Article archive / December 2017
Originally published: . Volume 8, No. 12. Source pages: 15.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
John Fanning, PhD Neuropsychologist, New Orleans, LPA Director and Past President
I'm currently reading Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Reslience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand, published in 2010. It is the biography of Louis Zamperini, who as a youth was more or less a juvenile delinquent, but became a track star, eventually representing the United States in the 1936 Olympics in the 5000 meter race. When the U.S. entered WWII, he became a bombardier in a B-24 crew. (During the war, my mother worked in a plant that manufactured B-24s.) When his plane was forced to ditch at sea, he was captured after a harrowing time at sea. He and his fellow prisoners suffered extremely brutal treatment and severe deprivation at the hands of their captors. He survived the war, but suffered terrible emotional trauma. Eventually, however, he returned to Japan and met with a man who had been a particularly brutal prison guard. Survival itself was a remarkable accomplishment, but going on to develop a long and productive life afterwards was no less so. Author Hillenbrand's own history is itself remarkable. She became an accomplished and successful author (also authoring Seabiscuit) despite being severely limited by severe chronic fatigue syndrome for most of her life. She didn't meet Zamperini in person until quite late in the writing process because she could not tolerate the demands of travel.
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