by John McCain
McCain and I leaned on each other a great deal. We were separated by about eighteen inches of brick, and I never saw the guy for the longest time. I used to have dreams…we all did, of course, and they were sometimes nightmares…and my world had shrunk to a point where the figures in my dreams were myself, the guards and a voice…and that was McCain. I didn’t know what he looked like, so I could not visualize him in my dreams, because he became the guy—the only guy—I turned to, for a period of two years.
We got to know each other more intimately, I’m sure, than I will ever know my wife. We opened up and talked about damn near everything besides our immediate problems—past life, and all the family things we never would have talked to anybody about. We derived a great deal of strength from this.
A great deal of strength indeed. And I am certain I derived more strength from our friendship than he could possibly have derived from it. Bob Craner kept me alive. Without his strength, his wisdom, his humor, and his unselfish consideration, I doubt I would have survived solitary with my mind and my self-respect reasonably intact. I relied almost entirely on him for advice and for his unfailing ability to raise my spirits when I had lost heart.
He was a remarkably composed man with the courage to accept any fate with great dignity. There were times when I would start to lose my nerve. I would detect some sign that another camp purge was coming, and my dread of another beating would start to get the better of my self-control. Anticipating a beating could often prove more unnerving than the beating itself.
“Bob, I think it’s coming again, and I don’t think they’ll miss us.”
“If it comes, it comes,” he counseled me. “If it doesn’t, it doesn’t, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.”
It may strike others as odd that such fatalism could have comforted us, but it did. It was the best attitude you could hold under the circumstances. It steeled me when I was weak, and made me feel better about myself. Worrying about a beating was pointless. There wasn’t much I could do to prevent it, save disgrace myself, and disgrace hurt more than the worst beating.
Whenever I was plagued by doubts about my situation or my own conduct, I turned to the voice on the other side of my wall. And it was to Bob I went for guidance one June evening in 1968, after the Vietnamese had offered me my freedom.
CHAPTER 19
The Fourth of July
For months, I had received conspicuously lenient treatment. By the time Bud and I were separated, I was able to walk for short distances, and the Vietnamese decided I was fit enough to withstand interrogations, or “quizzes,” as the POWs called them. The Vietnamese had caught me communicating several times, and I was forever displaying a “bad attitude” toward my guards. During this period, I possessed the camp record for being caught the most times in the act of communicating, yet the Vietnamese often only punished my offenses with threats. Sometimes they withheld my daily cigarette ration or my bathing privileges, a punishment that served to make me even surlier toward my guards. Once in a while they would cuff me around, but not often, and they never seriously hurt me.
In my first return to the interrogation room after being left alone for many weeks, Soft Soap had asked me if I would like to go home. I had replied that I would not go home out of turn. To this, and with uncharacteristic churlishness, Soft Soap had said, “You are all war criminals and will never go home.”
After I went back to my cell, I relayed Soft Soap’s offer up the communication chain to Hervey Stockman, an Air Force colonel who was our senior ranking officer at the time. Offers of early release were a fairly common practice at the time, and we regarded them as nothing more than psychological torture. So neither the SRO nor I took Soft Soap’s inquiry very seriously.
Sometime in the middle of June 1968, I was summoned to an interview with the Cat. His interpreter was an English-speaking officer we called “the Rabbit,” an experienced torturer who enjoyed his work. I had been brought to the large reception room in the Big House, the room they often brought visiting peace delegations to for their clumsily staged propaganda displays. The room was furnished with upholstered chairs, a sofa, and a glass coffee table supported by two decorative ceramic elephants. An inviting spread of tea, cookies, and cigarettes had been laid out on the table.
The Cat began telling me about how he had run the prison camps during the French Indochina War, and how he had given a couple of prisoners their liberty. He said he had seen the men recently, and they had thanked him for his kindness. He told me Norris Overly and the two Americans released with him had gone home with honor.
After about two hours of circuitous conversation, the Cat asked me if I wanted to go home. I was astonished by the offer and didn’t immediately know how to respond. I wasn’t in great shape, was still considerably underweight and miserable with dysentery and heat rash. The prospect of going home to my family was powerfully tempting. But I knew what the Code of Conduct instructed, and I held back from responding, saying I would have to think about it. He told me to go back to my cell and consider his offer carefully.
The Vietnamese usually required prisoners who were released early to make some statement that indicated their gratitude or at least their desire to be released. They viewed such expressions as assurances that the released prisoner would not denounce his captors once he was back home, and spoil whatever propaganda value his release was intended to serve. Accordingly, they would not force a prisoner to go home.
