During a short road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska over the summer, I was sitting in the back of my ex-boyfriend’s car staring blankly out the window. Eventually bored of the passing cornfields and telephone poles, I elected to scour his backseat for some sort of entertainment. Fortunately for me, I hardback copy of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was buried under a pile of miscellaneous clothing. I had been wanting to read this novel since the movie adaptation came out in 2014. Although I was a bit anxious about attempting to read a book for pleasure for the first time in years, I cracked it open.
I’m writing this article a few months after finishing the book, so I won’t go into too much depth about the plot. Hillenbrand wrote the biography over several years through interviews with the Zamperini’s, his teammates and sports folk, men who served with Louis, and from Louis himself. The nonfiction book follows Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete who joins the Air Force during World War II. His seemingly hopeless perils crash him into the middle of the Atlantic, float him into Japanese territory, and land him in some of the most deadly Japanese internment camps in the war.
Besides the stupor I felt from learning about the atrocities Louis underwent during the war, my most significant take away from the novel was the brutality of the Japanese internment camps and the expendability of the United States soldiers. The United Nations had established a set of rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) that were not being followed by most Japanese POW camps. Louis and thousands of other members of the Ally troops were not only stripped of their rights as POWs, but were subjected to severe neglect, violence, labor, starvation, and even murder during their times at these camps. According to Time Magazine, 40% of the captured American forces died while in the hands of the Japanese. For those who were able to avoid Japanese capture, their outlook was also bleak, especially those in the Air Force like Louis. Before his plane crash, Louis and his crew witnessed a multitude of plane failures due to the novelty of aircraft during the World War II era. The statistics for an accidental crash due to equipment malfunction are mentioned several times in the novel, with Louis’ team’s plane being the most notable for failure. Thousands of United States soldiers died in World War II due to the underdevelopment of the equipment they were issued. I would like to say that I’m surprised that the United States showed such apathy toward their “heroes”, but they needed bodies to stop the creep of Fascism. While I’d like to say the ends justified the means, there are many more moral conversations to be had about the conclusion of World War II, and this includes the number of US soldiers that needlessly died due to a lack of safety.