Unbroken

“A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain.”

As Louie trained to become an athlete of significant renown, his body endured pain. He realized that the exchange was, for him, worthwhile. His early acceptance of the pain linked with success foreshadows his ability to succeed later in life and endure great pain in order to be rewarded with survival.

“Life was cheap in war.” 

Early in their military career, Louie and his fellow airmen learned that many fatalities resulted merely from training exercises. Later, while prisoners at POW camps, Louie understood that fatalities were also commonplace in this particular context. When the war ends after the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is confirmed: during wartime, individual lives mean very little and death takes place in significant numbers everywhere.

“For Louie and Phil the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing...With these talks, they created something to live for.” 

While at sea in the life raft, Louie and Phil recognized that their survival depended on their mental states. In order to help each other maintain their psychological and emotional stability, they conversed with each other and supported each other with these talks. 

“The same attributes that had made him the boy terror of Torrance were keeping him alive in the greatest struggle of his life.”

Louie’s behavior as an adolescent was risky and sometimes death-defying; his boldness as a child was something to fear, but ironically, as an adult, his fearlessness enabled him to save himself. As a youngster, Louie did not consider the possibility that he might injure himself or others; this disregard of threats to bodily safety foreshadows his resilience in truly life-threatening situations.

“Though the captives’ resistance was dangerous, through such acts, dignity was preserved and through dignity, life itself.” 

This passage establishes the importance of one significant theme of the book: dignity and self-respect are essential elements when surviving hardship. By nicknaming the guards at the POW camp, the imprisoned soldiers are able to assert their own agency, even while the Japanese do everything they can to dehumanize them.

“If they were going to die in Japan, at least they could take a path that they and not their captors chose, declaring in this last act of life, that they remained sovereign over their own souls.” 

While imprisoned at the POW camps in Japan, American prisoners sought to take control of their lives in whatever way they could. Louie’s friend Phil gives voice to this deep-seeded desire to live a dignified life, even while under the control of cruel and abusive prison guards.

“Virtually nothing about Japan’s use of POWs was in keeping with the Geneva Convention.” 

The brutal and abusive techniques employed by prison guards like the Bird as well as the use of American POWs as hard laborers violated the terms of the Geneva Convention. These violations led directly to the post-war pursuit of Japanese war criminals like the Bird.

“I realized [the atomic bombs were] what had ended the war...I was so insensitive to anyone else’s human needs and suffering...I believed the end probably was justified the means.”

After enduring abuse after abuse at the hands of Japanese guards, many POWs felt similarly insensitive to the plight of Japanese civilians who either died or lost everything as a result of the atomic bombs. These men cheered when they first observed the desolation of the ruined cities in Japan at the end of the war.