Unbroken (The Young Adult Adaptation): An Olympian's Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive

Louie and Phil are taken to Ofuna. Initially, he is optimistic, thinking that it will be a traditional POW camp with oversight from the Red Cross. However, he learns from another captive there that it is a “secret interrogation camp” where “high-value captives” are tortured and abused to gain information (147).

The captives are regularly physically beaten, verbally abused, made to sleep in cold and dirty buildings, and starved. “The average army or army air force POW lost a staggering sixty-one pounds in captivity” (146).

The background narrative explains that the treatment of POWs reflected the Japanese hatred of their military enemies and their cultural disdain for anyone who allowed themselves to be captured. Entire POW and detainment camps were regularly wiped out throughout the war, with the Japanese directing the camps to kill everyone rather than have them rescued by the Allied militaries.

Despite their abuse and harsh conditions, the prisoners defy the Japanese guards secretly. They develop systems for communicating with each other using Morse Code and writing on toilet paper. Louie himself keeps a diary made from rice paper so that if he dies in Ofuna, he can “leave a record of what he had endured and who he had been” (156). Hillenbrand notes that these small acts of defiance act as a way for the men to preserve their dignity as humans, and thereby their hope of survival.

Men are regularly interrogated and tortured to get them to speak; however, through it all, Louie is never questioned.

Louie befriends three prisoners on Kwajalein. William Harris, a young marine who escaped the Philippines and swam to the Japanese-occupied Bataan Peninsula; Fred Garrett, a pilot who had his leg sawed off at Kwajalein and chose to stay in the same cell as Louie, where he saw his name on the wall; and Frank Tinker, a pilot.

Louie suffers from starvation and wonders if he will survive. The other prisoners regularly sneak in clothing and food to try to help him.

Twice, Louie is forced to race against a Japanese runner. The first time he is so emaciated that he collapses. He wins the second race. The guards beat him afterwards.

In March of 1944, Phil is transferred from Ofuna to a POW camp in Ashio. Although he is told treatment is better and he can write home, he is instead enslaved in a copper mine. He finds the letter he wrote to his fiancée, Cecy, in the trash, and pulls it out, determined to deliver it if he survives the war.

Back in Torrance, Louie’s family struggles with his disappearance but believes that he is still alive. His sister, Sylvia, regularly drives to the high school and cries alone under the bleachers. With her husband also at war, she moves back in with her family, where they often make up stories of where Louie could be and refuse to accept his death. The military is unhelpful, returning Louise’s letter with the message that they have accepted Louie’s death and “they hoped Louie would accept” it too (161).

Cecy works for an airline and moves to Washington, DC. She hopes to hear information about Phil. Even after the military sends death notices to both families on June 27, 1944, they still refuse to believe Phil and Louie are dead.

Meanwhile, America captures Kwajalein and finds evidence that Louie and Phil were there and survived the plane crash. Pilot Joe Deasy is wracked with guilt over not finding them.

In the summer of 1944, the situation in Ofuna becomes even grimmer as food and rations grow scarcer. One guard they nickname Quack brutally beats the prisoners, in one instance forcing Louie to eat a maggot-infested fish.

Louie, Harris, and Tinker formulate an escape plan. They steal information from newspapers and learn what they can from new prisoners. They learn that there is a standing order for all POWs to be killed if the Allied Powers get too close. However, their plans cease when prisoners learn that captive officers will be killed if anyone escapes; the men are unwilling to risk others’ lives.

One day when Louie steals a map from Quack and Harris copies it, Quack finds the map in his cell. Quack beats Harris savagely, long after he falls unconscious. When he revives, he is disfigured and comatose, unwilling to eat or communicate.

On September 30, 1944, Louie is told that he and Tinker will be transferred to Omori, a POW camp outside Tokyo. He is “euphoric” from the news (170).

A Japanese corporal, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, meets the men at Omori, a man-made island off the coast of Tokyo. Tinker considers him a “psychopath,” as he savagely beats Louie for not looking into his eyes on their first meeting and then leaves the men standing for hours in the cold.

Mutsuhiro comes from a family of military officers. The corps rejected his application to be an officer. As a result, he takes his anger and bitterness out on the prisoners and enjoys inflicting emotional torture. He would have “tea parties” for the POWs, treat them nicely, and then savagely beat them. Due to Louie’s status as an officer, and former Olympian, and his inherent defiance, Mutsuhiro obsesses over “shattering” Louie (173).

