Shu felt pain in his back slowly growing but ignored it and turned his attention to his current predicament. He quickly loaded his revolver with .38 caliber slugs, then began burrowing into a nearby thicket, hoping to hide until nightfall. With darkness cloaking him, he planned to trek the 5 miles to the coast and somehow orchestrate a rescue.
For the next hour, he watched from his hiding place as North Vietnamese soldiers and civilians canvassed the field, calling in French for the English-speaking pilot, “Anglais, Anglais!” Shu thought he had evaded the search parties until one last North Vietnamese soldier happened to look through a small tunnel in the brush that led directly to Shu’s eyes. The two men stared at each other, and the soldier leveled an AK-47 at the fugitive. Shu considered firing his .38, but the soldier had the drop on him—and as one man with six bullets surrounded by foes with automatic weapons, he knew his odds.
Bob Shumaker, the second American aviator captured in North Vietnam.
An hour earlier, Shu’s Crusader had roared over the waves firmly under his control. Now he huddled in the scrub brush of a third-world country, dirty, outgunned, unable to speak the language. With no realistic options, he raised his hands. During the August 5, 1964, retaliatory raid ordered by President Johnson and led by Jim Stockdale, Lieutenant Ev Alvarez had become the first U.S. aviator captured in North Vietnam. Shu had now become the second.
* * *
Soldiers quickly bound his hands, blindfolded him, and stuffed him into a jeep. Then he began a three-day journey that would take him from Đồng Hới to the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. Every pothole the driver hit sent pain shooting up Shu’s injured back, making the trip all the worse. The jeep stopped before entering each town along the way, and a political officer would hustle into the village and gather crowds of citizens to receive the prisoner. The guards would take Shu out of the truck and parade him through mobs of shouting townspeople who rained blows on the captive, likely the first American they had ever seen. With his hands cuffed, Shu simply tried to maintain his footing and get through one humiliating onslaught so he could face the next.
After three nights of traveling blindfolded through villages and farmland, Shu detected the noises of an urban area. The jeep made a number of turns that seemed to lead deeper into a city until it rumbled to a halt. Soldiers lifted Shu out and set him on his feet. He heard gates open and walked forward along a bricked path. The gates shut behind him, and he heard another pair swing open. Hands on his arms and back pushed him forward. He heard his footsteps echo off walls and a ceiling; he had entered a tunnel. The echoes faded as he emerged 70 feet later and again detected open space around him. The air smelled musty. He felt the guards direct him to the left. He stepped onto a hard floor and heard his steps echo again in a smaller corridor until he emerged into another open space. He turned right and was shoved through a doorway. Then the guards removed his blindfold.
He looked around at a Spartan room with white walls and a smooth concrete floor. He guessed he was somewhere in Hanoi. In fact, he stood near the city’s heart. He had arrived at one of the darkest spots in Southeast Asia: Hỏa Lò Prison.
* * *
When native Vietnamese forces surrendered to the French in 1883, the conquerors quickly consolidated their power and claimed the territory’s people and resources for France. The vigorous application of colonial justice soon filled jails with so many rebels and dissenters that the penal system needed additional space. In 1896, the French regime began constructing a new prison in central Hanoi, near the existing Court of Justice and Intelligence Department. The government cleared forty-eight small houses from the neighborhood of Phú Khánh to build a 42,349-square-foot detention facility. Phú Khánh residents had been known for their pottery kilns, or hỏa lò—pronounced “wah low.” So although the administration gave it the official name of Maison Centrale (literally the “central house,” but meaning “prison”), the place quickly became known as Hỏa Lò Prison. It received the name for another reason as well, though. Hỏa lò had an alternative translation: hellhole.
When Hỏa Lò began receiving inmates in 1898, the compound’s yellow and gray stone wall—built nearly 2 feet thick—stretched around a trapezoidal plot between several of Hanoi’s busiest thoroughfares. A hedge of green glass shards covered the top of the 13-foot-high bulwark. Live electrical wires ran above the glass. Several trees arched over the walls and shaded the security moat between the outer wall and the inner buildings. Inside, the terra-cotta roofs of cellblocks and administration offices rose above the walls. From the outside, Hỏa Lò looked as much like a walled government compound as a prison.
Its interior, however, revealed its purpose. Colonial jailers at Hỏa Lò had clamped Vietnamese prisoners in stocks on long wooden platforms in mass holding rooms, pressing twenty-five nearly naked men together with little concern for their toilet or exercise. Authorities dispensed food and water frugally—and prisoners found both of deplorable quality. Wardens sent the condemned into solitary confinement in the southeasternmost cellblock, where they spent their last days chained to bunks in dirty, claustrophobic cells. In the courtyard, jailers frequently employed the guillotine. As the years passed, conditions grew worse. Wardens became more callous, and overcrowding soon added more misery to the inmates’ dreadful existence. In 1913, the population had reached six hundred inmates. By the end of French rule in 1954, the place held more than two thousand; many of those prisoners suffocated in impossibly cramped cells.
