Motley Fool Money - The Man Who Survived 47 Days on a Raft Has a Lesson for Every Investor

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

Every market downturn will test you. Not your strategy, not your portfolio — you. And the investors who come out the other side aren't the ones who had the best picks going in. They're the ones who learned how to take a hit, stay in the game, and get smarter because of it. Motley Fool's Tom Gardner sits down with Louis Zamperini — World War II survivor, Olympic runner, and the man whose story inspired the bestselling book Unbroken — to talk about why the people who overcome the most become the hardest to beat, and why the moment everything in your portfolio drops 50 percent is actually the most important moment of your investing life. Host: Tom Gardner Guest: Louis Zamperini Producers: Bart Shannon, Lauren Budabin Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every time you overcome an adversity, I tell the kids this. Every time you overcome an adversity, you become more hardy. So don't think of adversity as bad. If it's there and you've got to face it, overcome it, and you've become more hardy and more hardy. That was Louis Zamperini, decorated war hero and subject of the best-selling book and movie Unbroken. I'm Motley Fool producer Bart Shannon. Molly Fool's CEO and co-founder Tom Gardner interviewed Zamperini back in 2011.

They spoke about Zamparini's World War II service, leadership, athletics, mentoring young men, optimism, and so much more. Zamparini died in 2014 and leaves an incredible legacy. Hope you enjoy. Mr. Zamparini, thank you very much for taking time today. Well, here I am. It's a real pleasure. So I have about eight questions for you. And the first question that I wanted to ask you is, I think of you having been put in a number of incredible

leadership roles through tremendous, tremendous crisis. And I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about the role that some of these things played in your survival and in your leadership through crisis. I think you hit on the head, survival. I think the greatest survival course you can take is Eagle Scout. You go to everything. And when you hear about people climbing Mount Hood, okay, every year, two or three guys die up there. And they're called experienced climbers. Well, that doesn't mean anything. Have they had survival training? And that's the main thing in any outdoor activity.

Then that woman last month had hiked up on Baldy, oh, we're not worried she's an experienced hiker. Well, has she had survival training? She didn't. They found her dead. And so the first thing about survival is, you know, always do things in pairs. So in case something happens, you didn't send for help.

Like that 127 hours where the guy cut his arm off, right? Exactly. Yeah, well, I didn't see the movie, but when people saw it, yes, they emphasize the fact that you should have somebody with you. Now, we had an attorney on a big case in L.A., a big, big case, I think like O.J., and he lived in Ohio, and he went hiking up Sesame Creek alone. He didn't show up for the child, and somebody found him two weeks later, laying in the stream. So what he did, he fell and hit his head against a rock and knock him out and his face within the water. You don't dare go anywhere in the wilderness, even local mountains without somebody with you. This is absolutely essential, and that's what I really trust our kids on.

Take as much survival courses as you can. Now, in Hawaii, our 27,000 servicemen, and they had a special at the university on survival in South Pacific. Out of 27,000, 15 of us showed up. But what I learned there came in handy on the life raft. So survival training, if it's going to be on the sea, I would take survival training on both land and sea, and then you're pretty well covered. How much do you think your survival was supported by just your sense of optimism in life?

Well, you know, when you have had survival training, you have no doubts about yourself. You have no doubts about surviving. You have a positive mind about living through it. You never think about death. Now, people ask me, did you ever think about dying on the raft? I said, no, I was too busy to stay alive. And not only did I have a lot of survival training,

but when you're in an unknown place like South Pacific out on the raft, you invent, because of your survival, you're able to invent new methods of survival as you go along. In other words, how to cast the fish. Well, when I ran out of the proper hooks for fish, I took the bigger hook that tied one of my little finger, index finger, and my thumb. When the shark came by with a pile of fish, I would reach it and grab the pilot fish, and, of course,

and I hardly tried to get away the pro the hoax dug you out. Okay, that's not in the books, but because of your survival training, you event things that go along. Your mind is active, and you're able to create new methods of doing things. Do you think that your sense of ingenuity and your survival instincts were made stronger by your pursuit of mastery as a runner in high school? Yeah, anything comes in handy where you have to persevere. And then running, first of all, you learn how to train. And you don't break your training.