Louie realizes that Omori is not the haven that he hoped it would be. Instead, like most POW camps, guards enslave the prisoners and force them to work in poor conditions and with meager rations. Additionally, although POW camps typically must register new prisoners with the Red Cross, they do not register Louie because they had “special plans” for him (178).

Although most of the guards are indifferent, Mutsuhiro is the exception. As a result, the prisoners obsess over tracking his whereabouts and doing their best to avoid his outbursts. They develop codes to communicate about him and nickname him the Bird.

Under the Geneva Convention, officers are supposed to be exempt from labor. However, with Louie’s arrival, the Bird forces officers to work as “benjo slaves” cleaning out the bathrooms (179).

Throughout the camp, the prisoners set up a “University” where they teach prisoners how to steal and sabotage the Axis Powers at the shipyards and train stations. They steal supplies, sabotage barges, destroy clothing and food being shipped out, and even knock over trains. As a result, the men survive, despite their meager rations, while helping the Allies.

In November of 1944, the B-29 Superfortress begins reconnaissance flights over Omori. When they spot it, the prisoners are delighted but the Bird becomes enraged. He continues to savagely beat Louie daily, as Louie resists, through prayer and memories of the Olympics, the urge to submit.

A radio program called Postman Calls, which was a “propaganda show performed in English and broadcast to Allied troops to demoralize them” (176), comes to Louie and asks him to send a message to his family. Although they use it as propaganda to show that the United States has false intelligence, the message gets to his family, who are elated to know he is alive.

The next time Louie is asked to do a message with Radio Tokyo, they have a propaganda message pre-written for him which stresses America’s failure of intelligence. They try to convince Louie to read the message by offering him a home there, to be well-fed and comfortable, but he refuses. When he is sent back to Omori, the Bird even more savagely beats him.

Beginning on November 24, 1944, B-29s regularly fly over Omori, and the prisoners hear bombs in the distance and cheer. The B-29s enrage the Bird and his abuse of the prisoners escalates. He regularly ransacks the camp and burns the prisoners’ personal belongings. He lines the men up to salute him then beats them even more harshly. Louie feels himself “come apart,” as his waking hours consist of beatings and thoughts of the Bird consume his dreams (193). One day, however, shortly after Christmas, the Bird becomes a sergeant and transfers to another camp, to Louie’s relief.

The narrative shifts to Phil, who was moved to the Zentsuji POW camp with Fred Garrett. There, the men starve, eating weeds from the ground and drinking water runoff from rice fields with human fertilizer.

Life at Omori without the Bird is significantly better, as the remaining guards allow them to have proper rations, write home, and the beatings stop. In early January, Harris shows up, but is no better than when Louie left him; a doctor tells him that Harris is dying.

Rumors circulated about nearby POW camps where guards murdered prisoners as Allied forces approached. As American bombers fly over Omori and decimate, Louie and several officers—including Tinker—are moved further away to Naoetsu POW camp in the snow and bitter cold. Upon arrival, he comes face to face with the Bird.

In Naoetsu, “of all the many hells Louie had known in war, this would be the worst” (201). The area is extremely cold, and the men are given only planks and straw for bedding. The men face starvation and relentless work. Louie is again tormented by the Bird’s increasingly savage beatings. He is forced to do dangerous work on coal barges, shoveling coal and often leaping treacherously onto floating vessels.

Through it all, however, the men find some solace in stealing from the guards. They take cigarettes and the guard’s lunches, and one day Louie steals rice from a bag through a hole in the latrine.

Louie is gravely injured and unable to work. The guards cut his rations in half, and he spends his work time at the camp with the Bird. Louie is desperate for work to get his full rations back. The Bird allows him to take care of a pig. He cleans the pigsty by hand, work which Louie thinks may finally “shatter” him (206).

Meanwhile, American bombing raids travel increasingly further inland, eventually passing over Naoetsu. One day the bombers even attack the steel mill the POWs are working in, sending the guards into distress but giving the POWs hope.

In May of 1945, a large group of new prisoners arrives. Louie learns that they are coming from Kobe and Osaka—large war-producing cities that have been destroyed by American bombings. Additionally, he learns that Germany has fallen, with the entirety of the Allied forces now focused on Japan.

Although Louie’s leg mostly heals by June and he returns to work, he suffers from a burning fever and gets no reprieve. When men steal fish from a boat, the guards force the officers, including Louie and Tinker, to stand before the other prisoners who punch them in the face. The guards threaten and beat those who do not punch with full force. Louie continually falls and stands again until he blacks out, after the men punch him “some 220 times” (209).

