From early 2000 until mid 2002, I worked for an American company in Northern Vietnam in a rural area commissioning a power station. One of the regular places we'd often meet up at for a few beers during our weekends off was at Jacc's Bar in a hotel called Hanoi Towers. A bar with a great restaurant/bistro, snooker table, outdoor swimming pool and predominantly filled with expats and travellers from all over the world. Every time an international rugby, cricket, soccer or motor racing event was on, you'd be sure to find people of all walks of life participating in friendly banter over who was going to win.
But it was the site that the Hanoi Towers was built on which I'd like to talk about here.
That site was known as the Hoa Lo Prison.
In early 2000, this was my second stint in Vietnam as an expatriate engineer assisting the Vietnamese in building up their infrastructure. The first foray had been in my early 20's as a very young and green electrical/instrumentation supervisor in about 1995 at a sugar mill project in a place called Quy Hop which, from memory, was about 9 hours by car to Hanoi. In other words VERY rural Vietnam.
So I was able to see, probably better than anyone, the dramatic difference 5 years can make in an emerging market economy in South East Asia as I had experienced the place in 1995 and 5 years later in 2000 with a break in between. And I have to honestly tell you the transformation was astounding. However I digress.
As I said before, one of the things we would often do on our weekends in Hanoi would be to visit Jacc's Bar for a few beers on a Friday/Saturday night, or on occassion Bloody Mary breakfasts on a Sunday morning. As a visiting expat in country for an estimated 1-2 years, on the odd occasion attempts at sight seeing would be undertaken. One Saturday someone mentioned that the site upon which the building we were now in, the Hanoi Towers, was actually part of the site of an old French Prison, Hoa Lo, which still stood, and was the same prison used during the Vietnam war to house American POW's.
So I decided to wander down for a look. I went with a friend who had been in Vietnam for about 10 years and his Vietnamese wife who was able to translate everything we saw, read or heard. Until the past few days I have not really thought about this 'tourist attraction', but I'd like to tell you a little bit about the prison and how it was POW's were treated in Hoa Lo.
Hell's Hole
The name "Hỏa Lò", literally translated as "fiery furnace" or even "Hell's hole", 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. American POW's gave it nicknames: "Alcatraz", "Briarpatch", "Dirty Bird" "Hanoi Hilton" , "The Zoo", "Heartbreak Hotel," "New Guy Village," "Little Vegas," and "Camp Unity."
Conditions were appalling; food was watery soup and bread. Prisoners were variously isolated, starved, beaten, tortured for countless hours and paraded in anti-American propaganda. "It's easy to die but hard to live," a prison guard told one new arrival, "and we'll show you just how hard it is to live." The Vietnamese also have bitter memories of the prison, for many Vietnamese revolutionaries were kept and tortured there by French colonists.
Link with overview photo
Link to more detail on Hanoi Hilton
Many United States Airmen who had been shot down over Northern Vietnam were taken to Hoa Lo prison for the term of the Vietnam war. According to Wikipedia, the North Vietnamese saw the attacks on their country as 'crimes against humanity' and authorized torture such as "rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement."
My recollections of my visit to Hoa Lo also agree with what my friend told me, his wife and what Wikipedia says was the purpose of this administered torture. The express intent was not to get accurate information out of the interrogated prisoners, but to break their spirit in an effort to extract fake propaganda which was needed to sway world and US domestic public opinion. The torture was administered until the prisoners would say what the interrogators wanted to hear and agree to sign "confessions".
I was quite taken aback initially at the seemingly cramped spaces the prisoners would have had to inhabit reflected first in this hallway photograph.
Tiny cells.
The museum was originally a French prison so there are also elements of the museum preserved from this era. It is claimed that this re-enactment is actually meant as a representation of French Colonial maltreatement of Vietnamese prisoners. But I was told this is how Americans were restrained as well.
Although my friends wife did state that they were only shackled on one foot.
It seems one of the things often done in cases of torture being administered is a 'white wash' or outright denial it occurred, accompanied with propaganda to 're-write' the history of the event. Personally, I think this is because once recognized for what it is, no country wants to admit that torture has been carried out because it is so inexcusable. In this respect it is claimed that conditions for American servicemen were quite humane with a more refined cell for John McCain, the most famous POW to be imprisoned in Hoa Lo.
