Son of Louis Zamperini: His Defiance Helped Him Survive at Sea and with the Japanese But Not When He Came Home

EXCERPT:

ZAMPERINI: "He was a naturally defiant person. His defiance got him through his entire life. He channeled that to sports and the defiance got him to the survival at sea. The endurance in the Japanese prison camps but when he got home he couldn’t fix himself. The natural able to overcome stuff had failed at this point. The Japanese couldn’t break him. That is the name of the story “Unbroken” but when he walked in the Billy graham tent he was a broken man. He went in there and he was defiant. The first one he went, he stormed out. My mom talked him in to going again. So he did. He didn’t like it again so he stormed out again but then he heard something to the effect Billy graham said when you come to the end of your rope and you have no place else to turn, that is when people turn to god to save them from whatever situation they were in. It reminded him of a prayer he had on the life wrap. It had been seven days without water. After five days you are dying. Seven days he said if you get me home alive from this, I will speak you and serve you my entire life. He had forgotten about that prayer after he came home from the war. Though he repeated it many times in prison camp. He felt terrible and said god had taken care of his part of the bargain but he had not. That turned him and he found himself coming forward to the stage. He told me after he got up off his knees,ing is said this prayer. He realized he was done getting drunk. He was done fighting. He had forgiven his former captors. Up to this point his PTSD had been manifesting itself in the horrendous dreams where the bird would come to him and beat him with a tick or belt or bare hands and it ended up trying to choke the life out of him in the dreams and he would wake up in a cold sweat. He went home that night and the first night in years he didn’t have the dream. And never had it for the rest of his life. He lived to be 97.5."