out, and you found out later, the
bird was actually still alive. He was running from the authorities.
He was a declared war criminal. He became aware of
the fact that you wanted to meet with him, but
he agreed to meet you, and then at the last
minute he refused to meet you. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Well, it was the sixty minutes did the video, the
one that won the Emmy award, And they did get
him on the street and that was the first interview
of his life, and they he agreed to talk to him,
but then his son and grandson came out of the
house and then sixty minutes did you know, a condemnation thing,
(46:23):
accused him of all these crimes, and the son and
grandson didn't know he was a guard. He didn't know
he was wanted by MacArthur. And boy, they stopped and said,
no more of this. Now some of that happened. He
said he would meet with me, but after the son
and grandson I stopped the whole conversation. I never got
(46:43):
to meet with him. Nobody could talk to on the
phone or saim in person. And he died about I
guess five or six years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Well that was his loss, I tell you. But you know,
to listen to your life, Louis is so amazing. It's
like you've lived multiple lives. That Louis the Olympic athlete,
the Torrents Tornado, who shook the hand of Adolf Hitler.
Louis the World War Two vet who fought for his country.
Louis the survivor of a horrific plane crash, of being
(47:12):
a drift at sea for forty seven days. Louis the
concentration camp survivor, and then a man who plunged into
alcoholism and was transformed by Jesus Christ. And you were
able to forgive the people that did this horrific thing
to you. And there are people here with us tonight
or watching or listening on the internet, and they've been
(47:36):
wronged in life, They've been heard in life, and they
probably said I could never forgive, But you were able
to forgive. How were you able to extend that forgiveness?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Well, I didn't know when has happened. I received Christ
as my savior. I knew when I was still on
my names that I was a different person, and I
didn't know what happened. And then later courses I began
to study the script that I realized that when I
invited Christ into my life, therefore a man be in Christ.
(48:06):
He's a new person, new creation. And that that was
the answer. But at that time I didn't note. I
just knew something phenomenal happened that I had no not
the slightest hate for the bird anymore. I loved everybody.
And so the first miracle was not having the nightmares,
or I should say my conversion of not having nightmares.
(48:28):
And then the third miracle was the Bible. I could
never understand it. In the Pacific, they gave us olive
grab bibles and nobody could understand it, and we just
threw it in our foot locker. So I took my
olive drab New Testament. I walked up into the Hollywood
Park and I started to read it, and now it
made sense. And when I got to the the crucifixion
(48:53):
on the cross and the treatment that God the Son
went through, and the torture and the humiliation, I started
to cry. I never cried my life, but nobody could
make me cry, as I was just defiant. But this
did it.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Wow, how does a person accept Jesus Christ? Louis, you
heard Billy preach, and I know you know what it
means to follow Christ. And I know you've shared this
with many people, but someone's listening, right, now they would say,
I want to have a relationship with God like Louis Zamperini.
What do they need to do?
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, First of all, they have to realize that God
had promised he would come to earth some day, and
he came in Jesus Christ. God was in Christ reconciling
man unto himself. And John three sixteen that tells us
why he came. For God to love the world. He
(49:48):
gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believe with him
should not perish, but have revelation in life very clear.
And then further he says, if thou will confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, I believe in thine heart
that God read him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
And boy, that is a and I really turning about.
(50:09):
That's what conversion is. One hundred and eighty. You reach
from where you're going. You're going south, and now you're
going north. And I'll tell you that my life further
since it has been a bubble. But I've gone through
some awful things since I've been a Christian, and God
tested me, especially when I said, oh, yeah, I believe
(50:30):
all things work together for good. And then I broke
my hip, and I thought, Lord, I know all things
work together for good. This better be good. And every
time something happened to me since I've been a Christian,
it always worked together for good. So now I'm one
hundred percent believer in that. That is the toughest thing
(50:51):
to accept in the Bible, is to believe that everything
that happens works together for good.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yes, it is
Life audio. I have to laugh when people say I
thought I was gonna die and my whole life went
before my eyes. You don't have time for your life
the faster before your eyes. You only have time to
say God help man.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, welcome to the Greg Glory Show. I'm glad you're
with us for this very special episode. Every now and
then hear a story it almost sounds too incredible to
be true. A troubled kid turned Olympic athlete, a war
hero lost at seat for forty seven days, a prisoner
of war who endured unimaginable cruelty and lived to tell
(00:54):
about it. The man I'm talking about is Louis Zamporini.
His life is so remarkable. There's a best selling book
and movie made of out of this life called Unbroken. Today,
we're going back into the archives for a remarkable conversation
recorded live, where Louis shares his story in his own words.