Like the American airmen who would one day inhabit these same cellblocks, the Vietnamese inmates learned to retaliate. In January 1930, they declared Hỏa Lò’s first hunger strike. United, they protested the food they received, and the wardens begrudgingly improved their rations thereafter. For the next twenty years, prisoners won similarly small but important victories through unified resistance. On several occasions, the French purged the prison population of its leaders, either killing them or exiling them to other facilities. Less overt but equally important defiance came in the form of covert communication. The Vietnamese developed invisible ink from stolen medical supplies and stashed notes throughout the prison. The authorities knew their control depended on isolating prisoners; the prisoners knew their lives hinged on maintaining contact with one another. Some of those same prisoners would return to Hỏa Lò as wardens themselves when the cells began to fill with Americans; North Vietnam’s prime minister and its general secretary had also served long prison terms during the 1930s and 1940s. The North Vietnamese would not forget the lessons of their own captivity.
In this new conflict, North Vietnam would use Hỏa Lò Prison as part of its plan to defeat—or more precisely outlast—the United States and whatever U.S. ally might hold power in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. The North’s three-pronged strategy included a committed military campaign, international diplomacy and political choreography, and proselytizing—influencing the minds and hearts of citizens and soldiers in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States. General Võ Nguyên Giáp advocated “using the enemy against the enemy,” and the Ministry of National Defense directed the Enemy Proselytizing Department (EPD) to gather intelligence from any American POWs. The government would also use prisoners for propaganda and attempt to indoctrinate them with Communist dogma. The Ministry of Public Safety, an organization similar to the Soviet KGB, would run the prisons and shared responsibility for interrogating prisoners with the EPD. They were to extract information and propaganda statements, then deliver the results to the Ministry of National Defense, for military use, or to the Office of the Prime Minister, which would broadcast the material through national and international print, television, and radio. These groups—collectively called the Camp Authority—aimed to use POW statements to win sympathy and erode domestic and foreign support for the Americans. North Vietnamese leaders considered antiwar propaganda vital, and they would place heavy pressure upon the Camp Authority to obtain it.
Hỏa Lò Prison, the
“Hanoi Hilton,” looking east by southeast. The main gate is top, center.
When he arrived at Hỏa Lò Prison, Bob Shumaker knew none of this. He just found an old, dirty colonial garrison. There in his holding room, he could only speculate that elsewhere in the facility, jailers had locked away Ev Alvarez, who Shu knew was the first aviator taken captive. Indeed, Alvarez was locked in Room Twenty-four, less than 100 feet away.
Since Shu had worn a blindfold throughout his drive into Hanoi, it took his eyes some time to readjust. Observing his new room more closely, he found it not unpleasant and, in fact, fairly spacious—perhaps 12 by 15 feet—more like an office than a prison cell. A desk even stood along one wall. On the tile floor, he found a woven bamboo bedroll, along with a toothbrush and toothpaste tube, a wash rag, coarse brown toilet paper, a bar of brown soap, a mosquito net, and a thin blanket. A guard soon entered the room and took his flight suit, leaving Shu what seemed like civilian clothes: khaki pants and a shirt. He also received a pair of sandals made from tire treads. The guard said, “Xô,” Vietnamese for “bucket,” and pointed to a corner. There, Shu found the most demeaning item of all, his “bo,” a three-gallon pail that he quickly deduced would serve as his personal latrine.
Roughly six hours after Shu arrived, a guard outfitted in green fatigues and sandals similar to his own opened the door and motioned the captive into the courtyard outside. As he left, Shu noticed the number “19” by his door. The guard pushed him down a short open-air passageway of dusty terra-cotta tiles to a large room with French doors, heavy curtains, and concrete flooring much like his own room. Its door was numbered “18.” When he entered, he found three officers seated behind a table covered with blue cloth. Above them, a lightbulb dangled from a plaster ceiling that also held a meat hook. A low concrete block sat before the officers; Shu gathered they intended that to be his seat. He squatted down onto the block and looked up at his captors. The interrogators did not state their names, so Shu privately assigned nicknames. He dubbed the apparent ringleader Owl, for his round face, short body, and deep-set eyes. Owl introduced himself as commandant of Hỏa Lò Prison and pulled up his sleeves to show Shu ghastly scars from his own imprisonment in Maison Centrale.
Shu began by stating his basic identifying information, “Shumaker, Robert H.; Lieutenant Commander; 548955; May 11, 1933.” The interrogators smiled and thanked him, then inquired about his squadron, his training, his airplane, his ship, his family, and his opinions. It reminded Shu of a high school quiz. If Owl expected answers, however, he was disappointed. In response, Shu just asserted his rights under the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The treaty, signed by North Vietnam, the United States, and 102 other countries, defined the rights of POWs and outlined rules to ensure their humane treatment. It also prohibited captors from extracting anything more than a prisoner’s name, rank, service number, and date of birth. Shu had given everything he intended to give.
When he invoked Geneva protection, Owl scoffed, “You are not a prisoner of war. You are a war criminal! And we will try you before the Vietnamese people.”
