Unbroken_ A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption - Laura Hillenbrand [135]
Louie ran out into a crashing, tumbling world. The entire sky was swarming with hundreds of fighters, American and Japanese, rising and falling, streaming bullets at one another. Over Tokyo, lines of dive-bombers bellied down like waves slapping a beach, slamming bombs into the aircraft works and airport. As they rose, quills of fire came up under them. Louie was standing directly underneath the largest air battle yet fought over Japan.
The guards fixed their bayonets and ordered the POWs back inside. Louie and the others filed into the barracks, waited for the guards to rush off to censure someone else, then stole out. They ran behind a barracks, climbed the camp fence, and hung there, resting their elbows on the top. The view was electrifying. Planes were sweeping over every corner of the sky, and all around, fighters were dropping into the water.
One dogfight riveted Louie’s attention. An American Hellcat hooked up with a Japanese fighter and began chasing it. The Japanese fighter turned toward the city and dove low over the bay, the Hellcat right behind it. The two planes streaked past the camp, the Japanese fighter racing flat out, the Hellcat’s guns firing. Several hundred POWs watched from the camp fence, their eyes pressed to knotholes or their heads poking over the top, hearts leaping, ears roaring. The fighters were so close that Louie could see both pilots’ faces. The Japanese fighter crossed over the coast, and the Hellcat broke away.
All told, fifteen hundred American planes and several hundred Japanese planes flew over the POWs that day. That night, the city was bathed in red fires. The following day, back the planes came. By the end of February 17, more than five hundred Japanese planes, both on the ground and in the air, had been lost, and Japan’s aircraft works had been badly hit. The Americans had lost eighty planes.
Seven days later, the hammer fell. At seven in the morning, during a heavy snowstorm, sixteen hundred carrier-based planes flew past Omori and bombed Tokyo. Then came B-29s, 229 of them, carrying incendiary bombs. Encountering almost no resistance, they sped for the industrial district and let their bombs fall. The POWs could see fire dancing over the skyline.
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On the last day of February, Louie and the other officers were called into the compound. Fifteen names were called, among them Zamperini, Wade, Tinker, Mead, and Fitzgerald. They were told that they were being transferred to a camp called 4B, also known as Naoetsu. Louie greeted the news with bright spirits. Wherever he was going, he would be joined by almost all of his friends.
On the evening of March 1, the chosen men gathered their belongings and donned overcoats that had been distributed the day before. Louie said good-bye to Harris. He would never see him again.
The Naoetsu-bound men climbed aboard a truck, which bore them into Tokyo. Watching the air battle over the city had been exhilarating, but when the men saw the consequences, they were shocked. Whole neighborhoods had been reduced to charred ruins, row after row of homes now nothing but black bones. In the rubble, Louie noticed something shining. Standing in the remains of many houses were large industrial machines. What Louie was seeing was a small fragment of a giant cottage industry, war production farmed out to innumerable private homes, schools, and small “shadow factories.”
Louie and the other transferring POWs were driven to the railway station and put on a train. They rode all night, moving west, into a snowy landscape. As they rode on, the snow became deeper and deeper.
At about nine A.M. on March 2, the train drew up to Naoetsu, a seaside village on the west coast of Japan. Led to the front of the station, the POWs stared in amazement; the snow rose up some fourteen feet overhead. Climbing up a stairway cut into the drifts, they found themselves in a blindingly white world, standing atop a snow mountain