Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [130]
I LEFT THE prison having promised Kano, James Sasaki, and Admiral Yokura that I’d try to help their cases for early release. Yokura had told me, “Louie, I do not understand your democracy. I have done nothing wrong, and yet I am sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.”
To the best of my knowledge, that was true. During the war-crimes trials our government had hired a lawyer to defend the Japanese. He didn’t want to do the job until he saw some defendants being “railroaded” by judges in a hurry to sentence prisoners left and right. He stayed in the country and still had access to the files, which he let me see. Admiral Yokura’s file indicated he was a kind, personable guy. I’d met him at Ofuna and again at Omori. When I read the transcripts of his trial, it shocked me. The evidence showed him innocent of every accusation. On the next-to-the-last page it said, “Innocent”—and yet the final page read, “Sentence: 10 years.” It didn’t make sense.
I wrote a deposition to General MacArthur indicating I had read Yokura’s case history and, “by your own courts he was found absolutely innocent of any crime. Yet, on the last page he’s sentenced to ten years. That evidently is an error. Please read the last two pages and come to some conclusion.” The attorney had my note delivered to SAC headquarters, and eventually Yokura was let out of prison.
I also wrote that Kano was not Kono. Kono was the Bird’s sycophantic right-hand man; he was a bastard. Kano was a nice guy. He took chances with his own life by helping us. Kano was also freed.
Sasaki was my only failure. Shortly after my liberation I had completed an affidavit on his behalf and thought the matter done. After seeing him at Sugamo I wrote to MacArthur—and then his successor, General Matthew Ridgway—that Sasaki (and Yokura) “were not war criminals in any sense of the term, not only to my personal knowledge but also to the knowledge of many of the other personnel who were imprisoned with me and subsequently in the Ofuna Prisoner of War Center. Since my return I have met some of the former prisoners of war and all have experienced the same shock and surprise that I did when learning that these men are now serving prison terms.” But I couldn’t get to first base with SAC for Sasaki, and neither could the attorney. And no one would tell us why. “Handsome Harry” had to wait until 1952’s general amnesty to go free.
THIS TIME WHEN I landed in Los Angeles there was no welcoming committee, no speeches, no fanfare. I simply went home to my wife and child. Happily. I may have been doing the Lord’s work—and more successfully than I had imagined—but I had missed them terribly. I also knew that I had finally come full circle. Except for continuing to tell my story and spreading the Word, a great part of my life was over: the delinquency, the running, the war, the imprisonment, the drinking, the nightmares, the greediness and desperation, the unhappiness. I was completely satisfied with my test of forgiveness and more than ready to move on.
15
NOT EVERY OLD SOLDIER FADES AWAY
If the love of family and friends and a newfound peace of mind alone could sustain me, what a wonderful world it would be. However, I also needed a job, preferably one that would not only support my family but allow me to serve the Lord as I had promised on the raft.
A Christian college in Hawaii inquired about my taking a teaching position. Another, on the East Coast, offered me work as a coach. But I was too busy speaking all over the country to take advantage of the many opportunities that came my way. Once I gave twelve talks in a day. It was almost as if I were campaigning for office.
In 1951 I toured from the Northwest to Florida. Miami was supposed to be my last stop, but I got booked from there through the West Indies. In Nassau they didn’t have a place big enough for the thousands