Former POW Ralph Galati ’70 Found Purpose in Service

Five decades after surviving a year as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, the St. Joe’s graduate and former head of the Office of Veterans Services is being recognized for a lifetime of giving back.

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Dieter Dengler: Heroic Immigrant Pilot Who Escaped POW Camp

Dieter Dengler was an American pilot in the Vietnam War. He was shot down, captured, and then spent several months in a small POW camp in Laos before his daring escape. He is the focus of a documentary, book, and movie about his capture and escape. Click here to learn

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

Ex‐P.O.W. Offers Reason For Statements in Hanoi (David W. Sooter)

An Army officer said today that he made voluntary statements for the Hanoi radio during the six years that he was a prisoner in Vietnam to let his family know he was alive. Chief Warrant Officer David W. Sooter, 34 years old, Umatilla, Ore., also admitted at a news conference

‘Fidel’ tortured POWs in Vietnam (Bomar, Hubbard, Cobeil)

Jack Bomar still has nightmares about the beatings administered by ”Fidel,” a Cuban government agent in North Vietnam who tortured him and 17 other U.S. prisoners of war some three decades ago. ”I wake up at night and I am in a situation back there,” the retired Air Force colonel

And with honor I return (Ronald Webb)

The bombing started on Dec. 18, 1972 and lasted 11 days. Waves of B-52s dropped 20,000 tons of ordnance on and near the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. For the nearly 600 American POWs held by the North Vietnamese, the destruction wreaked by Operation