My daughter said she was hungry the other day so I went into a fatherly tale of WWII veteran Louis Zamperini. If you ever saw the movie Unbroken, it only shares half of his story. The second half is the most important. The second half is the redemption.
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Hey, welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. Wanted to give one more thought here regarding Memorial Day, but this is every day. Freedom-loving American patriots like us, we're not one day a year, it's every single day we celebrate these men and women. We don't need an excuse for it. Although we'll take the Memorial Day excuse. My kids on the Memorial Day event we went
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to on Monday, yesterday, they got to shake the hand of a World War II veteran. You kidding me? They shook the hand of a 99-year-old man who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. They shook his hand and said, thank you for your service. Each and every one of them. Ah, it was beautiful. I don't know if I share it here in this segment, so let me just share it real quick again,
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and if you gotta hear it twice, fine. We found out he's there, and the event's almost over, and I have the kids come over here. I gather them, I say, kids, you're like seven, six, and four, and I'm holding the baby. I said, you guys, you're not gonna believe this.
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That is a real-life World War II veteran. This is unbelievable. We're gonna go shake his hand, and we're gonna say thank you for his service. And Grace goes, wait, what do I say? I say, thank you for your service.
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Thank you for your service. Johnny, what are you going to say? Thank you for your service. Got it. Boom. Here we go.
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Sliders, we're going to do this. This is unbelievable. I can't believe we get this opportunity. We go up there. I'm like crying because I'm like a little girl about to meet Justin Bieber or some K-pop band or whatever.
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So I'm doing the best I can to keep it together. Sir, thank you for your service. Can my children shake your hand? Oh, yes, I'd love it. Jack shakes his hand and says, thank you for your service. you for your service." And the man, the World War II veteran, says,
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Son, you have a great handshake. Love your country. Love your neighbor. Done. I hope you had a meaningful Memorial Day as well. I want to share here our segment we did to kind of ease back into the week. It's a political show we do, but Monday is our first day back after a weekend. It's always like, I don't know, do we want to hit it hard? Get right to the politics. It's 6 o'clock Eastern Time. It's 5 a.m. where I am. It's pretty
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early to go heavy politics. So we try to ease into the week at least. And we told the story of Louise Amperini. The rest of the story of Louise Amperini. Enjoy. You've seen the movie Unbroken by Angelina Jolie. I saw it like ten years ago when it came out. I remember liking it. I think, I don't really remember. But the story is incredible. And of course the book is always better. Gotta read the book.
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And it's the story of Louis Zamparini. Is the name ring a bell? The problem with the movie is it only does half the book. It's half the book. You're reading the book. You know back in the day when you used to watch a 30 minute TV show and you're 26 minutes
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into the show and you're like, wait a second. This isn't gonna finish in time. There's no way they can wrap up this story in the next four minutes, what's happening here? And then they do a to be continued. You're like, ah, they didn't make it.
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And you have to wait a whole nother week. It's the same thing with the book. Like the book's, like the war's over, and you're like, wait a second, there's still a lot of book left to go. So let's just jog everyone's memory real quick
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on Louis Zamperini, a name that everyone needs to know. So he lived in Long Beach, California before the war, went to USC for track, qualified for the Olympics in the 5,000 meters. He was 19 years old, youngest qualifier at that distance ever, and still today, 19 years old.
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And he got eighth in the Olympics in Berlin, but there was something about his finish, he had such a strong finish, that Hitler summoned him up to his stand and to see him. He ran the mile in four minutes, eight seconds was his time. So then he goes to World War II,
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and he's flying in airplanes. And one of his flights, one of his planes crashes. 850 miles off the coast of Oahu. He's in the middle of nowhere. So three of the guys survive, and they're on this raft and all they have to survive is rainwater.
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They had a couple rations for the three of them and they were able to catch raw fish and a bird landed on their raft and they grabbed the bird and killed it and ate it raw. Meanwhile, they're fending off shark attacks in the middle of the ocean and it's totally zero hope that they'll be found. I was telling my kids a story this weekend because we went on Saturday or whatever, we went to a Memorial Day concert in the neighborhood.
