Analog propaganda proves persuasive to some at 'Hanoi Hilton,' where exhibits selectively whitewash war

Hỏa Lò Prison, Hanoi
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Media illiteracy is not just an affliction of the aged.

In June, I visited Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as "the Hanoi Hilton," in Vietnam, where captured American soldiers, including the late U.S. Senator John McCain in 1967, were imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

Hỏa Lò was a prison well before the Vietnam War. The prison museum today mostly memorializes the brutal torture and execution of political prisoners at the hands of French colonial forces since the prison's 1896 construction.

Guillotine used by the French
in colonial Vietnam,
now at Hỏa Lò Prison
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The museum exhibits largely whitewash the imprisonment of Americans during the Vietnam War. Exhibits skip over the interrogation and torture of American prisoners, which conditions they were forced to deny in statements in the 1960s, but later reported (U.S. Navy, CBS News). Under international pressure, the Viet Cong improved conditions in the prison late in 1969. The museum focuses on that time and a prisoner exchange in 1973, in which McCain went home after more than five years.

Following the timeline of the prison's history through the many exhibit rooms, I came upon a group of British tourists, circa 20 years old. They were looking at an image of American soldiers playing volleyball in the prison yard. The photograph is a rather well known piece of propaganda, but it's represented in the museum as just a day in the life of "the American pilots" held at the prison.

One young woman in the group turned to her cohort. "See?" she said. "After the French treated them so horribly, this is how well they treated the Americans."

I guess history is written by the victors. 

Sometimes I lament that persons of my parents' generation, reared on Walter Cronkite, too readily believe anything they hear from a purported "news" anchor on cable TV or the internet. I wonder whether a screen-reared generation is too ready to believe anything they see on a museum wall.

I'll have a longer photo-essay on Vietnam, and the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, here at The Savory Tort on Friday, August 1.