page_title: Operation Homecoming
section_title: The Kissinger Twenty
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Homecoming / The Kissinger Twenty
caption_attribution_description: English: Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Butler's grandmother, wearing a fur hat and glasses, gets out of her wheelchair on March 17, 1973 to greet him in the crowd at the Tulsa airport. Butler had returned to his hometown after nearly eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
context_page_description: Operation Homecoming was the return of 591 American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam following the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
context_section_description: The culture of the POWs held at the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison was on full display with the story that would come to be known as the "Kissinger Twenty". One of the tenets of the agreed upon code between those held at the Hanoi Hilton stipulated that the POWs, unless seriously injured, would not accept an early release. The rule entailed that the prisoners would return home in the order that they were shot down and captured. The POWs held at the Hanoi Hilton were to deny early release because the communist government of North Vietnam could possibly use this tactic as propaganda or as a reward for military intelligence.
  The first round of POWs to be released in February 1973 mostly included injured soldiers in need of medical attention. Following the first release, twenty prisoners were then moved to a different section of the prison, but the men knew something was wrong as several POWs with longer tenures were left in their original cells. After discussions the twenty men agreed that they should not have been the next POWs released as they estimated it should have taken another week and a half for most of their discharges and came to the conclusion that their early release would likely be used for North Vietnamese propaganda. Consequently, in adherence with their code, the men did not accept release by refusing to follow instructions or put on their clothes. Finally, on the fifth day of protest Colonel Norm Gaddis, the senior American officer left at the Hanoi Hilton, went to the men's cell and gave them a direct order that they would cooperate. The men followed orders, but with the stipulation that no photographs were to be taken of them.
  It turned out that when Henry Kissinger went to Hanoi after the first round of releases, the North Vietnamese gave him a list of the next 112 men scheduled to be sent home. They asked Kissinger to select twenty more men to be released early as a sign of good will. Unaware of the code agreed upon by the POWs, Kissinger ignored their shot down dates and circled twenty names at random.
caption: Navy pilot Phil Butler is welcomed home by his family after 7 years and 10 months as a POW in North Vietnam
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