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Before I forget it, Dad, I would be very pleased if you would keep my guns in good condition so we might do some good hunting when I return home.

Mother Sylvia and Virginia, I hope you will keep up your wonderful talents in the kitchen. I often visualize those wonderful pies and cakes you make.

Is Pete still able to pay you his weekly visits from San Diego? I hope he is still near home.

Give my best to Gorton, Harvey, Eldon and Henry and wish them the best of care. I send my fondest love to Sylvia, Virginia and Pete and hope they are enjoying their work at the present. I miss them very much.

Since I have been in Japan I have run into several of my old acquaintances. You will probably remember a few of them.

The tall Marine, William Harris, from Kentucky is here and enjoying good health. Lorren Stoddard Stanley Maneivve and Peter Hryskanich are the same. You must remember William Hasty from Bishopville? We have been rooming together for the past two months. He is looking fine.

I know that you have taken care of my personal belongings and saving long ago. You have no doubt received the rest of my belongings from the Army.

Hello to Bob Lewellyn and all of my home town friends. Before closing I wish you a merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

Your loving son, Louie

——

Later that day, the phone rang at the Zamperinis’ house. The caller was a woman from the nearby suburb of San Marino. She said that she’d been listening to her radio when the station had aired an intercepted broadcast of an American prisoner of war speaking on Japanese radio. The broadcast had been scratchy and indistinct, but she was sure that she had heard the name right. The POW she had heard, she said, was Louie.

The Zamperinis were shocked and wary. The woman was a stranger, and they were afraid that she was a prankster. Sylvia and Louise asked for her address and drove to her house. The woman told them everything she had heard. Sylvia and Louise thanked her and left. They believed the woman, but they didn’t know if they could believe the broadcast itself. It could easily have been faked. “I was thinking, ‘Could it be true? Could it be true?’ ” Sylvia recalled.

After Sylvia and Louise got home, a Western Union telegram arrived from the provost marshal general. It read, FOLLOWING ENEMY PROPAGANDA BROADCAST FROM JAPAN HAS BEEN INTERCEPTED. Below were Louie’s words, as typed by Moody. The telegram ended with a disclaimer: PENDING FURTHER CONFIRMATION THIS REPORT DOES NOT ESTABLISH HIS STATUS AS A PRISONER OF WAR.

Messages began pouring in, from friends and strangers all over the country, telling the Zamperinis of the broadcast, which had been intercepted and re-aired on several stations. And Louie’s uncle Gildo Dossi called from Wilmington, Iowa. He had clicked on his radio and heard a voice that he felt certain was that of his nephew.

The messages relaying the content of the broadcast were varied, but a common thread ran through several of them: a request that they take care of Louie’s guns. Louie had grown up hunting, shooting rabbits in the fields around Torrance and on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, and he was especially careful with his guns. To the Zamperinis, this was the fingerprint, the detail that the Japanese could not have known. Louise and Sylvia dissolved in tears, then began shouting with joy.

Pete picked up the phone, dialed Payton Jordan’s number, and shouted three words into the receiver:

“Payt! He’s alive!”

Twenty-six

Madness

THE RADIO TOKYO MEN WERE BACK AT OMORI, SMILING. What a lovely voice Louie had, what a brilliant job he had done. How about another broadcast?

As long as he wrote his own copy, Louie saw no reason to decline. He composed another message to his family, then rode with the producers to Tokyo. When he reached the studio, the producers announced a change of plans. They didn’t need the message he’d written; they had one all ready. They handed Louie a sheet of paper. This is what it said, exactly as written:

Well, believe it or not … I guess I’m one of those “Lucky