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And Grace, who's six, is, Daddy, I'm hungry. There are food carts there, right? There are like four different food carts. They're like, Grace, you had your tacos. We gave you the pick of the litter. You had a whole array of food options.
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And you didn't want any of them, so okay, whatever, don't eat.
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She's like, what do you mean, don't eat, what do you mean? I'm so hungry.
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I said, Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace.
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Just don't eat.
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If you don't want to eat any of the food, just don't eat the food and just don't have dinner. It's fine. Or you can wait till we get home and there's some food in the fridge. Whatever, just like stop complaining.
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I said, I'm so hungry. I was like, Grace, kids, gather around, gather around. You could go a long time without food, you know. And they're like, how long? I was like, well, let me tell you the story of Louisiana Breed, that's why the story's in my brain.
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So they're on the raft, 33 days. Oh, by the way, they're also on the raft, airplane comes, one airplane came, and they shot off a flare, and the airplane didn't see. Oh, could you imagine the hope? And then it's shattered so then you know weeks later weeks another airplane flies
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low and they're like oh I'm blue it was a Japanese airplane and there's this shoot at him this 33 days into this one of the three men died 47 days in they They saw a ship, but unfortunately it was a Japanese ship. And thus started Louis Zamparini's prisoner of war camp life. And they were tormented as prisoners of war, particularly by a Japanese prison guard they named The Bird.
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He would force Zamparini to punch other prisoners until they were unconscious. One punishment he had to get punched 220 times in the face. Louis did. He'd beg for water. They'd throw burning, scalding water in his face. They'd put him in a cage and they'd poke him with sticks and throw rocks at him and force him to dance. Just constant torment. Then he worked in the coal barges. Just horrific. At one point he broke an ankle so they made him clean out the pig stalls with his bare hands. Just cruel dehumanizing. These guys they lost on average like 60 pounds. They only weighed 150 pounds to begin with. These guys are
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under a hundred pounds and dehumanized and demoralized in every way. It's such a weird thing in our history, culture, or whatever, that the face of evil in America, like when we look back, like we think of evil, we go right to Hitler, and not also Hirohito. Like isn't that like the weirdest thing?
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Like, Hitler, yes, I'm not like, oh, Hitler's not that bad. Like, Hitler, yes, but can we also add in a little Hirohito, too? All right, so that's the movie, the movie's all about that. But Angelina Jolie left out the second part of his life, and I think that's the most interesting. And I reread it this weekend.
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So let me share some highlights, if I may. Also I was thinking about this, because when I was, so we're at the memorial service yesterday, and here's this 99-year-old World War II veteran. It's hot out. It's hot. We're in Tennessee. It's hot, humid, gross. People
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are like, the pass out fans. I was having a tough time. And here's this 99 year old veteran over there in khaki pants, dress shoes, long sleeve shirt, and a suit jacket. Fine. Standing, totally fine. Doesn't bother him at all. I'm over here trying to be tough for my kids so they don't complain. Meanwhile, this guy's over here like it's nothing. So, Louie Zamperini, after the war,
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gets home to LA and he finds his childhood home where his parents still live. And I love this line. He looks at this house that he grew up in and he says, this, this little home was worth all of it.
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I love that.
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And the power of that line means even more when you really fully realize what all of it is. All of it is the worst thing you could possibly imagine. Yet that was all worth it because of his little house that he grew up in.
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This was worth it. That's such a beautiful thing. This. And that's why last week, we were like, hey, it's not happy Memorial Day, I hope you have a meaningful Memorial Day,
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but it's not, oh, don't have the barbecue. Like, Memorial Day should be a more solemn day, but also have the barbecue and do the community stuff and do all that fun stuff too, because that's what Louis Zamparini says, like this, this home, this is why they fought,
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this home is worth all of it. I just think that's so unbelievably beautiful. So they have a nice homecoming for him and everything's fine. And at one point in the night, his sister puts on a record player, a record on the record player of some of the Japanese propaganda that they forced Zamparini to read on the radio and he lost it.