You don't dissipate. So you develop that sense of accomplishment. And if you're going to do anything, you've got to go for it all the way. If you're going to be an attorney, you shouldn't be half-havverage, you should go all the way, study everything you can to be the best. And so in survival, yeah, I taught survival on both land and sea, glacier climbing. And I have skied glaciers in New Zealand and climbed 14,000-foot glacier in Wyoming, and then climbed it again two days later and steed it. So the range of there in 1957th, I never heard of anybody skiing that glacier. But I only did that because I had a lot of survival training,

and I know exactly how to live in the snow at Digger's Snow Cave. Now, digging a snow cave is not enough, so I take one of these, they call them the water run at Disney. They give you a little packet, a little plastic coat, and you put that on, the kids do's, so they don't get wet. Well, those things are so lightweight, it's a few ounces, and I keep one of those in my backpack. And then if I'm up on the mountain and the blizzard comes in,

and just dig a snow cave. That keeps the chill factor off you, but it doesn't prevent your body from throwing away heat. But what you do, you put this plastic little thing over your body, and then get in the soul cave. Now the heat just dissipating, hits the plastic, and goes back in your body. Now, why these guys don't do that?

I've been pretty sure for years, and I have about 30 or 40 of those packets. And I keep one in the car. I went to New York to get an award. It was a black tire fare. we had to walk two blocks to the Ellis Island ferry, and I had one of those in my suitcase, and everybody's out there walking in the rain.

I put that on. I'm the only guy that got the air dry, so that's survival, on a small scale, but it's still survival, and people should really, especially in this world today, with everything that's happening, earthquakes and iPhones and tsunamis. They should, everybody should take a survival course, both on land and sea. Now, in your experience in the Japanese POW camps, you face something that is a million times worse

than the average person will ever face in their life, and yet all of us have our days of reckoning and all of us suffer. And I'm wondering what advice you would have for anyone who's going through a period of suffering in their life. Well, that's tough you. When there's nothing you can do about it, you have to grin and bear it.

That's all they can do. And the fact that we all have an inward desire to live, That's probably the sonnest thing that's going to keep you going, but some guys do give up. We've had guys turn coat and tried to escape, knowing that if they escaped, they would line up officers and shoot every other one. So escape was not a real possibility without harming other members of the group.

The best thing is an example. Okay, I got a letter yesterday, and this guy, its nurse wrote me a letter, and this guy is on dialysis, three hours at the time, and he just wanted to give up to this. This is really busting me, and I guess I wanted to give up on it. He read my book.

I'm broke her until I got the letter yesterday, the nurse said it said to me, if that guy's apprehend he can spend 47 days on a raft, I can handle my three hours of dialysis. When I get letter like that five or ten a day of people, who use your story as an example of perseverance. You've got to persevere and overcome adversity. Every time you overcome an adversity,

and I tell the kids this, every time you overcome an adversity, you become more hardy. So don't think of adversity as bad. If it's there and you've got to face it, overcome it, and you've become more hardy and more hardy. So my generation, I don't like to term the greatest generation, we were the hardy generation.

And because we had nothing but obstacles, adversities, we had a forage for food, we had to go out and shoot rabbits. They had to go out of the beach, and bring home abalone, which was the poor man's food in those days. Not to $100 a pound. So we learn a lot during the depression years,

in the early days. And I think that's what made us so hard if we were able to survive and lived to a ripe old age. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands, championing diversity.

With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of leading positions held by women, diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit L'Oreal.com to learn more. Can you remember the moment when you turned from being a teenager that was getting into trouble with a very mischievous nature and maybe little petty crimes to being a young man who is pursuing mastery as a runner? Oh, yeah, because you see the main thing is recognition. As a little kid, I have no interest, except gang-related interests.

If someone had taken me aside and taught me how to play tennis, basketball, soccer, or everything else. When you're standing around up to do, you say, oh, just go play soccer. Let's do this. Way tennis. But, well, I had no interest, and I got no recognition. And, well, I got my recognition by stealing things.

