On the 27th day in the ocean, the castaways see another plane. It is a Japanese fighter plane. When its crew spots the Americans, the plane opens fire, sending Louie skittering into the ocean where sharks await. He fights off the sharks long enough to get back into the raft, only to come under fire from the Japanese again. The three men survive, but one of the rafts is punctured by bullet holes. They patch it as best they can, but now all three men have to live on one raft.

“Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.”

“Louie found himself thinking of the moment at which he had woken in the sinking hull of Green Hornet, the wires that had trapped him a moment earlier now, inexplicably, gone. And he remembered the Japanese bomber swooping over the rafts, riddling them with bullets, and yet not a single bullet had struck him, Phil, or Mac. He had fallen into unbearably cruel worlds, and yet he had borne them. When he turned these memories in his mind, the only explanation he could find was one in which the impossible was possible. What God asks of men, said Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.”

― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Unbroken: An Extraordinary True Story of Courage and Survival