Legacy of War

The Hanoi Hilton

I was in my early teens in the final years of the Vietnam War so I used to hear about all these places in Vietnam on the news growing up. Back then there were only three sources for news on television and then your local newspaper.

I remember asking someone in my family about the “Hanoi Hilton” and why it was called that and I remember being told, it used to be a Hilton Hotel before the communists took over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, it was a French run prison before the Vietnamese took it over and used it to hold American prisoners during the war. American pilots named it the Hanoi Hilton or the heartbreak hotel.