(01:14):
From his early days is what he called a rotten kid,
to becoming the Torrents Tornado, to competing in the nineteen
thirty six Olympics and even meeting Adolf Hitler. But that's
only the beginning. Louis opens up about surviving a plane
crash in the Pacific, drifting at sea for weeks surrounded
by sharks, and then facing years of brutal treatment in
(01:37):
a Japanese pow camp. Yet the most important and powerful
part of his story is in how he survived. As
significant as that is, it's what happened after, because everything
changed when Louis Zamporini encountered Jesus Christ at a Billy
Graham crusade. Louis went to be with the Lord in
(01:59):
twenty fourteen at the age of ninety seven, but his
story and his testimony still speaks powerfully today. So I
had the privilege of sitting down with Louis and hearing
firsthand how God took a life filled with pain, anger
and trauma and transformed it into a story of forgiveness,
purpose and unshakable faith. So join us for this where
(02:23):
an unforgettable conversation. It's a story you won't hear just anywhere,
and one that might change the way you look at
your own life. I present to you now, Louis Zamparini. Louis,
thank you for being with us here tonight. We're so
glad to see you, and so many people have been
(02:43):
so looking forward to this time you've met lived such
an amazing life, But you know, you didn't start off
with a lot of promise. You were a bit of
a troublemaker living there in Torrents, a little bit of
a hoodlu wouldn't you say?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They called me a rotten kidd.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And you got into trouble a lot with the law
and were kind of a little bit of a troublemaker, right.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Well, yeah, I formed a little gang and we in
the movie theaters with the dime they get in the movies.
So everybody went to the movies on Saturday night, and
we knew who made the beer and the wine and
the liquor. So when they went to the movies, we'd
get in their house and get the loot and hide it.
We had a cave out in the trees and we'd
(03:31):
hide it there, and then the next day we'd go
to the beach and lay on the beach and drink
beer or whatever we had wine. But the lifeguards were
like policemen then, and they came down and you know,
reprimanded us. So I worked at the diairy part time,
So I filled the milk bottles full of white paint,
(03:51):
left it upside down at night and then left it
in the sun first here four days. And then we
poured our wine or our beer into the milk bottle
and then and of course the lake guards thought we
were drinking milk. Wow, reformed kids, that's what we were.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. So, but you, your brother p was quite a runner,
and he got you into running, and running helped you
to get out of this lifestyle, didn't it and kind
of changed the course of your life somewhat.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, yeah, my brother knew I had no interest, only
gang related interest. And uh so, I'm a great believer
in getting young people started in different things. Felt that
when they were bored and said, hey, let's go play tennis,
so let's go do this. But I had none, so
I just said, hey, let's go do this. And it
was a wrong thing. And uh and so the police
(04:43):
were they got so bad when something happened in town,
they just park in front of my house and wait
for me to come home. Like my brother said, he said,
when the police car went south, I went north.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah. So, but you were so fast, you were such
a skilled runner that you had a nickname there the Torrents,
what was George Tondo, tornch Tornado and you qualified to
run for the United States of America in the nineteen
thirty six Olympics in Germany. Ye, So tell us tell
(05:19):
us about that experience. How old were you when you
were on your That was your first time out on
a big ship, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, Well, I was a teenager eighteen years old and uh,
and I was a champion high school miler, had the
nothing home the national or world record, but that didn't
compare to the five great miners who were in college
or graduated, and so I just decided it's hopeless. So
I didn't decide to train. And then because the second
(05:50):
best five thousand meter runner came to Compton to run,
and my brother, who was the coach, she said, you
got ten days to train for that longer race. Now,
in those days, they didn't want kids to run that far,
And so I trained for ten days and he just
he said, I just want to see how close you
(06:11):
can get to a fellow we know who will make
the Olympics. And I passed him two the laps before
we finished. He couldn't take it. He passed me. I
passed him and people were going crazy, and nobody expected
me to be in the race. With this guy, and
down the home stretch, I passed him about fifteen yards
(06:32):
and then we were lapping another runner from San Pedro,
and the officials were still shocked at my performance. They
didn't expect it, and I started passing. They motioned him
off the track the wrong way. He ran right in
front of me. We collided and went down out of
my knees. Got up, and now my opponent is a
(06:52):
head again. I caught him at the tape, but he
beat me about an inch, so I knew that I
could beat him. So on strength of that performance, the
Olympic Committee sent me an invitation to go to New
York for the tryouts. But it's funny because those days
a depression. All these athletes are invited when they qualify,
(07:13):
but how do you get to New York. There was
no money. We had some people hit shiked. A guy
took a motorcycle from Seattle all the way there to compete.
But my dad worked for the Pacific Electric Red Cars
and he was allowed one pass a year on the
Southern Pacific Railway. So I got my round trip. And
then I had nothing to wear, no suitcase, and so
(07:36):
the merchants in town got together and gave me everything
I needed, and they took a little offering around town
so i'd have spending money to eat on the train.
And then in New York, I had a room with
another buddy and we ran on the hottest day in
New York had for about ninety years, and boy, people
were dropping like flies. And anyway, my brother said, you're
(07:59):
going to run against the world's record holder in a
two mile John Lash and once they get behind him,
and just keep your eye on the back of his head.
Well as a kid, a world record holder to me
was Oh, it's just unbelievable. And I'm running behind him
and I had a chance to pass him the last lap,
but I didn't. I just said, well, how do you
pass the world champion? And I waited too late till
(08:21):
the last two twenty And now he's in the first lane,
his buddy's in the second lane behind, and I had
to run the third lane around a quarter of half
of the track, which put me about a twelve yards
further to run. By timing down the home stretch, we
ran neck and neck to the tape and you couldn't
(08:42):
put a I don't think there a half inch between us,
so that qualified me. I couldn't believe it. I'm on
the team and now they took care of me. They
put me in an hotel, gave me clothes, paid for everything.
