Summary: In Part I of the book Hildebrand decides to commence in chronological order with how Zamperini’s youth forged him to be the war hero he was destined to become. Born on July 26, 1917 he was the son of Italian immigrants, growing up in New York, Louie was no stranger of getting into constant trouble with the law. He started smoking when he was only 5 years old and drinking alcohol when he was 8. Louie was constantly running from the police since he stole anything he wanted and was vandalizing property at a very young age. His older brother Pete, felt really uneasy how his younger brother was behaving and since Louie had a talented of running from the cops he made him sign up for the high school track team and it wasn’t long until …show more content…
It finally happened on December 23, 1942 Louie and his crew took part of a bombing of a Japanese naval base. This mission was successful even though after a failure in plane engine, his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean a couple weeks after. In Part III of the book we experience Louis life as a castaway, when his B-24 bomber crashed the book tells us that only three men survived on two inflatables rafts for the next 46 days. In this section of the book we see the struggles of heat, the cold of the night, the imminent danger of sharks that surrounded the raft and a Japanese war plane who constantly was shooting at them. When they were able to spot land, they saw unfortunately that filled with japanese troops. On July 13, 1943 Louie was taken taken captive on Kwajalein Island. Part IV is about Louie’s Traumatic Years as a Prisoner of War, Louie was incarcerated in various POW camps, until he got the camp where he was under Mutsuhiro Watanabe aka “the bird”. This general was the personal demon of Louie, he beat, starved and humiliated Louie. After the war the bird disappeared to avoid being charged as a war