page_title: U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: The Hoa Lo Prison, dubbed the Hanoi Hilton by the American POWs held there during the Vietnam War.
context_page_description: Members of the United States armed forces were held as prisoners of war 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 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; a much smaller number were captured in the south and held by the Việt Cộng. 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. 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.
context_section_description: 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. North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had died the previous month, possibly causing a change in policy towards POWs. 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.
  Despite several escape attempts, no U.S. POW successfully escaped from a North Vietnamese prison. On November 21, 1970, U.S. Special Forces launched Operation Ivory Coast in an attempt to rescue 61 POWs believed to be held at the Sơn Tây prison camp 23 miles (37 km) west of Hanoi. Fifty-six commandos landed by helicopter and assaulted the prison, but the prisoners had been moved some months earlier and none were rescued. While the raid failed to free any POWs and was considered a significant intelligence failure, it had several positive implications for American prisoners. The most immediate effect was to affirm to the POWs that their government was actively attempting to repatriate them, which significantly boosted their morale. Additionally, soon after the raid all acknowledged American prisoners in North Vietnam were moved to Hỏa Lò so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect and to prevent their rescue by U.S. forces.
  The post-raid consolidation brought many prisoners who had spent years in isolation into large cells holding roughly 70 men each. This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò. The increased human contact further improved morale and facilitated greater military cohesion among the POWs. At this time, the prisoners formally organized themselves under the 4th Allied POW Wing, whose name acknowledged earlier periods of overseas captivity among American military personnel in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. This military structure was ultimately recognized by the North Vietnamese and endured until the prisoners' release in 1973.
  Nevertheless, by 1971, some 30–50 percent of the POWs had become disillusioned about the war, both because of the apparent lack of military progress and what they heard of the growing anti-war movement in the U.S. and some of them were less reluctant to make propaganda statements for the North Vietnamese. Others were not among them; there were defiant church services and an effort to write letters home that only portrayed the camp in a negative light. Such prisoners were sometimes sent to a camp reserved for "bad attitude" cases.
  At the "Hanoi Hilton", POWs cheered the resumed bombing of North Vietnam starting in April 1972, whose targets included the Hanoi area. The old-time POWs cheered even more during the intense "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972, when Hanoi was subjected for the first time to repeated B-52 Stratofortress raids. Although its explosions lit the night sky and shook the walls of the camp, scaring some of the newer POWs, most saw it as a forceful measure to compel North Vietnam to finally come to terms.
caption: The Hanoi Hilton in a 1970 aerial surveillance photo.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3151", "Image ImageLength": "2308", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2016:09:08 11:22:38", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11799", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2280", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1808"}