In July of 1945, as the Allies bomb more frequently, tensions rise among the Japanese guards and civilians. Louie and the other prisoners watch as the Japanese prepare for the invasion. They train even women and children. The prisoners at Naoetsu learn from a civilian that their date of execution, to prevent their return to Allied forces, is August 22.

Louie’s fever worsens. The men stop work at the barge and are cut back to half rations, which starves Louie as well. The Bird assigns him to care for a goat, telling him that if the goat dies, he dies as well. The goat gets loose and into the grain and Louie thinks the Bird set it free. The goat is near death. The Bird takes Louie into the yard and forces him to stand with a large beam over his head, telling a guard to beat him if he drops it. As Louie struggles to hold the beam, he thinks to himself: “He cannot break me” (213). Louie stands for 37 minutes holding it, until the Bird comes down, enraged, and beats him unconscious.

The Bird gets increasingly more paranoid with the arrival of more B-29s, and increasingly more brutal. One night, Louie and the other prisoners form a plan to kill him.

Meanwhile, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Before the prisoners can enact their plan to kill the Bird, he disappears into the mountains to prepare for the prisoners’ transfer there, just one week before the kill date of August 22.

As Louie gets increasingly sick, his limbs begin to swell, the first signs of beriberi—a potentially fatal lack of vitamin B-1.

Work in the factories stops, and the prisoners hear rumors that the war has ended. Four days later, on August 20, the Bird returns and the guards officially announce to the prisoners that “the war has come to a point of cessation” (222). The prisoners wait in suspicious silence. The guards order them into the river to bathe. As they do so, an American torpedo bomber flies overhead, signaling with its lights in Morse Code that the war is over.

More planes return, dropping supplies like chocolate and cigarettes for the men, as well as a magazine discussing the atomic bombs being dropped. As the men sit around—still nude from having gone into the river to bathe—the Bird escapes without being seen.

At Rokuroshi, Phil and Fred Garrett are told of the war’s end. The POWs drink rice wine and have a massive bonfire to celebrate, tearing down and burning the camp’s fence.

At Naoetsu, the guards become passive and allow the POWs to live freely. American planes continue to drop food and supplies to the men. A collection of magazines arrives, detailing the end of the war, which guards hid from the men for five days “almost certainly [because] they were awaiting instruction on whether to carry out the kill-all order” (227).

The men remain at the camp until September 5, when they demand a train from the nearby station to transport the healthy prisoners. During that time, the men eat, drink, and celebrate, often becoming sick from overeating. Louie grows healthy again, gaining weight, and reflects on the fact that just days earlier he had been ready to kill the Bird; now, “all Louie felt was rapture” (230).

Of the 132,000 known POWs, 36,000 die. The Japanese kill nearly 37% of American POWs. At other camps like Ballale, Wake, and Tawara, the kill-all order is executed, and thousands are killed at the war’s end.

As the former POW train travels through Japan, the men stop frequently for wine and food. Initially, they cheer at the destruction of their enemy’s cities. However, as they pass more decimated cities and see the refugees, the cheering stops.

The train arrives at Yokohama and the Red Cross cares for the men. A journalist is shocked to learn that Louie is still alive and interviews him about his experience. He reflects on everything, saying “If I knew I had to go through those experiences again, […] I’d kill myself” (233).

When Louie arrives in Okinawa, he learns that of the 16 men from his barracks at Oahu, only he, Phil, and two others survived. Now 28 years old, after 27 months of imprisonment, Louis weighs 143 pounds and is continuously weak and sick. He slowly recovers. When asked about his running career, he replies that he’ll “never run again” (235).

Meanwhile, Phil is rescued from Rokuroshi on September 9 and returns home on October 16. He marries Cecy.

On Okinawa, Louie eats, drinks, and resumes playing pranks on people that take advantage of the fact that people thought he was dead. In one, he asks a friend to bring his former USC track recruiter to him with news of a runner for him to recruit. The recruiter is shocked and falls backward in his chair when he sees Louie.

When Louie returns to the United States, he goes to a hospital in San Francisco to continue his recovery. As soon as Pete learns, he leaves his post to visit Louis. Pete is shocked to learn that Louie is cured of his sickness and gaining weight, and rather than being traumatized is “upbeat and chatty” (238).

Louie finally flies to Long Beach Airport, where his mother and sisters reunite with him.