Unbroken: Records from Louis Zamperini’s Incredible World War II Story

On May 27, 1943, Army Air Force bombardier Louis “Louie” Zamperini’s B-24 airplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The former U.S. Olympian survived, only to face months adrift at sea and years as a Japanese POW. His fate unknown in the U.S., Louie was declared dead a year and a day after his plane went down and was “posthumously” awarded a Purple Heart. Miraculously, Zamperini survived and was liberated at the end of the war.

Click here to learn more about this incredible story and other related records.

Zamperini’s Purple Heart medal, courtesy of Laura Hillenbrand; copies of the certificate awarding him the Purple Heart; and a condolence letter from FDR to the Zamperini family were on display in the “Featured Documents” exhibit in the East Rotunda Gallery of the National Archives in Washington, DC, February 5 through March 4, 2015.

Past Featured Records

Mr. Santa Claus: Romance of the Postal Service
On Display 12/5/2024 – 1/8/2025 This holiday featured film is one of a series of silent movies produced by the Post Office Department in 1921. The mini melodrama shows how the postal service helps make a happy Christmas for a boy and his sister when their “Dere Sandy Claws” letter is answered by a young married couple. https://catalog.archives....
Bring Them Home, Uncle Sam
Soldiers arrive home aboard the S.S. Haverford as the transport ship pulls into Philadelphia, 1918. Records of War Department General and Special Staffs On Display 10/31/2024 – 12/4/2024 More than two million American service members were overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, ending World War I. Americans would continue to ...
Betty Ford: Raising Breast Cancer Awareness
On Display 10/03/2024 - 10/30/2024 Just weeks after she became First Lady, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer. On September 26, 1974, doctors discovered a lump in her breast during a routine medical examination. She underwent a mastectomy two days later. Breaking with social conventions of the time, Betty Ford shared her cancer diagnosis with the public. This ...
Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...