Once you're on the team, and I'll never forget. I
just found the card I nailed to my mother. We're
(09:03):
in this hotel, and I wrote to her and said
that you won't believe it, mom, But they got a
radio in every room.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Wow, cutting edge technology in that time.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Now, my big problem was was not having been away
from home. The only time I ate out, I had
a a I think it was a tunic fish sandwich
with the olive arrt and that was the only time
I ever ate out. That was in a drug store.
During the depression, we had a full rage for food.
We had to go out and pick wild rabbishes, wild tomatoes,
(09:38):
and I had to shoot cottontail rabbits for rabbit consciratory.
And when we ran out of money again my mother's
they go to the beach row and bring me home
four or five abalonis. Well, that was poor man's food.
It's today's one hundred dollars a pound. So anyway, so
(10:00):
I got aboard the ship and I just when they
start bringing the food on a boat. I couldn't believe
not one sweet roll, but five different kinds of sweet roll.
My eyes just popped out of my head and I
went for the gold, but it was food.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, I think I could win that myself. So
you put on a few pounds on that boat, as
I recall, at least fourteen pounds. And who was your
roommate at the Olympics. Who is your roommate?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
My roommate was Jeffrey Orange and Mack Robinson.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So amazing. So here you are, you running the Olympics
in nineteen thirty six, there in Germany. World War two
has not started yet. You run the five thousand meter event.
You get eighth place, but you ran so fast that
there was a request sent by Adolf Hitler who wanted
to meet you. Do you remember meeting Hitler?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, it was being overweight. I couldn't keep up the pace.
But so the last lap, all the great runners are
up front. There were seven of them, and then there
was a fifty yard gap between them and us, and
I was really tired. And as the last lap, my
(11:18):
brother said, well everybody's tired, and they gave me a formula.
He said, isn't one minute of pain worth a lifetime
of glory? So I spend the whole last lap under
the one minute fifty six seconds and their grandstand people
jumped up, you know which quite a sight, I guess,
and I thought that I came in eighth. But as
(11:39):
a result of that, I got an invitation from an
officer to see Hitler, and I said, well, I didn't
win a gold. He said, well, no, he just wants
to see you. So I went over there and all
he said was the boy was a fast finish. That
was it.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So while you were there in Germany, I did a
little sight scene and you saw a Nazi flag hanging
off a flagpole, and you decided you wanted a souvenir
tell us what happened there.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Well, that was another thing I enjoyed about the Olympians.
They all collect stubners to bring home, and I had
a lot of childhood training about taking things home, so
I started my collection on the boat. And then in Germany,
(12:31):
after I competed, about two days later, I went to
Berlin with a buddy and they had what they called
beer auto match. You put in twenty fennix and you
get beer. But not a couple like is it's a
leader and not the smallest beer they had, and we
had two beers, and I got a little frisky, and
(12:54):
we walked down the street and I stalled. Limousine pull
up in front of the Chancellery and Hier got out
and I think it was general going now, not going
it with Fritz, and they went inside and the meantime,
the guards on the front walk. They'd meet at the
gate turn about walk to the corner. So I timed them,
and I knew I had plenty of time to get
(13:15):
across the street and tear this flag down. But when
I got to the flag, it was about a foot
higher than I had anticipated and I couldn't reach it.
So the guards started to scream in German, and I
I just panic. I jumped aside I could and just
barely clutched ripped it from the from the pole, and
(13:37):
I did what they do best.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I started to run, so you rip that flag down.
On what happened then?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Well, the guards started screaming at me as they ramp
toward me, and I just started to running across the
street and I heard a shot, so one of the
guards shot in the air, and then I stopped. They
came up and they handled me rather roughly at first
till they saw the Olympic in figure in the American flag,
(14:08):
and then they were more gentle. And then the guard
went in the chantellery talked to I think he talked
to General bom Fritz, I remember that name. When he
came out, and he said, but why did you tear
down to the floor Stika. Now we had two Jewish
boys abore the orimpions they were in the relay, and
(14:33):
he thought I was probably one of them, and I
tore the flag down for racial reasons, But I said no, no,
I just wanted to take the flag home to America
to always remind me of the wonderful time I had
in your country.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You live doing along with that. So let's fast forward
a little bit. So World War two breaks out. The
Japanese bomb prol Harbor. You're in the military. You're flying
missions in a plane called Superman. You're a bombed, and
later you're transferred over to another plane called the Green
(15:10):
Hornet and you're flying a special It's a rickety old plane.
You're flying a special mission, a rescue mission. And the
Green Hornet goes down over the Pacific tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, well there was quite a drop force to leave
Superman because we had a good ground crew and they
said it's our plane. They took good care of it.
We have no problems with Superman. But the Green Hornet
was a lemon and we couldn't use it in combat.
It wouldn't get off the ground with a bomb road.
But if it did get off the ground without a
bomb road, instead of flying like this, it flew like it.
