Remembering the Life of Louis Zamperini, Olympian and World War II Hero

Eighty-two years ago, the world was convinced Louis Zamperini was dead. A death certificate was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt because there hadn’t been news from the former Olympic athlete since his World War II bomber crashed into the Pacific performing a rescue mission.

They say cats have nine lives. It turns out Zamperini had three. All three were chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, which was released in 2010 and stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing 203 weeks.

When he died in 2014, the obituaries and tributes flooded in. But little ink was spilled on the most important—and the most beautiful—third chapter of his life: his resurrection and redemption. That’s because it involved a man named Billy Graham. And a savior named Jesus Christ.

Zamperini’s first life began in western New York, and continued in Torrance, California, where his family moved in the 1920s. The son of Italian immigrants, he struggled in school and was bullied by his peers. His dad did what dads did back then: He taught his son how to box. Soon, those bullies were getting a beatdown of their own.

Zamperini was an angry and rebellious teenager. His passions included alcohol and fighting. His prospects looked bleak until his older brother got him involved in the high school track team. Zamperini would go on to set a world interscholastic record for the mile and won a scholarship to the University of Southern California. His speed impressed everyone.

“The only runner who could beat him was Seabiscuit,” his USC coach told a reporter.

The world would come to know him in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Zamperini competed in the 5,000-meter run and finished eighth but was best remembered for what he did off the track. One night after a few drinks, Zamperini scaled a 15-foot wall surrounding the Reich Chancellery, pulled a Nazi flag off a flagpole and ran. German security guards caught him, but he wasn’t charged. When a high-ranking German Army commander found out who Zamperini was, he let him keep the flag.

Zamperini’s dream of participating in the 1940 Tokyo Olympics was thwarted by World War II. The games were canceled and he traded his track shorts for a military uniform, thus commencing his second life. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and deployed to Hawaii in 1942 with the 11th Bombardment Group, Seventh Air Force, as a master bombardier.

On May 27, 1943, Zamperini and 11 crew members were ordered to search for a B-25 shot down 900 miles south of Hawaii. They left Oahu in the only B-24 available, and hours later, the plane’s two port engines failed and the plane slammed into the sea.

“It felt like someone hit me in the head with a sledgehammer,” Zamperini told Life magazine.

Only two other crewmates survived the crash.

But there was more to endure. One day floating in a small raft in the Pacific turned into six weeks, with little food, less water and even less hope of being found.

There were other dangers. The water was filled with sharks bigger than Zamperini’s raft, and Japanese bombers made several passes at them, too. To keep up morale, the survivors crooned their favorite pop hits and pretended to cook meals. But it wasn’t enough to keep one of his raftmates alive.

After 47 days at sea, the two remaining survivors saw something they thought they’d never see again: land. But their hope was short-lived. Their raft had drifted 2,000 miles to the Japanese-occupied Marshall Islands, which had been turned into a fortress for the eventual American invasion.

The POW camp Zamperini was thrown into was nicknamed “Execution Island” for good reason: nine U.S. Marines were beheaded there. One sadistic guard known as “The Bird”—a man so brutal even his fellow guards despised him—was particularly tough on Zamperini.

Zamperini endured, and when the war ended, he returned home to a hero’s welcome. He’d escaped certain death not once, but twice. Physical death, that is.

But Zamperini’s tormenters had nearly killed his spirit. When all the celebrating was over, the rage he felt toward his captors persisted.

“Pain never bothered me,” Zamperini told the Associated Press in 2003. “Destroying my dignity stuck with me.”

Zamperini’s life soon descended into darkness. He began to drink, taking his anger out on the people around him. Soon, he was on the verge of losing his family.

Then came Zamperini’s remarkable third life in 1946. His wife was on the verge of serving her husband divorce papers when a friend persuaded her to see a young evangelist preaching in a big tent in Los Angeles named Billy Graham.

Zamperini’s wife accepted Christ that night, and told her husband that because of her conversion, she wouldn’t leave him. She instead asked if he would accompany her to the Crusade, and after a week of arguing, persuaded him to attend. That day, almost 30 years from the day he was born, Zamperini was born again in Los Angeles.

“I acknowledged to God that I was a sinner,” he told a large audience at a Billy Graham Crusade 12 years later. “I asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and save me, and of course he did.”

The change in his life was almost instantaneous.

“That night when I got home from the Crusade, it was unbelievable. I didn’t have a nightmare, and I haven’t had one since,” he recalled.

Zamperini soon realized what he had to do to free himself from his tormenters. He had to forgive them. And forgive them he did, returning to Japan to do it. Zamperini even tried to track down the sadistic guard who’d tortured him. But “The Bird” wouldn’t permit it.

In 1998, Zamperini got to participate in the Olympics in Japan. He carried the torch through the town where he’d been a POW 50-plus years before. CBS reporter Jim Nantz asked him about that day, and the graciousness of the Japanese people, who lined the streets to welcome him.

“It more than compensated for my past years in Japan 53 years ago,” he said, holding back tears.

Zamperini led a rich, full life. He gave up skateboarding at 81. At 91, he reluctantly gave up skiing. But he never stopped sharing the Gospel with people he met—the good news, and the healing power, of Jesus Christ.

The movie version of Unbroken, released months after Zamperini’s death, did not include any part of his remarkable third life: his encounter with Christ and his rebirth and redemption. Indeed, the movie should have been called Broken, because it left out the part that unbroke Zamperini.

None of that would have troubled Zamperini. To the end, he was teaching us how to not only survive, but to live—and thrive. His life was the embodiment of the oft-quoted line: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”