Transcripts For CSPAN3 1973 20240705 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN3 1973 July 5, 2024

Im going to call everybodys attention. It seems like youre all having great, which is the goal i to hear some talk about leadership at the tables with i want to introduce mr. Alvin townley name and as i introduce him i could stand up here and introduce him as youd introduce so many speakers could talk about the six books hes written are the emmy documentary that he was part of or that hes landed on three aircraft carriers in three oceans. But im not going to do that im actually going to talk about why we asked mr. Townley to be. So i was introduced to mr. Townley through mr. Sears, the director of innovation leadership innovation, the Stockdale Center, and he that mr. Townley would be a great speaker to kick off our homecoming 50th commemoration and and and as he talked about mr. And his writing of the alcatraz 11 and the p. O. W. S of vietnam and their families. But this is interesting could be a great start. And so i called mr. Townley and instantly i felt like i was sitting at the Kitchen Table is miles away on the phone, but i felt like i was sitting at the Kitchen Table, a conversation with him and. I knew right then it was the right person to bring to a venue like where were having conversations. And so i as i talked to him over the next several months, i felt the same way, like i was sitting the Kitchen Table, having a conversation. So thats why mr. Towne here today to talk to us and have a conversation about leadership through the stories of the p. O. W. S, vietnam and and their families and how that conversation, like you all just did with that. Mr. Townley. Right. Okay, celeste, thank you. That was a wonderful ive gotten a lot of introductions and that was top shelf phone. So thank you very much, everyone, thank you for coming today. I know everyone has a lot of things that they are doing. And a midshipmen study little bit. Yeah, some classes, things like that. So thank you for taking time away from that and everyone else. Thank you for being here with us to. Talk about what i think is a really important and, really interesting story that has couple of lessons that i hope you can take away from today as well. Im also happy because i got to come up here and have awesome crab cakes night. So thank you to my host for that was delicious im thrilled to be up here because i have a young theres been a waking up at 3 a. M. For the past two weeks wanting to play with me. And so being able to get 9 hours of sleep last night interrupted, very much worth the trip. So thank you for letting me come up here. You know, this been a really interesting couple of months for me. Ive been working with the Stockdale Center a little bit to activate the 50th anniversary of the p. O. W. So really today were kicking off a yearlong celebration where were going to mark the return of these from North Vietnam and celebrate and learn from all the activities, the examples, the leadership the advocacy that went into making that return possible. You know, if youve seen the black and white p. O. W. My flag, i think everyone here seen that at the bottom there for words. You are not forgotten. So that meant for the people the 1970s before the p. O. W. Came home, they were not going to forget that there were american servicemen in a foreign land, that they were going to bring home no matter what. They were not to forget those individuals. And then today, 50 years later, i think it means something little bit different. I think it means that we are not going to forget the example that they set and the values that their experience can teach us today. So im really honored to be part of this initiative. And so dr. , thomas, im very appreciative for this opportunity to to do that, but also happy for another reason to be here, the United States Naval Academy, because i dont think theres any other group of people that understands or can understand the p. O. W. Experience quite, as well as People Associated with this institution, understand the american p. O. W. , particularly in North Vietnam. You to understand their mindset, you have to understand that they were competitors and celeste now are in the bookstore. A little while ago. And there is just as much stuff that said go navy is there was a said beat army. So i know this is a Competitive Group that understands not wanting to lose and wanting to win. And so as i tell the story about the p. O. W. , i want you to keep that in mind, because they did not want lose. And so let me take you back to. 1965, and i want everyone to put themselves in the of Jim Stockdale father Jim Stockdale, senior and imagine that you are Carrier Air Group commander. Youre on the fast track to captain. And like many naval aviators, do you think that you are beyond beyond compare the best aviator in the whole right you yourself i see some nods over there and so nothing going to stop you from doing your mission and coming home safely back to your aircraft carrier. You take off for probably your 30th mission over North Vietnam. Youre leading your squadron and you come in for a for an attack, drop your ordnance and you start to pull out and youre thinking already thinking about a nice dinner in the wardroom. And youre at this point in the boardroom. There were linen, tablecloth and there were a mess. Steward so youre thinking about that. You were thinking about a clean bed and a hot shower. All of a sudden your aircraft shakes, your wings on fire. You look at your instruments, youve got seconds to figure out what to do in those 3 seconds, you realize you have to do what no aviator wants to do. You have to punch out. You punch out your your arm your leg. It hit coming out of the cockpit. Your response of the your chute opens and because youre low and just coming out of a dive