Owl explained that, in North Vietnam’s view, the Geneva Convention did not apply to the present conflict—war had not been declared between his country and the United States. Even if it had, he said, the Geneva Convention granted no protection to pilots who had attacked civilians, which he accused Shu of doing. The soft-spoken engineer maintained his characteristically calm composure and simply took note that trial was a possibility. Whether the North Vietnamese honored the Geneva Convention or not, he planned to stick by the U.S. military’s Code of Conduct, which governed the behavior of servicemen captured by an enemy.
After learning how POWs struggled against Communist interrogators and harsh conditions during the Korean War, the Department of Defense had decreed that its men needed better preparation and guidelines to follow in captivity. So on August 17, 1955, in an executive order, President Dwight Eisenhower set forth the Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces of the United States. Its words would inform every American act of resistance in North Vietnam.
ARTICLE I
I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
ARTICLE II
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.
ARTICLE 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.
ARTICLE 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.
ARTICLE V
When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am bound to give only 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.
ARTICLE VI
I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.
Shu had every intention of adhering to the Code. Since he never expected to be taken prisoner, however, he had to work to recall those specific points and phrases that provided the standard by which U.S. POWs could always measure their actions and others could in turn hold them accountable.
The Code, like the Geneva Convention, established the Big Four—name, rank, service number, date of birth—as the only information properly obtainable from a prisoner of war. However, since the North Vietnamese knew that Shu had not surrendered freely and had no interest in cooperating, they saw little reason to extend Geneva Convention protection to an active combatant in an undeclared war. As it dawned on Shu that North Vietnam would make propaganda coerced from POWs a key component of its war effort, he would come to believe he had the right—the duty—to continue fighting this war tooth and nail, from cells, interrogation rooms, or wherever the enemy might confine him.
At present, Shu’s fighting was confined to Rooms Eighteen and Nineteen. After Owl’s initial failed attempts to get additional information, he switched to lecturing Shu on the history of Vietnam. He explained the long and unhappy colonial legacy left by the French and Japanese, lamenting his people’s struggle for rights and basic security. As recently as 1945, when it celebrated its newly won freedom from imperial Japan, Vietnam had looked to America as an ally. Now, as Owl saw it, the United States seemed bent on becoming his country’s new master. In fact, when Vietnam marked its liberation from Japan, Hồ Chí Minh, the leader of the Việtminh—the League for the Independence of Vietnam—had gratefully acknowledged assistance from America’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II precursor to the CIA. As Hồ Chí Minh himself had worked in Boston and New York during 1911, he had great hope for an alliance with the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt’s statements of support for former colonies like Vietnam further encouraged Hồ Chí Minh and other Vietnamese leaders. Then France set about reestablishing control over its former colony. The brief peace ended, and the First Indochina War began. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, needed France to counterbalance the Soviet threat in Europe, and he believed the French military offered the only roadblock to Communist domination in Southeast Asia. Thus, Truman committed himself to the French cause, even as his advisers expressed doubts about anyone’s ability to suppress Vietnam’s growing nationalism.
The Eisenhower administration held the course, believing that the Việtminh did the bidding of America’s Cold War adversa
ries in Moscow and Beijing. By the end of 1954, America had spent more on France’s venture in Indochina than it had on France’s portion of the postwar Marshall Plan; the United States bore 80 percent of the costs of the Indochina War. One U.S. diplomat quipped, “We are the last French colonialists in Indochina.”
In Room Eighteen, Owl extolled Việtminh general Võ Nguyên Giáp, who had secured independence with a victory over French troops in the northwestern valley of Điện Biên Phủ. The resulting Geneva Accords of 1954 declared a cease-fire and divided Vietnam—temporarily—into two halves. An internationally supervised election scheduled for 1956 would unify the country under a single government. By then, however, Owl explained that neither the regime in Saigon nor its French or American patrons had any interest in staging national elections. All parties knew popular ballots would hand power to the Communist Việtminh. Thus, Vietnam remained split, and North and South Vietnam had consequently come into being as two distinct entities.
During the lectures, Shu sat silently on his concrete block, amazed that Owl and others spent day after day delivering three-hour history lessons from the desk. “They must have cast-iron bottoms,” Shu thought to himself. “They must have.”
As his fruitless efforts to reeducate Bob Shumaker continued, Owl explained that under North Vietnam’s direction, South Vietnamese factions—Communist and not—that opposed the American-backed regime of Ngô Đình Diệm founded the National Liberation Front (NLF), a Communist-led political organization. They called their military wing the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF); Diệm had dubbed the PLAF the “Việtcộng,” a truncated and pejorative form of the term “Vietnamese Communists.” Owl praised the resistance and its opposition to what he viewed as a puppet regime in Saigon. He told Shu the NLF would triumph, aided by North Vietnam, which was pumping men and materials southward along a jungle transportation network that the United States nicknamed the “Hồ Chí Minh Trail” after North Vietnam’s head of state and chairman of its Vietnamese Communist Party. With that lifeline, the NLF had gained significant control of more than 40 percent of South Vietnam, despite heavy U.S. aid and thousands of advisers. Hanoi hoped the insurgency’s success would overwhelm the southern regime and precipitate a U.S. exit by turning American public opinion against the war.
Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned Page 3