Drive past Torrance Municipal Airport and you’ll see the name Zamperini Field displayed prominently at the entrance.

It isn’t the name of an aviation pioneer or a former mayor.

It belongs to one of the most extraordinary people ever to call Torrance home.

Louis Zamperini moved to Torrance with his family in the 1920s and attended Torrance High School. After a difficult adolescence, his older brother encouraged him to join the track team—and Zamperini discovered that he could run extraordinarily fast.

In 1934, he set a world interscholastic mile record of 4 minutes, 21.2 seconds, a mark that stood for more than 20 years. His success earned him a scholarship to USC and eventually a place on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team competing in Berlin. He finished eighth in the 5,000 meters, but his remarkable final lap attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler, who asked to meet him afterward.

Back home, Zamperini became known as the “Torrance Tornado.”

Then World War II changed everything.

Zamperini served as an Army Air Forces bombardier in the Pacific. On May 27, 1943, his bomber went down after a mechanical failure during a search mission.

Only three members of the crew survived the crash.

Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips eventually spent an astonishing 47 days drifting across the Pacific Ocean on a life raft, battling starvation, dehydration, sharks and enemy aircraft. After finally reaching land, they were captured by Japanese forces. Zamperini then endured brutal treatment as a prisoner of war until Japan surrendered in 1945.

Meanwhile, Torrance was undergoing its own wartime transformation.

In 1941, the federal government purchased about 480 acres of the Weston Ranch in southern Torrance and constructed what became known as the Lomita Flight Strip. The facility served as an Army Air Corps training base for P-38 aircraft, at times housing approximately 40 officers and 200 enlisted personnel.

After the war, the military declared the airfield surplus. Its barracks were temporarily used as a staging area for Japanese-American families returning from wartime incarceration before the federal government moved toward transferring the facility to Torrance.

Then came the connection that remains with us today.

On December 7, 1946, Torrance named the airfield in honor of its hometown Olympian and war hero: Louis Zamperini. The federal government formally deeded the property to the City in 1948.

Zamperini’s remarkable life would later become internationally famous through Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book Unbroken and the 2014 film adaptation.

But Torrance had put his name on its airport decades earlier.

Today, Torrance Municipal Airport–Zamperini Field remains an active general-aviation airport with roughly 543 aircraft based there. It is also home to flight schools, aircraft-maintenance businesses and the headquarters of Robinson Helicopter Company.

So the next time you see Zamperini Field on an airport sign, it’s worth remembering what those two words represent:

A Torrance teenager who became an Olympian.

A serviceman who survived circumstances almost impossible to imagine.

And a hometown that made sure his name would continue to be seen long after the planes of World War II disappeared from its runway.

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