That’s what Sylvia Zamperini would say about her family during World War II when confronted with the idea that her brother, Louis, had been killed. Even when the War Department assigned Louis Zamperini an “official death date,” and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a condolence letter, his mom knew he was still alive and that she would see him again, one day. She was right.
As the world now knows, thanks to author Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini waged one of the most astonishing personal battles in World War II as an Army Air Corpsman. In May 1943, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. For 47 days, he floated on a raft in the ocean. He was then captured by the Japanese, who held him prisoner until August 1945. These experiences tormented Zamperini’s postwar life, but in 1949 things began to turn around for him. Zamperini forgave the men who held him prisoner, including the sadistic Japanese corporal, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who was known as the “Bird.” This saga is chronicled in Hillenbrand’s book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The book has remained on the bestseller lists since it was published in 2010, and in December, Universal will release a film adaptation, directed by Angelina Jolie.
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