Hỏa Lò Prison

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The Hanoi Hilton in a 1970 aerial surveillance photo

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Hỏa Lò Prison (Template:IPA, Nhà tù Hỏa Lò; Template:Langx) 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 until its demolition between 1993 and 1994. Its gatehouse remains a museum.

French era

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

The name Hỏa Lò, commonly translated as "fiery furnace" or even "Hell's hole",<ref name="logan">Template:Cite book pp. 67–68.</ref> 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 between 1896 and 1901,<ref name="memoiredeshommes">Template:Cite web</ref> when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina. The French called the prison Maison Centrale,<ref name="logan"/> '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.<ref name="zinoman">Template:Cite book p. 52.</ref> It was intended to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution.<ref name="coram">Template:Cite book p. 178.</ref> A 1913 renovation expanded its capacity from 460 inmates to 600.<ref name="zinoman"/> 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.<ref name="zinoman"/> By 1954, it held more than 2000 people;<ref name="logan"/> with its inmates held in subhuman conditions,<ref name="coram"/> it had become a symbol of colonialist exploitation and the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French.<ref name="logan"/>

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 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.<ref>Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille, p. 54.</ref> 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.<ref name="logan-145">Logan, Hanoi, p. 145.</ref>

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.<ref>Phan Van Hum, Ngồi tù Khám Lớn (In the Maison Centrale), Saigon, 1929</ref><ref>Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 University of California Press, 2001</ref>

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.<ref>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 ..."</ref> 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.<ref name="logan-145"/>

Vietnam War

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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 of war to be sent to Hỏa Lò was Lieutenant Junior Grade Everett Alvarez Jr., who was shot down on August 5, 1964.<ref name="afm-valor">Template:Cite magazine</ref> From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured miserable conditions, including poor food and unsanitary conditions.<ref>Template:Cite book.</ref> The prison complex was sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American POWs, about the well-known Hilton Hotel chain. There is some disagreement among the first group of POWs who coined the name but F-8D pilot Bob Shumaker<ref>(later Navy Rear Admiral Robert H. Shumaker)</ref> 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.<ref>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."</ref>

Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs;<ref name="r-k-292"/> it was dubbed "Little Vegas", and its buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as "Golden Nugget", "Thunderbird", "Stardust", "Riviera", and the "Desert Inn".<ref name="usnwr73">Template:Cite news Reposted under title "John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account", 2008-01-28. Reprinted in Template:Cite book</ref> These names were chosen because many pilots had trained at Nellis Air Force Base, located in proximity to Las Vegas.<ref name="r-k-292">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="pac101908">Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref name="karnow-655"/> Although North Vietnam had signed the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, it argued the convention did not apply to U.S. pilots, whom they classified as "war criminals" rather than POWs.<ref name="senate-pow">Template:Cite report</ref> Severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement.<ref name="afm-valor"/><ref name="karnow-655">Template:Cite book.</ref><ref name="nyt-stock">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name="usnwr73"/> In 1968, Template:Ill and Template:Ill from East Germany filmed in the prison the 4-chapter series Pilots in Pajamas with interviews with American pilots in the prison, which 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.<ref name="Alter">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="wapo060669">Template:Cite news</ref> During 1969, they broadcast a series of statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion.<ref name="wapo060669"/> 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.Template:Citation needed 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.<ref>Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 655–656.</ref>

Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable.<ref name="afm-valor"/> 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.<ref name="afm-sontay">Template:Cite magazine</ref> This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale.<ref name="usnwr73"/><ref name="afm-sontay"/>

Notable inmates

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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 of war 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.<ref name="ap062708"/> Trần Trọng Duyệt, 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 of war were tortured.<ref name="ap062708">Template:Cite news</ref> This contradicts U.S. Senate reports and extensive testimony from former POWs documenting systematic torture.<ref name="senate-pow"/>

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.Template:Citation needed

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 six years in Hỏa Lò until 1985. He mentions the last years of the prison, partly in fictional form, in Hỏa Lò/Hanoi Hilton Stories (2007).<ref>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."</ref> The prison remained operational until its 1993 demolition.

Demolition, conversion and museum

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

Demolition began in 1993<ref name="hanoitowers">Template:Cite web</ref> and most of the prison was demolished by 1994. The site now contains a complex of two high-rise buildings called Hanoi Towers or Hanoi Center Tower, consists of a 27-story Somerset Grand Hanoi serviced apartment building and a 14-story office building.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Other parts have been converted into a commercial complex retaining the original French colonial walls.<ref>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"</ref>

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.<ref>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.</ref> The Vietnam War section occupies one room and has been criticized by U.S. veterans for downplaying POW experiences.<ref name="bbc-museum">Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

References

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Further reading

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