Fiske Hanley, a World War II veteran and former Japanese prisoner of war, has died at age 100.
Hanley's B-29 was shot down over Japan, and he was captured and brutally treated in the Japanese prison camp made famous by the movie Unbroken.
Hanley and his copilot were captured during his seventeenth mission. The two jumped out of their burning plane, only to be captured after parachuting into a rice paddy.
Hanley, already wounded by gunshots and plane shrapnel, was tortured for five months while he was held in a dungeon in Tokyo.
B-29 prisoners were classified as war criminals and treated more harshly than other prisoners, so Hanley was given a small daily food ration of rice and deprived of medical attention.
Hanley said his weight dropped from 165 pounds to about 80 pounds, and he faced imminent death on 14 different occasions, including a firing squad.
He credited his survival to his faith and his body’s ability to heal his infected wounds.
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Hanley was freed more than five months after his capture when Japan’s emperor surrendered and the fighting stopped.
After returning to Texas, Hanley worked on planes as a civilian.
He wrote two books about his accounts of World War II, and he had planned return to Japan for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
