[news] Vietnam names 'Hanoi Hilton' a historical site

[Dam Son <son@u.washington.edu>]

Vietnam names 'Hanoi Hilton' a historical site
                                  
June 21, 1997

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Vietnam's "Hanoi Hilton," the squalid prison where
American airmen languished during the Vietnam War, has been declared a
national historical monument, a government newspaper said Saturday. 

The Ministry of Culture and Information approved a recommendation to
preserve the remains of the compound, officially known as the Hoa Lo
prison, the official Labor newspaper said. 

For Vietnamese, the 85-year-old building is significant chiefly because it
held many revolutionary heroes during French colonial rule in the 1940s
and 1950s. 

"Some of our greatest leaders and heroes were held by the French at Hoa
Lo," historian Pham Tu told The Associated Press. 

The prison roster reads like a who's who of recent Vietnamese leaders,
including Communist Party General Secretary Do Muoi, revolutionary leader
Le Duan, and independence activist Phan Boi Chau. 

The building, with its yellow walls and rusting barbed wire, was converted
into a prisoner-of-war camp in the 1960s. American airmen shot down over
North Vietnam usually spent some, if not all, of their incarceration
inside the prison they dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton." 

Pete Peterson, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, spent much of his 6 1/2
years as a POW inside a dingy cell at Hoa Lo. 

"Hoa Lo was a very stark and very repulsive place," he said. "Some of the
areas were incredibly close quarters, very tiny cells with no light,
almost dungeonlike." 

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also was held in Hoa Lo. 

The last inmates, Vietnamese criminals, were removed from the prison in
1994. 

Much of the original building has been razed to make room for a marble and
glass office tower. One stretch of the front wall and a half-dozen cells
will be preserved and converted into a museum, Tu said. 

Along Hoa Lo street, the prison's looming main entrance with the French
sign "Maison Centrale" will remain to remind passers-by of a darker time
in Vietnamese history.