The Hoa Lo Prison Camp
During the Vietnam war many U.S. soldiers became prisoners of war (POWs). Some of those prisoners ended up in prisons such as the Hoa Lo prison. The Hoa Lo prison, located in the middle of the city of Hanoi, was nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. It got this nickname because the building was formally the old Hotel Metropole. The prison was North Vietnam's main penitentiary, and the Administrative headquarters for the country's entire prison system. There were approximately one hundred and forty Americans without passports or portfolios locked up in Hoa Lo Prison Camp. Hoa Lo was designed as a prison—makeshift jail.
One of prisoner wrote of his trip to Hoa Lo. He described being blindfolded ...
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with neither food nor water. In addition, no sleep was allowed and the questions and beatings continued (Colvin 6).
Prisoners were beaten for a variety of reasons; for example, a prisoner would be told to sign a paper and if he refused, he was beaten. The papers were usually statements or words quoted from Bobby Kennedy or Senator William Fulbright. The POWs learned to sign the papers using fictitious names; such as, "Ima Bullshitter." The communists didn't like it, but it was better than not signing it at all (Colvin).
Escape, although always on the minds of the prisoners, was highly unlikely. The prison grounds were surrounded by a concrete wall approximately sixteen feet high and six feet thick. The wall was also covered by glass shards of curved and jagged glass, some from the French champagne bottles, protruded by the thousands from the top of the wall. Some of the shards were at least six inches high; most were green with a some of the glass colored red. Therefore, the ...
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anyway, thinking maybe the feces would provide more protein. Some prisoners were held in solitary confinement. Those stuck in solitary confinement were said to be in Heartbreak Hotel. If a prisoner was caught talking to another, he was severely punished. Because of this, the POWs were forced to come up with another way to communicate without talking. They would tap on the walls of the cells similar to Morse code. The letters of the alphabet were arranged in rows of five so it was A-E, F-J, etc One tap meant the letter was in the first row, so that would be in the A-E row, the next tap or series of taps would signify what column that letter was in. For example, one tap, followed by two ...
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"The Hoa Lo Prison Camp." Essayworld.com. February 18, 2008. Accessed May 3, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Hoa-Lo-Prison-Camp/79212.
"The Hoa Lo Prison Camp." Essayworld.com. February 18, 2008. Accessed May 3, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Hoa-Lo-Prison-Camp/79212.
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