youre on the ground and about 15 seconds. So this whole sequence of events from you being an invincible all American Naval aviator to being on the ground in foreign hostile country takes about 20 seconds. Imagine quickly that transition happens and they would know the worst place to parachute into when you just the place you just bobs the last place you want to go because nobody is happy. See you there. Right. So the second Jim Stockdale lands on ground, hes grabbed, hes beaten and hes stripped of everything, his radio, his weapon, flight suit, basically the North Vietnamese take away everything except, his honor and his will to survive there he has his money. Hes been he has no idea whats going to happen to him and eventually hes taken to hanoi, capital of North Vietnam. Hes taken particularly to wallow, which as all know, is also called the hanoi hilton. One most famous prisons in, all of history, one of the most infamous. And it was infamous before americans arrived because it was a colonial prison built by the french and used to hell house dissident North Vietnamese citizens. So the american who are in there said, you can just hear the screams and the groans of, you know, 70 years of colonial injustice. It was just a bad place to be. A lot of the North Vietnamese guards and who were in that prison actually been in that prison as prisoners themselves, slaves a decade or two before. So as more americans begin arriving in that prison, which, by the way, they even expect this, all of a sudden american pilots just start falling out of the sky. And they had they had to do something with them. So they them in this prison. And they knew, though, that prisoners that could communicate or prisoners who would not cooperate. So the First Priority for the North Vietnamese guards, North Vietnamese administration was separate to the american prisoners, keeping them separately couldnt communicate. They couldnt form any type of resistance. American p. O. W. S being, you know, very, very creative and realizing that if they werent able communicate with one another, they werent going to make it through this thing. They created one of the most ingenious systems of communication that im aware of. Its called the tobacco. I dont know, show of hands. You might familiar with the tobacco. You heard about that here. Excellent. Much better a civilian audience. So thank you. So, as you know, basically the p. O. W. S, the alphabet, which for any in here is 26 letters and. So they they put they put these letters put these letters into a five by five matrix. And they used c4k. So therefore its just five by five. And across the top of the matrix was a, b, c, d, e and down the side was a afl, q, v and so to tap a letter you would tap its row first though lets say were doing b. First row, second column, c first row, third column g is second row, second column youre at me like theres no way people could actually like this, but they did and it took a long time. But guess what . They had nothing but time on their hands. And so people would say the hanoi hilton sounded like a den of woodpeckers because the american p. O. W. S would be on the wall. Thats what they called it. Get on the wall and tap out all sorts of messages. And i like to think that maybe its my generation that pioneered text messaging abbreviations. But no, no, no. These p. O. W. S sending gm for good morning and gm for good night long before anybody ever thought of cell phone. So it was an incredible way to communicate and to keep, you know, to each other positive, keep each other in the loop, keep you, keep other part of a fighting unit. And so theyre the american p. O. W. Who are communicating as best they could and trying their not to give up any information to the North Vietnamese. You know, the geneva conventions dont allow a captor to ask except your name, rank, service number, date of birth and the americans did a pretty good job of just that for for a couple of months until about november of 1965 and november 1965, there were probably about 70 or so american p. O. W. S there in hanoi, maybe a little bit less so make you be Jim Stockdale again. You go into this called room 18, if you go to the hanoi hilton in downtown hanoi today there a hilton hanoi which is a hotel, but theres also the hanoi hilton prison. And you can go see sea the prison. You can go to room 18 and room 18 is where a lot of the interrogations happened. And so Jim Stockdale walked into room 18 and this guy named, rabbit, who was that was a nickname for the the officer who was in charge of interrogations for the North Vietnamese rab said, all right, you know, stockdale, sit down. Oakdale sits down and. Rabbit asked him, asked him to sign a confession, saying that he is a war criminal, that America Needs to get out North Vietnam and ho chi minh is the man. All right. So youre jim stuck in, remember the ground when you got shot down . Do you lost . Except, your honor and your to survive. So all you have left is your honor and, your ability to control what comes out of your mouth and what write all you have left. And there in that room, you make the choice of signing this confession. All right . Its a rabbit. Says, come on, we please sign this confession. My boss wanted me to get this confession from you. Just please. I got jobs i need to do. Just help out. No ones going to read this thing. Just. Just sign it. But again, you have nothing but your name and your honor, and so youre not going sign this or have this. All right . The rabbit calls him a guy that was nicknamed pig. I think i was kind of short stocky guy. And he comes rabbit puts him socks on ground, puts you on the ground and your legs are out in front of you. Your ankles are in irons. At this point. Hey, guys, theyre the cav. Apply a little extra pressure. So he begins to lace up the back of your arms behind