ver-forgive-her-japanese-
Heimke is now 85 and lives in Overland Park, Kan. Her story of internment as
a young girl during World War II tells of mean men, hunger, rats,
blood-soaked mattresses, clogged toilets and, most of all, a fear that it
would never end.
She watched her mother struggle daily to keep the family together and fed.
People died around her. Her father's ribs stuck out like steel bars.
No one should expect any Louie Zamperini-like absolution from her.
Zamperini was an American bombardier who was held as a POW and tortured by
the Japanese after his plane went down in the Pacific. Part of his story, as
told in the best-selling book "Unbroken" and now a movie that opened
Christmas Day, is that after the war he traveled to Japan and forgave the
guards who mistreated him.
When asked whether she could do the same, Heimke lifted her eyes from her
scrapbook and locked onto those of her questioner.
"He's a better Christian than I am," she said of Zamperini. "I'm not there
and doubt I will ever be."
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