Hanoi Hilton

“	They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn't have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.	„
	~ U.S. Senator and Vietnam War veteran John McCain recounts the torture he suffered during his time imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton.

Hỏa Lò Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton was a prison used by the French colonists in French Indochina for political prisoners, and later by the Communist Party of Vietnam for U.S. prisoners of war  which were mainly air force pilots during the Vietnam War where they were abused and tortured and also endured miserable conditions, including poor food and unsanitary conditions. After the Vietnam War, it continued to be in use after the release of the American POWs.

Background

The prison used by the North Vietnamese Army to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other North Vietnamese prisons during the Johnson administration, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war.

In 1968, Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann from East Germany filmed in the prison the 4-chapter series Piloten im Pyjama with interviews with American pilots in the prison, that they claimed were unscripted. H&S asked them about the contradictions in their self image and their war behavior and between the Code of the United States Fighting Force and their behavior during and after capture.

Regarding treatment at Hỏa Lò and other prisons, the North Vietnamese countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. During 1969, they broadcast a series of coerced statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion. The North Vietnamese also maintained that their prisons were no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam, such as the one on Côn Sơn Island. Mistreatment of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners and South Vietnamese dissidents in South Vietnam's prisons was indeed frequent, as was North Vietnamese abuse of South Vietnamese prisoners and their own dissidents.

Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable. Following the late 1970 attempted rescue operation at Sơn Tây prison camp, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hỏa Lò, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect. This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale.

The prison was demolished during the 1990s, although the gatehouse remains as a museum.

U.S. Senator and former Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain was notably a POW at the Hanoi Hilton for five-and-a-half years during the Vietnam War after being shot down during a surveillance mission.

A common misconception is that the Hanoi Hilton was operated by the Viet Cong; this is not the case as the VC operated exclusively in South Vietnam and Cambodia.