Over 2,600,000 civilians and militants died in Japan alone during World War II. One survivor named Louie Zamperini experienced unimaginable horrors, and faced death daily in a POW camp in Japan. He survived by refusing to let his captors deprive him of his humanity and make him “invisible.” Louie’s life could have been very different if he had never been captured. His experiences shaped him as a person and eventually made him a better man. In the book Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand illuminates the theme that war and conflict have profound and varied effects on different individuals.
Many prisoners of World War II were made to feel mentally invisible by their imprisoners. While in a POW camp, a man named Mutsuhiro Watanabe, more commonly known…
One way he was made to feel invisible, was when the guards “refused to register him with the red cross,” (160). Causing his family and the US government to believe him dead. Another way he was made invisible was when he learned that he was not taken to a POW camp, but a secret interrogation camp. It says that, “high value captives were held in solitary confinement, starved, and tortured so they’d give up military secrets” (147). Louie was forced to accept the fact that his family would not know that he was alive, but he still managed to hold onto the idea that he would be freed and reunited with his family. Another way the guards made the prisoners, specifically Phil, feel invisible was by burning letters from their loved ones. On page 159 it states that the Japanese, “never mailed it” This is talking about how Phil sent a letter to his fiance, but later found it in the garbage half burnt. Although Phil knew he would not be able to contact her, he vowed that if he survived, he would deliver it in person. By burning these letters, the Japanese took away the one thing that kept the prisoners connected to their families and what was happening in the war, making them invisible to the rest of the world. Prisoners of World War II were isolated from the rest of the world and affected by their invisibility in profound…