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And he screams, turn it off, turn it off. And he tells his sister to smash it in pieces and he falls on the floor and he's shivering and it's horrible. No one knew what to do, and that was the first moment when everyone's like, whoa, and when Louie's like, oh, I'm not, this is not.
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PTSD, like we think of our, I don't know about you, but we look back at our World War II veterans, and we're like, oh, they were treated well when they came home, unlike Vietnam veterans, and they didn't have PTSD, unlike, you know,
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our current wars we've been fighting. It's like, no, no, no. We just called it something different back then. So Louis had all these requests to speak and they were overwhelming but he had awards and he went and he gave 95 speeches
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right immediately after the war and even more radio interviews. And all the attention was on him and it was exhausting. So he did two things. First thing he did is he drove to the mountains
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I
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Drove to the forest he went into the wilderness and walked among the trees and he found a peace there That he hadn't felt since he was a young boy But then he got back in his car and as soon as he got back in his car driving back to civilization all the anxiety Came back So that was the first thing he did second thing. He did there was a time a gala for the LA Times He was the man of honor of course and they offered him a drink and
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it was the first time he said yes to the offer and he felt as he called it a pleasant numbness and the anxiety went away and he started drinking more and more and finally his nightmares stopped. Every night he would dream about the bird, the tormentor, the tyrant every night and he was scared to sleep. But now he could drink and fall asleep and he could drink and maybe not remember the dreams.
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So he became an alcoholic and it was so sad because there was that other option, that nature was a true medicine for him. But the alcohol was much easier. So he would have these PTSD moments, he would be in a bar and a car would backfire and he'd fall to the ground in the fetal position or someone would yell something that sounded like a Japanese word and he'd lose it. He was at dinner with a friend once and the friend got rice.
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He was served rice as a side and he lost it because it reminded him of... And then something happened. He heard the story of a former Pacific POW who went into a store and saw one of his former Japanese captors and he called the police and the police arrested the Japanese guy as a war criminal and Louie heard that story and he decided this is it this is my new life mission my new life mission is to find the bird and kill him so now he's
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anxiety, fear, depression, alcohol, and now rage. So he walked around every single day with murder on his mind. He went and he practiced boxing, just imagining beating the bird to death. Hillenbrand who wrote the book, she says, in seeking the bird's death to free himself, Louis had chained himself once again to his tyrant. He had one nightmare and the bird was beating him as always.
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But in this nightmare he was able to get on top of the bird because he was winning, right? He was fighting in his mind all day. He was ruminating about how he was going to kill the bird. So now here he is dreaming about him actually killing the bird. And he got on top of the bird and was choking him. And then he woke up and he was choking his pregnant wife who was lying next to him in bed in real life.
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His daughter was born, he loved that girl but he couldn't take care of her. He would shake her and he would just keep drinking and his wife finally left and filed for divorce and it was the lowest point of his life. It was lower than shoveling pig filth by hand. I think this part, like this is, and I understand there is a movie made about this actually. I haven't seen it, but there's a, one of those Christian movies made about this.
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Christian movies, what do you mean? One day, a man set up a circus tent in Los Angeles and set up 6,500 chairs. And the man had a press conference to announce a three week long event that he was having in Los Angeles and not a single newspaper covered the story. So they had this event and no one showed up for the first few days and then more people showed up and then it was half filled and then by the end of the three weeks the tent
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was filled and newspapers started picking it up and Billy Graham kicked off his revival in Los Angeles. Now Louie and his wife didn't get a divorce but things were really tough. She begged him to go hear Billy Graham speak and he kept saying no over and over again he said no and his neighbor awesome Louie you got to go go here but go once go one time and he finally went he sat in the back row and
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Billy Graham's up there and these you can hear the real recordings of these sermons so Billy Graham's out there and he's reading John 8 this is the story of the adulterous woman who was going to be stoned to death and Jesus said if any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone. And he's hearing this and he was full of rage. And Billy Graham even said, oh, I'm sure you're thinking you're not a bad fella.
