Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [127]
I ALMOST RAN out of money on the way back to Tokyo, but during lunch at a hotel outside Hiroshima, a navy ensign who’d heard my talk introduced himself. Before leaving Hiroshima I’d discovered I wasn’t allowed to ship home the rifle I’d received. The ensign said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You come out to the ship with me, talk to some of the guys, and I’ll not only give you two hundred and fifty bucks so you can stay in Japan, I’ll take your rifle home and give it to you when you return.” He was as good as his word, and I extended my stay.
The money allowed me to go into the Japanese countryside. After living at Ofuna and Naoetsu, I felt more at home there than in the cities. The men and women who now struggled along dirt roads carrying their loads of dried fish and bean paste seemed like old friends. On an overcast, cold and miserable day we stopped an old man pulling a loaded two-wheeled cart through a barley field. He listened to us long enough to know we were talking about God, then he looked up and pointed at the sky and said, “I worship the Sun Goddess.” Just then the clouds parted and the sun shone through, warming us all. He smiled and said, “Is there anything better?” What could I do but smile back? When I handed him a Christian booklet, he bowed and thanked me, then trudged on his way, enjoying the sunshine.
IN TOKYO I received word through a missionary couple that a former Japanese navy recruit who had heard me speak had approached them with a question: “I was one of those who beat Zamperini on the ship to Yokohama and broke his nose,” he’d confessed. “Do you think he has truly forgiven me?”
He was assured I had but urged to ask me in a note. I replied in a way that left no doubt about my pardon, but as I scribbled I thought, Writing is easy. Would it be as easy to say it in person?”
The time had come to find out.
LIFE MAGAZINE HAD kept in touch with me every few days, asking if I had made any progress toward being allowed to visit Sugamo Prison. I hadn’t and said I’d try again. But first I wanted to visit the camps where I’d been confined. Call it training, a prerace warm-up.
At Ofuna I walked the long narrow road, now slippery with rain, to discover that the camp was still there. Scavengers had stolen the wood fence, probably for lumber or fuel, and two barracks had been replaced by planted fields. A third barrack housed squatters, one of whom slept in the arbor where the Mummy had read his paper. The cemetery, where we’d said good-bye to so many of our buddies, had been burned over.
Today Ofuna is a resort. Then it was just a painful memory.
Omori was much the same story, except that as I drove across the bridge to the man-made island, I was more afraid than sad. Would I remember the thrill of watching B-29s streak toward Tokyo, bomb bays pregnant with destruction? Or would I see the Bird’s leering frog face and feel the sting of his buckle hitting my head?
The island was a shambles. The fences had vanished, but the deep holes once filled with human excrement remained. I tracked through the weeds and looked in the window of a collapsing barrack to find the same two planks where I’d slept. Three tramps now called it home, and poverty-stricken Japanese families huddled in the cubbyholes for warmth, picking at the sand fleas that still swarmed unchecked.
I saw the room where we were allowed an occasional bath while an inquisitive audience of girl cooks giggled and pointed at our physical merits or shortcomings.
I stood in the barn with the holes in the wall where I saw another POW shiver for days, surrounded by ankle-deep