Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [72]
I went to see Garrett. He told me that after his plane crashed the Japanese had imprisoned him and his men on Kwajalein. His crew was executed, but Garrett was spared. He didn’t know why. In addition, he had an ankle injury, which didn’t receive proper treatment and got infected, so they decided to amputate. Garrett was bitter, especially about the operation. I couldn’t blame him. For a mere ankle injury they’d cut off his leg above the knee, without using anesthetic or antiseptic—he said—with an ordinary crosscut wood saw. I couldn’t imagine the pain Garrett had endured. And I didn’t want to.
But why did he want to see me?
“I saw your name carved into the wall in my cell,” he explained. “Right under the names of the marines. I knew who you were because you got a lot of publicity when you went missing in action.” That was great. He was the second American, after Boyington, to confirm that, and we became close friends.
ONE DAY THE commandant decided to stage a track meet, featuring me. It was weird. My muscles had atrophied; I couldn’t run. I entered the high jump instead, and won it. I guess I was so skinny, I didn’t have much to lift. After that, I made a point of exercising to get in better shape.
Soon, with great fanfare, they brought in a local runner because what they really wanted was for me to run and lose. I told the grinning officers that the race would be unfair, that the track was hardly adequate for going distances. Most important, I had no desire to run. I shouldn’t have said that. They told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t run, not only I but the whole camp would suffer. My pride was not worth that, so I ran, and surprised myself at how light and comfortable I felt, considering my condition. I let the local runner set the pace and allowed him to stay ahead even as the finish line loomed. Then I stretched out and passed him; I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t resist.
Moments later I woke up on the ground. Someone had hit me on the head from behind with a cherrywood club.
They brought up another runner a few weeks later, and I beat him, too. After the race he took me aside and said, “Next week I bring my girlfriend. Let me win, so I can say I beat an Olympian, and I’ll give you a rice ball.”
No problem. I let him win. Instead of giving me a rice ball, he left with his girlfriend. But two days later he came back and gave me two rice balls. I guess I’d helped him win with his girlfriend, too.
THOUGH I HAD thought often of my family and friends, the running and meeting Fred Garrett brought back stronger memories of life before the war and made me wonder again how everyone was back home. I’d been gone almost a year, and according to Garrett, everyone thought I was dead. (I would later discover that because Ofuna was a secret camp, the Japanese had never registered me as a prisoner of war with the Geneva POW Convention.) I felt sorrier for my loved ones than I did for myself.
After the war I would confirm what Garrett had told me, that my disappearance had quickly made the papers. No more than a month after the crash, even as I drifted on the raft, a UPI story began, “A little flag hangs today in the ‘memory corner’ of a Pacific air base barracks for Lieut. Lou Zamperini and his dream of future miles.” Another paper described me as having “turned in [his] Service wings…Zamperini—as far as can be determined—has made the supreme sacrifice.”
In June 1943 my mother received a letter from friends that read in part:
We heard over the radio and read in our paper that Louie was reported missing May 27, 1943. We were all so distressed and do hope that news will come of Louie’s whereabouts and that somewhere, somehow, he is all right.
Another letter, this from a stranger, read:
Dear Mrs. Zamperini,
I had read of your son being missing, then gone.