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Unbroken

a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Dec 03, 2019IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
In 1936, 19-year-old Louis Zamperini of Torrance, California ran the 5,000-meter race in the Berlin Olympics. He finished 8th but was looking forward to the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo. Then World War II began and the Olympics were called off. Zamperini joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and was trained as a bombardier. In 1943, his plane crashed in the South Pacific and the three survivors began an amazing, terrifying journey that included surviving 46 days on a life raft, capture by the Japanese, and nearly two years of brutal treatment in several Japanese prison camps. There are many things that have stuck in my mind from this book. One is the incredible dangers of the War in the Pacific. Training was hasty and incomplete, and in the first half of the war more planes were actual lost in training accidents than in combat. Airmen in the Pacific, especially the ones flying in the hastily designed B-24s, had more than a 50% chance of being killed. Crashing into the Pacific in a B-24 was usually fatal, and even if some men survived and were able to deploy a life raft, the rafts were inadequately supplied, and survivors were hard to see in the vast space of the ocean. GREAT reading by actor Edward Herman. This is a book that is hard to stop listening to, even as the dangers mount and the torture of prisoners becomes too horrific to tolerate. However, Zamperini’s journey, survival, and self-reinvention make for an inspiring life story. The book was deeply researched and well-written. You will gain a new appreciation for what you likely did NOT have to go through yourself.