HANOI — Little remains downtown of the prison known as Hoa Lo, a name loosely translated as “hell hole.”
"Most of the French colonial-era complex was razed to make way for a luxury apartment high rise. The Vietnamese government turned what was left into a museum exhibiting a few of the dank cells where Vietnamese revolutionaries were held and sometimes executed by the French in the mid-20th century.
"There is one small room near the back devoted to a different group of inmates who languished for years: American prisoners of the Vietnam War.
"To those POWs this was the Hanoi Hilton, a nickname that oozed irony and defiance, the kind of petty “thumb in your eye” that provided some small pride in a place designed to strip dignity away.
"Forty years ago on Feb. 12, the first of those long-held POWs were released as part of the Paris Peace Accords that ended America’s decadelong war with Vietnam.
"They boarded a waiting plane and landed free men at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. They flew on to Hawaii, then to their families at home.
" 'Forty years later as I look back on that experience, believe it or not, I have somewhat mixed emotions in that it was a very difficult period,” said Sen. John McCain, shot down and captured in 1967. “But at the same time the bonds of friendship and love for my fellow prisoners will be the most enduring memory of my five and half years of incarceration.”
"The POW experience at Hoa Lo — and in the archipelago of other prison camps in North Vietnam — was unlike anything American prisoners had encountered before or since." . . .
On the less honorable side of McCain, back in May:
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