HANOI HILTON PRISON — Little remains downtown Hanoi of the prison known as Hoa Lo, a name loosely translated as “hell hole.”

There is one small room near the back devoted to a different group of inmates who languished for years: American prisoners of the Vietnam War.

To those POWs this was the Hanoi Hilton, a nickname that oozed irony and defiance, the kind of petty “thumb in your eye” that provided some small pride in a place designed to strip dignity away.