If you hate somebody, it’s like a boomerang that misses its target and comes back and hits you in the head. The one who hates is the one who hurts. I talked to girls at a school in Palos Verdes and I said, “If you want to age quickly, then hate somebody.” After that, I got a letter from one of them, she was probably 15. “I went to a girl whom I’d hated for two years and I asked her to forgive me,” she wrote. “Now we’re the best of friends.” So forgiving someone is healing. To hate somebody hurts you physically, mentally, and spiritually.

None of us believed it. None of us. Never once. Not underneath, even.

That’s what Sylvia Zamperini would say about her family during World War II when confronted with the idea that her brother, Louis, had been killed. Even when the War Department assigned Louis Zamperini an “official death date,” and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a condolence letter, his mom knew he was still alive and that she would see him again, one day. She was right.

As the world now knows, thanks to author Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini waged one of the most astonishing personal battles in World War II as an Army Air Corpsman. In May 1943, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. For 47 days, he floated on a raft in the ocean. He was then captured by the Japanese, who held him prisoner until August 1945. These experiences tormented Zamperini’s postwar life, but in 1949 things began to turn around for him. Zamperini forgave the men who held him prisoner, including the sadistic Japanese corporal, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who was known as the “Bird.” This saga is chronicled in Hillenbrand’s book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The book has remained on the bestseller lists since it was published in 2010, and in December, Universal will release a film adaptation, directed by Angelina Jolie.

Even before his war experience, Zamperini was a remarkable figure, “one of the greatest runners in the world,” as Hillenbrand writes. A track star at the University of Southern California, Zamperini competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He didn’t win the gold medal, but he returned to Los Angeles a celebrated athlete and continued to set college records.

Zamperini was a revered figure in Southern California, and died last July at age 97. After Hillenbrand’s book appeared, I learned that he was my neighbor in the Hollywood Hills. I interviewed him twice, in 2010 and 2011. This is the first time our conversations have appeared. They were edited for length and clarity.

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John Meroney: What did you learn from the publication of Unbroken?

Louis Zamperini: That World War II isn’t over. People are still suffering from it. I received a letter from a fellow who told me, “My dad came home from the war, he became an alcoholic, destroyed our family life, and I’ve hated his guts ever since. But after reading your book, I’ve forgiven him. I wish he were still alive so I could tell him I love him.” Letters like that come in all the time. Unbroken was published as a help to society.

Angelina Jolie with Louis Zamperini. Jolie directed Unbroken, a film about Zamperini’s life. (Universal Pictures.)

Meroney: Your story isn’t just about forgiveness. It’s about the definition of courage—the courage it takes to overcome incredible odds. Given your expertise in this area, who do you regard as the best examples of courage today?

Zamperini: The injured soldier who comes back from Afghanistan and says, I want to go back. He could get out of the service with a wound, but instead he says, I want to go back and be with my buddies.

Meroney: Do you get to meet with many of the troops?

Zamperini: Yes. For a number of years, I’ve been flying down to the Marine base at Twentynine Palms and speaking to the graduating class. And then they go off to Afghanistan. When I read in the paper that a Marine from Twentynine Palms was killed over there, I know I shook hands with him. That’s kind of hard to take.

Meroney: When you address soldiers, what do you say?

Zamperini: I tell them my war story. I say not to goof off during training—to learn all they can so that if they’re ever in a dire situation they’ll know what to do. When I was on that life raft, I was the only one who was prepared.

Meroney: Is that what kept you going?

Zamperini: Well, I’d taken survival courses all my life. Two weeks before we crashed, there was an expert on the South Pacific who gave a lecture on survival. When I got there to hear him, there were only about 15 out of thousands who could have attended. What he said helped me on the raft. Every soldier should learn survival on land, sea, and in the air.

“I had nightmares. I would always wake up wringing wet. I thought I was strangling the Bird.”

Meroney: A key turning point in Unbroken is the night in 1949 when you hear a young Reverend Billy Graham preach in Los Angeles. If that night had never happened, how do you think your life would be different?

Zamperini: I wouldn’t have a life. I think I’d be dead. I was going downhill, fast. But Billy Graham came to town.

Meroney: What did he say that got your attention?

Zamperini: The one thing he said that shook me up was, “When people come to the end of their rope and there’s nowhere else to turn, they turn to God.” I thought, That’s what I did on the raft. All I did was pray to God, every day. In prison camp, the main prayer was, “Get me home alive, God, and I’ll seek you and serve you.” I came home, got wrapped up in the celebration, and forgot about the hundreds of promises I’d made to God.

Meroney: After the war, you had nightmares about being a prisoner of war. Hillenbrand discloses that these dreams were so extreme, you almost strangled your pregnant wife to death in your sleep thinking she was the “Bird,” the man who tortured you.

Zamperini: Those nightmares came every night. I looked good, had my weight back, but I had nightmares. I’d always wake up wringing wet. I thought I was strangling the Bird. I honestly wanted to go back to Japan and secretly find and kill him before I’d be satisfied.

Meroney: And your life was never the same after Billy Graham.

Zamperini: Well, that night I went back to his prayer room and made my profession of faith in Christ. I asked God to forgive me for not being conscious that He answered my prayer requests. While I was still on my knees, I knew there was a change. It happened within seconds.

Meroney: What was it?

Zamperini: I felt this perfect calm, a peace. The Bible calls it the peace that passeth all understanding. I knew then that I was through getting drunk, smoking, and chasing around. I also knew I’d forgiven all my prison guards, including the Bird. Boy, that’s something. So I got up, went home, and that was the first night in four years that I didn’t have a nightmare. And I haven’t had one since.

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Meroney: How did forgiving your captors change your life?

Zamperini: Well, when you hate somebody, you don’t hurt them in the least. All you’re doing is hurting yourself. But if you can forgive—and if it’s true—you’ll feel good. It’s chemical. White corpuscles flood your immune system, and that’s a secret to good health.

Meroney: What kind of response are you receiving from Unbroken?

Zamperini: Ninety percent of the letters I get are from people who’ve been hurting, and they contact me for advice or counseling. I had one this morning—a woman with three little children, divorced. She goes to church, says she’s a Christian. She can’t forgive her former husband. She said, “I read your book and what it says about forgiveness and I broke down and cried.” I quoted Mark Twain for her: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

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