single-story buildings to create numerous cells. But the buildings were still in disrepair, their windows boarded up and their interiors filled with dirt, broken glass, insects, and rodents. Outside, separate toilet facilities were built. A wall was constructed around the perimeter of the camp, and sentry towers were installed.
The POWs initially called the compound Camp America, and with farm animals about, designated buildings as the Barn, Chicken Coop, Pigsty, and Stable. Many of the louvered French doors had holes that allowed the guards to peer inside, but sometimes the livestock meandered by and gazed in, which gave rise to the prison's permanent name: the Zoo. As one inmate said, "It's the first kind of place where the animals come and look at the people."
For two weeks Cherry lay alone in his cell, the only daylight or air filtered through cracks and gaps in the door and through a brick-sized air vent high on the wall. A single, naked, low-wattage light bulb hung from the ceiling and stayed on day and night.
A small blue box with a radio speaker piped in an endless stream of propaganda as the pain from his shoulder and wrist spread through his torso. He ate little and felt too weak to move. The premonition he'd had at the Yokota Officers' Club was playing itself out. His captors had given him no reason for hope. But he had faced adversity his entire life, and he wasn't giving up. He was confident he would survive. He just didn't know how.
5. The
Independence
On the morning of May 10, 1965, the USS
Independence
sounded its long, bellowing horn and shoved off from the gray coastline of Norfolk, Virginia. Its mission was to steam across the Atlantic Ocean, around South Africa, and through the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, where it would assume duties with the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Pacific. The attack carrier, to be gone seven months, received a patriotic farewell. Children waved American flags while a band played "Auld Lang Syne." Dignitaries toured the ship, wives and girlfriends said tearful good-byes, and Miss Norfolk, in a sleeveless white dress, white gloves, and white floral headband, smiled for photographers. The Norfolk Chamber of Commerce gave the captain a silver Goodwill Cup; the port city, proud of its naval tradition, also gave the
Independence
another mementoâa bomb inscribed with white paint: GREETINGS FROM THE PEOPLE OF NORFOLK TO THE
VIET CONG.
The ship was eighty thousand tons of steel and metal, a gray, angle-decked war machine that hauled forty-five hundred men and eighty fighter jets. Such a vessel is known as "a city at sea," loaded not only with mechanics, engineers, and sailors to keep it running but also with doctors, dentists, postal clerks, printers, career counselors, legal assistants, and educators. The
Independence
even had a musical band composed of shipmates who had brought their instruments.
The civic metaphor was fitting, but it hardly captured the delirious energy, the unremitting clamor, the sheer life-and-death drama of the enterprise. The jet namesâthe Phantom, the Intruder, the Vigilante, and the Skyhawkâconveyed the threat they posed to a distant enemy; but the planes themselves, loaded with fuel, cluster bombs, heat-seeking missiles, and 20-millimeter ammunition, could imperil their American handlers as well. A single miscue, particularly on takeoff or landing, could saturate the flight deck in a cataract of metal and flame.
On takeoff, a jet taxis onto a catapult track as crewmen race about, signaling with their scarred hands, ducking under moving wings, and looking for cover. The fighter engine wails as a deck officer in a yellow shirt waves his right index finger over his head. The pilot salutes from the cockpit and the deck officer drops his hand. The aircraft screams down the catapult, red flames spewing from its afterburners and steam billowing from the track. It accelerates to more than 100 mph in 250 feet. Just as it reaches the edge of
The POWs initially called the compound Camp America, and with farm animals about, designated buildings as the Barn, Chicken Coop, Pigsty, and Stable. Many of the louvered French doors had holes that allowed the guards to peer inside, but sometimes the livestock meandered by and gazed in, which gave rise to the prison's permanent name: the Zoo. As one inmate said, "It's the first kind of place where the animals come and look at the people."
For two weeks Cherry lay alone in his cell, the only daylight or air filtered through cracks and gaps in the door and through a brick-sized air vent high on the wall. A single, naked, low-wattage light bulb hung from the ceiling and stayed on day and night.
A small blue box with a radio speaker piped in an endless stream of propaganda as the pain from his shoulder and wrist spread through his torso. He ate little and felt too weak to move. The premonition he'd had at the Yokota Officers' Club was playing itself out. His captors had given him no reason for hope. But he had faced adversity his entire life, and he wasn't giving up. He was confident he would survive. He just didn't know how.
5. The
Independence
On the morning of May 10, 1965, the USS
Independence
sounded its long, bellowing horn and shoved off from the gray coastline of Norfolk, Virginia. Its mission was to steam across the Atlantic Ocean, around South Africa, and through the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, where it would assume duties with the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Pacific. The attack carrier, to be gone seven months, received a patriotic farewell. Children waved American flags while a band played "Auld Lang Syne." Dignitaries toured the ship, wives and girlfriends said tearful good-byes, and Miss Norfolk, in a sleeveless white dress, white gloves, and white floral headband, smiled for photographers. The Norfolk Chamber of Commerce gave the captain a silver Goodwill Cup; the port city, proud of its naval tradition, also gave the
Independence
another mementoâa bomb inscribed with white paint: GREETINGS FROM THE PEOPLE OF NORFOLK TO THE
VIET CONG.
The ship was eighty thousand tons of steel and metal, a gray, angle-decked war machine that hauled forty-five hundred men and eighty fighter jets. Such a vessel is known as "a city at sea," loaded not only with mechanics, engineers, and sailors to keep it running but also with doctors, dentists, postal clerks, printers, career counselors, legal assistants, and educators. The
Independence
even had a musical band composed of shipmates who had brought their instruments.
The civic metaphor was fitting, but it hardly captured the delirious energy, the unremitting clamor, the sheer life-and-death drama of the enterprise. The jet namesâthe Phantom, the Intruder, the Vigilante, and the Skyhawkâconveyed the threat they posed to a distant enemy; but the planes themselves, loaded with fuel, cluster bombs, heat-seeking missiles, and 20-millimeter ammunition, could imperil their American handlers as well. A single miscue, particularly on takeoff or landing, could saturate the flight deck in a cataract of metal and flame.
On takeoff, a jet taxis onto a catapult track as crewmen race about, signaling with their scarred hands, ducking under moving wings, and looking for cover. The fighter engine wails as a deck officer in a yellow shirt waves his right index finger over his head. The pilot salutes from the cockpit and the deck officer drops his hand. The aircraft screams down the catapult, red flames spewing from its afterburners and steam billowing from the track. It accelerates to more than 100 mph in 250 feet. Just as it reaches the edge of
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