Not that my name's in the paper, the fact that it says, Miner's Pie Shop rated again, but that's recognition to me without my name. And so that's what I do in my camp program. I take kids out of the youth authority. I take them up in a series. I always keep my eyes open for a kid that is ignoring and shun,

and I give him all my attention and bring him into the fold, you might say. Otherwise, the kid's going to suffer. He could ruin the camp program. Well, I know from experience. Now, the first recognition I got was my first race. I didn't try for a wonder a lot if I'm coming down the home stretch, and all of a sudden the kids from my kids from my, school in unity are screaming come on Louis come on and I thought my god I didn't

know anybody knew my name and boy I did the first I could I passed a guy came in third but that started being on a whole new role in life and that was becoming a runner so my brother said you want to keep on being a bum on your life or you want to accomplish something and he said you got a lot of recognition in the race today now you're gonna make of your mind before I spell asleep I said, okay, Pete, I'm going all out. So I quit chasing around, smoking, and stealing liquor from the bootleggers. And I became a fanatic trainer.

I was just the opposite. And so within the year, I booked the state record in the 1320. The next year I broke the Invis Elastic or Wolfe record in the minor in high school. And I was still a junior. And then I beat all the college runners as a junior in high school. So that's how my life changed by you've got to get something that you can put your heart into and go for it. It's just a stunning example of what happens when you get recognition

and you have something that you can build toward. The change from not being a runner at all to beating college runners and setting a national standard for the mile in such a short period of time is just such an incredible example of the power of recognition. Yeah, once you go forward, you're going to, to throw your heart into it. But when Laura Hillenbren got the idea from my book, she was doing research on Seabiscuit back in the 30s,

and she kept seeing my picture on the same page, a couple of runners. Well, I used to lay on the grass but coliseum, and they would stop football again in the trackmatch when he ran. I'd later listen to his race and run mine the same way. And then she saw an article on the same page where those analysts times called our coach, Dean Cromwell, and said,

And Louis hasn't lost a mile race for five years. If he loses this year, who'd you think who beat him? And the coach said, me, Biscuit. No, she thought that thing. I got to call this guy, so that caught started. And then we became real close friends. Then also about 40 years ago, I quit going to movie because I wanted, once I got a taste of accomplishment, the first accomplished was a runner.

Then I wanted to be everything I could be. I took typing and I hated something like, but I took it. It was an accomplishment. It helped me through college. And then I took up other sports, but then about 40 years ago, I couldn't go into movies.

I decided to become as many things as I could. So I'd become 84 different things as a profession or licensed in or an expert in. So I've been everything. I've been a deputy sheriff under Biscule. I've been a lifeguard under Red Cross, a key instructor, you name it. I've been 84 different things.

Listen, that all happened with crowd to have. The kid, I have no accomplishments. Now I got 84 things to my credit. And I tell you, I can look back and start reminiscing on those things. And it just throws my heart to think that I have done that. But I had to quit going on a movie to doer. What is one of the 84 things that is most surprising even to you that you master? One thing I like a lot.

Now, I just spent the time with Robert Duvall, and twice we met last week for hours and hours, and we're like a couple old cowboys. I often like to be alone, because when you're an athlete, as John and April will testify, people were always around you, and I'd love the West, the old West.

In fact, I still have my saddle downstairs. And so I wanted to become a real cowboy, so I worked on the Vanderhoof Ranch, every summer and then the Willis Ranch in White Sama, Oregon. And I tell you, get down there alone riding the fence on a good horse and searching for a lost cow and then patching the fence up. It takes all day long. You leave only in the morning, come home at night.

And I'm around people all the time so much. That was a real treat for me to get off alone and just meditate and take of the past and make plans. for the future. A lot of us like to see the forces of evil defeated, and we like to see the bad guys suffer. And when we read your book and your life story, Mutsuhiro Watanabe is obviously such a dark force. And yet your perspective on him is transformed through your life. And I just would like to hear you speak a little bit about that so that those of us who face something dark in our lives might actually take a different perspective on it.

Well, yeah, when I came home, I was so filled with rage over the bird. After what he did to me over the period of a couple of years, that I was trying to make money. I could go back there secretly seek him out and do him in. I really wanted to do that. So I had probably the worst case of vendetta you ever heard of, and yet after receiving Christ it was just the out. I wanted to go back and give the guy a hug and tell him I forgave him.

