Unbroken

Summer is quickly approaching and that means I am looking forward to doing lots of things. Among those things is actually having time to read. I love to read, but don't really have much time to do it. I am particularly fond of non-fiction. Last year Tami pointed me in the direction of a book called "Unbroken". This is the story of a man named Louis Zamperini. Louis was a world class track star back in the 30's. He was a tremendous athlete at the University of Southern California and even ran in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. These are the same games where Jesse Owens won all his gold medals and Adolf Hitler treated him so horribly. Louis didn't win a medal in those Olympics because he was young and needed more time to mature and train. The plan was to return to the 1940 Olympics where he would have been favored to win a medal. Louis never made it to the 1940 Olympic Games. World War II had begun and those games scheduled to take place in Tokyo were cancelled. Louis then set his sights on the games in 1944, but that never happened either because the U.S. was involved in the war by that time.

This book is not about Louis's lost opportunity of running in the Olympics. It's so much more than that. When the war broke out, Louis joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. This is significant to his story because Louis was deathly afraid of flying. But much like most men of his day, Louis was forced to put those fears behind him and selflessly serve his country. Louis served in a bomber and as luck would have it, his plane was shot down and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He and several of his crew mates survived the crash and made it onto a life raft. While on the raft, these brave men faced blistering heat, storms, hunger and severe dehydration for weeks. At some point a fighter plane spotted them and they thought rescue was imminent. The plane ended up being Japanese and strafed the raft with bullets. Somehow the men survived the attack, but their position was relayed to the Japanese Navy and they were captured and placed as POW's in a prison camp. The conditions in this camp were obviously deplorable. Crowded, filthy, very little food or water and tales of unspeakable torture. Most of the story takes place in this prison camp, but as you may have already guessed, by the grace of God, Louis made it out alive. He would never run competitively again. His body was a shell of its former self because of the years of mistreatment, malnutrition and torture. Louis went on to lead an incredible life and became a Christian. Louis is still alive today and must be in his 90's by now This book is an incredible read and I dare you to put it down once you start reading it. I know you won't be able to do it. Tami rarely reads these kinds of books, but absolutely loved this one. It's such a compelling story of the human spirit, the unquenchable will to live and a story of the incredible work of God in one man's amazing life.