(15:46):
It was a musher and nobody wanted to fly it.
And we had just come back from a mission and
the report came that the B twenty five and I
radioed in that they were making a water landing north
of the islra of Palmyra, which is about seven eight
hundred miles south of Hawaii. So we're ready to head
(16:06):
into town to take our two day vacation, and the
Operations Act came out and halted us and said we
want you to take we want you to fly down
the stretch for this plane. Well, we said our planes
got to be served to take all day long. Well
you can take the green Hornet and we said, oh no,
but they said, well there's been it's been a task inspection,
(16:29):
so the commander when he talks to you and asked you,
asked you a question, it's really a command. We took
the Green Hornet and we got to the very area
where they reported going down, and we started to circle
the waters to see if we can find any to
bree or a life raft. And then number one more
to quit. And we had a whole new crew because
(16:52):
we had just got back from Nauru where we bound
the phosphate plants at naw Rule and we came back
with six hundred bullet holes and five cannon holes and
every shot up inside. Seven men laid out on the
deck and one did and so that plane, a slipperman,
was then condemned. They couldn't restore it and we crashed
(17:16):
landed when they came back to front of fooding. And
so we were assigned a new plane, which was a
good planet. And that now we're in the Green Hornets.
And uh when number one, well, we had a new
crew come over from the States. Could we lost our
crew and uh, the pilot called the engineer to come
(17:37):
up with further the motor. Well, actually it's a co
pilot's job, but it's in the book. The pilot and
co pilot by every day in the same spot. The
coal pilot who will be a number one pilot, He said,
let's switch seeth. I wanted to get familiar with, you know,
the left side. So now he's using his right hand
(17:59):
on the troddle, the co pilot the left hand. So
there's a little confusion there, and so they called the
engineer father of the motor, and there's four buttons up there,
and he comes up and he feathers the wrong motor.
So two motors out on the same wing, and the
plane drops over starts to lose an altitude, and even
(18:22):
though it's wrong, you have to do it. You push
full strodgle on the two starboard engines. And what that
does it takes the plane and pushes it around and down.
So we went heading down was full motor's going, And
that's why the plane blew up in the bit.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And so if the eleven men on board, only three survive, yourself,
the pilot Russell Allen Phillips and tailgunner Francis McNamara, who
you called mac. So, now here you are in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean in a life raft, and
did you think you would live through this? Did you
(19:01):
think this was the end when you crashed and managed
to get in that ref because I know you went
under water. Tell us about how you were wrapped in
all those cords and then that passage you mentioned, Well, you.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Know, kids asked me, do you ever think about dying?
That's a big question, the kids asked, and no, I
never thought about dying. We just thought about living, and
we focused on that, and then I had plenty of
survival training to make it work. My problem was I
was the pilot and the tail gunner were blown free
(19:34):
of the wreckage, but I was trapped in the waste section.
Why because the tripod that holds the machine gun up
is in front of me, and I hold the life
rent on my body, and then before we hit, I
jumped down low and so I ended up under the
tripod with the wrapped bromy and I was severely and
(19:55):
painfully wedged into that tripod. So there's no way I
could move. And it make matters worse. The tail snapped
off and the warriors are springing wire. They coil up,
the wires coiled around me. I'm already crashed hopelessly and
I'm completely entangled in wires, and I thought, well, this
is it. I knew I was dead, and now I
(20:18):
have to laugh when people say I thought I was
going to die, and my whole life went before my eyes.
You don't have time for your life to fast before
your eyes. You only have time to say, God help me.
And that's what I said in my mind and heart.
God helped me. I'm dead anyways, my last request, and
(20:42):
then I went down at least twenty feet when my
ears popped. Then I was down probably one hundred hundred
and fifty feet when my forehead had a severe pain
from the pressure. And then I lost consciousness. But just
before I did, I said in my heart God helped me.
And then I'm conscious again. And this is strange because
(21:04):
the first second that I became conscious, I thought this
is the afterlife, and it wasn't like the Bible said.
Then I started fighting for air, but I was completely
away from I never felt the tripod again ever, fell
to wires. I'm free in the way section of the
(21:27):
ship and floating upwards. My body's buoyant with the plane
is sinking rapidly. I'm going up rapidly, and I tried
to get out of the plane. I kept floating around
the darkness, and my USC ring caught onto the white
waste window and the pressure was so severe with the
plane sinking and my buoyanty that I couldn't let go,
(21:47):
and thank God for that. So I had to pulled
myself down and arched my back out. The window took
skin off my back, and it seemed like forever to
get to the surface, swallowing gasoline and oil and blood.
And I got up there and I just threw her
thing up, and then the pilot, the tail gunner had
been up there. They said I was down about two
(22:09):
or three minutes, and they thought everybody was dead, but
they screamed at me, help, help, Well, the life draft
is drifting away from the plane and I was fully closed,
and so I tried to swim to catch it, but
the current took it faster than I could swim. But
when it extended from the plane, it had a hard
(22:30):
foot cord and I had a pin on it. So
when it goes out there, the pin, the pressure of
the pin causes the seal two cartries to inflate the raft.