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But when you die, God's going to pull down a screen and show you everything you ever did and every thought you ever had in your head for every second of your life. And those words and thoughts and deeds are going to condemn you. And God is going to say, depart from me. And Louis lost it. Absolutely, I'm a good man, I'm a good man.
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And he knew it was a lie, but he left.
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He ran.
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Ran away. And his wife begged him to go back the next day. And he did. And Billy Graham, and I love this story so much. Remember this for next week's gratitude segment. This next sermon, and you can find it online, it's called, it's about communism. It's entitled, the problems with communism or something.
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I can find it, one more second, I'll find it during the break. It's not Satan's religion, that's not the one. Why God Allows Communism to Flourish, that's it. So you can hear the real sermon. Why God Allows Communism to Flourish, 1949. So he's talking about God's power and God's creation
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and God and beauty and he's talking about the beautiful California sky and how God made that and how God knows the numbers of hairs on your head and knows when a sparrow falls and loves you even more and all that. And in the midst of this beautiful sermon, Louis had this flashback. And he remembered one day when he was on this raft for the 47 days, right?
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And he was dying, but for some reason he was looking up in the sky and the clouds captured him in some way. And he forgot that he was dying and he forgot how hungry he was and he forgot how thirsty he was, and he felt this overwhelming sense of gratitude. Keep in mind, he's on the raft,
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no hope at all of anything, starving. Not like, oh, I'm at an event and I don't like the food trucks, starving. Like, actual starving, dying, being fried to death, sharks around him, but he felt overwhelming gratitude. to.
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And that feeling came back to him. He forgot it. It came back to him. And then Billy Graham said that God works in miracles. And then Louis thought of how when the plane crashed, he was underwater and he was trapped in all these wires and he couldn't get out.
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And then all the wires vanished. And he was able to get to the surface and he thought back of how the Japanese plane flew overhead and riddled him with bullets but not one hit him and once again he had a yet another flashback when he said He whispered One time on the raft
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He wasn't religious at all. He didn't know God at all. He said if you save me, I will serve you forever He said that he remembered he forgot he said it he remembered he said that That was it he went home poured all the alcohol down the drain and for the first night since Did not dream about the bird and the bird never entered his dreams
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ever again
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and for the first time in his life or I should say for the first time post-war he started to think not of everything that happened to him but of all the things look all the terrible things but of all the things that happened to save him. And he thought not of all of his misery, but of all the things that, and all the people that intervened to keep him alive.
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And totally changed his mindset. And the bird tried to take away his humanity, but instead, now, he was born again. I'll leave you to read the book and you can finish the rest because there's more to the story even after that. He did make it back to Japan, I'll tell you that.
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But I just think of that, I mean,
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there's so many unbelievable things. Like, so just to wrap up, remember last week we talked about Barack Obama's speech to the college graduates of Morehouse College back in 2013 and he said, hey, there's people all around the world today who have it way worse than you, you've ever had it.
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And people in our history have had it way worse than you've ever had it. So stop complaining. No one cares about anything in your life. No one cares about the discrimination. That's Barack Obama back in,
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no one cares about discrimination that you've had. No one cares about the tough things you've had in your life. You just suck it up and let's go.
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Almost no one has ever had it worse than Louie Zamperini.
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He made it out the other side. If you want to read the book, you can check out,
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there's more to the story, but I will say
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this one thing he did. He started a boys camp. He bought this camp with no money, it was a total dump, renovated it himself, and made this camp for troubled youths for boys, for boys who were on the wrong path and they went swimming and horseback riding and camping and mountain biking and they were back in nature they were
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back in God's creation and who knows how many lives he saved doing that as well come on that's an incredible story that's as good as it gets so remember that story next time your kids complain that they're hungry that story next time your kids complain that they're hungry kids complain that they're hungry.
