Informative Essay On Louis Zamperini

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Louis Zamperini was an Olympian and a prisoner of war during World War II. He was born on January 26, 1917, in Orlean, New York. He was a smoker by age 5 and a drinker by age 8, and had spent most of his youth with a criminal family.(Andrews) Louis became a criminal, stealing almost anything he could find that wasn’t nailed down. Louis’ family was worried that he would soon end up either in prison or on the streets.(Zamperini) Louis Zamperini’s life of crime ended while he was in high school though, when a group of girls suggested that he should join the school track team. He broke the national record when he ran a mile in only 4 minutes, 21 seconds. This record helped Louis to qualify for the Olympics in 1936, while he was still a teenager. …show more content…

In 1940, Louis enlisted in the Army Air Corps and the Olympics for that year were cancelled. He became a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator and went on a mission to find a pilot whose plane had gone down.(Andrews) While over the Pacific Ocean, Louis’s plane had a mechanical failure in two of its engines and crashed. Of the eleven men who were on the plane, only three including Louis Zamperini survived.(editors) Louis and the other two airmen became stranded on two rafts for 47 days, surviving only on catching bird and fish and drinking rain water.(Jacobs) Finally after drifting over 2000 miles Louis and the pilot washed ashore, though the other airman died before they found land. Louis and the pilot were soon taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese on the island they washed up on. Louis was subjected to torture and was beaten during his time as a prisoner, and probably the only thing that kept him from being executed was that the Japanese found out he was a famous Olympic runner and used him as a propaganda tool.(Zamperini) Louis was in captivity for more than two years and pronounced dead by the U.S. military.(Andrews) After the war ended, Louis Zamperini was released in 1945 and returned to the United

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