David L. Burkhead

He was an American Olympic runner at the 1936 Berlin Games. He finished eighth in the 5,000 meters and shook Hitler's hand. Six years later his Air Force B-24 crashed into the Pacific. For forty-seven days he drifted on a raft with two other men. One died. Sharks circled every night. Then the Japanese Navy picked him up and sent him to a prison camp in Naoetsu, on the Japan Sea coast. For over two years, a camp guard the prisoners called The Bird beat him with a belt buckle, broke his nose, made him hold a wooden beam over his head for thirty-seven minutes and drove his fist into his jaw every time it dipped. The Bird singled him out because he had been an Olympic runner, and because he would not break. The war ended. He went home to California. He could not sleep. He drank. He had nightmares of strangling The Bird with his bare hands. Then, slowly, over years, he forgave. In 1998, Nagano hosted the Winter Olympics. Louis Zamperini was 81 years old. The torch relay planners asked him if he would carry the flame. Through Naoetsu. The same town. The same train station. Near the same ground where The Bird had worked him almost to death. He flew to Japan and he ran. The Japanese crowd lining the street did not shout his name as an athlete. They shouted it as something closer to an apology their grandparents had never been able to say. He finished his kilometer with the torch and walked, alone, to a quiet memorial erected in Naoetsu for Allied prisoners who had died there. He stood in front of it for a long time. He had also written a letter, in his own hand, to The Bird. The letter offered forgiveness and asked to meet. The Bird's family refused the meeting. Louis did not need the meeting. He had already let him go. An Olympic runner from Torrance, California, ran through the town that had tried to kill him, and gave it light instead. That is what an American can do with a lifetime of hate.