unbroken-laura-hillenbrand

Five
Into War
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, LOUIE found
himself on a campus infested with world-class track
athletes. He spent mornings in class and afternoons training
with his best friend, Payton Jordan. A sensationally fast
sprinter, Jordan had seen nothing but Jesse Owens’s back
at the 1936 Olympic trials and, like Louie, was aiming for
gold in Tokyo. In the evenings, Louie, Jordan, and their
teammates wedged into Louie’s ’31 Ford and drove to
Torrance for Louise Zamperini’s spaghetti, considering
themselves so close to family that Sylvia once found a high
jumper asleep on her bed. In his spare time, Louie crashed
society weddings, worked as a movie extra, and harassed
his housemates with practical jokes, replacing their deviled
ham with cat food and milk with milk of magnesia. He
pursued coeds by all means necessary, once landing a date
with a beauty by hurling himself into the side of her car, then
pretending to have been struck.
Between classes, Louie, Jordan, and their friends
congregated near the administration building, sitting at the
foot of the statue of Tommy Trojan, the symbol of USC. On
some days, they were joined by a neatly dressed Japanese
émigré who lingered on the edges of the group. His name
was Kunichi James Sasaki. Known as Jimmie, he had
come to America in his late teens and settled in Palo Alto,
where he had endured the social misery of attending
elementary school as an adult. Among Louie’s friends, no
one would remember what Sasaki studied at USC, but they
all recalled his quiet, anodyne presence; saying almost
nothing, he smiled without interruption.
Sasaki was an ardent track fan, and he sought Louie’s
acquaintance. Louie was especially impressed with