Then when the raft inflated, it pulled the pin out
of the ship. When I looked back at the pilot
and Chaim gunner and thought, well, we're all dead. But
the last three feet of that cord was going by
(22:51):
my face, so I grabbed it, reeled in the life
raft and that's what saved us. I got to the
pilot and it fled. He had artial blood shooting out
of his head. So I made a compress put it
tight on his head, and then we settled back in
the raft and I but within thirty minutes the tailgunner
(23:14):
panicked and start screaming and he lost control completely. We're
going to die. We're all going to die, and I said, mac,
nobody's going to die. Settle down. He kept screaming, and
of course that wasn't good for the pilot, who lost
a lot of blood, and so I tried to use well,
I took psychology in college, so I tried that. That
(23:36):
didn't work. So then I threatened to report him. I said,
we're going to be picked up tomorrow today and I'm
making a report to the commander. And that didn't work.
So I just turned my back on him and came
round and was knuckles and I crashed him across the face,
knocked him on his pandy and he was completely content Well, wait,
(24:04):
I had the five days they were had to do
it again and again. He was contentious, lay there with
you know, happy. But after that he settled down. But
we thought he would fall apart and hallucinate or something.
But we had these mental exercises every day, songs, teaching
(24:24):
each other works of songs, reminiscing what'd he go after
the war? I told him about physiology by major, and
so we exchanged things like that mentally every day to
keep our mind sharp. Right. My professor at college said,
if your mind is like a muscle, if you don't
exercise it, it will atrophy. So actually he died on
(24:46):
the thirty third day, but he was he was far
from hallucination. He was sharper. After thirty three days a
day crash.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And here you were out in the middle of the Pacific.
You ended up. Now you were at sea. It drift
at sea for was it forty seven days? And here's
a description from your book written by Laura Hildebrand, about
what happened. Looking over the side of the raft, they
saw it swelling up from under the water. Came a leviathan,
(25:20):
a vast white mouth, a broad back parting the surface,
and a long dorsal fin ghostly in the moonlight. The
animal was some twenty feet long, more than three times
the length of the raft. Louis recognized its features from
a survival school training. It was a great white shark,
so that wasn't the only shark. The sharks were circling.
(25:42):
They were coming up underneath the raft, and pretty soon
they were coming into the raft. But you took care
of one of those sharks. Are a few now there.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The thing is, I was never scared on the raft,
except for that great white because he actually we were
trying to sleep well. We put four inchant of water
in the raftic our body warmed. That little bit felt
better than the ocean. The shark came up, slapped us
on the bottom, lifted us out of the water. Three
(26:11):
guys in a raft. I thought it was a submarine.
And then I saw the sharks swimming around, and oh
my god, don't make a sound.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
The shark was like a human being. Every time he
runs a long way of the raft, he would take
his tail and flip water on us, just see what
we were. He did that about eight or ten times,
and we just sat motionless, no sound, And he finally
disappeared just like he came. That was scary because if
he was big enough to bite the raft in two
(26:44):
and take us all.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, but you you had to eat, and these sharks
were trying to eat you, and so you decided to
turn the tables on the sharks, say you ate them.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
That was really ironic. That the other two guys were sleeping,
and I was awake, and I kept watching these there's
always too sharks for some reason, and they kept circling,
or asked, circling, that's all they do. And so I thought, well,
it can't be like one with nature if I could
touch one of them. So I put my hand over
(27:16):
his head when he went by, and Mike hand went
over his door, so fin and I thought, hey, that's neat.
Then at one with nature, as they say, And I
did that to both sharks twice, and then all of
a sudden, and this was unusual. I never happened before
they both disappeared. There was always two sharks, nothing scared
(27:39):
them away. But these two disappeared. Now on my knees,
looking to see where they are, and this head comes
up out of the water, mouth open, and it was
like a demon out of hell. I mean, it just
scared me and I just inadvertently put my hands up. Well,
I had it high enough. So the shark's mouth is
(28:01):
when he opens his mouth, it's snoop is about a
foot ahead of his mouth, and he turns up. I
got him on the top of the nose and pushed
him back in, and then the tail gunner couldn't figure
out what was happening. He woke up, grabbed an oar.
I grabbed an oar, and I'll tell you for the
next ten minutes, they kept trying to jump in the raft.
We kept jabbinging with the ore, and they finally gave
(28:22):
up and they left. Well what that did to me,
it made me really mad, and being Italian, I wanted
to get even, and so I decided to make them
part of our food chain. And I lived with there,
(28:44):
I mean, finding off more than we could chew. But
so I waited for a small shark. The next day,
a five footer came by, and I thought, well, I
stopped small, but I'll drive my luck. So when he
came by the raft flow circling, I reached in and
grabbed him by the tail. But I didn't get his
tail out of the water. Fast enough, and he pulled
(29:05):
me in and I got out fast out, And so
then I waited. The next day, a four footer was
there and I thought, well, he's still pretty big, but
I'll make it try. So we have a pair of
shute flare cartridge. When you pull a shock out of
the water, immediately their mouth opens. And so I said,
(29:28):
I'm going to pull his head out quickly pull him
into the raft, and before he biss the raft or
any of us, put the cartridge in his mouth and
you have to perfectly pulled him in. And the pilot
shoud the casing into his mouth and he clamped down
on it and wouldn't let go. And then I had
a pair of plyers on the raft. Now, after forty
(29:49):
seven days, we couldn't figure out what the plyers were for.
