At age 93, Torrance’s favorite son — Olympic distance runner and World War II prisoner of war Louis Zamperini — remains “Unbroken.”
In fact, the arc of Zamperini’s storied life is moving faster and higher than ever before, spurred by the success of his biography that was released last month.
Written by Laura Hillenbrand, author of the critically acclaimed “Seabiscuit” — the renowned 1930s-era racehorse — the book “Unbroken” is firmly entrenched in the upper reaches of The New York Times’ best-seller list after debuting at No. 2.
After an initial printing of 250,000 copies, there are now 615,000 copies in print.
It has been named one of the top 10 books of the year by the likes of Time Magazine, National Public Radio and Amazon.com, said Sally Marvin, vice president and director of publicity for Random House.
“This thing is bigger than I ever expected,” Zamperini said. “It’s mushrooming. Laura Hillenbrand is something else the way she writes – it’s unbelievable. It grips you and pulls you into the story. I know when I was reading it I had to stop and look out the window to be sure I wasn’t back in prison camp.”
Indeed, the book is being positioned as the must-read of the holiday season. But this is no comfortable yarn — page-turner though it is.
Of the book’s 400 pages, about 70 are devoted to the grueling 47 days Zamperini and a fellow aviator spent starving aboard a life raft while drifting 2,000 miles after their B-24 bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the next 150 pages document Zamperini’s withering ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war after he was captured.
And once the war is over, Zamperini must overcome episodes of deep depression and bouts of heavy drinking and erratic and violent behavior, obsessed as he is with the need for revenge.
“Unbroken,” subtitled “A World War II story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption,” is a relentless, harrowing, psychologically merciless narrative.
At sea, Zamperini kills seabirds with his bare hands, drinking his prey’s blood to quench his thirst, as an enemy airplane strafes the disintegrating raft, and sharks circle during monotonous freezing nights and torrid days.
Upon reaching the comparative safety of land, Zamperini endures chronic dysentery, starvation and debilitating ailments.
Adding to the odyssey is that Zamperini is simultaneously targeted by a vicious Japanese prison guard. He subjects Zamperini to stomach-churning torture, recounted in grisly detail, in an effort to break the famous Olympian physically and mentally.
Hillenbrand has a special insight into the indignities and incapacitating illnesses Zamperini must endure; for almost a quarter century she has suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.
Unable to travel for the last two decades, the affliction often leaves her profoundly exhausted, bedbound for years at a time and racked with balance problems and chronic muscle and joint pain.
“In the time that I’ve been ill, I’ve become intimately familiar with suffering, loss, and desperation,” Hillenbrand wrote in an e-mail. “Because of what I cope with, I feel pulled toward subjects whose lives are defined by vigorous motion, and who demonstrate perseverance, tenacity and grace in the face of extremity.
“I escape from my body and live vicariously through these subjects, and I draw inspiration from their resilience. There is no greater example of resilience than Louie Zamperini.”
If Hillenbrand is an unabashed admirer of her subject matter, the feeling is mutual.
Zamperini and his biographer conducted more than 75 telephone interviews over seven years as work on “Unbroken” progressed.
The intimacy created a special bond between the pair, although Zamperini said he was unaware of Hillenbrand’s illness for the first few years of their relationship.
When he did find out, he sent her one of his three Purple Hearts in tribute.
“I said, `You deserve this more than I do,”‘ Zamperini said. “She’s my inspiration. I don’t know if I could handle what she’s handled – it’s unbelievable.
“We got to be close friends like a dad and a daughter,” he added. “When you talk to her on the phone you love her. You’re really an intimate friend.”
Yet, amazingly, the two have never met in person.
“Hopefully I will in the future, but it was physically impossible for me to do it while researching for the book,” Hillenbrand said. “Conducting all of our interviews by phone, rather than in person, turned out to be an advantage.
“When he was telling his story, because I wasn’t in the room with him, I wasn’t seeing a 90-something- year-old man. I was seeing him in his youth, living this story. I think not being physically with him enabled me to visualize his life more fully and vividly, and helped me to tell the story.”
Helping her tell the story were the thick scrapbooks pack rat Zamperini compiled of his life over the years – one alone weighed more than 60 pounds.
Hillenbrand exhaustively researched virtually every facet of Zamperini’s life.
From his days as an incorrigible juvenile delinquent growing up in then-tiny, blue-collar Torrance shortly after its 1912 founding to Zamperini’s religious deliverance at a post-war Billy Graham crusade, Hillenbrand meticulously documents his fears, hopes and motivation.
Zamperini, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up in what was a bigoted, xenophobic community; residents appealed to the City Council to keep the foreigners out when his family moved to Torrance, Hillenbrand said.
That overt prejudice molded young Zamperini, who smoked and drank prodigiously as a youth, bullied his peers and thumbed his nose at authority figures.
“I was the worst kind of rebel,” Zamperini recalled. “Kids teased me when I was young because I couldn’t speak English.
“I was belligerent, I was always trying to get even,” he added, remembering beating one bully “to a pulp.” “Police were chasing me all over town.”
That defiant nature would later help Zamperini withstand the will-sapping brutality of the prison camp.
And that constant running from cops would help transform him into the “Torrance Tornado,” a nationally renowned miler who became the toast of a community, aided by his older brother, Pete.
He went on to become track coach at Banning High School for about 40 years, Zamperini said.
“Pete used to get him out at night at 8 o’clock and kids in the neighborhood would race him around the block,” recalled former Mayor Ken Miller, who grew up near Zamperini’s home on Gramercy Street that still stands to this day.
“He would win handily, but he didn’t like running,” said Miller, who remains friends with Zamperini. “He didn’t like to do anything except get in trouble.”
Zamperini hasn’t lived in Torrance since the war, although his mother, a jogger until about age 82, as well as his brother lived there for many years, Miller recalled.
Yet he remains a frequent visitor to the city, seeing friends when he’s not giving motivational speeches on cruise ships or with former Olympian and friend John Naber.
“I talk to people in Torrance almost daily – it’s still my hometown,” Zamperini said. “I’m still a Torrance kid.”
Zamperini lives in a secluded home in the Hollywood Hills that once belonged to silent film star Theda Bara, Miller said.
He’s conducting as many as a half-dozen interviews a day. Next year Zamperini plans a book tour in support of “Unbroken.”
“As long as the book is helpful to other individuals, (the schedule) doesn’t bother me,” he said. “If the book had no message that would help people or young people, I probably wouldn’t do it.”
But it does with its message of hope, of inner strength, that can be found in the depths of the human soul, no matter the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that exist.
It’s what has propelled Zamperini over the decades.
And it’s what attracted Hillenbrand to his story.
The timeless tale of suffering and endurance has as much relevance to the seemingly intractable conflicts of today as the one rapidly disappearing into history that Zamperini survived.
“None of us is going to experience the trials that Louie knew during the war,” Hillenbrand said. “But all of us are going to face harrowing struggles in our lives, times when we don’t know how we will find a way through.
“Louie’s story is a lesson in the resilience of the soul and the wondrous breadth of possibility that life affords, even in our bleakest hours,” she added. “We can overcome so much more than we realize; we need only look to Louie to be reassured of this.”