His clothing kept intact for him.
A written statement (revision??) of the history of the prison in Vietnamese and translated into English.
Link to a better photo.
A Few pictures of American Pilots In Hoa Lo Prison
From August 5, 1964 to January 24, 1973, US government carried out two destruction wars by Air and Navy against North Vietnam. The Northern Army and people had brought down thousands of aircrafts, captured hundreds of American pilots. Part of these pilots were detained in Hoa Lo prison by our ministry of interior.
Though having committed untold crimes on our people, but American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained. Instead they were well treated with adequate food, clothing and shelter according to the provisions of Paris Agreement, our government had in March 1973, returned all captured pilots to the US government. Pictures in this exhibition room show how American pilots had their life in Hoa Lo prison.
Aside from the incredibly small cells, foot shackles were used to restrain prisoners. It was said this was a representation of what happened during the French administration of the prison but you left with the impression the Americans were treated in this way. My friend told me that American prisoners of war had in fact written of torture within these walls and explained the attempt to re-write history. There was one story my friends wife translated for me which I remember for its horror factor.
This was a long time ago so my memory is a little hazy but I asked her whether any one had ever escaped from within the prison. After relaying this question back and forth to a museum guide, she took us out into an area of the prison with what looked like a covered spoon drain running through the middle of it. At a central point there was a grey granite brick looking pylon structure at the cross intersection of three of these spoon drains. My friends wife explained that they would often find bodies trapped inside of people who had attempted to escape. See the spoon drain, which from memory was no more than 1-2 feet wide, was in fact the sewer line.
Although the prison had in place barriers to prevent inmates from climbing into the sewer, from time to time they managed to circumvent these barriers and enter the drain. The pylon structure was an area which the prison guards could access the drain and remove any prisoners who had climbed in and drowned in the piss and shit of 2,000 inmates. Prisoners who had tried to escape because conditions were so bad within the prison, they thought this a better option than continuing to endure. They knew it certain and horrible death, but tried anyway.
I know there have been a lot of diaries on this subject over the past week, but I thought maybe hearing from an outsider on their reactions would present a different perspective.
I am an Australian citizen and have followed closely the developments over the last week. If I was still working with Americans in Vietnam I'd be conveying the same thoughts to them to try and make sense of all this.
The problem is the horror I felt learning that people would rather die in this way, with such indignity because they were tortured and badly mistreated in the Hoa Lo prison, I am now having great difficulty distinguishing from what America has done to their prisoners of war.
This was such a gut reaction, an instant but terrifying realization, that I felt the need to write this diary.
The reason it has probably got to me enough to write it down is I always believed that America is the one country who would never employ the tactics of tyrants, murderers and dictators or in this case a long time ago, of Communists. Who would never seek retribution without forethought and good cause and examining alternate options. Who would never torture when it has proven it is abhorrent when discovered the depths man will sink to in his inhumane treatment of fellow man. That the lessons of Auschwitz, Cambodia, Burma and Hoa Lo were so powerful, had sworn never to let them happen again. These were all lessons where America was always seen to be the 'good guy'. Who no matter what, could be relied upon to set people right when it came to what was acceptable treatment of POW's and what was not.
That. America. Did. Not. Torture.
It has been said this torture was undertaken for political reasons. Not only to try to ensure national security or discover possible future attacks, but in order to find reasons to go to war with Iraq by linking them with Al Qaeda. To create fake propaganda to sway world and US domestic public opinion.
This makes it even harder for me to distinguish between this and what I saw and imagined happened in the Hanoi Hilton.
When these thoughts hit me I went looking for the Abu Grahib pictures, more out of a need to make sense of what has been done, maybe to assure myself that maybe the tactics Americans adopted were different somehow than what other countries have employed. Without descriptions these are some of the shots I found.
To put this in the simplest terms I can -
Whether a country tortures its POW's is one of the ways to distinguish the 'bad guys' from the 'good guys'. The fact some Americans have accepted the premise that 'if it works, its OK' removes this important distinction. If anything, it is this that I find hardest to understand or accept.
"There are arguments that torture makes us a safer country, there are no arguments that it makes us a better country." Dana Gould, Bill Maher show 24 April 2009