The Journey.
How do pallets of original materials from the Hỏa Lò prison make their way from Hanoi to Hudson, Massachusetts?
It’s a long story and a long journey.
As Vietnam looked to the future and began new development in their nation, portions of the capital city of Hanoi started to transform and erase the scars still evident from years of war. One such transformation took place at the Hỏa Lò prison.
In 1994, the Hỏa Lò site was selected for redevelopment and portions of the prison complex was slated for demolition to make room for new commercial buildings as the city grew. Instead of destroying the entire prison, the Vietnamese government decided to preserve the entrance and West side buildings of the “Maison Centrale” prison to tell their story of oppression and cruelty by the French when the facility was used as a prison under French Colonial rule.
The portions of the prison that were used mostly for American prisoners of war during the Vietnam War, known by American POWs as “New Guy Village”, were slated to be destroyed… erased from history.
Original cells of "New Guy Village" section being demolished.
A two-prisoner cell from "New Guy Village" being demolished.
A prisoner bed with shackles still attached before being removed.
Believing that the history of the prison meant more than just what the Vietnamese envisioned with their plans, Mr. Glenn Richards through the help of Mr. Jeet Mahal, saved the building materials of several complete cells. This included the original bricks, cement ceilings, concrete “beds” with ankle shackles, and an original cell door and transom window.
As trade normalization between the United States and Vietnam was not established at the time, the pallets of materials were stored for six years in Vietnam before being originally transported to Canada where they would remain stored for nearly a decade. Once transferred to the United States, Mr. Richards sought to find a permanent home for the materials where they could be transformed into a proper exhibit to honor the sacrifices of the POWs who lived within these walls.
In the Summer of 2020, the American Heritage Museum was chosen by Mr. Richards and the assistance of the Marine Aviation Museum in Houston, TX, to receive the materials after their long journey from Vietnam. Two truckloads of pallets were unloaded for initial storage at the museum as an exhibit plan was developed to reconstruct them within the Vietnam War Gallery in the American Heritage Museum.
In December 2021, the American Heritage Museum received a generous $150,000 grant from the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation to fund the exhibit design process to allow us to begin construction in 2022 with the goal of opening the exhibit in February 2023 for the 50th Anniversary of Operation Homecoming, the release of the POWs from North Vietnam in 1973. An additional construction grant of $150,000 from PenFed Credit Union was received in December 2022 to keep progress moving ahead.
Learn more about the exhibit plans and design in the next page… “The Project”