69 pages • 2 hours read
Laura HillenbrandUnbroken
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 28-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4
Chapter 28 Summary: “Enslaved”
Naoetsu was filthy and frigid. In the barracks, boxes of spilled ashes were stacked containing the remains of cremated Naoetsu prisoners. Food was meager, and the Japanese guards smoked American cigarettes from the Red Cross boxes intended for the prisoners. The Bird began to treat Louie as abusively as he had done at Omori. Many of the POWs were used as slave laborers in a nearby village. The Bird did not handpick Louie for this kind of work.
In the spring, Louie began working on a crew of “farm laborers” and planted potatoes. The work was relatively easy, and they had full access to clean well water and regular rations of food. On April 13, an American B-29 flew over Naoetsu. The POWs were jubilant, but not the Japanese. The Bird relished telling the men that Roosevelt was dead, and after being teased for having a “lazy” crew, the Bird ordered all of the men in Naoetsu to perform hard labor hauling coal.
After sustaining an injury, Louie was unable to work, so his rations were halved. Louie begged the Bird for work, and he was given a position looking after the camp pig. He had to clean out the pig’s sty with his bare hands. Louie ate animal feed in order to keep himself from starving.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Two Hundred and Twenty Punches”
After the bombing of major centers like Kobe and Osaka, Naoetsu received four hundred new prisoners. They brought with them news that Germany had fallen. The Bird had been named the “disciplinary officer” at another camp (Mitsushima), and his behavior there was so vicious, the prisoners decided to try and “kill him to save themselves” (288). They created a substance that contained dysentery bacteria, and they persuaded the camp cook to pour the substance onto the Bird’s food. After the first “batch” had no effect on the Bird, but the second one made Watanabe violently ill with fever and diarrhea. He did not work for about ten days, but he returned back to his duties with a vengeance.
At work shoveling coal, one prisoner was accused of stealing fish. After assembling all of the men, the Bird asked Louie, Tinker, Wade, and two other men to step forward. He blamed the stealing incident on them and ordered all of the other enlisted men to strike the five men in the face as hard as they possibly could. If the men did not hit hard enough, they would be beaten, and then they would have to continue beating Louie and the others repeatedly until the Bird was satisfied. Each of the men were punched approximately two hundred and twenty times.
While walking to their labor duties, the POWs could see that the Japanese had lost the war and that their surrender was shameful. If the men had been in “normal” POW camp circumstances, the word of an Allied invasion would have given them hope, but here, the threat of invasion brought the possibility of the “kill-all order.” The camp office received an order that stated that all POWs were to be “liquidated” by September 15th. Naoetsu’s prisoners’ date was August 22nd.
Chapter 30 Summary: “The Boiling City”
Louie’s guardianship over the camp pig ended, so his food was reduced to half. Then, he was ordered to nurse a goat back to health, but it died. As punishment, he was ordered to hold up a thick beam; if he lowered his arms, a guard would hit him with a gun. Louie defied the odds and held the beam above his head for over thirty-seven minutes.
The torture of the POWs continued. Every time an American air raid took place (noted by the constant wailing of sirens), the American POWs were beaten with clubs. One day a group of men, including Louie, were ordered to do push-ups just above the overflowing benjo pits (toilets). Louie managed to keep his head up, but some prisoners did not have the strength, and/or the Bird would push their faces down into the waste with the butt of his rifle. Louie lived in fear of being drowned. Finally, a group of POWs, including Louie, devised a plan to kill the Bird. They found a boulder and managed to roll it outside their barracks. They would capture Watanabe, tie him to a rope attached to the boulder, and throw him out the window to the river below. Louie was responsible for finding rope lengths and tying them together.
On the morning of August 6th, Hiroshima was struck with the first atomic bomb.
Chapters 28-30 Analysis
This section chronicles desperation and violence, and both the Bird and the Allied forces were at their limits as the war neared its conclusion. The story of Louie and the beam symbolizes the endurance of the men’s spirits. Louie, as a representative of all the men still alive, “[endured] long past when his strength should have given out” (296). The unwillingness of a Japanese surrender parallels Louie’s refusal to give up and the Bird’s increasing force as the American assault increased on Japan. Each faction refused to give up, and while the Japanese had orders to “liquidate” all of its POWs, the Americans unleashed the atomic bomb.
Hillenbrand reasserts in these chapters that the men had “control” over their own fate, despite their dire circumstances. The POWs began to plot murder, choosing to risk their lives to rid themselves of the Bird rather than sacrifice their lives to his sadistic pleasure. This murder plot symbolizes their faith in a life after the war and their own commitment to surviving. Though this interpretation of the theme of self-preservation and dignity is less uplifting than others discussed in previous sections of the book, it is still a demonstration of the dignity and the self-respect of the POWs.
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