Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
REMARKS: 730304 RELEASED BY DRV
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).
UPDATE - 09/95 by the P.O.W. NETWORK, Skidmore, MO
JAMES L. HUGHES
Colonel - United States Air Force
Captured: May 5, 1967
Released: March 4, 1973
The best way I can describe my attitude toward going to Vietnam is so that others might be free. In my way of thinking, I was helping a faction - in this case a majority - free themselves from a society and a regime they did not support, a regime that would in fact deprive them and retard their progress in terms of world progress. I was serving a group of people that had learned to love that which I love - freedom.
My hometown was Waterloo, lowa. Upon graduation from the local high school, I entered the Navy. Shortly thereafter World War II came to an end and I enrolled at lowa State College. When the Korean War began, I chose to enlist as an aviation cadet in the Air Force. An air accident necessitated plastic surgery. This was to go on for 12 months.
Various assignments ensued and then I put in a request to fly the F-105. This huge aircraft weighs 51,000 Ibs. on take off for a combat mission - it has one engine and is a most impressive weapon. With many hours of flight time I was ready to go into combat. However, following Christmas in 1966 I took a two week survival training course. This enlightened me as to what to expect if I were captured. Regretably, there was no way they could train one to prepare for months of solitary confinement lacking even the barest necessities for passing time. Now the time had come to say good-bye to my family and leave for Southeast Asia.
On May 5 Gordon (Swede) Larson and I reported for our briefing. We were to destroy a military complex. As I turned to make the bomb run on our target, I took a hit which wiped out the electrical and main fuel systems. During ejection my helmet was blown off and I sustained a hard blow on the head which rendered me unconscious, cousciousness was regained in the parachute descent. I was received on the ground by a large group of people, completely disrobed, although they later returned my underclothing, and was taken to a nearby animal shelter where they put me in with the chickens and the pigs.
I was later moved to a single family compound and put on a board bed. Two young girls came in and splashed iodine on my face wounds, bound my head with gauze and left.
About a half hour later I was blindfolded and forced into the back of a vehicle and carted off to Hanoi Immediately I was taken to the Meat Room of the Hanoi Hilton, so-called because of the bolts in the ceiling that could be used to string things up, such as POWs who blatantly refused them. My legs were put in shackles and an eight foot metal bar was put through the eyes of the U-bolts and this weighted the feet to the ground. They handcuffed my hands, tightening the cuffs with a mechanical rachet, breaking the skin and causing the hands to swell like five bananas on each arm. Then they put ropes around my elbows and from behind the torture guard put his foot on my elbow and pulled the ropes tight. He then brought the elbows together behind my back, gave me a judo punch to the right rib cage and cracked it, doubled over he brought the ropes from behind my back down to the metal bar at my feet and put my head between my shins. So my legs were bent, my elbows were touching behind my back and my head between my shins.
It was the same torture guard, lacking in innate intelligence who was with me on and off for six years. I found I could not think of home as that was a form of mental punishment. To sustain any form of sanity I had to block out that part of my life. I could no longer take the physical punishment if I subjected myself to mental punishment. 1967 was a terrible year for me. They exploited me at every turn of the road. The tortures were varied, such as interrogating me all night and then one could not lie down during the day. Sometimes this would cover a ten day period.
I found the only way I could avoid having to meet delegations, make tapes and be in films for propaganda was to go into a physical conditon bordering on death. I took my diet down to a bare minimum. My weight dropped to 100. With this routine I became in an emaciated and seemingly unstable condition and was able to survive without further exploitation with the exception of one tape and then again I went on the diet and continued it until release.
Our greatest triumph as POW's was the riot all 360 of us implemented to bring pressure that religious services could be held. Any gathering of over 20 people was not permitted. We held the service as planned with different men reading scripture, praying and offering the sermon. Some senior officers were removed and put in solitary. While those men were being led away all of the POW's sang the "Star Spangled Banner"- it resounded in the streets of Hanoi. We won - religious services on Sunday were no longer denied - our finest hour.
December 1996
James Hughes retired from the United States Air Force as a Colonel. He and
his wife Paula reside in Arkansas.
