Shot down on his fiftieth mission over North Vietnam, Major Larry Guarino was the eleventh American to be captured during the Vietnam War. Through eight years of humiliation and imprisonment which included physical and mental torture, and through the bleakest periods of suffering and despair, Guarino never lost his courage,
A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary
By the time of the Vietnam War era, the “Mexican American Generation” had made tremendous progress both socially and politically. However, the number of Mexican Americans in comparison to the number of white prisoners of war (POWs) illustrated the significant discrimination and inequality the Chicano population faced in both military
In March of 1971, Shary Aument began a one-year self-funded project to create a series of 100 drawings from a picture provided by close family members of American GIs imprisoned or lost in Southeast Asia. In response to Shary’s request, the families sent a description of their loved one. The
On May 14, 1961, Grant Wolfkill, a news cameraman for NBC, watched the signing of a cease fire agreement in Laos. The following day his helicopter crashed, and he was captured by the Pathet Lao. For fifteen months, he was to be their prisoner – a prisoner of peace. Post
