October 7, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Navy pilot Larry Spencer was captured in North Vietnam, he entered a world that few Americans would ever see. He spent years as a prisoner of war, first in a camp called “The Zoo” and later in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. Survival meant finding strength in small moments and holding on to hope that freedom would come again. Spencer tells his story in his own words, offering a rare and personal account of what it meant to live and survive inside North Vietnam’s most notorious prison.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories up next, a
story courtesy of the Iowa gold Star Military Museum at
Camp Dodge. Larry Spencer served twenty five hundred and fifty
one days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, six
days short of seven years. As one of the first
(00:30):
twenty POWs of the Vietnam War, Larry served longer than
any other Iowan. Larry passed away on May twenty first,
twenty twenty two. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
On February eighteenth, nineteen sixty six, James t Ruffin and
Larry Spencer, who you are about to hear from, We're
escorting an Air Force reconnaissance plane over the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And then.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
A little series of things that all contribute to something
bad happening take place, Like we had an equipment problem
with our radios on the airplane. We were flying above
clouds and got separated from the other two airplanes that
we were with. We got on the radio and said, hey,
we got a problem. We're not sure whether to this
(01:17):
day whether anybody heard us or not, but if finally
we found a break in the clouds, could look down
and saw that we were over land, and we knew
that was a bad thing because we were supposed to
be out over the water.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So we turned one hundred and.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Eighty degrees and hitded east and declared emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And the next thing that happened.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We heard a loud boom, which it turns out was
a surfaced air missile exploding below and behind the airplane.
I can remember thinking, oh my, I'm going to be
a pow. I looked over to the side of the
cockpit where I could look at the mirror up by
the pilot, and he gave me a thumbs up, which
usually means that's a good sign that you know, we
(01:59):
may obviously we have a problem, but the thumbs up
meant that I think we're going to be okay. And
the next thing I knew it got real windy in
the back seat. In this occasion, I think the thumbs
up meant I'm out of here. I broke through the
clouds in my parachute and came down. I was about
a quarter of a mile off the coast of North Vietnam,
(02:20):
and I could see some people putting a log boat
into the water while I was still in my parachute.
This boat came out, had two or three people in it.
As I recall, there's certain universal language that is understood
no matter what language it's spoken in, and one of
them is when somebody with an AK forty seven sticks
(02:41):
it in your face, your hands kind of go to
the I give up position. I had a pistol which
I had jettisoned at sea, because I knew if somebody
had if it was me with my little pistol against
some well armed people, it was going to be a
real short war. So I didn't want any problem with that,
so I jettisoned my pistol before they picked me up.
They hustled me into this jeep, took my shoes off,
(03:04):
and I think I was tied up, and we blindfolded
and the jeep took off.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It stopped a couple.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Of times during the course of the night, at what
I can only describe as a pep rally.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I pulled into a little village.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
There'd be a whole bunch of people up there, hooping
and hollering, with some of the political leaders leading cheers
and fight songs, and they would get you out of
this jeep and march you around the village and call
you dirty names, I'm sure, and shake their fist at you.
And then half an hour later you'd be back in
the jeep and off on another jaunt, not knowing where
(03:41):
you were going, but pretty suspicious that it would be
to Hanoi. And the gates swung open and they marched
me into this what turned out to be the old
French prison building Hanoi in the eighteen hundreds, which became
known as the Hanoi.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Hilton Larry was also in prison, and that too, low
nicknamed the Zoo by those detained there.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
In this camp, the Zoo, there was a driveway that
came in and made a circular route around the inside
of the camp, and so if there were some senior
officers coming, they would get a working detail out to
sweep up the leaves and stuff and have it make it.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Have a better appearance.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
That provided an opportunity to communicate with everybody that was
in the camp by the manner in which you swept
the streets with your broom and it's there's a communications
code called the tap code, which enabled whoever was sweeping
to pass information to everybody who was listening. And so
(04:44):
if the guy was sweeping, everybody in the camp could
hear him, and it was like a town crier. He
would tell you all the latest news that the guy knew,
and he'd be tapping it and anybody. All they had
to do was sit and listen, and you could get
the latest news. It might be six months old, but
it was news to us. We had three different types
of soup. Over the course of a year. There was
(05:06):
four months of spinach soup, four months of cabbage soup,
and four months of pumpkin soup.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Twice a day.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You could almost mark your calendar by when the food changed.
