The United States listed about 2,500 Americans as prisoners of war or
During the war, POWs in Hanoi prisons endeavoured to maintain a registry of captive Americans; they concluded that at least 766 POWs entered the system. POWs were initially held in four prisons in Hanoi and six facilities within 50 miles (80 km) of the city. No POW ever escaped from Hanoi.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lists 684 POWs returned home alive from the Vietnam War — the majority after the U.S. pulled out of the war in 1973. (The war officially ended April 30, 1975). There are 1,582 Americans still unaccounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
The national organization of former Vietnam POWs (NAMPOWs.org) includes men who served in the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Army. These remarkable men averaged more than 5 years of torture and inhumane treatment as POWs. As of July 2021, only 407 remain alive out of the original 662 military POWs.
With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, the American withdrawal had a firm end date. As such, the North Vietnamese released the POWs they still held. Between February and March 1973, 591 American servicemen were released by the North Vietnamese.
Robert Russell Garwood (born April 1, 1946) is a former United States Marine. Often cited as the last verified American prisoner of war (POW) from the Vietnam War, Garwood was captured on September 28, 1965 by Việt Cộng forces near Da Nang, Quang Nam Province.
Floyd James "Jim" Thompson (July 8, 1933 – July 16, 2002) was a United States Army colonel. He was one of the longest-held American prisoners of war, spending nearly nine years in captivity in the forests and mountains of South Vietnam, Laos, and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Bergenfield, New Jersey, U.S.
During a routine torture session with the hook, the Vietnamese tied a prisoner's hands and feet, then bound his hands to his ankles — sometimes behind the back, sometimes in front. The ropes were tightened to the point that you couldn't breathe.
Estimates of total casualties
Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30%. The Ministry of Defense for Vietnam reported 849,018 military dead during the war for the period between 1955 and 1975 (of which a third were non-combat deaths).
North Vietnamese torture was exceptionally cruel--prison guards bound POWs' arms and legs with tight ropes and then dislocated them, and left men in iron foot stocks for days or weeks. Extreme beatings were common, many times resulting in POW deaths.
59 American women who served as civilians (including nurses) in Vietnam were also killed and died in that war. 4 were POWs.
As a result, Everett Alvarez, a navy pilot who was captured a couple of months after Thompson, was named as the longest held POW when the conflict was finally over.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
On both sides, prisoners were tortured, abused and violated. This is shown by previously classified sources from the U.S. National Archives. NZZ / til. Much has been written in the United States about the treatment of American prisoners in North Vietnam.
Many Vietnam veterans claim that most people treated them with indifference and seemed uncomfortable listening to their stories from battle. Some people, however, saw returning soldiers as dangerous, violent symbols of an increasingly futile and terrible war—much like the individual Wowwk encountered.
The Mỹ Lai massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] ( listen)) was a war crime committed by the United States on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by the United States Army in Sơn Tịnh district, South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Joseph Alexander became a POW at 15. He was a military and civilian worker at Kelly AFB. Joseph Alexander never got to enjoy his youth. At just 14 years old, and with his grandmother by his side, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and is said to have been the youngest American prisoner of war.
The Viet Minh took 37,000 French prisoners in the 1945-54 Indochina war. About 60 percent died. Only 2,000 survivors remain alive. Boudarel remained in Vietnam after the war.
Operation Homecoming was completed on March 29, 1973, when the last of 591 U.S. prisoners were released and returned to the United States.
“Vietnamese torture was pretty standard for all of us in North Vietnam, we called it the rope trick,” Kirk said. “They took a piece of rope, wrapped it around your arms above the elbow three or four times, they'd run it behind your back to the other arm. They pulled your arms together until they touched in the back.”
Army Corps Nurses arrived in Vietnam as early as 1956. 90% of women who served were volunteer nurses. 8 American military women were killed the Vietnam War. 59 civilian women were killed the Vietnam War.
A tour of duty in Vietnam for most ground forces lasted one year. Becoming “short” by having less than 100 days left in a tour of duty was a cause for celebration. It also required a countdown calendar on which each day was crossed off until only the “wake-up” – the last morning in Vietnam – remained.
Using the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as a mnemonic device, he memorized over 250 prisoners' names. When the Vietnamese decided to release three prisoners from the camp, Douglas didn't want to go.