And we had a patching kit like a bicycle patching kit,
and you use sand paper to rough up the rubber
to make the patch stick. That's what they had, sand paper,
and the sand was on the bottom and the paper
was blank. They should have had waterproof emery cloth. Everything
(30:11):
was wrong about this raft and we and so we
began to look around for the trademark. We thought they
had to be made in Germany or Japan.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So I took the brass mirror and I made three
teeth teeth marsh on the edge of the mirror. It
took me about ten or fifteen minutes to open a
hole in the ability of that four foot or five
foot shark. And they are tough. So we had a
lovely dinner of row liver. Twenty percent of the shark
(30:44):
is liver, though you got a lot of liver. Before
World War Two, all vitamin filts were made from shark liver,
and I knew how many shushes it was. But survival
school said, you don't eat the meat unless it's cooked.
It smells like ammonia. And then about a week later
when we called another shark, a little small four footer
(31:06):
and trump, we have two luscious meals on the raft.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
But as you were out at sea, a plane came by.
You thought it was an American plane. It turns out
to be a Japanese plane. It fires on you. Ultimately
you make it to the Marshall Islands where you are
rescued ironically by the Japanese. And now you are, ultimately,
after being beaten, being recognized as an Olympian. They seemed
(31:37):
to know who you were. And how did they know
that you were Louis Zamparini, the American Olympic athlete.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, i'll tell you, the Japanese knew more about American
athletes than we did, and more about our movie stars.
That's all they talk about. And we heard that in
President camp oh, Shirley Temple had an abortion and died.
Stuff like that. They kind to discourage it, and but
they yeah, when I was missing it made had lines
(32:05):
from America and so then they picked it up on
the radio and they were really surprised and they knew me.
In fact, when I was for four days, we couldn't walk,
so we had to be carried over their shoulders.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And how much did you weigh at this point, Louis,
I lost.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, I was one hundred and sixty five. I went
down to sixty five, so I was a skeleton. And
so we're now. The situation for the next forty three
days on land was far worse than being on the
life raft. So I used to pray there, God get
me out on that right, and I want to die
(32:42):
out there was clean and beautiful sky, but here we
were in this filth, constant, permanent diarrhea, and then all
kinds of things happened. They injected us and submarine launched there,
and eighty men we'd come ashore and you know, change
us and spit on us and fell rocked at us.
(33:02):
And but I tell them, the most disappointing thing was
when we went before the interrogation panel. Six naval ulcers
and white uniforms with gold braid medals all that, And
before the interrogation started, one of the ulcers said, mister
(33:22):
Zamprin or Lieutenant Zamparty, when you were entering USC in
nineteen thirty six, I was graduating, and this guy said
he was a trojanman, and that was hard for me
to believe. He was the most obnoxious of the six,
and I just couldn't figure it out. I finally had
(33:43):
to come to the conclusion that he was a third
year transfer from UCLA.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
So but ultimately you were to meet the cruelest of
all men. His nickname was the Bird.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
What was his actual name, missus Cheryl Watson Nabby.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
This man singled you out and beat you, mercilessly, tormented you,
just gave you the worst treatment imaginable, and it became.
He became like a plague to you, didn't he.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, well, it all started when I was put into Ofuna.
That's a secret camp and it's for high profile prisoners.
People they like Pappy Boynen was shot down Friday. He's
there Saturday. He's got a current information. And now the
head interrogator there, what's the sc with me? And I
(34:47):
asked him, I said, I'm not a high profile presner.
Forty seven days on the raft, forty three days in
the cell. I once getting to Yokohama, he wouldn't tell
me anything. But after a year and a month, I'm
transhferred to headquarters. O'morey and I found out the reason
(35:09):
why it takes a year and a month to be
declared dead. And they were waiting for me to be
cleared dead so they could condemn America. And they and
the first propaganda they had on the radio and I
think it's in the book. And then the purpose was
because on Quadalon we were a day of execution was set.
(35:31):
But another ulser came there and said it would better
serve Japan's purpose to send Louis on to Tokyo to
make propaganda broadcast, so that saved on life. But when
day I made this broadcast to my parents, that was
just the ruse, the first step, and it's the time
I went to the radio. They provided me with the
(35:52):
script that they wrote, and it was propaganda and they
were subtle, but then that's the way they get. You said, well,
it's not that bad. Then the next time it's a
little stronger. And I refused to read it and I
was able to steal a copy, which is in the book.
