Found and scanned yesterday….

In 1970, members of a Congressional delegation visiting South Vietnam disclosed the existence of so-called “tiger cages” being used at a prison on Con Son Island, where prisoners were kept in conditions that clearly amounted to torture.

Peace activists in the U.S and internationally quickly seized on the tiger cages as a symbol of what was happening in Vietnam. Replica tiger cages were set up in public places as the starting point for public dialog and discussions about the war and U.S. policy.

I believe this early selfie was taken in 1973 during a tiger cage protest somewhere in the Los Angeles area. I took a turn in this replica cage with Rev. Al Cohen, a leading figure in the religious community in Southern California. At the time, I think Al was a campus minister, and this could have been on his campus. I don’t recall.

I was in the Los Angeles area at the time for “orientation” for my new job with the American Friends Service Committee, which had its regional office in Pasadena.

Here’s an excerpt from “The Tiger Cages of Viet Nam” by Don Luce.

The Tiger Cages

In 1970, President Nixon sent a delegation of ten Congressmen to Viet Nam to investigate pacification. A part of their mandate included a visit to a prison in South Viet Nam as a way to be allowed to visit a prison where U.S. POWs were held in the North.

Tom Harkin, then an aide to the congressional group, convinced two of the Congressmen to investigate stories of torture in the Tiger Cages off the coast of Viet Nam (the French built them in 1939 to hold political opponents; similar ones in French Guinea became famous in the movie Papillion, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman). The congressman requisitioned a plane for the 200-mile trip to Con Son Island. I was asked to go as an interpreter and specialist in Vietnamese prisons. At that time I was working for the World Council of Churches.

On the way out Frank Walton, the U.S. prison advisor, described Con Son as being like “a Boy Scout Recreational Camp.” It was, he said, “the largest prison in the Free World.”

We saw a very different scene when we got to the prison. Using maps drawn by a former Tiger Cage prisoner, we diverted from the planned tour and hurried down an alleyway between two prison buildings. We found the tiny door that led to the cages between the prison walls. A guard inside heard the commotion outside and opened the door. We walked in.

The faces of the prisoners in the cages below are still etched indelibly in my mind: the man with three fingers cut off; the man (soon to die) from Quang Tri province whose skull was split open; and the Buddhist monk form Hue who spoke intensely about the repression of the Buddhists. I remember clearly the terrible stench from diarrhea and the open sores where shackles cut into the prisoners’ ankles. “Donnez-moi de l’eau” (Give me water), they begged. They sent us scurrying between cells to check on other prisoners’ health and continued to ask for water.

The photos that Harkin, today a U.S. Senator from Iowa, took were printed in Life Magazine (July 17, 1970). The international protest which resulted brought about the transfer of the 180 men and 300 women from the Cages. Some were sent to other prisons. Some were sent to mental institutions.

Also see “Viet Tiger Cages revisited here,” Miami News, Feb 8, 1972