Hanoi Hilton Presentation by Robert L. Martinez All the People by Joy Hakim Images as cited.

It was July 18, 1965, and U.S. Navy Commander Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr., was sitting in the cockpit of a bomb-loaded A6 airplane on the carrier Independence, located in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Gulf of Tonkin

The deck of an aircraft carrier seems huge, but its runway isn’t long enough for a normal takeoff. So the plane was catapulted – off the deck.

Denton was on his way to North Vietnam. As he dropped his bombs over the target, near Hanoi, he felt a jolt. His plane had been hit. The controls were dead.

Denton descended into the Ma River, was picked up by Vietnamese soldiers, and became a POW, a prisoner of war.

Denton was put in solitary confinement, which means he was all alone in a tiny cell with only a concrete bed, wooden stocks that held his legs, and a bucket for a toilet. photos.igougo.com

He was physically tortured, mentally tortured, starved, and taken on a march through Hanoi where people hit him and spat on him.

For Denton, 1965 became 1966, and ’67, and ‘’68, and on, and on. Commander Jeremiah Denton

Some 700 Americans were captured and held in several prisons near Hanoi.

They gave the prisons names like the Hanoi Hilton, Dogpatch, Heartbreak, Alcatraz, and Briarpatch.

Former presidential candidate & Senator John McCain

The prisoners kept their sanity and their pride in themselves and their country by defying their captors.

The POWs talked to each other by tapping on the walls of their cells with a special code.

The American people disagreed about the war, but everyone was in agreement when it came to the POWs. We wanted them home.

The Vietnamese soon realized that they had important hostages. They filmed some of the POWs, intending to show that they were being well treated. POW John McCain (former presidential candidate).

Commander Denton kept blinking his eyes. Most people thought it was the bright camera lights, but Denton was blinking the word torture in Morse Code. alphabetcity.blogspot.com

Eventually, President Nixon secured a gradual withdraw of American troops from Vietnam. In return, the North Vietnamese released America’s POW’s.

After seven years, our POWs were heading home.

U.S. Senator John McCain returns home, and is greeted by President Nixon

These men had endured great hardship and had survived America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Some 50,000 Americans who had been in S.E. Asia would not return home with them.