Louis Zamperini on the Tonight Show

Sadly, NBC took down its links to Mr. Zamperini's appearance on the Tonight Show and blocked others from displaying the now-historic interview. [Update 7/13/14]

However, here see a better, longer piece by CBS Sunday Morning (produced by a high school classmate of mine) May 27, 2012.

 Louis Zamperini, the subject of the best-selling book Unbroken, was interviewed by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show Thursday, June 7, 2012. Zamperini talks about how he was tortured and experimented upon by the Japanese on a Pacific island after he was captured having survived 47 days on a life raft. He was eventually shipped to Japan for further torture and ended up as a slave laborer for Japanese corporations. He survived the infamous Ofuna Naval Interogation Center in Kamakura and was then shipped to two of Japan's most horrific prison camps near Tokyo: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shin-Etsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless (NSSC). These multi-national companies still exist with their same names.

Unbroken will be translated into 23 languages worldwide. Japanese is not one of the languages as no publisher in Japan has shown an interest in this bestseller.

Unbroken will be released as a movie sometime in 2013 by Universal and directed by Francis Lawrence.

Later: Here Mr. Zamperini is interviewed back stage at the Tonight Show and adds a bit more about his 1936 Olympics roommate, Jesse Owens.

Best Seller Still

Other photos of the Omori rescue and Ofuna rescue HERE 

As reported in USA TODAY, last week Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken passed the one-million-copy milestone in hardcover sales. Currently there are no plans to issue the book in paperback.

Hillenbrand's story of Louis Zamperini, a World War II bombardier who crashed in the Pacific, was marooned on a raft for 47 days and survived brutal internment in Japanese POW camps, was first published in November 2010.

 Zamperini endured sadistic torture and abuse at the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation station (he was water-boarded) in Kamakura and was then sold to Japanese companies to be a slave laborer in Japan's two most horrific prison camps: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shinetsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless. These companies still exist and have retained their original names.

The book has spent 41 weeks on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. It was the best-selling hardcover nonfiction title of the first half of 2011, according to Bookscan. E-book sales to date: approximately 650,000 copies.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

In Las Cruces, New Mexico stands the only federally funded memorial dedicated to the memory of the those soldiers and civilians forced on the Bataan Death March in April 1942 at the start of Pacific War. The Bataan Death March Memorial Monument is located in the town’s Veterans Park. It was dedicated in April 2001.

Las Cruces artist Kelly Hester designed and sculpted the larger-than-life bronze statue depicting the struggle of those on the Death March. Two men try to hold up their buddy and move him forward. If they did not succeed, he would be shot, bayoneted, or beheaded—or all those things. Footprints are imbedded in the concrete in front of them... footprints made by boots as well as by bare feet. These footprints were made by those who had survived the March and their ordeal as POWs of Japan.

The Battle of Bataan and it bitter aftermath is deeply rooted in the state of New Mexico. Of the 12,000 Americans on the Bataan Death March, 1,800 were from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard. They came from nearly 300 New Mexican communities, and some 300 came from southwest New Mexico alone, where Las Cruces is located.

In addition to the national memorial to the Bataan Death March, the Las Cruces area has also hosted, since 1989, the annual Bataan Memorial Death March. The March takes place every March at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Over 5,000 people from all over the U.S. and the world participate. Service members march in uniform.

The local congressman is Republican Steve Pearce, an Air Force veteran and Tea Party Caucus member who has established a Veterans Advisory Council for his district. Despite this commitment to New Mexico’s veterans, Congressman Pearce has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333, honoring those who were POWs of Japan, many of whom were from New Mexico. (August 13, 2011)

UPDATE: On December 9, 2011 Congressman Pearce became a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333.

National Guard Units Captured by Japan

Below are the National Guard Units captured on Bataan and Java in the first months of World War II. Each Unit is matched with its current Congressman/woman. A majority of the American POWs of Japan were from these battalions.

