During the 1970s, Americans were riveted by stories of prisoners of war coming home from Vietnam. One part of the story that often went untold, though, was that there were many POWs from Hoa Lo Prison who opposed the war. How were these dissenters portrayed at at the time and why was their story purged from public memory?
With us today to discuss are Tom Wilber and Jerry Lembcke, co-authors of the new book Dissenting POWs: From Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison to America Today (Monthly Review Press, 2021), which challenges conventional accounts of the POW experience and debunks many of the myths and legends that have grown up around POWs from Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison.