You can take your pumpkin soup and mash up the pumpkin,
put rice in with it. If you're having rice, or
if you're having bread that day, you tear your bread
up into little pieces, put it in the soup, stir
it all up, and visualize it as a Hungarian goulash
or macaroni and cheese or whatever. It's still going to
(05:36):
taste the same, but it helps you mentally. As your
grandmother used to tell you, you don't have to like this.
All you have to do is eat it. And most
days you didn't go out of the room for anything.
But the thing that you have to keep in mind
is that when you wake up in the morning, you
have no idea what that day holds. I'm sure our
(05:56):
blood pressure jumped thirty or forty points when a guard
would come to the on the walkway outside your room
and just rattle the keys to the door, because if
they came to the door, opened the door, pointed at you,
or gave you the whatever Vietnamese name they had assigned
to you, it was a Vietnamese word. I have no
(06:17):
idea to this day the name that they gave me meant.
It may have been dirty dog or something like that.
If they told you to put your shirt on and
your pant long trousers on, that you were going off
to see somebody that was not good. Nothing good ever
happened when you went out, and nothing could ever happened
at night.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Either. You were mistreated.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It was more so in the first years in the second,
but the Vietnamese were very willing to utilize physical discomfort
when they deemed necessary. There were times when well after
there were a couple of escape attempts and that started
purges that would last for months at a time where
people were brutally tortured. But it was something that happened
(07:00):
every day. Sometimes you thought it was going to And
they certainly tried the psychological thing of telling you, okay,
if you don't do what we want you to do here,
you know, we're going to beat you up. And the
threat that they would most often try to use orgs
say well, someday when the war ends, if you don't cooperate,
we're not going.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
To let you go. We're going to keep you here.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I don't think anybody believed them, but it was always
something in the back of your mind. But yes, physical
torture was a part of the experience, but it didn't
happen every day. On July sixth of nineteen sixty six,
the United States conducted air raids in Hiphong and Hanoi
(07:40):
for the first time. That was a significant step as
far as the Vietnamese concerned. They to think that the
United States would bomb a target in Hanoi made them
very angry, and so that night they took most of
the people from this camp, the zoo and some people
from another camp. There were less than a hundred prisoners
(08:00):
total at that time. They took about fifty five or
sixty of us, and we were blindfolded. We didn't know
where we were, but they took us to downtown Hanoi.
They got you out of the truck, you hand kept
you to one other prisoner, and you were sitting on
the floor on the street here out in the middle
of this residential area. They had Vietnamese soldiers on both
(08:25):
sides of this line of people. And when they took
the blindfolds off and told you to stand up, and
you were walking, they turned a corner and the streets
were lined.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
It was like a Fourth of July parade.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
And the streets were lined with people six seven deep
in rows on both sides calling you bad names. And
it's a really wonder that somebody didn't get killed in
that what we came to be known as the Hanoi March.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The cadres were trying.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
To keep the people back from throwing rocks at us
and hitting you over the head with shoes. It's a
wonderful nobody didn't get knife stuck in their back when
that was going on. It ended up a couple hours
later at a soccer stadium in downtown Hanoi, and when
they opened the gates of the stadium to try to
get the prisoners in here, there was a surge of population,
(09:14):
of civilian population any only that just burst right through
the gates at the same time. They ended up with
all the Americans sitting out in the middle of the
soccer field, with soldiers all around us trying to get
the while they tried to get all the civilians out
of here. February twelfth was the first day of prisoner
release in accordance with the agreements that were signed in
(09:36):
Paris at the end of January nineteen seventy three. And
then in my personal case, I was on the first
airplane home from Clark Air Force Base on Valentine's Day
of nineteen seventy three. There were twenty guys on the
first airplane home, and I had the good fortune to
be one of them. The adjustment process to life in
(09:57):
the seventies was pretty remarkable in itself. Well, that was
quite an experience as well. Fortunately for us, the one
thing that everybody could agree on about the Vietnam War
is that they were glad to have us home.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And a great job on the editing by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to the Iowa Gold Star Military
Museum at Camp Dodge for graciously allowing us to air
this audio, and as he said, simply hearing the keys
of the guards instilled fear into the prisoners. Nothing good
happened when you left your cell. Little good happened at night.
