Hanoi Hilton

The Hoa Lo Prison ( _vi. Hỏa Lò), later known to American prisoners of war as the "Hanoi Hilton", was a prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War.

French era

The name Hoa Lo, commonly translated as "fiery furnace" or even "Hell's hole",cite book | last=Logan | first=William S. | title=Hanoi: Biography of a City | publisher=UNSW Press | year=2000 | isbn=0868404438 pp. 67–68.] also means "stove". The name originated from the street name phố Hỏa Lò, due to the concentration of stores selling wood stoves and coal-fire stoves along the street from pre-colonial times.

The prison was built in Hanoi by the French, in dates ranging from 1886–1889 to 1898cite book | last=Zinoman | first=Peter |title=The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 | publisher=University of California Press | year=2001 | isbn=0520224124 p. 52.] to 1901,cite web |url=http://www.vietnamwar.com/hanoihilton.htm |title=Vietnam's Hanoi Hilton - Hell on Earth |accessdate=2008-04-23] when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina. The French called the prison Maison Centrale—a traditional euphemism to denote prisons in France. It was located near Hanoi's French Quarter. It was intended to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution.cite book | last=Coram | first=Robert | title=American Patriot: The Life and Wars Of Colonel Bud Day | publisher=Little, Brown and Company | year=2007 | isbn=0-316-75847-7 p. 178.] A 1913 renovation expanded its capacity from 460 inmates to 600. It was nevertheless often overcrowded, holding some 730 prisoners on a given day in 1916, a figure which would rise to 895 in 1922 and 1,430 in 1933. By 1954 it held more than 2000 people; with its inmates held in subhuman conditions, it had become a symbol of colonialist exploitation and of the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French.

The central urban location of the prison also became part of its early character. During the 1910s through 1930s, street peddlers made an occupation of passing outside messages in through the jail's windows and tossing tobacco and opium over the walls; letters and packets would be thrown out to the street in the opposite direction. [Zinoman, "The Colonial Bastille", p. 54.] Within the prison itself, communication and ideas passed. Indeed, many of the future leading figures in Communist North Vietnam spent time in Maison Centrale during the 1930s and 1940s;Logan, "Hanoi", p. 145.] in the end the prison served as an education center for revolutionary doctrine and activity, and it was kept around after the French left to mark its historical significance to the North Vietnamese.

Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War, the first U.S. prisoner to be sent to Hoa Lo was Lieutenant, Junior Grade Everett Alvarez Jr., who was shot down on August 5, 1964.cite news | url=http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1989/February%201989/0289valor.aspx | title=Valor en Masse | author=Frisbee, John L. | publisher="Air Force Magazine" |date=February 1989] From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured conditions that were miserable, including poor food and unsanitary conditions. [cite book | last=Hubbell | first=John G. | title=P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-Of-War Experience in Vietnam, 1964–1973 | publisher=Reader's Digest Press | year=1976 | location=New York | isbn=0883490919 p. 18.] The prison complex was sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American POWs, in reference to the well-known Hilton Hotel chain. Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs; it was dubbed "Little Vegas", and individual buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as "Golden Nugget," "Thunderbird," "Stardust," "Riviera," and the "Desert Inn." The naming was due to many pilots' familiarity with Las Vegas due to its proximity to Nellis Air Force Base.cite book | last=Rochester | first=Stuart I. | coauthors=Kiley, Frederick | title=Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973 | publisher=Naval Institute Press | year=1999 | location=Annapolis, Maryland | isbn=1557506949 pp. 292–294.]

The Hanoi Hilton was merely one site used by the North Vietnamese Army to torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Although North Vietnam had signed on to the Third Geneva Convention of 1949,cite book | last=Karnow | first=Stanley | authorlink=Stanley Karnow | title=Vietnam: A History | publisher=The Viking Press | year=1983 | isbn=0-670-74604-5 p. 655.] which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, the North Vietnamese saw U.S. bombing attacks against them as "crimes against humanity". As a consequence, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, 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, 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. In the end, North Vietnamese torture was sufficiently brutal and prolonged that virtually every American POW so subjected made a statement of some kind at some time. [Hubbell, "P.O.W.", p. 548.] (As one 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.") Realizing this, the Americans' aim became to absorb as much torture as they could before giving in, then admit to each other what had happened, lest shame or guilt consume them or make them more vulnerable to additional North Vietnamese pressure.cite news | url=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25stockdale.html | title=The Prisoner | author=Mahler, Jonathan | publisher="The New York Times Magazine" |date=2005-12-25] 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.cite news | url=http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/A_refining_experience.shtml | title='A refining experience' | author=Farrell, John Aloysius | publisher="The Boston Globe" | date=2000-01-23] 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."

Regarding treatment at Hoa Lo and other prisons, Communist propagandists countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.cite news | title=U.S. Fliers Well Treated, Hanoi Says | publisher=United Press International for "The Washington Post" | date=1969-06-06] During 1969, they broadcast a series of coerced statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion. The North Vietnamese would also maintain that their prisons were no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam, such as the one on Con Son Island.Fact|date=July 2007 Mistreatment of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners and South Vietnamese dissidents in South Vietnam's prisons was indeed frequent, as was North Vietnamese treatment of South Vietnamese prisoners and their own dissidents. [Karnow, "Vietnam", pp. 655–656.]

