In January, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer announced the naming of a future Arleigh Burke–class destroyer in honor of U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran, Navy Cross recipient, and former U.S. Senator (R-AL), Rear Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. The survivor of several North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps, Admiral Denton was interviewed in 1976 for the U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Program. In this selection, Denton recalls the emotional complexity of learning that freedom for the prisoners was at hand as the war wound down:
At the time it was almost like a dream. The announcement that we would come home was made in accordance with the ceasefire agreement. It was scrupulously observed, but it was an anticlimax to us, especially to me. Because in my optimism when the bombing started on the 18th of December 1972, I bet Jim Stockdale a hundred bucks that peace would come by Christmas. It didn’t. Christmas came, and then I said, “OK, I’ll bet another hundred that if it’s resumed on the 26th, we’ll have peace by the 1st of January.”
Jim took me up on it. Well, I didn’t miss it by far. Mr. Nixon came up with the bombing decision himself. I’ve talked to him about it. On the 26th, it was reinstituted, and by the time a few more days and nights had gone by, they had nothing left in the way of air defenses. We could have bombed them with impunity.
We knew they were finished. The guards were obviously jelly. The officers were jelly. They started acceding to our demands. They started catering to our goodwill, and sort of “You remember me, I wasn’t bad” and that type attitude. And as the release sequence came along, they asked us how many feet from us would we tolerate photographers? Could photographers come with us on the bus? For the first time, the senior officers were actually telling the North Vietnamese what to do, and they did it.
So going through with it was, in a way, an anticlimax and, in another way, a test of restraint because you didn’t want to go mad with joy. You just didn’t want to go insane with joy. You had to try to keep telling yourself, “Now, come on, twenty years from now this won’t be a real big deal!”
You didn’t want to think something would happen to prevent your returning home either. But there was a time in the first release sequence in which I was involved, we were on our way to the airport and they told us when the plane was supposed to land and we were supposed to leave, and it didn’t happen that way. They were delayed. I’ve forgotten now the actual cause of the delay, but we began to worry. I tried not to show this to my buddies. I was the senior officer in the first release group.
I tried not to show them how worried I was, but, boy, my stomach. I just about lost it when I saw that it was getting late and I didn’t know what the hell had happened. But finally the plane did land, and when I saw that C-141 out there it was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in my life. It was so clean and all new and the Air Force guys with all these fancy flight suits and the nurses all crisp and clean. It was the first time we’d seen any physical evidence of American power recognized by the North Vietnamese. They were awed. The crowd out there was awed by that airplane, awed by the military smartness of the people who came out of there.
As for the reception we received when we came back home, from the President of the United States on down, and all of the people who were concerned with this in the Department of Defense and in the State Department and the executive staff of the President all along, there was an almost infinite compassion involved in the way they were going to handle us. The compassion shown to our families, the tenderness and consideration shown to them, all of that is deeply appreciated. The Navy especially was more, in my opinion, compassionate than the other services. They did much more than the others, from what I’ve learned.