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- This article is about the prison for prisoners of war used during the Vietnam War. For the hotel operated by the Hilton International Corporation in Hanoi, see Hilton Hanoi Opera.
The Hanoi Hilton (Vietnamese: Hoa lo
Lò, meaning "fiery furnace") was a prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. The official name of the prison was "the Hoa Lo Prison", and was built by the French in 1904, when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution. The French called the prison Maison Centrale - a usual term to denote prisons in France.
Captured U.S. POWs reported that the conditions there were miserable, and the food so bad, that the prison was sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the inmates, in reference to the well-known and upscale Hilton Hotel chain.
American authorities stated that the Hanoi Hilton was used as a place for the North Vietnamese Army to torture and interrogate captured soldiers, mostly Americans, mainly pilots shot down during bombing raids. Others countered by stating that prisoners were treated with decency and that the prison was no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam such as the one on Con Son Island.
When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other North Vietnamese prisons in the late 1960s and early 1970s, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war. Initially this information was suppressed by American authorities for fear that conditions might worsen for the prisoners remaining in North Vietnamese custody.
Neither the United States nor its allies ever formally charged North Vietnam with the war crimes revealed to have been committed there, nor demanded extradition of Vietnamese officials who had violated the Geneva Convention at the Hanoi Hilton. The present government of Vietnam firmly holds to the view that the Hanoi Hilton was a prison for criminals, not POWs, and that those held in the Hanoi Hilton were "pirates" and "bandits" who had attacked Vietnam without authority.
Vice Presidential candidate James Stockdale was held as a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton, as well as Senator John McCain, who spent five and a half years there. Actress Jane Fonda reportedly visited the Hanoi Hilton as part of an anti-war demonstration.
The Hanoi Hilton was depicted in the eponymous 1987 Hollywood movie Hanoi Hilton.
Only part of the prison exists today as a museum. Most of it was demolished during the construction of a high rise that now occupies most of the site. Ironically, the interrogation room where many newly captured Americans were interrogated and tortured, notorious among former prisoners as the "blue room", is now made up to look like a very comfortable, if spartan, barracks style room. Displays in the room claim that Americans were treated well and not tortured, in stark contradiction to the many claims of former prisoners that the room was the site of numerous acts of torture.
Further reading
- McDaniel, Eugene B. Scars and Stripes. Harvest Houst Publishers, May 1980. ISBN 0-89081-231-4
