From the Raft to the Runway

In the summer of 1943, Louis Zamperini drifted on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean, sunburned and starving, sharks circling beneath him. The former Olympic runner had survived a bomber crash only to face forty-seven days adrift, then two years of brutal captivity in Japanese prison camps. When the war ended and Zamperini finally came home to California, the cheering crowds saw a hero.…