Now, but did go back and went into Flegamo prison, 850 war criminals, and the colonel asked the men that knew me to come forward, and I looked for the bird he wasn't there. And I said, well, we believe he committed Harry Keary, so I assumed he was dead until CBS found him just before the Nagin on Winter Olympics, and then he sent me over there twice to do a video, not only carrying the torch alongside of my former slave labor camp, but to meet the bird.

And then they started to do a 60 minutes on him, accused him of all these crimes. His son and grandson were standing there, and boy, they didn't like it. And they didn't know he had committed those crimes, and they said, no more of this. So they could never get back to him again. But they did a video that won an Emmy Award, and that shows him. The only footage ever taken of Watanabe is in that video. when you find someone like that to restore them back into fellowship with God. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

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Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. What are a few things that you want to achieve now and add to the list of 84 forms of mastery that you've gathered up in your life. What accomplishments are you pursuing now? I gave up skateboarding on my 81st birthday, and I gave up skiing on my 91st. But I'm so active now,

speaking. I'm a motivational speaker, and I speak at universities. I just spoke at USC last week, to 300 athletes. Then I do lecturing aboard cruise liners, and the idea is to motivate people to work hard for their cooperation and not because they're giving away their life because when you work hard and appreciate your work, you're getting the benefit, the benefit of, we'll say, the white corpuscles for their immune system, you just don't get sick.

And by the way, when you're working hard for your company, you keep them solvent. And so it's a good idea for people to have both things in their mind. You work good for your own benefit and you work good for your company. So you both benefit from it. Them doing good. When you do good, you feel good, right? If you feed a guy on the street or buy somebody a meal that a homeless portion, you feel good.

And that feeling is your immune system being flooded with white corpuscles. So that's the secret of longevity and that's the secret of my life. And people say, well, how can you help us to a great memory at your age? Well, that's one thing that helps. The other thing is memorizing. I memorize the great passages from the scriptures and other things I think of be pertinent in my work with young people, memorizing your under intense concentration, and I keep it from going senile and becoming a scatterbrain. I suspect that you feel that things happen for a reason in life.

Yeah, I do. I accept anything that happens for your own benefit, but if things are going to happen, why cry over it, why fight over it? The thing is they accept everything and do the best you can with it and use it as a learning tool because we're always learning and every time we overcome a hardship we're not only becoming more hardy but a learning tool. And more hardship to go to the more you learn and that's why our generation, not the greatest generation, the hearty generation, because that's all we did was overcome, overcome.

And I tell young people, when you have a problem, think of it this way. When you overcome that problem and lick it, you're a better person, you're more Hardy. You'd be surprised if kids take that up. I'm never going to give up again. And I get all these letters from the book, and I always sign it in my name with Be Hardy, Louis Vaparini.

You know, Louis, I don't know how much you know about our company, The Motley Fool, but we teach people how to save and invest. And when I talk to young people about it, I tell them that the best thing you can do is actually to make your first investment, and actually the best result you can get from your first investment is that it doesn't succeed for you because you will end up learning why rather than congratulating yourself for your good fortune out of the gate. And that lesson of accepting failure and difficulty as a challenge, an opportunity to learn and improve yourself is just such a great lesson. And I genuinely mean that I could sit and talk with you for the next three hours,

but I don't want to take any more of your time. but this has been a thrilling moment for me in my life to be able to spend this half a lot. Thank you. You made it great. That is great when you teach overcoming. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's in your company policy, huh? Yes, it is.

I mean, when you invest, you are going to definitely have periods of time like we had a few years ago where everything goes down 50% in value. And that's either the time that you cry in your soup and give up or that you double down, try and learn more, and get smarter because of it. That's good. That's beautiful. I like it. Louis, I'll tell you, this has been a real thrill for me, and I'm going to send you a Motley Fool baseball cap. Hey, great. Hey, thanks a lot. It's your night talking to you.

Thank you very much. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and the Mali Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool, standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. I'm Bart Shannon, and we will see you tomorrow.