Book SummaryUnbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Unbroken

The story of Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, details the life of Louis “Louie” Zamperini, from his rise to Olympic hero to his life as an American soldier in World War II. Against unimaginable odds, Louie pushed his will beyond the limits of his body and mind to allow his spirit to never be broken. His is a story of strength, courage, and redemption in the midst of madness.

From Terror to Triumph

As a young boy, Louie was known as the town terror in Torrance, California, a neighborhood south of Los Angeles, where his family moved in 1919 when he was two. Louie was a notorious thief and prankster and had trouble fitting in at school. He was often the victim of bullying, but he never cowered in the face of danger.

As a teenager, Louie was restless and sick of living a life of rules and restrictions. When his antics got him suspended from school, he was banned from participating in athletic activities. His older brother, Pete, a model student and athlete, knew Louie needed direction. He convinced the principal to let him join the track team and took responsibility for Louie’s training. Still, he couldn’t get Louie to engage. Louie left home at the age of sixteen.

After only a few days on the road, Louie realized he was wasting his life. He returned home, agreed to let Pete train him, and found he had a tremendous talent for running. Louie started competing in the mile and two-mile races, quickly making a name for himself with his impressive speed. Soon, he was beating college runners as a high school senior, and he received a scholarship to run at USC.

Louie had set his sights on another target. He wanted to run in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. All of Louie’s training was focused on getting him to the Olympics, and his dream became a reality when he came in second at the trials. Although Louie didn’t medal at the games, he drew attention by clocking the fastest final lap in history up to that point. Even Hitler was impressed.

A Dream Cut Short

Louie wasn’t satisfied with his finish at the Olympics and quickly set his mind to training and winning the mile at the 1940 Olympics in Helsinki. Those Olympics would never occur. Shortly after the 1936 games, Germany invaded Poland, setting off the events that led to WWII. As America drew closer to involvement in the war, Congress passed a draft bill with a caveat that anyone who enlisted before the draft was enacted could choose which branch they joined. To avoid random selection, Louie enlisted with the United States Air Force and went to basic training.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942 catapulted the United States into the war and Louie into active combat. He was made a bombardier and put on a crew slated to fly bombers known as B-24s. The pilot of Louie’s crew was a young man from Indiana named Phil, and the two became close friends.

Louie and Phil’s crew flew in two significant missions that helped destroy Japanese strongholds in the Pacific. On the last of these missions, their plane, the Super Man, was so badly destroyed, it was beyond repair. The crew were given a new plane, an old B-24 named the Green Hornet that was missing several parts. During a rescue mission, the Green Hornet experienced technical difficulties and went down in the Pacific ocean. Only Louie, Phil, and a man named Mac survived.

Lost at Sea

For forty-two days, Louie and the other two men drifted on two inflatable rafts in the middle of the Pacific ocean. There had been rescue missions to locate them, but they weren’t found. The men’s food and water supplies dwindled quickly, and after only a week, they were without either. For the next month, they survived by syphoning rain water into bottles, killing birds for food, and fishing with small bits of bait.

Many dangers befell the men on the boat. They were close to the equator, and the sun blazed down on them daily, weakening them and burning their skin. They suffered sores from the salt water, and sharks circled their boats daily. A Japanese fighter plane shot at them four times, but no one...

Unbroken Summary Prologue: Lost

In June 1943, Louie Zamperini found himself lost at sea. He was on one of two inflatable rafts with two other American soldiers. They’d been stranded for 27 days and were dehydrated, malnourished, sun-beaten, and exhausted from the constant call to thwart the efforts of circling sharks. Although they didn’t know it, they’d drifted 1000 miles already across the vast sea and into Japanese territory....

Unbroken Summary Part 1 | Chapter 1: The Wayward Child

Long before Louis Silvie Zamperini was an Olympic athlete and soldier in WWII, he was a child criminal no one knew how to handle. Born to Italian immigrants in New York in January 1917, he was the second of what would become four children. His parents were Anthony, a coal miner and boxer, and Louise, who had Louie when she was 18. After Louie came down with pneumonia at the age of two, the family moved to Southern California to live in warmer weather.

The family moved to the town of Torrance just south of Los Angeles. In Torrance, Louie’s antics earned him the reputation of being the town terror. He once ran across a busy highway and was almost run over. At five, he started smoking cigarette butts found on the street. At family dinners, he climbed under the table and stole his parents’ glasses of wine. One night, he grew so inebriated, he fell into a rosebush in the yard. On another, he almost drowned in a refinery well after diving off the top of an oil rig. When they pulled him out, he was covered in oil.

Mostly, Louie was a thief. He learned how to pick locks with wire and broke into neighbors’ homes to steal their dinner off the tables. The sight of Louie sprinting...

