UNBROKEN

Unbroken , A World War II Story Of Survival, Resilience And Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand , a survival epic of Louie Zamperini, an American Olympic runner who joins Air Force after the World War II breaks out. On one of his bombing missions, the plane crashes and Louie with two of his mates survive. They drift on a raft for 47 days – struggling with thrust, hunger, sharks, weather, and bombing attacks – with just one hope that someday they will hit the land. Hit the land they do but… unfortunately an enemy territory – an island in possession of Japan. From there onwards begins the plight  - torture as the POW ( prisoners of war) – an unbelievable yet very true account of the inhuman treatment given to POW by the Japanese during WW II. No stone was left unturned to take away the dignity of a human being.

While living everyday in the shadow of death ( fear of being executed anytime ) , just one ray of hope that America will win the War gave them the strength to endure all the hardships ( too mild a word for what they had to go through ) and keep struggling for the survival.  The sources of the hope were  -  the limited and vague news about the war from the new prisoners that kept coming to the camp and the news papers which they used to steal from the officers’ room. Both the jobs were very risky as the prisoners were not even allowed to look at each other.

It exemplifies how a ray of hope and the desire to meet the loved ones ( who you know are waiting for you ) can make one a super human being and give strength and will power to fight just any odd.

Though the book is a biographical account of  Louie Zamperini, its representative – an account of all Pacific POWs – brutality they faced , their struggle for survival during the War as POWs and post War – the struggle with the horrible memories and nightmares ( post war effect) and start a normal life again. Many had physical deformities, severe illness, mental imbalance ; some never came out of it , many were so traumatized that they kept silent and even the closest ones could never know what they went through. Louie too struggled  through the phases of complete hatred, vengefulness  ( to the extent of planning a murder of the most brutal camp officer) to forgiveness and peace of mind.

The writer has really done a marvellous job of penning the entire account with great details and yet make it very interesting, gripping; it has the quality of possessing the reader. The amount of research done to gather the information and verify the details is amazing. The greatness of the writer is, she does not restrict the subject to just the life story of a single person but sees the opportunity to make it a bigger platform –the story of all Pacific POW of WW II – so much so that the book almost becomes a historical document.  In the writer’s own words,`` the best subjects offer the opportunity to use a small story to tell a much larger one ‘’.

Observations like :

``The dead weren’t numbers on a page. They were their roommates, their drinking buddies, the crew that had been flying off their wings ten seconds ago. Men didn’t go one by one. A quarter of a barracks was lost at once. There were rarely funerals, for there were rarely bodies. Men were just gone, and that was the end of it.’’

“Life was cheap in war”

“War is a crime against humanity”

Speak volumes – just the ego, greed and ambition of a handful politicians made the entire humanity suffer, devastated them. Millions perished....That’s WAR !