(10:35):
Unimaginable what men like this went through. Nearly seven years,
Larry Spencer served as a prisoner of war. His story
here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories up next, a
story courtesy of the Iowa gold Star Military Museum at
Camp Dodge. Larry Spencer served twenty five hundred and fifty
one days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, six
days short of seven years. As one of the first
(00:30):
twenty POWs of the Vietnam War, Larry served longer than
any other Iowan. Larry passed away on May twenty first,
twenty twenty two. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
On February eighteenth, nineteen sixty six, James t Ruffin and
Larry Spencer, who you are about to hear from, We're
escorting an Air Force reconnaissance plane over the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And then.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
A little series of things that all contribute to something
bad happening take place, Like we had an equipment problem
with our radios on the airplane. We were flying above
clouds and got separated from the other two airplanes that
we were with. We got on the radio and said, hey,
we got a problem. We're not sure whether to this
(01:17):
day whether anybody heard us or not, but if finally
we found a break in the clouds, could look down
and saw that we were over land, and we knew
that was a bad thing because we were supposed to
be out over the water.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So we turned one hundred and.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Eighty degrees and hitded east and declared emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And the next thing that happened.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We heard a loud boom, which it turns out was
a surfaced air missile exploding below and behind the airplane.
I can remember thinking, oh my, I'm going to be
a pow. I looked over to the side of the
cockpit where I could look at the mirror up by
the pilot, and he gave me a thumbs up, which
usually means that's a good sign that you know, we
(01:59):
may obviously we have a problem, but the thumbs up
meant that I think we're going to be okay. And
the next thing I knew it got real windy in
the back seat. In this occasion, I think the thumbs
up meant I'm out of here. I broke through the
clouds in my parachute and came down. I was about
a quarter of a mile off the coast of North Vietnam,
(02:20):
and I could see some people putting a log boat
into the water while I was still in my parachute.
This boat came out, had two or three people in it.
As I recall, there's certain universal language that is understood
no matter what language it's spoken in, and one of
them is when somebody with an AK forty seven sticks
(02:41):
it in your face, your hands kind of go to
the I give up position. I had a pistol which
I had jettisoned at sea, because I knew if somebody
had if it was me with my little pistol against
some well armed people, it was going to be a
real short war. So I didn't want any problem with that,
so I jettisoned my pistol before they picked me up.
They hustled me into this jeep, took my shoes off,
(03:04):
and I think I was tied up, and we blindfolded
and the jeep took off.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It stopped a couple.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Of times during the course of the night, at what
I can only describe as a pep rally.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I pulled into a little village.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
There'd be a whole bunch of people up there, hooping
and hollering, with some of the political leaders leading cheers
and fight songs, and they would get you out of
this jeep and march you around the village and call
you dirty names, I'm sure, and shake their fist at you.
And then half an hour later you'd be back in
the jeep and off on another jaunt, not knowing where
(03:41):
you were going, but pretty suspicious that it would be
to Hanoi. And the gates swung open and they marched
me into this what turned out to be the old
French prison building Hanoi in the eighteen hundreds, which became
known as the Hanoi.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Hilton Larry was also in prison, and that too, low
nicknamed the Zoo by those detained there.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
In this camp, the Zoo, there was a driveway that
came in and made a circular route around the inside
of the camp, and so if there were some senior
officers coming, they would get a working detail out to
sweep up the leaves and stuff and have it make it.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Have a better appearance.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
That provided an opportunity to communicate with everybody that was
in the camp by the manner in which you swept
the streets with your broom and it's there's a communications
code called the tap code, which enabled whoever was sweeping
to pass information to everybody who was listening. And so
(04:44):
if the guy was sweeping, everybody in the camp could
hear him, and it was like a town crier. He
would tell you all the latest news that the guy knew,
and he'd be tapping it and anybody. All they had
to do was sit and listen, and you could get
the latest news. It might be six months old, but
it was news to us. We had three different types
of soup. Over the course of a year. There was
(05:06):
four months of spinach soup, four months of cabbage soup,
and four months of pumpkin soup.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Twice a day.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You could almost mark your calendar by when the food changed.
