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Congressman Recalls Years as Prisoner in North Vietnam
Friday, September 20, 2002
By Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service

"They used to pull grass out of the river and boil it and feed it to us," he recalled. "Rice was a staple that they fed us on occasion. They didn't mess that up. Fortunately I never lost my appetite for rice, even back here." The six-foot, two-inch former POW said he weighed about 195 pounds when he was captured and went down to about 120. "When I was released, I weighed about 150 because they fed us better and bumped our weight back up," he said. Johnson said he coped with the ill treatment because the Air Force trained him well. "Of course, they can't prepare you for what you're actually going to encounter with an enemy like that," he noted. "I just praised the Lord that I was able to talk to him. I feel like without God on my side, I would have never made it."

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
About 10 days after being shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese in April 1966, Sam Johnson's captors blindfolded him, put him on trial, accused him of being a criminal and sentenced him to death.

They marched him out into the woods and put him in front of a five-man firing squad. As he prayed harder than he ever had before in his life, Johnson said, the North Vietnamese officer told the firing squad to shoot.

"They all went Click! Click! Click! Click! Click!" said Johnson, now a congressman from Texas. He was the keynote speaker at the Pentagon's POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony on Sept. 20. "I praised the Lord and laughed at them, and they kicked me into a slit trench and left me there for a while."

That was the beginning of nearly seven years of hell in a prisoner of war camp for the Dallas native. He was shot down over North Vietnam during his 25th combat mission on April 16, 1966, and not released until Feb. 12, 1973. Forty-two months of that time was spent in solitary confinement.

Johnson was shot down during his second tour of duty in the Vietnam War. His first tour was in 1965, when he worked at MACV headquarters in Saigon where he helped set up the first B-52 strikes. The former Thunderbirds flight demonstration team pilot and director of the Air Force Fighter Weapons School returned to Southeast Asia in 1966 and flew F-4 Phantom combat missions with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing in Thailand.

Johnson had flown 62 combat missions in F-86s during the Korean War and recalled scoring one MiG fighter kill, one probable and one damaged. Though he took his share of enemy gunfire and flak, he emerged from the war unscathed. He wasn't so lucky over North Vietnam.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

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