7 – Hoa Lo Prison
Also known as the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ or ‘Hell’s Hole,’ the Hoa Lo Prison was bad even by the standards of the Vietnam War. The prison by built by the French in the late 19th century and was completed in 1901. The population of the Hoa Lo swelled rapidly within a few years, and there were 600 prisoners by 1913. The number continued to grow so by 1954, there were 2,000 inmates, and overcrowding was an obvious problem.
Even at that stage, the prison was notorious for the sub-human conditions it provided, but it gained its reputation during the Vietnam War. The first American POW to be housed in the Hoa Lo was Everett Alvarez Jr. in August 1964. The Vietnamese made no attempt to improve the terrible conditions. They opened a new area of the prison for the growing number of POWs in 1967, and it was given the nickname ‘Little Vegas’ by the inmates.
The American pilots captured and placed in the prison were usually in bad shape by the time they arrived, and things got worse for them very quickly. The North Vietnamese Army used the prison as one of its main sites for interrogating and torturing captured servicemen. They hoped to break the spirit of the American POWs and get them to reveal important military secrets. Torture methods such as lengthy solitary confinement, beatings, irons and rope bindings were used in contravention of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949.
Inmates of the Hoa Lo were kept behind 20-foot high walls with barbed wire and glass on top. While the North Vietnamese claimed that conditions in their prisons were no worse than those endured by their troops in South Vietnamese prisons, conditions at the Hoa Lo nonetheless improved from late 1969 onwards. More prisoners were moved there in late 1970. With more comrades-at-arms to talk to, morale gradually improved. The prison remained in use after the Vietnam War, but in the mid-1990s, most of it was demolished. There is a small piece of the prison open today, but it operates as a museum.
Sources For Further Reading:
Open Democracy – Romania’s History Wars: On The Sufferings Of Fascist Saints
Insight Crime – From Black Serpents to PCC: A Brazil Gang Myth Turned Nightmare
Insight Crime – São Paulo, Paraguay and Beyond: The PCC’s Growing Power
The Guardian – Inside World’s Most Bizarre Prison
Amnesty – Brazil: Carandiru Massacre Trial Must End Long Legacy Of Impunity
Ancient Origins – The Infamous Mamertine Prison and the Supposed Incarceration of Saint Peter
College de France Lectures – A Dispatch From Rome: The Mamertine Prison
History Things – The HMS Jersey: Gruesome Revolutionary Prison Ship
Smithsonian Magazine – The Grisly History of Brooklyn’s Revolutionary War Martyrs
Abandoned Spaces – The infamous Hỏa Lò Prison: Jokingly dubbed “Hanoi Hilton”
Politico – I Spent Seven Years as a Vietnam POW. The ‘Hanoi Hilton’ Is No Trump Hotel.
