Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [63]
PHIL AND I had been prisoners for nearly forty days, expecting each to be our last, when the interrogation panel summoned me for another session. They wanted to know the number of ships, troops, and planes transported to the Pacific through Hawaii. They probably expected me to finally break down, but I’d had enough. “We have spent forty days here, and more on a raft,” I said. “What could I possibly know? We are obsolete. My information was obsolete the day after I left my home base. Whatever you want to know, you already know. I can’t tell you anything else.”
No cookies for me that day.
ON THE FORTY-SECOND day the guards gathered outside our cell block and talked in low voices.
An officer burst in and said, “Tomorrow you will”—I held my breath—“be put aboard a ship and go to the island of Truk, and from there to Yokohama as prisoners of war.”
My God, I thought, we’re going to live through this.
WHAT HAD CHANGED their minds? Maybe they thought it better to save the life of a famous American athlete and Olympian than wantonly destroy me. But why? Did they think showing me mercy would help their cause? It made no sense.
Whatever the rationale, I didn’t argue. Who would? As an official prisoner of war, I was under the jurisdiction of international law. I wasn’t really sure what it would be like under Japanese authority, but I thought, At least they have to feed us properly and bed us down.
Phil and I left Kwajalein on a vessel that was part of the Japanese fleet and sailed due west for Truk, in the Carolines. We spent about a week in the harbor. Every time I went to the rest room, I looked out the window to count the ships. If I ever escaped, at least I’d have some information about this big Japanese naval base.
(Six months later, at 06:00 hours on February 17, 1944, in Operation Hailstone, the American Allied force attacked the Japanese naval and air force fleet in Truk Lagoon. More than seventy planes and forty ships were destroyed and hundreds of lives lost. The raid helped win the war. Today, Truk Lagoon attracts many divers because of the undersea wrecks and multicolored reefs and marine life growing on them.)
After Truk, on the way to Yokohama, my shipboard hosts couldn’t contain their excitement at seeing the enemy face-to-face. They rifled through my wallet and found an illustration of me in my running suit against a backdrop of the planes bombing Wake Island. It was a patriotic “Stars in Service” ad for the war effort that told about my participation in that raid. In big letters, at the bottom, it read: THEY GIVE THEIR LIVES—YOU LEND YOUR MONEY. BUY SECOND WAR LOAN BONDS. Evidently our Christmas Eve attack had killed many of the crewmen’s buddies, as I discovered when five or six sailors burst into the cabin Phil and I shared.
“Who’s going to win the war?” they shouted.
“America.”
That was all they needed to beat us, still skeletons, to the floor. They also broke my nose, which I had to set myself. Finally an officer came in, stopped the fight, and made everyone leave. He took me topside to an officer’s cabin. It was a nice room. For the rest of the trip I slept there on a long, padded bench.
I spent most of my time alone in that cabin. Occasionally an older sailor came in and thumped me in the head. He was a weird and funny guy. He’d say, “Thump you in the head for a biscuit?”
“Hey, go ahead.” For a biscuit, he could thump all he wanted. He’d thump me once, give me the biscuit, and leave. He did this every other day. I ate well; he felt better.
WE HAD A submarine scare on the way to Yokohama. Alert bells rang and I was suddenly afraid. I thought, Boy, I’ve had it now. Our navy is out there and they’re going to let these Nips have it—and me, too. After all this time I’ll be killed by my own people. But as much as I was frightened, I was thrilled, too. Sirens blared. Sailors screamed and ran for battle stations. This continued for about thirty minutes, but we were never attacked.
WITH NOTHING TO do but sit in someone’s cabin all day, waiting for a thump in