Unbroken Summary Chapter 2: A Young Man’s Resilience

Louie’s confidence and brashness in the face of obstacles as a child would come to be his saving grace after losing his dream of racing in the 1500 in Berlin. Louie saw an article about an upcoming meet at the Los Angeles Coliseum. A twenty-six-year-old schoolteacher, Norman Bright, was touted as one of the favorites in the 5,000 meters race. Bright had the second-best time behind a younger racer from Indiana named Don Lash.

Louie learned that three 5,000-meter runners would go to the Olympics. Pete pushed him to enter the race, despite its extended distance of just over three miles. If Louie could keep up with Bright, he’d have a shot at making the team. With only two weeks until the meet and having never run farther than a mile twice in high school, Louie knew it was a long shot. But Louie was nothing if not a fighter. He trained so intensely, he lost the skin off one of his toes.

Louie would learn just what he was made of during that race. In front of 10,000 fans, Bright and Louie ran neck and neck the whole way. Although Bright finished a heartbeat ahead of Louie, both their times were faster than the previous record of that year.

**With his Olympic dream suddenly a...

Unbroken Summary Part 2 | Chapter 3: America Goes to War

Around the time that Louie started his training in Houston, the U.S. government, aided by the FBI, received word that Jimmie Sasaki was working as a spy for Japanese intelligence. His trips to Torrance had actually been visits to a large transmitter used to send information to the Japanese. Whether Jimmie was involved in the events that unfolded one morning in December is unclear, but it didn’t matter. The damage would be done regardless.

Before dawn on December 7, 1941, a Japanese pilot named Mitsuo Fuchida flew a small aircraft over Oahu scoping the strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He spotted eight battleships off the coast and signaled to his comrades. Within minutes, 180 Japanese bombers came up behind him and began the assault on Oahu. This was the first wave of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Within the span of two hours, Japanese bombers attacked the base in Oahu, along with other bases in Thailand, China, the Philippines, Guam, Midway, and Wake. In total, more than 2,400 people would be killed during the Japanese attacks.

The attack on Wake was the most surprising. The atoll was far out in the Pacific ocean and manned by 500 American soldiers. They were successful...

Unbroken Summary Chapter 4: Those Lost and Left Behind

The various crews were exhausted after the Nauru attack, but there would be no rest for the weary. As the men relaxed, ground crews doctored the planes, getting them ready for another mission the next day. Super Man was too badly damaged to make the trip. Louie and Phil were in their tent, like all the others, asleep for the night. Louie awoke to a disturbing sound. A plane was flying back and forth above the island. Louie assumed it was lost and wished them well.

The next sound Louie heard was the roar of multiple engines and a loud explosion. Louie and Phil ran down the beach in search of shelter. They found a hut on stilts and dove underneath it. At least twenty men were already hiding there. In the infirmary, Pillsbury was stranded in bed, unable to escape with his bad leg. The small island was rocking from blast after blast, bombs dropping one after the other down the line of tents and base buildings. Louie and Phil’s tent disintegrated shortly after their escape.

When the bombing stopped, some men scurried out of hiding to help the wounded. On seeing Pillsbury stuck in bed, one soldier placed him on a stretcher and pulled him into a cement shelter. Louie and Phil...

Unbroken Summary Part 3 | Chapter 5: Needle in a Haystack

On the island of Palmyra, the Daisy Mae landed as the afternoon sun waned. Their search for Corpening’s plane had been unsuccessful. By early morning, the Green Hornet was also declared missing. Between the two planes, twenty-one men were unaccounted for.

Daisy Mae pilot Joe Deasy estimated that the Green Hornet had likely gone down in a swath of ocean eight hundred miles long. However, because the currents in that part of the ocean converged from the east and west, it was difficult to predict which way the survivors would drift. Air Force planes, along with two Navy air crafts, commenced their search for Louie and his crew.

The next morning, Louie awoke to find Phil still weak in his raft and Mac still silent. When Louie opened the compartment to retrieve the provisions, the chocolate was gone. Louie was confused until he saw the guilty look on Mac’s face. Louie was livid, but he hid his anger, telling the sergeant he was disappointed in him but understood he had acted out of fear. Their situation was more dire now without food, but Louie was sure they’d be found soon.

A little while later, the sound of a plane overhead reached the raft. Louie shot a flare and...

Unbroken Summary Chapter 6: The Real Battle Begins

Louie’s and Phil’s active duty ended when the Green Hornet went down, but their trials as American soldiers were just beginning. Aboard the ship, the men were tied to the mast, bound at the hands, and taunted by the Japanese soldiers. When the captain saw what was happening, he ordered his men to untie them and give them water and a biscuit. It was the first thing either had eaten in over a week.

Louie and Phil were taken to an island, where they received a full examination and treatment for their wounds. Before their doomed flight, Louie and Phil each weighed between 150 and 160 pounds. When they were weighed on the island, they discovered they’d lost half their weight.

