How It All Goes Down
B-29
- Pushing a wheelbarrow into Tokyo, Louie sees the phrase "B Niju Ku" (4.25.3) scrawled on a wall: B-29.
- It's a new American bomber—ironically named the Tokyo Rose—that has been flying over Japan.
- The bomber flies over the camp and gives the POWs hope.
- Unfortunately though, this angers the Bird, and he beats Louie with a belt buckle, rendering him temporarily deaf in one ear.
- In November, Louie is driven to Radio Tokyo studios and given the opportunity to tape a message for broadcast, which will correct the NBC radio broadcast announcing his death.
- A woman named Lynn Moody, who was with Louie at USC in 1940, hears the broadcast and contacts his parents.
- They're worried the broadcast is fake, but when they hear it being re-aired, they know it's his voice.
- Plus, he asks them to take care of his guns. Louie grew up hunting, and his family knows that's not a detail the Japanese would have known.
- They finally know that Louie is still alive.