your back. Now i know everybodys in uniform. Most of all are in uniform. So you may not be able to do this. If you want to, you can try, see if your elbows can touch. And if pig. I was in this, your elbows could touch your back. So if you want to think pain, think about being there with your legs out in front of you, with your shoulders being pulled back, with your sternum to crack open. And you dont think the human body can experience this much pain, let alone this much pain . And then it gets worse because you still, after all of that pain, youre still like i say that confession. So pig, i takes your hands and pulls them up behind your back, pushes your nose down towards your knees and you break because nobody. Nobody can kind of that kind of pain. So you signed the confession and you think youre the prisoner of war in all all of the hanoi hilton that broke you think youre the weak link in the chain. Youre the guy that didnt do what he expects of himself. You youre an invisible naval aviator. You expected. Yourself to perform better than everybody else, to be able to beat the North Vietnamese in that room. You lost. And so you go crawling back to your room, literally crawling back to your room because you cant walk. You crawl through the cell door, youre laying there in just filth and roaches and rats on, this thin little red mat, not even wanting to go home because you think youve lost your honor, and you think youre the only person that lost their honor in this way, then through the wall, you hear this. My catch that, gee, be you, which meant god bless you. But it meant a lot more than that. Admit that we know what youve been through. Weve been there, too. And going to get home together. And so the american p. O. W. Is through that Communication System and, through their ability to support one another, made sure that every man in hanoi understood that they were part of a military unit. They were not criminals. They were told every day, every North Vietnamese call them criminals, told in their criminals and Jim Stockdale, the other leaders, made sure that the americans remember they were fighting men. Theyre part of a unit and their mission wasnt what they hoped it was going to be. Right when they started this mission, they were they were hoping it was going to be a couple of hours, a couple of hours out. And they, you know, would be back home. This mission was the one they had and the one they were going to have to execute successfully. So among these p. O. W. S, a core of leaders, Jim Stockdale here am i, denton. Robby reisner, some other senior officers. And they came up with what is the most brilliant vision statement that ive ever heard. Corporate organizational militaire, otherwise rewards return with honor. The reason that was important and strategic was because people could communicate it easily. They could remember it, and they could act upon it because when they were in an Interrogation Room by themselves, there was list of rules for what to how to how to respond, what might come. They didnt know what was to come. They know what theyre going to be asked. They dont know what theyre going to be asked to do or say. So every man in hanoi could. For himself what it looked like to return home with honor. Now, they didnt know when they were going to return home with honor, you know, for all they knew it could be next week, it could be a year from now. No one ever thought it was going to be as long as seven or eight years, which it was for some people. But they knew what it meant and what it looked like for them to walk off an aircraft. Some in indeterminate point in the future with their head held high, being able to look their family, friends, their fellow Service Members in the eye and know that they did their best and they kept their honor bright. So the men i mentioned became a real problem for. The North Vietnamese, North Vietnamese were trying to run a you know, reasonably efficient prison system, trying to get propaganda out of these american p. O. W. S and these guys who, for them leave a bunch of guys in their forties. These old men, right these old men were confounding all of their plans and they realized they were 11 guys of all these people that was there, 11 guys that were so obnoxious uncooperative, intentionally subversive and effective, they had to get of them. So they kicked them out of the hanoi hilton. Do you realize how bad you have to be to get thrown out of a p. O. W. Camp, but thats these guys. And not surprisingly, three of the ringleaders were graduates. The United States Naval Academy. So you might have noticed the increased security out in the parking lot this morning, because one of these reprobates, one of these troublemakers, is with today. And im going to get in trouble for recognizing him. So im going to apologize in advance for doing that. But theres a very special gentleman here whos been very special to my family my daughter actually carries his middle name on purpose. She has four grandparents in atlanta and she has an admiral in northern virginia. And i want to introduce to you admiral Robert Harper shoemaker, distinguished graduate, the United States Naval Academy and, p. O. W. For eight years and one day. All right. Hes going to hes getting embarrassed now and i will get in trouble for that. But i didnt the opportunity to pass to not let you know how much emeka is, maybe speak to him if you can. Its just a very special person to me. So thank you for being here. Anyway. So, alma shoemaker, future admiral, i guess you werent a admiral quite then yet. You are a Lieutenant Commander shoemaker and matter stockdale, commander denton and eight other guys were taken out the hanoi hilton at night i believe was may i sorry . October 23rd. I think its 1967. And for those of you that goin

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