Louis Zamperini Research Paper

Words: 752
Pages: 4

Not many people can survive a plane crash and 47 days with minimum water and food, shark attacks, and Japanese Prisoners Of War (POW) camps. Louis Zamperini had an unstoppable drive to never give up. He is one man who refused to break. Zamperini took a stand against all the POW camp guards who beat him and made him suffer. Zamperini was born on January 27th, 1917 in Olean, New York. He had two sisters and one brother. When Zamperini was young he had a taste for alcohol, fighting, and was constantly being chased by cops. As a teenager Zamperini found a way to forget about his addiction that Zamperini had when he was younger, that was long distance running. He won a scholarship to University of Southern California. In 1936 at the age of 18 Louis made the US Olympic track team in Germany. On the way to Germany, Zamperini partied and drank on the USS Manhattan. He finished 8th place in the race. Zamperini was drafted to the US army in September of 1940. He had a taste for army air …show more content…
His normal weight of 165 pounds was all the way down to 79 pounds. They had a few hard biscuits and water, that was all their food for their first 8 days. He was put through camp to camp. During captivity he was a doctor's guinea pig, the experiments would not stop until he blacked out. At Yokohama he was made to unload 10,000 tons of coal, if you refused, you had to do push-ups over the latrine (outhouse). When they found out Zamperini was a olympian track star he had his nose broken 3 times. Zamperini often fell behind and he was once told by a guard to lick his boots and he did not so he got beat on the head with the guards belt. Zamperini was beaten by the worst guard many times, his name was sergeant Matushu Wantanbee. He also back talked to a guard and he had to hold a metal bar over his head while he gets punched in the stomach. He also got punched in the face by every prison guard. All of that went on for 2 years