Ex-POW that Jerry West honored featured in PS Air Museum (Jerry West)

Utah’s Jay Hess survived more than 5 years in notorious Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam

Jay Hess was 14 years into his Air Force service. The fighter pilot, in the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief, was dropping 600 pound bombs in the heavily defended area around Hanoi, in north Vietnam. Hess finished the steep dive, released his bombs and began to pull out when his

‘Killed’ in Vietnam and buried with comrades, one Marine returned from the dead (Ronald Ridgeway)

Ronald Ridgeway was “killed” in Vietnam on Feb. 25, 1968. The 18-year-old Marine Corps private first class fell with a bullet to the shoulder during a savage firefight with the enemy outside Khe Sanh. Dozens of Marines, from what came to be called “the ghost patrol,” perished there. At first,

Vietnam POWs celebrate 40th reunion and Everett King shares story of capture and escape

Among the 200 American Vietnam prisoners of war and their families who recently gathered in the reproduced East Wing at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda were Whitethorn residents Everett and Evelyn King. Everett King was a corporal in an Army intelligence unit stationed at Hue,

Gaining strength from the past: Museum opens exhibit on POWs (William Beekman)

They are pictured cooking, laughing, seated with their pets, standing with their wives. The photographs of 30 former Vietnam war POWs portray a comforting normalcy, though their common history is anything but. Most hold no anger or bitterness.

Thirty years ago, some 600 POWs finally came home (Tom Kobashigawa, William Thomas)

For nearly a year, Kailua resident Emilia Thomas never knew that her husband, a Marine Corps aviation observer, was alive after being shot down in Vietnam and being held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. “That’s the only thing that still bothers me,” said retired Marine Chief Warrant Officer