I think and uh and I so then the bird
(36:20):
was mean enough as it was, but I think they
gave him orders to make my life miserable so I
would accept the better life of a cafeteria, food and
radio Tokyo. In a hotel room, I met two Australians
and an American that were doing that. And when I
shook their hands, they couldn't look in my eyes, and
I think they were sending me a message there's no
(36:42):
way I could do it. I may not have to
live with that the rest of my life. And so
I was sent to a slave labor camp and I thought,
thank god, I'm getting away from mister showatsonaby the bird,
but then he was transferred to another camp. There's a
ninety camps in Japan, proper, Well, he's one of those
camps there Jewish. Later, I'm transferred to another camp, told
(37:05):
to stand the attention and faced the guard shack, and
I did, and the door opens and outsteps watch the knobby.
And I my knees buckled, and I thought, I'm useless, useless,
and I'll start all over again. And so he worked
me over right right to the end. But he knew
the war was over two days before we did. And
(37:26):
so he's the bird flew the coop.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, and you're what you would eat some days you
would be given a ball of rice right thrown on
the ground. In your book Unbroken, it says the food
was infested with rat droppings, maggots, and so much stand
in grit that Louis's teeth were soon pitted, chipped and cracked.
(37:48):
The men nicknamed the Russians all dumpo. Yeah, it's just horrible.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well that's why I think guys were dying. We lost
eighty eighty guys in one winner, in one camp, and
that happened all over Japan. And the food was right,
it wasn't rice. Rice was a luxury. It was I
think it was Miller some kind of red grain, but
it had grit in it and stuff like that that
(38:15):
chipped our teeth. And then they gave us a toothpowder
which was pomis with mint in it, and that wore
the enamel off of our teeth. So that's prison life.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah. So World War two finally comes to an end.
The Japanese really are not willing to surrender. President Chuman
gives the order and the atomic bomb has dropped in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan finally surrenders, and Louis Zamparini, who
is thought dead but is alive, returns home to a
(38:49):
heroes welcome. Is that how it was when he came
home again.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, everybody was startled and I was alive. I mean,
the official distin is happy that I had had home.
And my parents wouldn't They wouldn't believe it. They just
had a lot of parents had home. But my brother
said to my mom and dad, don't worry about RUI.
If he's got a toothbrush, he can survive anywhere.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, and you did, and you married Cynthia Applewhite. You
told me a story last night where you said that
all the hardship you went through in the war helped
prepare you for marriage. Do you remember.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
How did that go? Well? I don't know why I
said that, but after I carried the torture, now I know,
the mayor and had me up to answer a questions
at the city council. And that was the question he
asked me, did anything good come out of her being
a pergram war for two and a half years? And
I just said, yeah, prepared me for fifty five years
(39:49):
of married life. But actually, if it hadn't been for
the war, or watch the nabby and the post traumatic stress,
that's what drove me to Christ. When I got on
my knees and accepted Christ, what a relief to know
that I'd passed from one life into another.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So, but prior to your commitment to Christ, said the
Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angeles, you started drinking heavily.
You were experiencing what we now call post traumatic stress syndrome,
but back then they didn't have a name for it.
You were having nightmares about the bird. One night you
(40:37):
woke up with your hands around your wife's throat, thinking
you were choking the bird. Correct, well, we.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Were both scared. I just I couldn't figure out what
was happening. But the nightmares started in prison because every
day when he would punish me, I'd clinch my fist
and he knew I wanted to hit him, and he said,
if I grow on my short I must use it.
So I had nightmares there all the way home. And
there was never a night I didn't dream about getting
(41:05):
the and uh so, but when I woke up in
a coach with my hand around my wife's throat, that
really scared me, and of course it scared her. And
and then she and we were a young couple in
the apartment. Came to our apartment and knocked on the
door and started telling us about a young advangelist coming
(41:27):
to LA and he started to quote scripture and boy
that and that hit me. I said, hey, I'm out
of here. And my wife listens. And then when Billy came,
they talked her to going down with them, and she
in the meantime, she had already filed for divorce. And
then when she came home and tried to get me
to go down, I fought her. Uh but then she
(41:50):
said something that softened me up. She said, because of
my conversion, I'm not going to get a divorce. Well,
that really stopped me up a bit, and so she
was able to persuade me to go down here Billy.
But then again he was quoting scripture, and that really
hit me between the eyes, and I said, I don't
need anybody to tell me I'm a sinner. I know
I have. And so I got mad, pulled her on home.
(42:13):
But the next day she's all over me again, and
I said, okay, okay, I'll go back on one condition.
When he says every head bound and every eye clothes
were out, and so back again we went, and Billy's
finishing his sermon and I said, let's go. And then
he said something like when people come to the end
of their rope and they have no wh else to turn,
(42:35):
they turn to God. And I thought, yeah, that's what
I did. And on the raft in prison camp, all
the printers were praying about the same prayer, get me
home alive to my family, and I'll seek you and
serve you. Well, he got me home alive, and I
didn't keep my promise, and that really hit me between
the eyes. So instead of leaving the tent, and went
back to the prayer room and made a confession of
(42:57):
my faith in Christ.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
In an interview you did Louis, you made this statement
about your conversion quote. I got off my knees, and
somehow I knew I was through getting drunk. I knew it.
I knew that I forgave all of my guards, including
the bird. I think proof of that is that I
had nightmares every night about the bird since the war,
and I haven't had a nightmare since the night I
(43:28):
made my decision for Jesus Christ nineteen forty nine till now.
