Hoa Lo Prison

The Vietnam war was a war between the communist North Vietnam and the democratic South Vietnam In which the United States intervened heavily. It was one of the most controversial wars in US history and it was also a war that involved a lot of politics and conflicting ideological principles , which was heavily opposed by the majority of American citizens. This essay is mostly about misinformation and propaganda about what actually happened on both sides of the conflict, centered mostly on the maison centrale, or the Hanoi Hilton. 

The Maison Centrale was built in 1886 by the French colonists to hold Vietnamese citizens who disagreed with the French or tried to create a riot. It was mostly used to hold political prisoners who the French saw as dangerous. The Vietnamese called it Hoa lo, which translates as “fiery furnace” or “hell’s hole.” It was an infamous center for torture and a symbol of why the Vietnamese were resisting. The prisoners also turned it into a sort of school of politics, where they would share their ideas and discuss how a free Vietnam would be structured.

After the French had been expelled and the Vietnam war had begun, it was used as a prison for Americans, downed pilots and aircrew especially, where its legacy as a torture center was continues. One of the most famous prisoners, John McCain, was held there and wrote in “Faith Of My Fathers” how after he was fished out of a lake, he was tortured using his broken legs and arm, and given no medical care. he was simply thrown onto the floor of a cell and given a spoonful or two of food a day. The only medical care he received was after they learned that he was the son of a navy admiral, and gave him a sloppy cast for his arm that actually made it worse and eventually rubbed his skin off down to the bone in places. Despite this treatment, prisoners were forced to make propaganda statements about how they were “treated better than the Vietnamese themselves” and “repentant of trying to kill such kind people.” The Americans were only able to get an idea of what was happening when Jeremiah Denton blinked the word “torture” in morse code during a propaganda interview. 

Nowadays it is common knowledge how the Vietnamese constantly tortured the inmates, but if you visit the prison as we did, the war is presented like this: The Americans only got involved in the war because they wanted to kill Vietnamese people and keep the south away from the north even though the south Longed to be reunified with the north. Inside the prison, they still use “evidence” to show how well the Americans were treated. This “evidence” is the quotes that the Americans were forced to say under threat of torture. This is so that the Vietnamese who visit the prison can see how kind and just their communist government is. The rest of the world can simply look up the prison online and see what really happened, but the Vietnamese people can’t. Because they are living in a communist country, every source of information is strictly watched and manipulated so that it says what the government wants it to say, which is almost never something that is true.

The American version of the story, however, is also not all the facts. While not twisted and manipulated, our side of the story also tends to drift in the direction of “we were in the right.” That is to say that although it is somewhat unconscious, American readers tend to describe the war in a way that puts America in a good light. In reality, both sides of the war were both good and bad. The north of Vietnam did invade a peaceful country and force communism upon them, but they were also trying to drive out those that they saw as foreign enemies and re-unify their country. The south and the Americans were trying to protect democracy and save the citizens of the south from the certain economic failure that is communism, but we were still bombing innocent families and killing hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians. Even the Viet Cong soldiers are to some extent innocent, because you have to remember that in a communist country, you only hear what the government wants you to hear. They probably thought that the Americans were occupying the south and enslaving the people as the French did, and that the south wanted to be communist.

In conclusion, although both sides of the story are to some extent off from the truth, the Vietnamese version is far more inaccurate. This is, as I described earlier, possible because under communism that is the only version the Vietnamese get to hear. There is no contradicting story, so the story presented must be the only one there is, and therefore true. This is also another reminder of why it's important to question all the information that you are given, so that you are not deceived into believing whatever people want you to believe.

The original guillotine used to execute Vietnamese political prisoners

A replication of the conditions in the prisons. Vietnamese prisoners were sometimes kept in leg irons for weeks at a time.

The cells used to hold US airmen.