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Resilience In Unbroken

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In Unbroken Part IV, the Japanese guards, everyday would try and make their POWs feel “invisible” but the POWs resisted, demonstrating resilience multiple times. In this part of the book Unbroken it is about Louie and many other POWs who are held captive in prison camps. In these camps the POWs are abused and humiliated daily by the Japanese guards. But this story is not only about how the Japanese dehumanized the POWs, it is also about how the POWs fought back to try and regain their dignity and themselves. In this book most Japanese prison guards put in all their effort to try and make the POWs' life as terrible as possible. As Hillenbrand states, “everyday, the men were slapped, kicked, beaten, and humiliated”(167). This quote tells us …show more content…

Many POWs would collect intestinal gasses and save them up for roll call, where they were ordered to bow toward the Emperor. They would then, “pitch forward and fart in unison”(155). Showing how even though they were suffering all this abuse they would hit back, trying to regain themselves. And even though this act of farting at the emperor might seem small it made a big difference for the POWs. While trying to regain their dignity and themselves, this act showed the POWs that they could defy the people who treated them like they were lesser. While that act showed how the POWs as a whole defied the Japanese, Louie also individually defied the Japanese. One time when Louie individually defied the Japanese was when he was forced to carry a very heavy wooden beam around 6 feet long, he had to hold this beam over his head and could not put it down or shake because if he did he would be beaten. But Louie was not going to give the guard the satisfaction of knowing that he tired out Louie. Louie said to himself, “He cannot break me”(213). Louie ended up holding the beam for 37 minutes. Much longer than a man in this condition should have. To Louie this act of defiance was bigger than the world; he would not let the Japanese strip him of who he was. He was not going to let them make him feel lesser. He and the other POWs stood up, they would regain their dignity taking the smiles off

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Mary Matsuda Gruenewald tells her tale of what life was like for her family when they were sent to internment camps in her memoir “Looking like the Enemy.” The book starts when Gruenewald is sixteen years old and her family just got news that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japan. After the bombing Gruenewald and her family life changed, they were forced to leave their home and go to internment camps meant for Japanese Americans. During the time Gruenewald was in imprisonment she dealt with the struggle for survival both physical and mental. This affected Gruenewald great that she would say to herself “Am I Japanese?

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In the book Unbroken During the war people lost so many things that they loved or cherished. The topic is about what people lost during the war in the book unbroken. In the book unbroken POWS lost family belongings and they lost their dignity. POWS lost their dignity during the war when they were captured and put into camps. One of the characters named Louie Zamperini was beaten everyday and picked on by guards.

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Louie says, “He cannot break me” (Hillenbrand 113). By saying this Louie resisted the attempts of the Bird trying to make him feel invisible. Even thought Louie was already resisting the Bird, Louie and the other POWs resisted even more, “...They threw dirt in gas tanks” (Hillenbrand 179) Louie and the other POWs did this because they were being treated like slaves in the coal mine. Although not as harsh as what the POWs went through, the POWs threw dirt into the gas tank so that the Japanese could learn not to mess with the POWs because they will fight back.

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“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man 's soul in his body long past the point when the body should have surrendered it” (Hillenbrand 189). In the novel Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis “Louie” Zamperini goes through several life-threatening experiences. After being a troublemaker as a child, and an Olympic athlete, Louie straps up his boots and becomes a bombardier for the Army Air Corps. After a traumatizing crash and a forty-six day survival at sea, Louie is taken captive by Japanese officials.

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Throughout Unbroken, readers face one surprise after another. The audience is forced to expect the unexpected, and never accept what is said to be the truth. Louie Zamperini had anything but an ordinary life. His experiences are practically unfathomable, and intermittently lead to question of credibility. Indisputably, however, Louie had an unusual life filled with coincidence.

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Walter Anderson, an American painter and writer once said, “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quantity of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.” Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, describes how Louie Zamperini’s intelligence helped him through many hardships while stranded at sea and in the POW camps during World War II. Remarkably, Louie’s critical thinking skills kept him alive and well during times when he thought his life was over. Described as a delinquent at the beginning of his life, Louie spent most of his time stealing items from people’s’

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Louie and Miné were tortured and punished for something that they didn’t do and it made them feel like they were invisible. Louie was get dehumanized, hurt, because the Japanese would think that dehumanizing Americans would make them stop the war. “Nearly every day, they flew into rages that usually ended with Phil and Louie being spat upon and bombarded with rocks and lit cigarettes.” (Hillenbrand 140) Dehumanized because he is getting hurt by the guards because he is an american and they think that Louie and Phil would hurt them.

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Japanese Americans constantly had an urge to go home, but they had to stay in the miserable camp with terrible conditions and qualities. They wanted to go home so badly and live a normal life with their families, but they could not. Moreover, struggles between these groups also show differences. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” This opening line of Lincoln’s address tells us that Americans should treat others the same. However, during the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War, Americans fought themselves “breaking the rules”.

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In chapter 31, the pows derailed a Japanese train in an act of resistance. (ch31 Hillanbrand) The last piece of evidence shows that the American POWs went to extreme measures to resist their captors and feel like soldiers again. Resisting comes in all different forms, as long as it gives the American POWs their dignity back. Japanese American interns were dehumanized in many different ways, they were cut off from the outside world, not able to communicate with anyone, and they faced extreme racism.

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Glenn Frazier, a Bataan Death March survivor, provides a insight into the Japanese atmosphere of chaos, confuse, and fear. In a television series ran by PBS called The War, Frazier recounted a few of the stories of his time in the Bataan Death March. He begins with this harrowing statement, “If we had known what was ahead of us at the beginning of the Bataan Death March, uh, I would have taken death.” One of the main problems that Mr. Frazier ran across as a POW was a language and communication barrier. If the Japanese soldiers believe you ignored them or did not understand them they would beat the POWs with the butts of their bayonets.

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Fung also points out, “We were Chinese, so they treated us like animals. They beat us, starved us, and worked us to death. They didn’t care if we lived or died”(Yung 89). Fung shows the harsh treatment that the Chinese prisoners were put under because of their race and because the Japanese prisoners targeted them specifically because they were Chinese. They were treated so brutally that he says it did not matter if they lived or died because they were treated like slaves and animals.

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He then chose to go back to the horrible, slipshod POW camp rather than degrade and betray his country. These men exemplify people standing up in the face of adversity and the embodiment of a noble

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Unbroken, a novel written by Laura Hillenbrand, outlines the horrors of being captured by Japanese troops during the Second World War. Because of the ethics that the Japanese people had, the Geneva Convention was hardly ever followed, and the captives were rarely ever treated well. The Red Cross was blatantly lied to, meaning that to the outside world, the Japanese Prison Camps were treating their husbands and sons well. On the interior, however, it was apparent that the prisoners had to do whatever it would take to survive. Men stole goods, communicated in many ways, and even had ploys to either kill camp officials, or to even run away.

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Overcoming Dehumanization “Louie watched the sky and hoped the Americans would come before the Bird killed him” (181). This is one of the many examples of how the way POWs were treated in these camps influenced many lives negatively. Like many other Prisoners of War, Louie Zamperini survived several difficult conditions. He had to resist several attempts of dehumanization. In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand uses both internal and external conflict to show that war has profound and varied effects on individuals.

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“The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely due to the physical characteristics of the people” (Martin 31). The Japanese didn’t resist being kicked because they felt like if they complied to prove their allegiance (Sandler 45). The Americans betrayed them out of fear. It was fear that drove the

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