Members of the United States armed forces were held as prisoners of war (POWs) in significant numbers during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973. Unlike U.S. service members captured in World War II and the Korean War, who were mostly enlisted troops, the overwhelming majority of Vietnam-era POWs were officers, most of them Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps airmen; a relatively small number of Army enlisted personnel were also captured, as well as one enlisted Navy seaman, Petty Officer Doug Hegdahl, who fell overboard from a naval vessel. Most U.S. prisoners were captured and held in North Vietnam by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN); a much smaller number were captured in the south and held by the Việt Cộng (VC). A handful of U.S. civilians were also held captive during the war.
Thirteen prisons and prison camps were used to house U.S. prisoners in North Vietnam, the most widely known of which was Hỏa Lò Prison (nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton"). The treatment and ultimate fate of U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam became a subject of widespread concern in the United States, and hundreds of thousands of Americans wore POW bracelets with the name and capture date of imprisoned U.S. service members.Michael J. Allen, Until the Last Man Comes Home, (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pg. 57.
American POWs in North Vietnam were released in early 1973 as part of Operation Homecoming, the result of diplomatic negotiations concluding U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. On February 12, 1973, the first of 591 U.S. prisoners began to be repatriated, and return flights continued until late March. After Operation Homecoming, the U.S. still listed roughly 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and sought the return of roughly 1,200 Americans reported killed in action, but whose bodies were not recovered. "Vietnam War Accounting History". Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office. These missing personnel would become the subject of the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue.
Phases of captures On March 26, 1964, the first U.S. service member imprisoned during the Vietnam War was captured near Quảng Trị, South Vietnam when an L-19/O-1 Bird Dog observation plane flown by Captain Richard L. Whitesides and Captain Floyd James Thompson was brought down by small arms fire. Whitesides was killed, and Thompson was taken prisoner; he would ultimately spend just short of nine years in captivity, making him the longest-held POW in American history. The first fighter pilot captured in North Vietnam was Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) Everett Alvarez, Jr., who was shot down on August 5, 1964, near the town of Vinh in the aftermath of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. As the first pilot captured by the North Vietnamese, his captors at first seemed unsure what to do with him. He was initially held in the local police jail, as there was no other place to keep him. His meals were take-out brought from local restaurants. He was eventually among the first to be transferred to the repurposed old French Hoa Lo prison, later to be infamously known as the Hanoi Hilton.Alvin Townley, Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014)
American pilots continued to be captured over the north between 1965 and 1968 as part of Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained aerial bombing campaign against North Vietnam. After President Lyndon Johnson initiated a bombing pause in 1968, the number of new captures dropped significantly, only to pick up again after his successor, President Richard Nixon, resumed bombing in 1969. Significant numbers of Americans were also captured during Operation Linebacker between May and October 1972 and Operation Linebacker II in December 1972, also known as the "Christmas Bombings". They would have the shortest stays in captivity.
Severe treatment years
Beginning in late 1965, the application of torture against U.S. prisoners of war became severe. During the first six years in which U.S. prisoners of war were held in North Vietnam, many experienced long periods of solitary confinement, with senior leaders and particularly recalcitrant POWs being isolated to prevent communication. Robinson Risner and James Stockdale, two senior officers who were the de facto leaders of the POWs, were held in solitary for three and four years, respectively. The Alcatraz Gang was a group of eleven POWs who were held separately because of their particular resistance to their captors.
The POWs made extensive use of a tap code to communicate, which was introduced in June 1965 by four POWs held in the Hỏa Lò: Captain Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, Lieutenant Phillip Butler, Lieutenant Robert Peel and Lieutenant Commander Robert Shumaker. Harris had remembered the code from prior training and taught it to his fellow prisoners. The code was simple and easy to learn and could be taught without verbal instructions. In addition to allowing communication between walls, the prisoners used the code when sitting next to each other but forbidden from speaking by tapping on one another's bodies.Brace, A Code to Keep, pp. 171–172, 187–188. Throughout the war the tap code was instrumental in maintaining prisoner morale, as well as preserving a cohesive military structure despite North Vietnamese attempts to disrupt the POW's chain of command.McCain and Salter, Faith of My Fathers, pp. 211–212. During periods of protracted isolation the tap code facilitated elaborate mental projects to keep the prisoners' sanity.
