Fascinating story of forgiveness

I usually don't like to read books or watch movies that are extremely highly praised because the hype raises the bar and I can't help approaching it with expectations. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel for instance, as critically acclaimed as it was, was so long-drawn and flat to me I slogged through two-thirds of it and called it quits; the point of the book seemed so obvious -- that people and civilization flourish where the land is fertile and the weather is temperate -- the rest was details and the details were boring.

So I started this book by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, with much trepidation. I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, this is about war and people in it and not as academic as the Guns, so maybe the two cannot be compared and perhaps I should not be surprised. But the difference was refreshing, and now I am one of the thousands of Amazon reviewers giving it five stars.

It's a story of Louie Zamperini, who ran in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and who as a boy "wanted nothing to do with airplanes" found himself becoming the bombardier aboard a B-24, which crashes into the Pacific Ocean. He and two of his crewmen drifts on a raft, fighting death: thirst, starvation, burning sun, sharks, a strafing Japanese bomber, a typhoon, etc.

The book was written in short, crisp and powerful sentences and easy to read, even for a non-native English speaker like me. The story seems to be backed up by a great deal of research, interviews, and records. Virtually every detail seems to be referenced at the end of the book, page by page and line by line.

At some points, though, I couldn't help but stop and question some of the passages, like those referring to the Rape of Nanjing, or the circumstances surrounding the comfort women. I'm not a historian and I can't point out any errors in the book; I would just say that these issues are controversial.

The cruelty of the guards at the POW camps depicted here is staggering. The level of abuse, humiliation, and violence to which Zamperini and other captives were subjected is horrendous. They are beaten and clubbed daily, denied full Red Cross rations and clean water.

I could only feel sorry for them. But I feel like defending my own country and my own anscestors by saying these guards were and are not typical or representative of the Japanese, then or now: they were "the dregs of the Japanese military" and "quite a few were deranged," as Hillenbrand so impartially writes. And you must remember that in the wartime Japan, hitting and clubbing were an everyday occurrence in the military. Especially new military recruits were routinely beaten for minimal transgressions or mistakes.

Even to this day newspapers sometimes carry letters from WWII veterans and survivors, telling stories about the abuses inflicted on them by their own countrymen. It was a time of war, and corporal punishment was the norm. I just hope that the readers of this book, restrained as it is, will not jump to conclusions about the nature of Japanese as a people. By the same token, I tell myself not to hasten to generalize other nations' character by the acts of only a few of their folks.

After the book, I watched a CBS interview of The Bird, Zamperini's once arch-enemy prison guard, on Youtube.  He came across as an unhappy man not at peace with himself. His words and demeanor appeared to show a sad man who couldn't or wouldn't get it all over with. But then again, how would I have treated Zamperini and other POWs had I been one of the guards at any of the POW camps? I'm not so sure.

A fascinating and gripping story of forgiveness, and I loved this book.

("Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption", Laura Hillenbrand; the review originally posted on Amazon Review in Nov. 2, 2012)