• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Janneke Jobsis Brown

Following Shadows

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • WW II Heritage
  • Events
  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Video
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Grace Stories / 30 DoL – Louis Zamperini -Trust in the Depths of WWII

April 7, 2011 By Janneke

30 DoL – Louis Zamperini -Trust in the Depths of WWII

Louis Zamperini and Trust

As I watch this video, (click above) detailing Luis Zamperini’s  ordeal during World War II in Japanese POW camps I wonder, how did he find bits and shreds of hope as he went along?

I know some survivors of trauma fared worse, because they had already experienced trauma before war. Some survived because they were tough before World War II — that is Louis Zamperini’s story.

NPR describes Laura Hillenbrand‘s biography of  Zamperini- Unbroken as follows:

He was a juvenile delinquent, then a world-class miler; a World War II airman, then a POW grotesquely mistreated by the Japanese.“

And the After-War(d)s for Zamperini? This is how Hillenbrand described him during the same interview:

“Louis came home a deeply, deeply haunted man…terrible, terrible nightmares where Louis would wake up screaming … fighting,…… being beaten…

Today Zamperini’s struggles would be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Once the war is over physically, it’s not over emotionally,

Not nearly.”

I wish Hillenbrand’s spot-on description of PTSD was around when my grandmother, father, brother and sister came home from being held prisoner by the Japanese. They came “home” only months before they had been as close to death as the allied POW’s, and almost as skeletal. Their new “home” was not Indonesia, but war-torn The Netherlands.

I will mark for us points of healing. Tomorrow, some of Zampirini’s.

Meantime, contemplate the emotional/mental/spiritual struggles which were so hard for  survivors after valiently finding physical ways to survive.

I still have such  day to day struggles today. The trials I have survived are mild, yet these are the day to day struggles I have.  I benefit from sharing such thoughts with  survivors of “the unspeakable.” Will you speak anyway to me, even if you too experienced the unspeakable?

Or will you tell me how much more you know now, about the reasons for previous  generations’ silence after suffering?

Here’s a journal entry of mine some time back, attempting to turn past silent sufferingl into the finished novel I want you to read one day:

Why do I find such satisfaction in feeling and believing now this life of mine can work today…or these goals of mine can work?

I know one part that’s great is I can feel there is direction for me and you.

Such times are a lot like King David’s Psalm 119. God’s directions really is a lamp unto my feet, lighting up my path.

But I need help, with all those times that developing these thoughts, ah, now I know, is really about not trusting God, about wanting all the guarantees up front, and then maybe I’ll do my part, after I know.

I do my part anyway. I thank God for always loving me, and you —  first.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Share this post:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email

Filed Under: Grace Stories, Thirty Days of Light, Trauma-Healing, War's Family Tagged With: 1936 Summer Olympics, Dutch East Indies, Dutch-American, History, Holland, Japanese Concentration camp survivor, Japanese Concentration Camps, Licht, Psychological trauma, Trauma (medicine), Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival Resilience and Redemption

Previous Post: « Knowing, Carl Jung, Jung's Red Book
Next Post: 30 DoL Louis Zamperini – Trust 2 in the Depths of WWII »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nancy Benich says

    April 11, 2011 at 1:13 am

    I often wonder if my father suffered trauma when a Japanese Kamakazi plane flew into his ship during WWII. The plane did not explode miraculously, but the Japanese pilot died. The goal was for the American ship and its crew to die. My mother told me about the incident, which happened before I was born. My father never spoke of it. I wonder if he thought he had been spared for a reason. I wonder why he abused alcohol when life was really pretty good.

  2. Janneke says

    April 11, 2011 at 3:27 am

    I wonder with my Dad too. I don’t know what his toughest times were during World War II. Like you, most of those I did know, came from my mother.

    All my father told us was that he broke his nose fighting for bread, in the midst of his years of starvation. He emphasized that he fought after liberation 8/17/45; he must have desperately wanted to be seen as brave after he and over 100,000 others were imprisoned for so long. At his memorial in 2008 I learned from my aunt and uncle, who also survived the camps, that his bravery was actually to go find his family, bring them together during the dangerous Bersiap period, and find them a makeshift home.

Primary Sidebar

Signup for Updates

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE. You will receive updates in your inbox whenever new articles are posted.



Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Topics:

  • Grace Stories
  • Homesick-Heimwee
  • Thirty Days of Light
  • Trauma-Healing
  • Uncategorized
  • War's Family

Footer

Meet Janneke

Janneke Jobsis Brown
Following Shadows is inspired by my own story. As a survivor of an international childhood with parents who were World War II survivors, I know the generational after-effects of starvation and slave labor in Japanese concentration camps for my father, and the terror of Nazi occupation for my mother. I know the challenges of struggling to feel at home across three countries: The Netherlands, Iran and America.

Read More…

Recent Blogs

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Read Two Free Chapters

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE.



Copyright © 2021 · Janneke Jobsis-Brown, All Rights Reserved