INHUMAN CAPTIVITY U.S. PRISONERS’ SAD PLIGHT IN VIETNAM PRISON CAMPS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32486, 22 December 1970, Page 16

INHUMAN CAPTIVITY U.S. PRISONERS’ SAD PLIGHT IN VIETNAM PRISON CAMPS

(By

THOMAS M. DEFRANK and WILLIAM S. GRAY)

(Newsweek Feature Service) At least 450 Americans—some sick, some tortured, some going quietly insane—are in enemy prisons in South-East Asia. The price of their freedom is total United States withdrawal from South Vietnam, The price as viewed in Washington, is too high.

Yet the ordeal is like nothing ever endured before by American prisoners of war. The time factor alone is unprecedented. Three of the men are in their seventh year of captivity, at least 75 are in their sixth, some 158 in their fifth. And deliverance seems as distant now as from the’ first day of incarceration.

The near-solitude of their living conditions makes them the worst in the American military experience. No comparison is possible with World War 11, in which captured G.l.s were usually permitted to live in groups and organise their lives into a semblance of normalcy. “Americans just don’t realise what it’s like in a Vietnamese prison,” says a Pentagon official. “Too damn many people in this country have watched ‘Hogan's Heroes’ on the tube. They have the idea that prison camp is some sort of a jolly place.” Contacts denied But jollity is a group phenomenon and the North Vietnamese have destroyed not only groups but any feeling of group association. Prisoners are housed in oneto four-man cells and no real contact between inmates of one cell and another is ever permitted. “It is safe to assume,” says one former prisoner, "that there are some guys who have talked to only one other prisoner their cellmate in six years. You know every family secret he has, every movie he’s ever seen, every book he’s ever read. You talk about sex, politics, everything you can think of. But you finally always run out of things to say.” It is this staleness of life that is the greatest torture of all, according to the nine United States servicemen who have been released from North Vietnamese prisons. All endured beatings and humiliations during . their first weeks of captivity. But the nightmare days and years car.ie later. Breaking process

Since the enemy has apparently stopped extort-

ing “confessions” of “war crimes” the stilted unreality of the prisoners’ performances proved worthless as propaganda he has learned that forced mental and physical inactivity and tight confinement are far more effective in breaking the spirits of men. The breaking process is gradual. Typically, the men spend their prison lives in concrete, windowless 10-by--6ft cells. On opposite sides are planks resting on sawhorses, which are used as beds. No mattresses, no pillows. There is room between the plank beds for one man to walk at a time.

In winter, the unheated cells are so cold that the men "wear” their two blankets. In summer, everyone gets heat rash. They also face kidney trouble from lying on the hard beds as well as edema, intestinal worms, hair loss, dental problems and vision defects from the low-protein, highcarbohydrate diet. Weight loss averages 45 to 601 b. Medical care is minimal. Propaganda blasts The loud-speaker is the most prominent feature in every cell. At 6 a.m., it awakens the men with a 30rninute blast of propaganda. At 6.30, the daily ration of three cigarettes and a lighted punk are shoved through the Judas hole in the door. Then nothing but the loudspeaker until 10.30 when the first of the day’s two meals is brought. The usual fare is turnip or pumpkin soup, sometimes a sliver of pork fat floating in it, a loaf of heavy French bread and a pitcher of warm water. Ten minutes after delivery, the breakfast bowls are collected, and then nothing happens until noon when a gong signals the start of the twohour nap period. Two hours later the gong rings again, and there is nothing to do but listen to the propaganda broadcast until 4.30 when the feeding ritual is repeated. The loudspeaker goes off from 5.30 to 8.30, then returns for a final half-hour of propaganda. At 9, the prisoners go to bed with the single bare bulb. burning overnight all night. • Every other day, the prisoners are permitted to march to a bath house, but the notalking rule is rigidly enforced Once a month, they are taken to a entral reading room where clippings about riots and poverty and recession from American newspapers are made avail-

able jo them. Again: no talking. No escape It is the bleakest possible life, and the feeling of hopelessness is enlarged by the near impossibility of escape. “The American prisoner knows that he is in an Asian environment,” says a Pentagon official, "that he has little or no chance of escaping in a tightly controlled Communist society where his white or black face sticks out like a red light.” The life, of course, would be far easier if the North Vietnamese were willing to abide by the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners of war. But as far back as the time when United States military personnel in Vietnam were called “military advisers” and were mostly professional soldiers, the Hanoi regime—a signatory of the Geneva pact—made a momentous decision.

Captured Americans would not be given the status of prisoners of war. Instead, they would be treated as “war criminals.” For a time, this tragic situation applied to only a handful of prisoners —then escalation changed the picture, though not the policy.

Now there are more than 1500 Americans officially "Missing in Action” in the area—and more than 1500 American families cannot be sure whether their missing men are still alive. The Hanoi regime refuses to divulge the names or numbers of prisoners they hold. What statistics are available have been doled out to various peace groups in the United States and Europe. Policies secretive For years, United States policy on the prisoners seemed almost as secretive as that of the enemy. But lately the Government has begun to upgrade the issue. The recent raid on what turned out to be a prisonerless prison camp in North Vietnam dramatised the subject, especially when President Nixon decorated members of the raiding party at a White House ceremony. And the United States proposed—and got passed—a United Nations resolution calling for humane treatment of war prisoners. At the Paris peace talks, the United States representative Mr David Bruce has taken by far his strongest stand on the prisoner issue, denouncing the "shameful attitude” of the North Vietnamese. He also said: “We intend to get those prisoners out by one means or another.”

This enforces the impression in Washington that further raids on prison camps may be forthcoming, both in North and South Vietnam. There have already been several of these in the South. Late in November, for example, Navy frogmen freed 19 Vietnamese prisoners from a Viet Cong camp in the Mekong Delta. At present, the Viet Cong hold an estimated 78 American servicemen captive in the South. Counter-offensive If it has accomplished nothing else, the new United States diplomatic offensive on the prisoner issue has provoked a propaganda counteroffensive by the North Vietnamese. A few trusted Communist journalists have been allowed to visit the prisons, and their reports have painted a far different picture than that provided by the nine United States former prisoners.

A recent issue of "L’Humanite,” the official French Communist Party daily, told of prisoners going on outings to museums and auto drives through Hanoi. Sports, too: “In a courtyard, big husky fellows, bareheaded and tanned, leap around a basketball court.”

More to the point, the North Vietnamese have begun to forward letters from prisoners in unprecedented numbers and many American families have heard from missing sons and husbands for the first time since they were captured. Packages may also be sent to the prisoners, with apparently better prospects of their arriving unpillaged.

Bleak future But the future still lookr bleak. Even captivity is North Korea seems to hawy been less hopesless an or*vj. Commander Lloyd Bucher, skipper of the captured U.S.S. Pueblo, has been in contact with several of the returned prisoners, and he found differences in their treatment by the Vietnamese and his own by the Koreans. “In most instances the Koreans rather enjoyed t,e duty of beating prisoners,” says Bucher. “My impression is that the North Vietnamese assigned this' chore find it outwardly distasteful.”

To Bucher, choosing between prison life in Korea and Vietnam is “like deciding whether you’d rather lose both arms or both legs. They’ll both kill you, but eventually the guy in Vietnamese solitary will be more terribly affected.” f .