Hỏa Lò Prison

21°1′31″N 105°50′47″E

"Hanoi Hilton" redirects here. For the 1987 film, see The Hanoi Hilton (film). For the hotel operated by the Hilton International Corporation, see Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel.
The Hanoi Hilton in a 1970 aerial surveillance photo

Hỏa Lò Prison (Vietnamese: [hwa᷉ː lɔ̂], Nhà tù Hỏa Lò; French: Prison Hỏa Lò) was a prison in Hanoi originally used by the French colonists in Indochina for political prisoners, and later by North Vietnam for U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. During this later period, it was known to American POWs as the "Hanoi Hilton". Following Operation Homecoming, the prison was used to incarcerate Vietnamese dissidents and other political prisoners, including the poet Nguyễn Chí Thiện. The prison was demolished during the 1990s, although its gatehouse remains a museum.

French era
The French name "Maison Centrale" above the gate of Hỏa Lò
Museum reconstruction of First Indochina War prisoners in Hỏa Lò

The name Hỏa Lò, commonly translated as "fiery furnace" or even "Hell's hole",[1] 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 in pre-colonial times.

The prison was built in Hanoi by the French, in dates ranging from 1886 to 1889[1] to 1898[2] to 1901,[3] when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina. The French called the prison Maison Centrale,[1] 'Central House', which is still the designation of prisons for dangerous or long sentence detainees in France. It was located near Hanoi's French Quarter.[2] It was intended to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution.[3] A 1913 renovation expanded its capacity from 460 inmates to 600.[2] It was nevertheless often overcrowded, holding some 730 prisoners on a given day in 1916, a figure which rose to 895 in 1922 and 1,430 in 1933.[2] By 1954 it held more than 2000 people;[1] with its inmates held in subhuman conditions,[3] it had become a symbol of colonialist exploitation and of the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French.[1]

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.[4] Within the prison itself, communication and ideas passed. Many of the future leading figures in Communist North Vietnam and Viet Minh spent time in Maison Centrale during the 1930s and 1940s.[5]

Conditions for political prisoners in the "Colonial Bastille" were publicised in 1929 in a widely circulated account by the Trotskyist Phan Van Hum of the experience he shared with the charismatic publicist Nguyen An Ninh.[6][7]

Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1954

Following the defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Accords the French left Hanoi and the prison came under the authority of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.[8] Thereafter 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.[5]

Vietnam War
Main article: U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War
The "Little Vegas" area built for American POWs in 1967, shown in a final inspection in 1973 shortly before the Americans' release

During the Vietnam War, the first U.S. prisoner to be sent to Hỏa Lò was Lieutenant Junior Grade Everett Alvarez Jr., who was shot down on August 5, 1964.[9] From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured miserable conditions, including poor food and unsanitary conditions.[10] The prison complex was sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American POWs, in reference to the well-known Hilton Hotel chain. There is some disagreement among the first group of POWs who coined the name but F8D pilot Bob Shumaker[11] was the first to write it down, carving "Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton" on the handle of a pail to greet the arrival of Air Force Lieutenant Robert Peel.[12]

Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs;[13] it was dubbed "Little Vegas", and its individual buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as "Golden Nugget", "Thunderbird", "Stardust", "Riviera", and the "Desert Inn".[14] These names were chosen because many pilots had trained at Nellis Air Force Base, located in proximity to Las Vegas.[13] American pilots were frequently already in poor condition by the time they were captured, injured either during their ejection or in landing on the ground.[15]

Hỏa Lò Prison Rules
Hỏa Lò Prison memorial

The Hỏa Lò was one site used by the North Vietnamese Army to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids.[16] Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949,[16] which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement.[9][16][17] 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.[14] In 1968, Walter Heynowsk and Gerhard Scheumann from East Germany filmed in the prison the 4-chapter series Pilots in Pajamas with interviews with American pilots in the prison, that they claimed were unscripted. Heynowski and Scheumann asked them about the contradictions in their self image and their war behavior and between the Code of the United States Fighting Force and their behavior during and after capture.[18]

