Why this book: My wife read this book and told me that I definitely needed to read it.  She reads more than I do and she doesn’t make that recommendation very often.  My friend Liz Train, a voracious reader herself, also suggested that I read it and that I would enjoy it.  But I was into about 4 books at the time, and knew that I might never get to it, so I purchased the CD version to listen to in the car while commuting.  So I didn’t really read the book, I listened to it, and listening to the story was a great way to enjoy this book.

My Impressions:  The book is written by a Laura Hillenbrand, a master story teller (Sea Biscuit), and belongs in the classics of survival literature about the triumph of will and the human spirit.    The book begins with stories of Louis Zamparini’s misadventures as a juvenile delinquent, then progresses to how he becomes a record setting distance runner and Olympian (1936 Berlin.)    After the war begins, he becomes an Army Air Corps officer, and when his plane goes down in the Pacific, the meat of the story begins.  The next section of the book describes how he (with two other men) survived 47 days adrift in the Pacific on a tiny rubber raft.  As they finally reach an island, they are taken prisoner by the Japanese, and the next section of the story is about his nearly 3 horrific years as a Japanese Prisoner of War.  At the end of the war, we learn of his liberation, his repatriation, and joyful reunion with his family.  Then more struggles ensue with his descent into alcoholism and other destructive behavior as he continues fighting the demons that he carried with him from his time in the Japanese Prisoner of War camps.   He eventually has a spiritual re-awakening, and creates a new life for himself– a life that still continues.  He was one of the torch carriers in the Olympics in the 90’s, became a prolific supporter of not-for-profit causes, and was an inspirational public speaker for decades.   Liz Train emailed me that she had lunch with him in April while he was in Hawaii promoting the book.

One of the shocking insights to come from this book was how the atrocities and humiliation that the Japanese inflicted on their prisoners rival the horrors the Nazis inflicted on their victims in the concentration camps in Germany and Poland.  Apparently because of his celebrity as an Olympian, Zamparini was allowed to survive when others were murdered; also perhaps because of his celebrity, he was targeted for even more concentrated and degrading abuse.   The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came two weeks before PoW camp commandants had been ordered to murder all their prisoners.

The books makes clear that Zamparini and other PoW’s realized that maintaining their sense of human and personal dignity, in the face of extreme and persistent degradation and dignity-robbing abuse, was key to their survival.  This point echoes Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning.  Zamparini’s defiance in the face of brutal and degrading treatment was key to his survival.  He fought and struggled to maintain his human dignity in the most dehumanizing environment imaginable.  And somehow, he succeeded.  Laura Hillenbrand now calls him the Ambassador of Joy.  This is also a story of forgiveness and redemption.  A wonderful book.