Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Book Review

From Hitler's Olympics to a Japanese prisoner of war camp to the bottle,Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand tells an astonishing life story, says Nigel Jones

If ever a book was destined to become a Hollywood blockbuster, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is  the one.

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, the story of an eponymous racehorse galloping through the Great Depression, has found another story(Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand) from the same era that encapsulates the American dream.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrandhas five hundred pages actually every thing is: poverty, crime, rags to riches, to rags, to riches again (this time religious ones); sport, Hitler, war, shark attacks, cruel Japanese guards, booze, divorce, old time religion, and finally redemption. And, to put the tin lid on it - this is fact, not fiction, and its unbroken hero is, at 93, even now with us. If this does not have Tinseltown’s money men weeping into their iced mineral waters, I do not know what will.

The story starts between the wars in Hollywood’s very own backyard, exactly where a teenage tearaway called Louis Zamparini is moving inside the wrong course. Expanding up unloved in a broken home in the unfashionable town of Torrance, southern California, the boy expends his excess power in stealing vehicles, jumping railroad boxcars, along with a small light burglary. Evading the cops thanks to becoming fleet of foot, the delinquent understands that he can put this gift to much better use - as a world-class athlete. It is his first redemption.

Louis trains tough and manages to create the American team as a middle-distance runner at the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics. The Nazis are riding high, Adolf hitler is in power and every day life is getting tough for Germany’s Jews. Louis’s black team-mate Jesse Owens makes a nonsense of Nazi racial superiority theories by trouncing the very best Aryans the Fatherland can easily field and scooping a clutch of medals. Seemingly oblivious to all this, Louis, although losing his race, is very happy to shake the Führer’s hand and proud to obtain his autograph.

Back in the United states, Louis is saved from the scrap-heap of the Depression by Pearl Harbor and also the US entry towards the Second World War. He joins the USAAF, trains as an air bombardier, and flies 37 successful combat missions in a B-24 bomber in the Pacific Battle against The japanese. Then he gets unlucky. Hit by a Japanese Zero fighter, Louis and his two surviving aircrew ditch amid thousands of miles of empty ocean.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Alone on a tiny raft for the next 47 days, they drift helplessly, fighting off hunger, thirst, circling sharks and finally surviving another strafing from a Zero. Eventually, worn out, emaciated and sick, they sight an island. But they soon wish they hadn’t: the island is occupied by the Japanese and they're captured.

Following his hell drifting on an open boat, the 27 months that Louis spends in 3 Japanese POW camps is an inferno incarnate. A constant round of beatings, abuse, hunger and torture reduces Louis and his companions to skeletal zombies. One guard in particular, Watanbe, known as 'the Bird’, takes a sadistic pleasure in tormenting his helpless charges. He ties them to trees throughout a freezing winter; makes them to do press ups over pits of excrement - until they collapse into them - and makes the prisoners beat each other up (if they didn’t hit tough enough they earned an additional beating). Louis thought he had earned a respite when 'the Bird’ left the camp, but whenever Louis was moved to another camp Watanbe was waiting for him. Liberation following the two US atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes only just in time. An order had already been issued to execute all POWs in Japanese hands.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Louis returns house a broken man. His marriage fails and he takes to drink. No longer young, and devastated by his experiences, he is heading hellwards as soon as more when he is saved in a second redemption following attending a revivalist rally conducted by the Christian evangelist Billy Graham. Born once more, he finds the strength within to beat the bottle and renew the race of life. He also forgives his enemies - even 'the Bird’.

Today, an active nonagenarian, Louis is certainly one of America’s best known 'inspirational speakers’. Even those with no faith will certainly be inspired by his story. Showing exactly the same qualities of meticulous research and identification with her subject that brought Seabiscuit alive, I’m sure that Laura Hillenbrand is already fighting off the main studios having a large stick.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand