Louis Zamperini

Before he was a national hero, Louis Zamperini was a fighter. After he was born to Italian immigrant parents in Olean, New York in January 1917, his family moved in 1919 to Torrance, California. Speaking little English, the family was ostracized in their new home, and his father taught the young Louis how to box so that he could hold his own in schoolyard fights. As a teenager, Louis took up track and field to redirect that athletic energy, with his older brother's encouragement; in 1934, he set the world interscholastic record for the mile. That record held for nearly twenty years, and helped him earn a scholarship to the University of Southern California and eventually a place on the 1936 Olympic team, running the 5000-meter race. He placed eighth, but ran his final lap in a staggering 58 seconds. In 1941, Zamperini finished his studies at USC and enlisted in the Army Air Corps shortly after the United States entered World War II. He was a B-24 bombardier flying a rescue mission in May 1943, when his plane malfunctioned and crashed in the Pacific Ocean, 850 miles west of Oahu, killing eight of the eleven crew members. Zamperini and two crew mates survived for more than a month at sea. Francis McNamara perished after 33 days, but Zamperini and pilot Russel Phillips survived, only to be picked up by the Japanese, held as prisoners of war and tortured by a brutal prison camp sergeant who was later classified as a war criminal. Zamperini and Phillips were released when the war ended in August 1945, and Zamperini returned home a hero. He had been declared Killed In Action a year and a day after his plane went down. After the war, he suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder, but was saved by his wife, Cynthia, who was instrumental in Zamperini's conversion into a born-again Christian. Zamperini launched a career as a Christian inspirational speaker, preaching forgiveness, and personally forgave many of his captors. He wrote two autobiographies and ran a leg of the Olympic Torch relay for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, not far from where he was held prisoner. In 2010, Laura Hillenbrand, author of the bestsellers like Seabiscuit: An American Legend, published a biography of Zamperini called Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The book was a number 1 New York Times bestseller, and was adapted into a film directed by Angelina Jolie, announced for release in 2014. Louis Zamperini died of pneumonia in Los Angeles on July 2, 2014 at the age of 97.