Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [136]
I’d even unearthed new facts about my war story, among them, why I could never help get James Sasaki out of prison.
A couple of years earlier, at the Zamperini Field air fair, a young policeman came up to me while I greeted pilots. He said, “Oh, Mr. Zamperini, I have your book. Could you autograph it for me?”
When I opened it I saw it was already autographed “to Ernie Ashton,” a guy I went to high school with, who later became a policeman. The young man said Ernie had died and he’d come by the book and read it. I signed it again, and then he said, “Oh, by the way, Ernie wrote something on another page.” I flipped through the book, and on the page where I mentioned Sasaki, this is what he’d written at the bottom: “Jimmy Sasaki had a powerful radio transmitter in a field off Torrance Boulevard near a Southern California Edison substation, which was in constant radio contact with the Japanese government. He left the USA by boat before a raid by the FBI and CIA.”
Sasaki had been a spy.
No wonder he had bragged so often at Ofuna about his fondness for Long Beach and San Pedro. He’d go there, then to his transmitter, and broadcast a report about ship movement in the harbor.
When Draggan called, I saw an opportunity to complete the record. We met, he took some notes, realized he’d found more than he expected. He put together a little outline and proposed a segment about me to air during the Winter Olympics. CBS loved it and allotted ten minutes.
As part of his research—Draggan loves research—he flew to Japan and started digging. He went to Wotje and filmed. He went to Naoetsu, now renamed Joetsu, and discovered that in October 1995 the site of Camp 4-B had been turned into a Peace Park, with a memorial dedicated to the Allied prisoners of war who died there. Kids who were in school when I was a prisoner had grown up, made some money, pooled their resources, pitched in to buy the land, and created the park. They didn’t want their kids or their kids’ kids to forget what had happened.
He also wanted me to go to Japan and carry the Olympic Torch again, this time for a kilometer at the 1998 Winter Games in nearby Nagano. I suggested I do it right alongside the old prison camp, but as it didn’t exist, I ran through town just a few miles away, and later he filmed me visiting the Peace Park memorial.
I’m a die-hard pack rat, and as the piece took shape Draggan and I spent days going through so much of the stuff I’ve kept all my life: letters, documents, magazines, newspapers, films, pictures, scraps of this and that, and finally, my World War II diary. He didn’t mind. “Everything has to be authentic,” he said. “We have to confirm everything.”
For instance, when I told Draggan about the Bird and the time I had to hold up the wooden beam, he asked, “Who else saw that?” Most of the guys were dead, but Draggan got ahold of Tom Wade in England, and Wade gave him his book, Prisoner of the Japanese, in which he just happened to write that very story.
I also told Draggan, “My whole life is serving God. If you want this to be authentic, you have to have my conversion in there.”
“There’s no story without that,” he said immediately. “We’re basing this all on a theme of forgiveness.”
I was greatly relieved. “Besides my conversion,” I said, “I want you to show a picture of Billy Graham to confirm it. When people hear the name Billy Graham they think of one thing: the gospel.”
He said, “You got it,” and he took care of everything.
Based on the material I’d archived, and the proof of events from his research, CBS gave Draggan five more minutes of airtime. Then another five. Lucky me. After all I’d been through, I thought it couldn’t get better than that.
I WAS WRONG.
While I was answering mail in my office at the church, the phone rang. Draggan was on the line from Tokyo, where he’d gone to verify more of my story and to shoot footage. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, hold