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prepared, but I devoured the risotto to the last grain. Afterward we had coffee, and I noticed everyone looking at one another with expressions that seemed to ask, “Now?” My mother nodded, and everyone trooped out of the living room and returned moments later with armfuls of brightly wrapped packages. These were presents, tagged CHRISTMAS 1943, CHRISTMAS 1944, JANUARY 26, 1945 (my birthday), and notes that read: “Thinking of you on your birthday, wherever you are,” and the like. Here was the full proof that my family had never given up hope, had never stopped believing I was alive, and it struck deeply, not only reaffirming their love but revealing to me—despite all our previous differences—just where I’d come by the indomitable spirit that had kept me going on the raft and in prison camp. And to think that this was the family I’d often ignored, the mother I’d once, years ago, accused of loving Pete more than me. I was ashamed and overcome.

My family and friends didn’t try to get me to talk about POW camp or my war experiences except to say, with obvious satisfaction at the positive outcome, that monthly checks from my life insurance had arrived at the house for almost a year and been deposited in the bank, where they lay untouched—another symbol of their faith in my return.

I didn’t want to talk about the war either. When someone comes home from prison you don’t immediately say, “How was it in the big house?” You take him out to dinner and talk about other things—how it feels to be back, going hunting and fishing, running again, what kind of job he wants to get. Otherwise it’s like reminding someone they had cancer. Besides, I’d told it all to Trumbull, my parents had read it, and every paper in the country had copied it.

My parents also did interviews. One paper quoted my father as saying, “Those Japs couldn’t break him. My boy’s pretty tough, you know.” My mother tearfully offered another perspective: “From now on, September ninth is going to be Mother’s Day to me because that’s the day I learned for sure my boy was coming home to stay.”

Both hit the nail on the head and summed up my feelings exactly. Well, almost. What I told the papers about being home again completed the sentiment: “It’s just like Christmas, only better.”

12

THE HOLLOW HERO

I stayed with my parents for a few days, living in my old room, before being ordered to Birmingham Hospital in Van Nuys for a month of observation. There they fed me pills to finally kill the intestinal parasites and any other bugs I’d brought back from the war. The regimen often made me sick all night, but at least the doctors warned me in advance, saying, “You’ll be fine in the morning.”

I had to stay in the hospital the first week, but then I could put on my uniform and go out if I came back at a decent hour. Wherever I went, publicity followed. Whatever I did after the war was news. Today, if Tom Cruise drove down the street in plain sight, people would yell and wave. I’m no Tom Cruise, but that’s about how famous I was after the war. The exposure cost me my privacy, but after what I’d been through, I didn’t mind the glory. The other guys in my ward couldn’t resist kidding me relentlessly: “Hey, we saw you in the paper with a cute chick, Zamp. An actress. You’ve gone Hollywood, Zamp.”

The coverage and attention kept building as everyone tried to get into the act. In early November the Los Angeles chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart honored me, along with Lieutenant Will Rogers, Jr., and Commander Edward Dockweiler. I was happy to be there, as my parents had received my Purple Heart for “wounds resulting in my death” in May 1944.

(A few years later, Will invited me to be on his radio show to talk about the Bill of Rights. His other guest was a B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan. At the time a couple of big oilmen wanted to groom me for the state legislature. I declined. When Reagan found out, I remember him saying, “It’s interesting that you’re going into politics. I was born for politics.” His remarks made me scratch my head; he was just an actor.)