Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

by Laura Hillenbrand

Navigating the nine-inch-wide bomb bay catwalk could be difficult, especially in turbulence; one slip and you’d tumble into the bay, which was fitted with fragile aluminum doors that would tear away with the weight of a falling man.

airmen trying to fulfill the forty combat missions that made up a Pacific bomber crewman’s tour of duty had a 50 percent chance of being killed.

Search planes appear to have been more likely to go down themselves than find the men they were looking for.

Historians estimate that the Japanese military murdered between 200,000 and 430,000 Chinese, including the 90,000 POWs, in what became known as the Rape of Nanking.

Louie noticed that when he drank the stuff, his chest hair spontaneously fell out.

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 at which the body should have surrendered it.

of the 34,648 Americans held by Japan, 12,935—more than 37 percent—died.*2 By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died.

in the first two postwar years, former Pacific POWs died at almost four times the expected rate for men of their age,

Nearly forty years after the war, more than 85 percent of former Pacific POWs in one study suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),