James Stockdale Interview (page: 4 / 9) Medal of Honor	Print Interview

Admiral, how did you survive psychologically? The other men you mentioned perished under the same circumstances.

James Stockdale: I don't know. I didn't feel like I had more vitality than the next one. I had things to do. I was alone a lot, and I found ways to talk to myself and to bolster my own morale. I was getting occasional letters from my wife Sybil. And she would from me. She probably wrote 50 and I got six, and I probably wrote 20 and she got two or something like that.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. After I came out of Alcatraz, we all came back to the regular prison. They tried to get me to go downtown. They tried everything. They would give me the ropes three times a week. One of my original breakthroughs was self disfiguration. I was given a lot of times in the ropes in room 18, which is the main torture chamber of Hoa Lo prison. It also serves as kind of a ceremonial chamber when no prisoners are in there. In that, the only room in the building, a great big building with plate glass windows, and they had big heavy quilts that they drew across it. I was in there and they were about at their wits end. Two officers were working me over. Pi Ga, my torture guard, was always there to take me wherever they wanted. It was about mid-afternoon and they said, "Okay, you've done okay, today. Now you want to get washed up." I knew what that meant. That meant we were going downtown that night.

On any day you could probably find a couple of international discussion groups somewhere in town and on some days probably five of them. And they would cajole Americans into going downtown. It's not so much the location, it's some place in Hanoi where you're going to talk about politics and nothing else. I never went downtown. In Heartbreak Hotel a lot of prisoners only had access to this shower head that was in a regular cell with two cement seats or beds. But this was dedicated to showers, they didn't have anything else to do. So you walked in and you went between these beds and then you saw the spigot and pretty soon the water started coming out and you were to take your clothes off and he handed you the soap and the razor and slammed the door because he had other errands to do.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. As soon as I could I got my head wet and lathered up, I started with that safety razor, just cutting a track down the top of my head that I judged would make it impractical for them to take me downtown. He came back to the peephole and I ducked down, just showing him my behind, which is all he could see because I was stooped over, and then back up and again. I didn't realize that I was bleeding so bad. And then he came in and grabbed me, grabbed my arm and he knew he was in trouble, too. There was blood running down my shoulders and there were secretaries in the courtyard that we went by and they were looking. That was the headquarters prison of the whole country of North Vietnam so they had offices and they had everything you can expect. He took me back into this room and boy, those two officers, they said, "How dare you? How dare you?" I just got down in the position for the ropes and he said, "You have no right to take the ropes." I knew I was getting him screwed up. Finally they said, "I got it. We'll get a hat and we'll take you down to the press conference with a hat on." So as soon as they locked the door, I looked around for something else to do damage to myself with, and I saw the old toilet can that had been there for years, and I knew every chunk of it, but that was infection and one thing -- and then I said, "Well, what's wrong with this mahogany stool?" and bang, bang, bang, bang, and the secretaries across the hall wondered what the noise was and they started shaking the door. I didn't -- couldn't see them. But by the time they got back my eyes were closed and there was no question about it. They couldn't do anything and said, "What do you want me to tell the commissar?" I said, "You tell the commissar the CAG decided not to go downtown tonight." And they went out and then they gave me -- you know, then through that -- other times I'd used other devices.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

They told me, "We think they're going to put you in the mint pretty soon." And that was kind of the end of the line. There was an old privy outside, and we had this signal system. You could take a vertical wire -- the outsider wouldn't even realize it was up there -- and if you moved it this way, that meant there was an old bottle under that sink. If you had a message for Stockdale he would know that he had a message in the bottle. If it looked like it was booby trapped you'd just push it back. There was even a position for if it was okay.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. So I was down there and I was exchanging notes and getting things done and then I had kind of got a nice note from a guy and I -- but we were -- what we were using for paper and pen was tough toweling that was sort -- it was the idea of toilet paper and rat manure. You'd lick it and you could print right on it and get another piece. And so a voice said -- and I was careless on this. He sneaked up under the door, and it was kind of a complicated thing but he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm reading these letters my wife sent me," which was authorized. They would leave letters. And he said, "No, your hand was moving." Uh-oh, I knew it. Well, then he ran and he got the turnkey and they came in and they got me out and they told me to put my hands up -- this is the typical prison shake down position.

In the meantime I had had sense enough to put it in the crotch of my pants. I did that because I concluded -- and I think I'm right -- that there's a great connection between farm boys in Illinois and farm boys in rural Vietnam. They have a sense of propriety against intruding in other people's private parts. As far as I know that's true. I don't know, because I didn't have it up there well enough. As I was walking back it rolled out of my pant leg and then they had it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was something in the air. I don't want to make this too mysterious, but it was kind of a dark and dreary night. As they walked me over to the other side of the camp and put me in a little privy-like place I'd never seen before that's just full of cobwebs -- it would only accommodate one man -- and I think they were just doing something to get me out of that camp so that I knew I'd go in room 18 the next morning. And the man came in with leg irons and he put them on me and they were squeeze irons, built to put pressure points on your legs so you couldn't sleep that night. And I looked down there and he was, so help me, weeping, and not out of sympathy for me I'm sure, but I marked that down in my book. And then the next morning, when I was taken over to the other place to get the torture started for that day there was a couple of other people weeping. And I said, "Old Ho Chi Minh probably died last night."

I'd been unsuccessfully accosted to give them information. I could hold it back from the particular crowd that was working with me that day, they were kind of halfway friendly people. Something was wrong. The whole country was going bananas. Later that afternoon, I was just lying down on my roll, assuming that the day was over, and this guy named Bug, who was a snotty officer, he said, "Get on your feet! Tomorrow is the day we bring you down." That meant I would succumb. And he said, "This country is in mourning. There will be dirge music in the streets tonight. Ho Chi Minh died last night and we're in mourning." Well, I'd anticipated that. And then they didn't let me lie down. They put me in a chair. They said, "Put him in a chair with ropes on his arms and traveling irons for his feet." Traveling irons were what you got so you could go to the bathroom in the night. I was depressed. I said to myself, "God, maybe I'm the problem here instead of the solution. I had said, "Here's my orders. Remember: B-A-C-U-S: BACUS." It could be tapped out. "B" means do not bow in public. "A," stay off the air, never talk into a tape recorder or a microphone. "C," don't kiss them good-bye when we go home. "U-S" might be seen as United States but what it really means is "Unity over Self." That was the first order. I put out dozens of them but that was the instruction. I said, "Maybe I'm the problem, because there had been people who were killed in the ropes." And then I just said, "I do know one thing. I've got to change the status quo because I'm going to be dealing with a different country tomorrow than I was yesterday. And who knows what's going to happen? They may go bonkers."

Get the Flash Player to see this video. And so I said, "I've got to change the status quo," and with that I got off from my traveling irons and went over and shut off the light, pulled back these blankets, and exposing the plate glass window, using the palm of my hand, which was relatively free -- I had enough freedom there, to get the long shards, pull the curtains back, turn on the light, get back in my chair and sit down and just start going like this. And, first of all, I started getting blue blood and I said, "Where is the blue blood coming from? We've got to get some red blood." And so I said, "I don't..." I said to myself, "Is this right? I don't know but I know I've got to..." my hands -- I had run out of ideas and I had to explore the future. You wouldn't think I had a future if you saw me. I passed out in a pool of blood.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

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