Louis Silvie "Louie" Zamperini was a US prisoner of war survivor in World War II, a Christian evangelist and an Olympic distance runner.
Zamperini took up running in high school and qualified for the US in the 5000m race for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He finished 8th in the event. In 1941 he was commissioned into the United States Army Air Forces as a Lieutenant. He served as a bombardier in B-24 Liberators in the Pacific. On a search and rescue mission, mechanical difficulties forced Zamperini's plane to crash in the ocean. After drifting at sea for 46–47 days he landed on the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands and was captured. He was taken to a prison camp in Japan where he was tortured. Following the war he initially struggled to overcome his ordeal. Later he became a Christian Evangelist with a strong belief in forgiveness. Zamperini is the subject of two biographical films, the 2014 Unbroken and the 2015 Captured by Grace.
Variant: I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's healing, actually, it's real healing...
Forgiveness.
“The world, we'd discovered, doesn't love you like your family loves you.”
Source: Devil at My Heels
