We too often use phrases like “life-and-death” to describe sports events, too cheaply use “hero” to describe athletes. Then along comes someone like Louis Zamperini – who served as the honorary referee at this weekend’s Armory Collegiate Invitational at the 168th St. Armory – for whom no other word will suffice.
The slender, bespectacled 86-year-old has three Purple Hearts – one for being wounded, another for being a POW, and the third when presumed dead. A veteran and a Samaritan, prisoner and Olympian, his autobiography is titled “Devil at My Heels,” which is fitting, since he’s been to hell and back.
Born in Olean, N.Y., in 1917, Zamperini grew up in Torrance, Calif., as an admitted delinquent. But his talent was on the track, where he set a national schoolboy record of 4:22 in the mile to earn a scholarship to USC.
That summer, he tied for first in the Olympic Trials 5,000 at Randalls Island, earning a trip to the 1936 Berlin Games, where he met Adolf Hitler. Zamperini returned to run a collegiate-record 4:08.3 mile for USC, and was sure he’d return to Japan for the 1940 Tokyo Olympics.
War changed all that, and Zamperini signed up to be a bombardier. On May 26, 1943, while on a rescue mission, his B24 exploded. He and two others floated for weeks on a raft, watching sharks circle. Eventually, two sharks tried to leap into the raft.
“It looked like a demon out of hell,” Zamperini said. “I grabbed the oar and used it on him, jabbed out his eye. I’m Italian. When I get mad, I get even. I decided to make them part of the food chain.”
And so they did, dragging sharks out of the Pacific and eating the raw meat. Later, they were menaced by a 20-foot great white, and strafed by a Japanese plane and were menaced by a storm with 30-foot waves. They floated to the Marshall Islands on the 47th day, and got picked up by a Japanese patrol boat.
“The most fearful thing was the storm,” Zamperini said. “You’re on top of the mountain and next thing you know you’re down in the valley. There’s nothing worse than a storm at sea.”
At a POW camp on Omori, Zamperini was tortured and used as a guinea pig; but the worst was Sgt. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a sadist who loved inflicting pain. It was Zamperini’s hatred of Watanabe, whom he called The Bird, that kept him alive for 2 ½ years until the war ended.
Zamperini returned home, but the war wasn’t over for him. Vacationing in Miami in 1946, he met Cynthia Applewhite and proposed 10 days later. But he couldn’t get The Bird’s black eyes out of his nightmares.
His drinking worsened, and Cynthia almost divorced him – until the day in 1949 she urged him to listen to Billy Graham.
“Every time I thought about The Bird I wanted to get back there and do him in. It was killing me,” said Zamperini, who decided to listen to Graham. “[At the sermon], I started thinking: All you do on a raft is pray. All you do in prison is pray.
“They’re always the same: Spare my life and I’ll serve you. I didn’t even try to keep one promise. I felt terribly ashamed. That’s when everything changed. I made my commitment. I haven’t had a single nightmare since.”
There’s a movie on the way starring Nicolas Cage. Zamperini still skis and flies planes; he carried the ’98 Olympic torch through Naoetu, where he’d been imprisoned. He runs a camp for delinquents, illuminating them with hard-earned wisdom, “All athletes want to win; but on a raft, you must win.”