You can take your pumpkin soup and mash up the pumpkin,
put rice in with it. If you're having rice, or
if you're having bread that day, you tear your bread
up into little pieces, put it in the soup, stir
it all up, and visualize it as a Hungarian goulash
or macaroni and cheese or whatever. It's still going to
(05:36):
taste the same, but it helps you mentally. As your
grandmother used to tell you, you don't have to like this.
All you have to do is eat it. And most
days you didn't go out of the room for anything.
But the thing that you have to keep in mind
is that when you wake up in the morning, you
have no idea what that day holds. I'm sure our
(05:56):
blood pressure jumped thirty or forty points when a guard
would come to the on the walkway outside your room
and just rattle the keys to the door, because if
they came to the door, opened the door, pointed at you,
or gave you the whatever Vietnamese name they had assigned
to you, it was a Vietnamese word. I have no
(06:17):
idea to this day the name that they gave me meant.
It may have been dirty dog or something like that.
If they told you to put your shirt on and
your pant long trousers on, that you were going off
to see somebody that was not good. Nothing good ever
happened when you went out, and nothing could ever happened
at night.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Either. You were mistreated.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It was more so in the first years in the second,
but the Vietnamese were very willing to utilize physical discomfort
when they deemed necessary. There were times when well after
there were a couple of escape attempts and that started
purges that would last for months at a time where
people were brutally tortured. But it was something that happened
(07:00):
every day. Sometimes you thought it was going to And
they certainly tried the psychological thing of telling you, okay,
if you don't do what we want you to do here,
you know, we're going to beat you up. And the
threat that they would most often try to use orgs
say well, someday when the war ends, if you don't cooperate,
we're not going.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
To let you go. We're going to keep you here.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I don't think anybody believed them, but it was always
something in the back of your mind. But yes, physical
torture was a part of the experience, but it didn't
happen every day. On July sixth of nineteen sixty six,
the United States conducted air raids in Hiphong and Hanoi
(07:40):
for the first time. That was a significant step as
far as the Vietnamese concerned. They to think that the
United States would bomb a target in Hanoi made them
very angry, and so that night they took most of
the people from this camp, the zoo and some people
from another camp. There were less than a hundred prisoners
(08:00):
total at that time. They took about fifty five or
sixty of us, and we were blindfolded. We didn't know
where we were, but they took us to downtown Hanoi.
They got you out of the truck, you hand kept
you to one other prisoner, and you were sitting on
the floor on the street here out in the middle
of this residential area. They had Vietnamese soldiers on both
(08:25):
sides of this line of people. And when they took
the blindfolds off and told you to stand up, and
you were walking, they turned a corner and the streets
were lined.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
It was like a Fourth of July parade.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
And the streets were lined with people six seven deep
in rows on both sides calling you bad names. And
it's a really wonder that somebody didn't get killed in
that what we came to be known as the Hanoi March.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The cadres were trying.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
To keep the people back from throwing rocks at us
and hitting you over the head with shoes. It's a
wonderful nobody didn't get knife stuck in their back when
that was going on. It ended up a couple hours
later at a soccer stadium in downtown Hanoi, and when
they opened the gates of the stadium to try to
get the prisoners in here, there was a surge of population,
(09:14):
of civilian population any only that just burst right through
the gates at the same time. They ended up with
all the Americans sitting out in the middle of the
soccer field, with soldiers all around us trying to get
the while they tried to get all the civilians out
of here. February twelfth was the first day of prisoner
release in accordance with the agreements that were signed in
(09:36):
Paris at the end of January nineteen seventy three. And
then in my personal case, I was on the first
airplane home from Clark Air Force Base on Valentine's Day
of nineteen seventy three. There were twenty guys on the
first airplane home, and I had the good fortune to
be one of them. The adjustment process to life in
(09:57):
the seventies was pretty remarkable in itself. Well, that was
quite an experience as well. Fortunately for us, the one
thing that everybody could agree on about the Vietnam War
is that they were glad to have us home.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And a great job on the editing by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to the Iowa Gold Star Military
Museum at Camp Dodge for graciously allowing us to air
this audio, and as he said, simply hearing the keys
of the guards instilled fear into the prisoners. Nothing good
happened when you left your cell. Little good happened at night.
(10:35):
Unimaginable what men like this went through. Nearly seven years,
Larry Spencer served as a prisoner of war. His story
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.