However, after the war Zamparini met legendary preacher Billy Graham, becoming a fervent Christian and deciding to forgive his captors rather than take revenge.
Zamparini mentioned in the interview that shortly after the war ended he wanted to return to Japan and exact revenge on his tormentor. Watanabe severely beat Zamperini during his time as a POW, and was reviled among the American captives. Mediatite wrote that after the war, Watanabe “had gone into hiding during the American occupation of Japan,” but “in 1952, the United States granted amnesty to Japanese war criminals, after which he emerged to become a businessman.”
CBS interviewed Zamparini and attempted to track down Watanabe, known in Zamperini’s POW camp as “The Bird.” Zamparini ended up carrying the Olympic torch for the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan in a show of forgiveness and reconciliation. He had served in the Army Air Force on a B-24 Liberator bomber that crashed in the Pacific in 1943 and survived on a raft for over a month before being picked up by a Japanese ship. He was captured by the Japanese in World War II and subjected to years of brutal treatment. Zamperini, who died in 2014, was one of America’s greatest track and field Olympians.
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