When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other 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 the those remaining in North Vietnamese custody.cite news | url=http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html |title=How the POW's Fought Back |author=Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III, United States Navy |publisher="U.S. News & World Report" |date=1973-05-14 (reposted under title "John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account", 2008-01-28) Reprinted in cite book | last=Library of America staff | title="Reporting Vietnam, Part Two: American Journalism 1969–1975" | publisher=The Library of America | year=1998 | isbn=1883011590 pp. 434–463.] Policy changed under the Nixon administration, when mistreatment of the prisoners was publicized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others. Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners became less severe and generally more tolerable. Following the late 1970 Son Tay prison camp attempted rescue operation, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hoa Lo, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect.cite news | url=http://www.afa.org/magazine/perspectives/vietnam/1195sont.asp | title=The Son Tay Raid | author=Glines, C. V. | publisher="Air Force Magazine" |date=November 1995] This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hoa Lo, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale.

Future U.S. Vice Presidential candidate James Stockdale and decorated U.S. Air Force pilot Bud Day were held as a prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton, as was future Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who spent parts of his five and a half years as a POW there. Air Force colonel and record-setting parachutist Joseph Kittinger spent 11 months in prison there. Brigadier General Robbie Risner was the senior ranking POW, responsible for maintaining chain of command among his fellow prisoners, from 1965 to 1973.

Post-war

After the Paris Peace Accords implementation, neither the United States nor its allies ever formally charged North Vietnam with the war crimes revealed to have been committed there. Extradition of North Vietnamese officials who had violated the Geneva Convention, which they had always insisted officially did not bind them as their nation had never signed it, was not a condition of the U.S. withdrawal and ultimate abandonment of the South Vietnam government. The present government of Vietnam firmly holds to the view that the Hanoi Hilton was a prison for criminals, not POWs, and that those held in the Hanoi Hilton were "pirates" and "bandits" who had attacked Vietnam without authority. Fact|date=July 2007 In the 2000s, the Vietnamese government has held the position that claims that prisoners were tortured during the war are fabricated, but that Vietnam wants to move past the issue as part of establishing better relations with the U.S. Bui Tin, a North Vietnamese Army colonel-turned-later dissident and exile, who believed the war cause just but that the country's political system lost its way after reunification,cite news | url=http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/74744909.html?dids=74744909:74744909&FMT=FT&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=&date=Oct+20%2C+1991&author=Bui+Tin&desc=Vietnam%3A+The+Betrayal+of+A+Revolution%3B+Victims+of+Discredited+Doctrine%2C+My+People+Now+Look+to+America | title=Vietnam: The Betrayal of A Revolution; Victims of Discredited Doctrine, My People Now Look to America | author=Bui Tin | publisher="The Washington Post" | date=1991-10-20] maintained in 2000 that no torture had occurred in the POW camps.cite web | url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/honor/sfeature/sf_forum_1115.html | title=American Experience: Return With Honor: Online Forum | publisher=PBS | date=2000-11-15 | accessdate=2008-07-07] Tin stated that there were "a few physical hits like a slap across the face, or threats, in order to obtain the specific confessions," and that the worst that especially resistant prisoners such as Stockdale and Jeremiah Denton encountered was being confined to small cells. Tran Trong Duyet, a jailer at Hoa Lo beginning in 1968 and its commandant for the last three years of the war, maintained in 2008 that no prisoners were tortured.cite news | url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-06-27-McCain-endorsement_N.htm | title='Hanoi Hilton' jailer says he'd vote for McCain | publisher=Associated Press for "USA Today" | date=2008-06-27 | accessdate=2008-07-25]

After the war, Risner wrote the book "Passing of the Night" detailing his 7 years at the Hanoi Hilton. Indeed, a considerable literature emerged from released POWs after repatriation, depicting Hoa Lo and the other prisons as places where such atrocities as murder, beatings, broken bones, teeth and eardrums, dislocated limbs, starvation, serving of food contaminated with human and animal feces and medical neglect of infections and tropical disease occurred. These matter-of-fact details revealed in famous accounts by McCain ("Faith of My Fathers"), Denton, Alvarez, Day, Risner, Stockdale and dozens of others.Fact|date=July 2007 In addition, the Hanoi Hilton was depicted in the eponymous 1987 Hollywood movie "The Hanoi Hilton".

Only part of the prison exists today as a museum. Most of it was demolished during mid-1990s construction of a high rise that now occupies most of the site. The interrogation room where many newly captured Americans were questioned (notorious among former prisoners as the "blue room") is now made up to look like a very comfortable, if spartan, barracks-style room. Displays in the room claim that Americans were treated well and not harmed (and even cite the nickname "Hanoi Hilton" as proof that inmates found the accommodations comparable to a hotel's). Former prisoners' published memoirs and oral histories broadcast on C-SPAN identify the room (and other nearby locales) as the site of numerous acts of torture.

A Hilton Hotel in Hanoi opened in 1999 and was carefully named the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel.

References

Further reading

*Coram, Robert. "American Patriot : The Life and Wars Of Colonel Bud Day". Little, Brown and Company, ©2007. ISBN 0316758477 9780316758475
*Denton, Jeremiah A; Brandt, Ed. "When Hell Was In Session". Readers Digest Press, distributed by Crowell, 1976. ISBN 0883491125 : 9780883491126 0935280006 9780935280005
*cite book | title=Museums of Southeast Asia| last=Lenzi| first=Iola| year=2004| pages=200 pages| publisher=Archipelago Press| location=Singapore| id=ISBN 981-4068-96-9
*McDaniel, Eugene B. "Scars and Stripes". Harvest House Publishers, May 1980. ISBN 0-89081-231-4