UPDATE: As of July 21, 2011, only two of these Congressmen, Ben Chandler (KY-6-D) and Martin Heinrich (NM-1-D) have signed on as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333 (*). Paul Ryan (WI-1-R) became a cosponsor on September 14, 2011 and Sam Farr (D-CA) on November 30, 2011. Steve Pearce became a co-sponsor December 9, 2011.

Captured on the Philippines (Bataan Death March)
>192nd Tank Battalion (Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin) Activated: November 25, 1940 Sent to Philippines: October 24, 1941

CONGRESSMEN (as of Summer 2011):
*Company A: PAUL RYAN (WI-1-R) [co-sponsor 9/14/11]
Company B: Danny Davis (IL-7-D)
Company C: Marcy Kaptur (OH- 9-D)
*Company D: BEN CHANDLER (KY-6-D)

Resources
The Origin of Bataan Day
Maywood Bataan Day Organization
Proviso East High Bataan Commemorative Research Project; Maywood, IL
National Guard History eMuseum; Kentucky Guardsmen of the 192nd Tank Bn
Company C, 192nd Tank Battalion, Port Clinton, OH


>194th Tank Battalion (Minnesota, Missouri, California) Activated: February 10, 1941 Sent to Philippines: September 8, 1941

CONGRESSMEN (as of Summer 2011):
Company A: Chip Cravaack (MN-8-R)
Company B: Wm. Lacy Clay (MO-1-D)
*Company C: SAM FARR (CA-17-D) [co-sponsor 11/30/11]


Resources
A History of the Salinas National Guard Company 1895-1995
California Militia and National Guard Unit Histories; Company C, 194th Tank Bn


>200th Coast Artillery (New Mexico) Activated: January 6, 1941 Sent to Philippines: August 17, 1941

CONGRESSMEN (as of Summer 2011):
*Troop A: MARTIN HEINRICH (NM-1-D)
Troop B: STEVAB PEARCE (NM-2-R)

Resources
A Brief History of the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery
The Bataan Corregidor Memorial Foundation of New Mexico
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The 200th Coast Artillery (AA) - (12/8/1941)


Captured on Java (“The Lost Battalion,” USS Houston, and labor on the Thai-Burma Death Railway)
>2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Battalion (Texas) Activated: November 25, 1940 Sent to Pearl Harbor: November 21, 1941, Sent to Java: November 28, 1941 (diverted to Java, instead of the Philippines after Pearl Harbor)

CONGRESSMEN (as of Summer 2011):
Battery A: Charles A. Gonzalez (TX-20-D)
Battery B: Mac Thornberry (TX-13-R)
Battery C: K. Michael Conaway (TX-11-R)

Resources
2nd Bn, 131st Field Artillery, USS Houston; HISTORY Of THE LOST BN
Book Review: Kelly E. Crager. Hell under the Rising Sun: Texan POWs and the Building of the Burma Thailand Death Railway
USS Houston
USS Houston Memorial Site

Best Seller: Unbroken

Since the day it was published in November 2010, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption has been a bestseller. This memoir of an American POW of Japan has remained among the top ten on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon lists.

Californian, Olympian, airman, Louis Zamperini experienced the worst of Imperial Japan's POW camps. He was tortured, experimented upon, interrogated, beaten, whipped, starved, humiliated, and forced to give a radio broadcast. He survived torture at the infamous Ofuna Naval Interogation station in Kamakura and was then shipped to to work in Japan's two most horrific prison camps: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shinetsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless. These companies still exist.

As Hillenbrand writes: 

Virtually nothing about Japan's use of POWs was in keeping with the Geneva Convention. To be an enlisted prisoner of war under the Japanese was to be a slave. The Japanese government made contracts with private entities to send enlisted POWs to factories, mines, docks, and railways, where men were forced into exceptionally arduous war-production or war-transport labor. The labor, performed under club-wielding foremen, was so dangerous and exhausting that thousands of POWs died on the job. In the extremely rare instances in which the Japanese compensated the POWs for their work, payment amounted to almost nothing, equivalent to a few pennies a week. (p. 234)