U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam were subjected to extreme torture and malnutrition during their captivity. Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, p. 655. which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as waterboarding, strappado (known as "the ropes" to POWs), irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement. The aim of the torture was usually not acquiring military information. Rather, it was to break the will of the prisoners of war, both individually and as a group.Hubbell, P.O.W., pp. 288–306. The goal of the North Vietnamese was to get written or recorded statements from the prisoners that criticized U.S. conduct of the war and praised how the North Vietnamese treated them. Such POW statements would be viewed as a propaganda victory in the battle to sway world and U.S. domestic opinion against the U.S. war effort.
During one such event in 1966, then-Commander Jeremiah Denton, a captured Navy pilot, was forced to appear at a televised press conference, where he famously blinked the word "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" with his eyes in Morse code, confirming to U.S. intelligence that U.S. prisoners of war were being tortured. Two months later, in what became known as the Hanoi March, 52 American POWs were paraded through the streets of Hanoi before thousands of North Vietnamese civilians. The march soon deteriorated into near riot conditions, with North Vietnamese civilians beating the POWs along the route and their guards largely unable to restrain the attacks."People & Events: The Hanoi March", PBS American Experience
To stop the torture, prisoners would often lie or make up stories to get their captors to end the abuse. One captured pilot, when asked what his mission was, claimed that he'd been ordered to bomb North Vietnams largest brewery to damage the morale of their military. American recon flights soon afterwards noticed an increase in anti-aircraft artillery around it. Another pilot, when asked the names of other members of his squadron, gave the real names of several American comic book superheroes instead.
In the end, North Vietnamese torture was sufficiently brutal and prolonged that nearly every American POW so subjected made a statement of some kind at some time.Hubbell, P.O.W., p. 548. As John McCain later wrote of finally being forced to make an anti-American statement: "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine." Only a small number of exceptionally resilient prisoners of war, such as John A. Dramesi, survived captivity without ever cooperating with the enemy; others who refused to cooperate under any circumstances, such as Edwin Atterbury, were tortured to death. James Stockdale, fearing that he might reveal details of the Gulf of Tonkin incident if tortured, attempted suicide, but survived; he never revealed this information to the enemy. Under these extreme conditions, many prisoners of war's aim became merely to absorb as much torture as they could before giving in. One later described the internal code the POWs developed, and instructed new arrivals on, as: "Take physical torture until you are right at the edge of losing your ability to be rational. At that point, lie, do, or say whatever you must do to survive. But you first must take physical torture."
After making statements, the POWs would admit to each other what had happened, lest shame or guilt consume them or make them more vulnerable to additional North Vietnamese pressure. Nevertheless, the POWs obsessed over what they had done, and would years after their release still be haunted by the "confessions" or other statements they had made. As another POW later said, "To this day I get angry with myself. But we did the best we could. [We realize], over time, that we all fall short of what we aspire to be. And that is where forgiveness comes in."
The North Vietnamese occasionally released prisoners of war for propaganda or other purposes. The POWs had a "first in, first out" interpretation of the Code of the U.S. Fighting Force, meaning they could only accept release in the order they had been captured, but making an exception for those seriously sick or badly injured. When a few captured servicemen began to be released from North Vietnamese prisons during the Johnson administration, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war. Initially, this information was downplayed by American authorities for fear that conditions might worsen for those remaining in North Vietnamese custody. Reposted under title "John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account", 2008-01-28. Reprinted in Policy changed under the Nixon administration, when mistreatment of the prisoners was publicized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others.
Later years
Beginning in October 1969, the torture regime suddenly abated to a great extent, and life for the prisoners became less severe and generally more tolerable.Jon A. Reynolds, "Question of Honor", Air University Review, March–April 1977.Rochester and Kiley, Honor Bound, pp. 489–491. North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had died the previous month, possibly causing a change in policy towards POWs.Hubbell, P.O.W., p. 519. Many POWs speculated that Ho had been personally responsible for their mistreatment. Also, a badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected, and the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia heightened awareness of the POWs' plight.McCain, Faith of My Fathers, pp. 290–291.