As soon as I could, I raised Bob Craner and asked for his advice. We talked the offer over for a while and speculated about what I might be asked to provide in exchange for my release. After a considerable time, Bob told me I should go home. I had hoped he would advise me not to take the offer, which would have made my decision easier. But he argued that the seriously injured should be excused from the Code’s restrictions on accepting amnesty and should take release if offered. He said I should go home, as my long-term survival in prison was in doubt.
Close confidants though we had been for months, Bob and I had never really seen any more of each other than a couple of brief glimpses when the turnkeys took one or the other of us to the interrogation room or to the showers. Bob had never observed my physical condition and had only reports from other prisoners and my own occasional references to the state of my health upon which to base his judgment about my fitness for prolonged imprisonment. Yet this good man, who revered our Code of Conduct, and who braved the worst adversity with dignity, offered me a rationale to go home, out of turn, while others in at least as bad shape as I was in remained behind.
“You don’t know if you can survive this,” he argued. “The seriously injured can go home.”
“I think I can make it,” I replied. “The Vietnamese tell me I won’t, but if they really thought that I’m in such bad shape they would have at least sent a doctor around to check on me.”
“You can’t be sure you’re up to this. What do they want from you in return?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Well, when you go back, just play along with them. See what they want to let you go. If it’s not much, take it.”
“I don’t think I should go down that road. I know and you know what they want, and we won’t let it go any further. If I start negotiating with them, it’s a slippery slope. They’ll tell me they don’t want anything, but they’ll just wait until the day I’m supposed to go, and then tell me what they want for it. No matter what I agree to, it won’t look right.”
I wanted to say yes. I badly wanted to go home. I was tired and sick, and despite my bad attitude, I was often afraid. But I couldn’t keep from my own counsel the knowledge of how my release would affect my father, and my fellow prisoners. I knew what the Vietnamese hoped to gain from my release.
Although I did not know it at the time, my father would shortly assume command of the war effort as Commander in Chief, Pacific. The Vietnamese intended to hail his arrival with a propaganda spectacle as they released his son in a gesture of
“goodwill.” I was to be enticed into accepting special treatment in the hope that it would shame the new enemy commander.
Moreover, I knew that every prisoner the Vietnamese tried to break, those who had arrived before me and those who would come after me, would be taunted with the story of how an admiral’s son had gone home early, a lucky beneficiary of America’s class-conscious society. I knew that my release would add to the suffering of men who were already straining to keep faith with their country. I was injured, but I believed I could survive. I couldn’t persuade myself to leave.
Bob still counseled me to take the offer if the Vietnamese were willing to let me go without getting any antiwar propaganda from me. So I spelled out the reasons why I should not do it.
“Look, just letting me go is a propaganda victory for them. I can tell they really want me to do this. I mean, they really want me to go. And if they want something that much it’s got to be a bad thing. I can’t give them the satisfaction, Bob.
“Second, I would be disloyal to the rest of you. I know why they’re doing this—to make every guy here whose father isn’t an admiral think the Code is shit. They’ll tell all of you, ‘We let McCain go because his father’s an admiral. But your father’s not and nobody gives a damn about you.’ And I don’t want to go home and see my father, and he wouldn’t want to see me under those conditions. I’ve got to say no.”
Bob didn’t say much after that. He just wished me well, and then we dropped the matter. Several days later, I went to tell the Cat I wouldn’t accept his offer.
I sat for some time in the same well-furnished room with the Cat and the Rabbit, exchanging pleasantries and helping myself to their cigarettes. Eventually, again using the Rabbit to interpret, the Cat asked me if I had considered his offer. “I have,” I answered.
“What is your answer?”
“No, thank you.”
“Why?”
“American prisoners cannot accept parole, or amnesty or special favors. We must be released in the order of our capture, starting with Everett Alvarez”—the first pilot captured in the North.
He then suggested that my physical condition made my long-term survival doubtful. “I think I will make it,” I replied. He told me the doctors believed I would not survive without better medical care. His response amused me, and I smiled when I told him that I found that hard to believe, since I never saw a doctor except the indifferent Zorba, whose only prescribed treatment for my condition had been exercise and the consumption of my full food ration.
Cat, who evidently did not share my sense of irony, then tried to convince me that I had permission from my Commander in Chief to return home.
“President Johnson has ordered you home.”
“Show me the orders.”
“President Johnson orders you.”
“Show me the orders, and I’ll believe you.”