Along with the medical treatment, Louie and Phil were given plentiful food, alcohol, and cigarettes. They were taken to a room, in which they told their story of their survival to Japanese officials. They learned they’d drifted two thousand miles to the Marshall Islands. Their raft, splayed on a table in front of them, had forty-eight bullet holes in it.

Louie and Phil were given clean beds to sleep in, and it seemed that their nightmare was over. The Japanese continued to treat them with care and...

Unbroken Summary Part 4 | Chapter 7: The Will to Live

Louie’s fight for his life was far from over, and his will would be tested several times in the months to come. During the winter, Louie and William met Frank Tinker, another officer, and the three spent most of their time together. Winter turned to spring and spring to summer, and the situation at Ofuna continued to deteriorate. By summer 1944, Louie, William, and Tinker had formed a plan to escape.

First, the food situation was becoming more dire. Rations had been cut in half that spring, and men were slipping into desperate states. Louie became so desperate for food, he stole an onion and split it with other men. He stole miso paste and chestnuts from the kitchen after dark. He even volunteered to serve as a barber for the guards, despite understanding the consequences if he cut any of them with the straight blade, because the pay was one rice ball per cut.

There were also great infestations of fleas and lice throughout the camp, brought on by the summer heat. Louie and the others were covered in bites and itched like crazy.

More news about the war had also entered camp, and the POWs knew the allies were getting closer. Every day the allies advanced, the lives of the...

Unbroken Summary Chapter 8: Relief At Last

On the morning of November 24, the Americans arrived in Tokyo. The sirens went off, and everyone at Omori, including the guards, stopped what they were doing and marveled at a tremendous sight. One hundred and eleven B-29s were swarming Tokyo to bomb an aircraft factory on the city’s cusp. The prisoners shouted with glee and pride.

Sirens and B-29 sightings became daily events. Each day of bombing made the Bird dwindle farther into madness. He took away the minor luxuries from the prisoners, such as smoking and playing cards, and started forcing them to line up at attention regularly in the yard. He’d run up and down the line waving his sword above their heads.

The Bird’s aggression toward Louie also reached pivotal heights once the bombings started. The Bird ran through the camp in search of Louie, then charged at him with fists flying, pounding him until Louie was bleeding on the ground. Louie started dreaming of the Bird beating him with the buckle.

Louie wasn’t only suffering because of the incessant beatings. He was also starving to death. Twice, Red Cross shipments had come in, and twice, the camp officials pilfered what they wanted and stored the rest. In one...

Unbroken Summary Part 5 | Chapter 9: American Heroes

The atom bombs changed everything. With two cities virtually wiped from existence, the Japanese surrender would follow shortly. Although life at camp seemed unchanged, the POWs could tell something was off. The Bird started making trips away from the camp, and the violence had abruptly ceased. The sudden relief was nearing too little too late for Louie.

Louie spent most days suffering in bed. He was tormented by fevered dreams of battles to the death with the Bird and vomited frequently. When he touched his legs, his fingers left indentations. Louie had contracted beriberi, a life-threatening vitamin B deficiency that can lead to heart failure, paralysis, and death.

On August 15, the POWs at the camp and work stations noticed something strange—silence. The Japanese guards had disappeared. At camp, Tinker found them huddled in an office around a radio, but he couldn’t tell what was being said. At the worksite, one guard told a POW that the war was over. The POW told the others back at camp, but no one knew what to believe. Still, for the first time in months, no planes flew overhead and no sirens went off. The men were cautious of this news. The kill date was only a week...

Unbroken Summary Chapter 10: Redemption

Louie’s desire to find the Bird was not unique. In Japan, a massive manhunt was underway for forty war crime suspects. Among those names was Mutsuhiro Watanabe. More than 250 POWs had provided statements about their experiences, detailing the gruesome abuse and torment they experienced. The Bird’s name popped up in all of them.

The United States government had an 84-count indictment against the Bird in one document that stretched eight feet in length. Only a small portion of his crimes were listed, and Louie’s affidavit only accounted for one count. Still, Watanabe was a wanted man, and the Japanese working under the authority of the United States hunted him with fervor.

After leaving Naoetsu, the Bird ran to his mother’s village and hid in her home. But when he learned that he was a wanted man after a couple of weeks, he fled. He knew capture would mean execution, and he decided the best course of action would be to vanish from existence.

Everyone in the Bird’s life became a target in the investigation. The police questioned relatives and monitored their communications. They staked out his mother’s house and questioned associates from all periods of his life, even...

Shortform Exercise: The Ups and Downs of Life

The story of Louie Zamperini’s struggles and triumphs speaks to the strength of the human soul and serves as a lesson to never give up.

What do you believe is required for a person to survive immense hardship?