News-Info-Alerts

Re: 30 Years of Freedom

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: March 29, 2003

"POW trauma helped shape Kernan
Former prisoner in Vietnam says soldiers held in Iraq can handle ordeal of captivity.

By Mary Beth Schneider
mary.beth.schneider@indystar.com
 
Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan couldn't sleep Sunday night.
He, like most of the world, had seen that day the haunting images on television of American soldiers who had just become Iraqi prisoners of war.

Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan
He recognized that dazed expression each wore. He knew that stunned fog of disbelief that enveloped them.

He'd shared both as a 26-year-old Navy lieutenant whose jet was shot down over North Vietnam on May 7, 1972. Within minutes, he was a prisoner of war.
But Kernan not only knows how these new POWs feel, he knows something they will find out for themselves.

"They're going to be OK," Kernan said. "They can handle this."

He knows. Because 30 years ago Thursday, Kernan walked out of the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" prison where he and so many other Americans had been held captive by the North Vietnamese.

He'd not only survived, he'd gained something. In some ways, he said, those 11 months were the best experience of his life.

"The best in the sense that I learned a lot about myself and other people. A lot of different senses kick in -- of survival, of caring, of support. You become more of who you are."

Thursday morning, Kernan remembered that it was the 30th anniversary of his freedom.

He doesn't always, though.

"There are some years where I'll remember a week or two later," he said. "This year, though, with all of what's happening, it's a day that wasn't going to get by without me thinking about it.

"It reminds me more of what my family went through and knowing what the families of this woman and these men (now held) are going through."

He never forgets, though, May 7, "the day I was shot down."

It was his 26th mission. He was in the rear seat of an RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance jet, on a picture-snapping mission to assess bomb damage. They raced along at 650 mph, 80 miles south of Hanoi, then navigated down Highway 1 to take photos of traffic.

They were relatively low -- 4,500 feet high, compared with the 35,000-foot altitude a B-52 bomber would fly -- when antiaircraft fire hit the plane's tail.

"The nose pitched down very violently," and the pilot tried to make it to the potential safety of the U.S.-controlled Gulf of Tonkin. The jet couldn't make it. Kernan ejected, followed closely by the pilot.

"I blacked out on the ejection," Kernan said.

"I landed in somebody's front yard on a beautiful Sunday afternoon," he recalled. "When I woke up, I found myself on the edge of a group of people, surrounding me, watching me get up, with people coming at me from everywhere."
But there was one blessing -- one he knows -- that Shoshana Johnson, Joseph Hudson and the other American POWs in Iraq must have experienced.

"For 24 to 48 hours, you are in shock. It's a defense mechanism, so you have time to adapt to your surroundings. It's a good thing," Kernan said.

He is more concerned about the families back home. If Vietnam was the living-room war, played out nightly on the evening news, Iraq is the Reality TV war -- live, 24 hours a day.

Kernan said he is concerned not only about the security and intelligence breaches of so much instantaneous information, but also the fear it inevitably spawns in families and the danger that someone will lose their child, their spouse, as they watch on TV.

"For us to sit here and watch a war taking place live -- it's not a video game. This is life and death, and it is war," Kernan said.

But, he repeated, it will end, and the POWs will come home.

Kernan never doubted that when he was a prisoner -- "Oh, God, no."

Even for those who had been prisoners for years, he said, it was a question of when, not if.

"Our country has forever made sure no one is left behind," Kernan said. "We're not going home without them."

Call Star reporter Mary Beth Schneider at 1-317-615-2382.

Copyright 2003 IndyStar.com. "