He handed me a letter from Carol in which she expressed her regret that I had not been released earlier with Norris and the other two prisoners. It was the kind of thing you expect your wife to say. I didn’t believe that Carol wanted me to dishonor myself, and the fact that the Vietnamese had kept her letter from me until now angered me, an emotion that usually serves to stiffen my resolve. I was dismissed with an order to reconsider my answer, and returned, holding my wife’s letter, to my cell.
A week later, I was summoned to a third interview, much weakened by dysentery, which had worsened since our last meeting. The interview was shortened by the effect of my illness. Shortly after I arrived, I asked permission to return to my cell to relieve myself. The request greatly irritated the Cat, who accused me of being “very rude.” “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I responded. He angrily terminated the interview, and I was returned to my cell.
During these sessions, the Cat had promised me that I would not be required to make any propaganda statements in return for my release. I had no doubt that he was lying. I knew that once I agreed, the Vietnamese would exert enormous pressure on me to record a statement, and I worried that my resolve would dissipate as I faced the imminent prospect of homecoming.
On the morning of the Fourth of July, Soft Soap entered my cell and mentioned that he knew I had received a generous offer to go home. “You will have a nice family reunion, Mac Kane,” he suggested.
“Yes,” I acknowledged, “but I can’t accept it.”
A few hours later, I faced a solemn Cat. That morning, the camp loudspeakers broadcast the news that three prisoners had been chosen for early release. The Cat had summoned me to offer me one last chance to accept his offer. This time I was not taken to the large reception room but to an interrogation room. There were no cookies or cigarettes offered. The Rabbit spoke first.
“Our senior officer wants to know your final answer.”
“My final answer is no.”
In a fit of pique, the Cat snapped the ink pen he had been holding between his hands. Ink splattered on a copy of the International Herald Tribune lying on the table, opened to a column by Art Buchwald. He stood up, kicked over his chair, and spoke to me in English for the first time.
“They taught you too well, Mac Kane. They taught you too well,” he shouted as he abruptly left the room.
Yes, they had.
The Rabbit and I sat there for a few moments staring at each other in silence before he angrily dismissed me.
“Now it will be very bad for you, Mac Kane. Go back to your room.”
I did as instructed and awaited the moment when the Rabbit’s prediction would come true.
That same day my father assumed command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. I wouldn’t learn of my father’s promotion for nearly a year, when two recently captured pilots were brought to the Plantation. A few months after they arrived, one of them managed to get a one-sentence message to me:
“Your father assumed Commander in Chief in the Pacific, July 4,1968.”
CHAPTER 20
Lanterns of Faith
At the end of the Korean War, America was shocked when a number of American prisoners of war chose to live in China rather than be returned to the United States. Reports about the brainwashing of POWs were publicly disclosed, along with even more disturbing accounts of some POWs who had treated their comrades inhumanely. Consequently, the military began to instruct American servicemen about what they could expect should they be captured and, more important, about what was expected of them. Toward that end, the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War was drafted. It reads as follows:
I
I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
II
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.
III
If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
IV
If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.
V
When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
VI
I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in God and in the United States of America.
Although the experiences of prisoners in the Korean War had necessitated this formal declaration of an American prisone
r’s responsibilities, the military did not anticipate how the North Vietnamese would regard POWs. Unlike the Japanese and Germans, and more insistently than the North Koreans and Chinese, the Vietnamese considered prisoner-of-war camps to be an extension of the battlefield. Ho Chi Minh had declared that the war would be won on the streets and campuses of American cities, and the Vietnamese were determined that we would serve that end. With the exception of incidents of arbitrary cruelty, many features of our treatment—forced confessions and antiwar declarations, meetings with peace delegations, early releases—were intended to help sway American public opinion against the war. Since the Vietnamese invested so much time and energy in coercing our cooperation, our fidelity to the Code was almost constantly challenged. Yet its principles remained the most important allegiance of our lives.
The days dragged on as I waited for the Cat to make good on his threat. I knew a bad time lay ahead, and that I would soon confront a greater measure of my enemy’s cruelty, an experience many of my comrades had already endured but I had been spared. I had seen the Cat’s fury, and it had made a deep impression on me. I tried to be fatalistic, and prepare myself to suffer the inevitable without dishonoring myself.
For almost two months nothing happened. Three prisoners had been released in early August. Their departure had been delayed for several weeks, and I assumed the Vietnamese had neglected my punishment to avoid complicating the release. Treatment for all prisoners in the camp was lax in advance of the event. I assumed that the Vietnamese were worried that if word got out that I had been tortured for refusing to leave, the prisoners who had accepted release might change their minds.
Then one evening in late August, several guards came and announced that the camp commander, the rough customer we called Slopehead, wanted to see me. They took me to a large room, a theater that had been used for Christmas services the year before.