The veteran graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1969. He spent 25 months as a prisoner of war (POW) at the Zoo, Plantation Gardens, and Hilton prisoner camps in Hanoi, Vietnam.
On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in Vietnam. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese and spent the next seven years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. Fortunately, three years earlier, he was recommended a book. That book, he says, saved his life. After twenty years in the navy, Stockdale decided to go back to school. He enrolled in a two-year graduate program at
Communist East German made propaganda film about American Prisoners of War held by the North Vietnamese.