Louis
Zamperini

Last mile for real this time

Louis Zamperini died again – this time at the age of 97.

His first obituary appeared in 1944. His parents got a condolence note from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Turns out he wasn’t dead, but close to it, in a Japanese POW camp, where he endured two years of torture. 

He survived 47 days at sea after his B-24 Liberator crashed into the Pacific Ocean, only to be captured when he reached a Japanese-held island.

Zamperini’s memories, “Devil at My Heels,” recounted his POW camp days. “Unbroken,” based on Laura Hildebrand’s book about Zamperini's experiences, has been made into a movie directed by Angelina Jolie that will be out soon.

The “Torrance Tornado” set the national mile record for high schoolers, twice was NCAA mile king at the University of Southern California and was in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, rooming with Ohio State’s Jesse Owens, who turned Hitler’s Aryan superiority theory on its ears at the Berlin Olympics by leaving German runners behind in the dust.

To read the entire story, click on http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-louis-zamperini-20140704-story.html#page=1