That's right, it's still true. So now you wanted to
kill the bird. You've made a commitment to Jesus Christ
at a Billy Graham crusade, and you've been able to
(43:49):
forgive him. So you return to Japan and you want
to actually talk with him and meet him. And you
actually wrote a letter to him because you were told
that he was no longer alive, but you wrote a
letter in hopes of meeting, in which you read that
letter to us, to.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Missus Sieur Watsonaby as the results of my prisoner of
war experience, under your unwanted and unreasonable punishment, my post
war life became a nightmare. It was not so much
due to the pain and the suffering, as it was
to the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me
to hate with the vengeance. Under your discipline, my rights
(44:36):
not only as a prisoner but also as a human
being were stripped from me. It was a struggle to
maintain enough dignity and hope to live until the war's end.
The post war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but
thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham,
I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate
(44:58):
I had for you. Christ said, forgive your enemies and
pray for them. As you probably know, I returned to
Japan in nineteen fifty two and was graciously allowed to
address all the Japanese war criminals at Sugamo Prison. I
asked them about you and was told that you probably
had committed Harry Kirey, which I was sad to hear
(45:21):
at that moment. Like the others, I also forgave you
and now would hope that you would also become a Christian. Now.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
As it turns out, and you found out later, the
bird was actually still alive. He was running from the authorities.
He was a declared war criminal. He became aware of
the fact that you wanted to meet with him, but
he agreed to meet you, and then at the last
minute he refused to meet you. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Well, it was the sixty minutes did the video, the
one that won the Emmy award, And they did get
him on the street and that was the first interview
of his life, and they he agreed to talk to him,
but then his son and grandson came out of the
house and then sixty minutes did you know, a condemnation thing,
(46:23):
accused him of all these crimes, and the son and
grandson didn't know he was a guard. He didn't know
he was wanted by MacArthur. And boy, they stopped and said,
no more of this. Now some of that happened. He
said he would meet with me, but after the son
and grandson I stopped the whole conversation. I never got
(46:43):
to meet with him. Nobody could talk to on the
phone or saim in person. And he died about I
guess five or six years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Well that was his loss, I tell you. But you know,
to listen to your life, Louis is so amazing. It's
like you've lived multiple lives. That Louis the Olympic athlete,
the Torrents Tornado, who shook the hand of Adolf Hitler.
Louis the World War Two vet who fought for his country.
Louis the survivor of a horrific plane crash, of being
(47:12):
a drift at sea for forty seven days. Louis the
concentration camp survivor, and then a man who plunged into
alcoholism and was transformed by Jesus Christ. And you were
able to forgive the people that did this horrific thing
to you. And there are people here with us tonight
or watching or listening on the internet, and they've been
(47:36):
wronged in life, They've been heard in life, and they
probably said I could never forgive, But you were able
to forgive. How were you able to extend that forgiveness?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Well, I didn't know when has happened. I received Christ
as my savior. I knew when I was still on
my names that I was a different person, and I
didn't know what happened. And then later courses I began
to study the script that I realized that when I
invited Christ into my life, therefore a man be in Christ.
(48:06):
He's a new person, new creation. And that that was
the answer. But at that time I didn't note. I
just knew something phenomenal happened that I had no not
the slightest hate for the bird anymore. I loved everybody.
And so the first miracle was not having the nightmares,
or I should say my conversion of not having nightmares.
(48:28):
And then the third miracle was the Bible. I could
never understand it. In the Pacific, they gave us olive
grab bibles and nobody could understand it, and we just
threw it in our foot locker. So I took my
olive drab New Testament. I walked up into the Hollywood
Park and I started to read it, and now it
made sense. And when I got to the the crucifixion
(48:53):
on the cross and the treatment that God the Son
went through, and the torture and the humiliation, I started
to cry. I never cried my life, but nobody could
make me cry, as I was just defiant. But this
did it.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Wow, how does a person accept Jesus Christ? Louis, you
heard Billy preach, and I know you know what it
means to follow Christ. And I know you've shared this
with many people, but someone's listening, right, now they would say,
I want to have a relationship with God like Louis Zamperini.
What do they need to do?
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, First of all, they have to realize that God
had promised he would come to earth some day, and
he came in Jesus Christ. God was in Christ reconciling
man unto himself. And John three sixteen that tells us
why he came. For God to love the world. He
(49:48):
gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believe with him
should not perish, but have revelation in life very clear.
And then further he says, if thou will confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, I believe in thine heart
that God read him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
And boy, that is a and I really turning about.
(50:09):
That's what conversion is. One hundred and eighty. You reach
from where you're going. You're going south, and now you're
going north. And I'll tell you that my life further
since it has been a bubble. But I've gone through
some awful things since I've been a Christian, and God
tested me, especially when I said, oh, yeah, I believe
(50:30):
all things work together for good. And then I broke
my hip, and I thought, Lord, I know all things
work together for good. This better be good. And every
time something happened to me since I've been a Christian,
it always worked together for good. So now I'm one
hundred percent believer in that. That is the toughest thing
(50:51):
to accept in the Bible, is to believe that everything
that happens works together for good.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yes, it is
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