What Life Was Like for a POW In Vietnam

Although the Vietnam conflict lasted for 20 years – from 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in 1975 – the United States government never officially declared war. Over 3 million people perished in the conflict, and hundreds of American and Vietnamese citizens were held in prison camps as unofficial POWs. The North Vietnamese captured American troops and the South Vietnamese held hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers. These POWs were treated in different but perhaps equally awful ways. Americans suffered terrible treatment and years-long solitary confinement, while the South Vietnamese left their captives in miserable health conditions that ended many lives.

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The Incredible Stoicism of Admiral James Stockdale

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

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