Regarding treatment at Hỏa Lò and other prisons, the North Vietnamese countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.[19] During 1969, they broadcast a series of statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion.[19] The North Vietnamese also maintained that their prisons were no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam, such as the one on Côn Sơn Island. Mistreatment of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners and South Vietnamese dissidents in South Vietnam's prisons was indeed frequent, as was North Vietnamese abuse of South Vietnamese prisoners and their own dissidents.[20]

Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable.[9] Following the late 1970 attempted rescue operation at Sơn Tây prison camp, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hỏa Lò, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect.[21] This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale.[14][21]

Notable inmates
See also: Alcatraz Gang

Post-war accounts

After the implementation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, neither the United States nor its allies ever formally charged North Vietnam with the war crimes revealed to have been committed there. In the 2000s, the Vietnamese government has had the position that claims that prisoners were tortured at Hỏa Lò and other sites during the war are fabricated, but that Vietnam wants to move past the issue as part of establishing better relations with the U.S.[24] Tran Trong Duyet, a jailer at Hỏa Lò beginning in 1968 and its commandant for the last three years of the war, maintained in 2008 that no prisoners were tortured.[24] However, eyewitness accounts by American servicemen present a different account of their captivity.

After the war, Risner wrote the book Passing of the Night detailing his seven years at Hỏa Lò. A considerable amount of literature emerged from released POWs after repatriation, depicting Hỏa Lò 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 details are revealed in famous accounts by McCain (Faith of My Fathers), Denton, Alvarez, Day, Risner, Stockdale and dozens of others.

In addition, Hỏa Lò was depicted in the 1987 Hollywood movie The Hanoi Hilton.

Hỏa Lò in the late 1970s and early 1980s

The prison continued to be in use after the release of the American prisoners. Among the last inmates was dissident poet Nguyễn Chí Thiện, who was reimprisoned in 1979 after attempting to deliver his poems to the British Embassy, and spent the next six years in Hỏa Lò until 1985 when he was transferred to a more modern prison. He mentions the last years of the prison, partly in fictional form, in Hỏa Lò/Hanoi Hilton Stories (2007).[25]

Demolition, conversion and museum
John McCain's flight suit and parachute, on display in the museum part of the Hoa Lo site

Most of the prison was demolished in the mid-1990s and the site now contains two high-rise buildings, one of them the 25-story Somerset Grand Hanoi serviced apartment building.[26] Other parts have been converted into a commercial complex retaining the original French colonial walls.[27]

Only part of the prison exists today as a museum. The displays mainly show the prison during the French colonial period, including the guillotine room, still with original equipment, and the quarters for male and female Vietnamese political prisoners.[28]

Building materials from several complete cells were saved, including original bricks, cement ceilings, concrete “beds” with ankle shackles, and an original cell door and transom window. After being in storage in Vietnam for six years and nearly another ten in Canada, the cells were reconstructed using the original materials and turned into a permanent exhibit that opened in 2023 at the American Heritage Museum in Stow, Massachusetts.[29]

References
  1. Logan, William S. (2000). Hanoi: Biography of a City. University of New South Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-86840-443-1. pp. 67–68.
  2. Zinoman, Peter (2001). The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22412-4. p. 52.
  3. Coram, Robert (2007). American Patriot: The Life and Wars Of Colonel Bud Day. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-75847-5. p. 178.
  4. Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille, p. 54.
  5. Logan, Hanoi, p. 145.
  6. Phan Van Hum, Ngồi tù Khám Lớn (In the Maison Centrale), Saigon, 1929
  7. Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 University of California Press, 2001
  8. Scott Laderman (2008). Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory. p. 1. "Following the 1954 Geneva Accords that put an end to French suzerainty in Indochina, Hoa Lo Prison, as the institution was called by the Vietnamese, fell under the authority of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the independent Vietnamese ..."
  9. Frisbee, John L. (February 1989). "Valor en Masse". Air Force Magazine. Archived from the original on 2009-01-21. Retrieved 2021-10-12.
  10. Hubbell, John G. (1976). P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-Of-War Experience in Vietnam, 1964–1973. New York: Reader's Digest Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-88349-091-4..
  11. (later Navy Rear Admiral Robert H. Shumaker)
  12. Stuart I. Rochester, Frederick T. Kiley (2007). Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973. p. 96. "There is disagreement among the first group of PWs as to who actually named Hoa Lo the Hanoi Hilton, but the nickname ... the message "Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton" on the handle of a pail to greet the arrival of Air Force Lt. Robert Peel."
  13. Rochester, Stuart I.; Kiley, Frederick (1999). Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. pp. 96, 292–294. ISBN 978-1-55750-694-8.
  14. Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III, United States Navy (1973-05-14). "How the POW's Fought Back". U.S. News & World Report. Archived from the original on 2008-10-13. Reposted under title "John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account", 2008-01-28. Reprinted in Library of America staff (1998). Reporting Vietnam, Part Two: American Journalism 1969–1975. Library of America. pp. 434–463. ISBN 978-1-883011-59-8.
  15. Parker, Adam (2008-10-19). "Former Vietnam POW recalls ordeal, fellowship". The Post and Courier. Archived from the original on 2011-10-06. Retrieved 2009-06-27.
  16. Karnow, Stanley (1983). Vietnam: A History. The Viking Press. p. 655. ISBN 978-0-670-74604-0..
  17. Mahler, Jonathan (2005-12-25). "The Prisoner". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 2017-05-10. Retrieved 2017-02-09.
  18. Alter, Nora M. (1996). "Excessive Pre/Requisites: Vietnam Through the East German Lens". Cultural Critique (35): 54–66. doi:10.2307/1354571. JSTOR 1354571.
  19. "U.S. Fliers Well Treated, Hanoi Says". The Washington Post. United Press International. 1969-06-06.
  20. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 655–656.
  21. Glines, C. V. (November 1995). "The Son Tay Raid". Air Force Magazine. Archived from the original on 2008-04-24.
  22. "He was a POW in Hanoi Hilton: How Mississippi man's 'tap code' helped them survive". www.clarionledger.com.
  23. "F-100 Pilot Hayden Lockhart – The First USAF Vietnam POW". Super Sabre Society. Archived from the original on 29 September 2017. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  24. "'Hanoi Hilton' jailer says he'd vote for McCain". USA Today. Associated Press. 2008-06-27. Archived from the original on 2008-07-24. Retrieved 2008-07-25.
  25. Nguyễn Chí Thiện (2007). Hỏa Lò/Hanoi Hilton Stories. Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies. "During the roughly fifteen years spent as a political prisoner in Vietnamese labor camps from 1960 to 1977, Nguyen Chi Thien composed hundreds of poems. Released following the fall of Saigon, Thien delivered a manuscript of these poems to the British Embassy in Hanoi. He was arrested at the gate and taken to Hoa Lo – the well known "Hanoi Hilton" Prison, where he spent six of an additional twelve years of imprisonment, often in solitary confinement."
  26. "Hoa Lo Prison Museum | Hanoi, Vietnam Attractions". Lonely Planet. Retrieved 2020-04-08.
  27. Jeffrey E. Curry, Chinh T. Nguyen (1997). Passport Vietnam: your pocket guide to Vietnamese business. p. 13. "Hundreds of Vietnamese died in Hoa Lo prison –the famous "Hanoi Hilton" – long before it was used as a prison for American pilots. It is being turned into a commercial complex, but its original French colonial walls are being left as"
  28. Daniel White, Ron Emmond, Jennifer Eveland (2011). Frommer's Southeast Asia. p. 270. "Hoa Lo Prison (Hanoi Hilton) For sheer gruesome atmosphere alone, this ranks near the top of the must-see list. ... To the west is the guillotine room, still with its original equipment, and the female and Vietnamese political prisoners' quarters.
  29. "The Journey".

Further reading
  • Coram, Robert. American Patriot : The Life and Wars Of Colonel Bud Day. Little, Brown and Company, ©2007. ISBN 0-316-75847-7, ISBN 978-0-316-75847-5
  • Denton, Jeremiah A; Brandt, Ed. When Hell Was In Session. Reader's Digest Press, distributed by Crowell, 1976. ISBN 978-0-88349-112-6 ISBN 978-093528000-5
  • Lenzi, Iola (2004). Museums of Southeast Asia. Singapore: Archipelago Press. pp. 200 pages. ISBN 978-981-4068-96-3.
  • McDaniel, Eugene B. Scars and Stripes. Harvest House Publishers, May 1980. ISBN 0-89081-231-4
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