Interviewed by a japanese prisoner and during the interview he blinked torture on morris code. A portion of that interview on cspan 3s american tv. And wrote the book defiant and the most infamous prison. First of all, thanks for having me with you and he was a native in alabama and United StatesNaval Academy graduate flying off the u. S. S. Independence off the coast of North Vietnam and a very well respected leader and the father of 7 children and a husband to a wonderful wife named jane. How was he treated . He was shot down in lets see july of 1965. He didnt know how he was going to be treated. He didnt know anything that was going to be fall him so he realized that the rules of the Geneva Convention did not apply and he was obstructed to an increasingly rough experience there and was continually hounded for intelligence and propaganda statements and not allowed to ride home and communicate like he had hoped to. Commander denton was interviewed on may 2nd, 1966 by a joop these news network. What did he say . Theres someone that i would not and its a strong southerner and for whatever reason and asked a series of questions and he spent the last few weeks being worked over by his sbeer gators and he would know he was supposed to give the answers they wanted him to give. He was supposed to support the north vote inietnamese point of. He was asked what he thought of the war and he knew if he answered incorrectly he was going to catch a lot of grief and go through a lot of pain after the interview. He also knew his family at home was watching and his fellow servicemen were watching and he had his own sense of honor so he was not going to say what they wanted him to say. So he supported his government and stood by america in that interview and people dont realize how much bravery that took. He was 7,000 miles away from home. Unsure if he was going to see his family again. He had been there about a year already. He stood up and said what he wanted to say and he was almost 90 years old. At what point did the u. S. Government realize he was in morris code. At first you think something is wrong with him. When people in America First saw the interview everyone thought it was because of bright lights but at some point they figured he was blinking in morris code. Torture. And to have the presence of mind to answer questions like he was answering in the manner he was answering them in and be able to think to blink out torture in morris code is extraordinary and america did pick up on it before they released it publicly and he watched the clip and its scrambled and the audio often doesnt match the video because they didnt want anyone to be able to read torture consecutively. It was a trick he pulled over on north voietnamese. It aired on may 17th, 1966. How did the public react when they saw it . His wife reacted horribly. She hadnt seen her husband in a year at this point and the whole family gathered together at Virginia Beach and when he walked on to the screen jane just gasped. He looked so terrible. The rest of america saw an american captive. Thats never a Pleasant Site for someone to see and it reminded americans that there were pows in North Vietnam and they were important figures that we needed to remember. Did his torture effect change in u. S. Strategy . Military or otherwise vietnam . The pow situation interesting because they asked the family to stay quite. She this h to tell her 7 kids that daddy wasnt coming home and they didnt know if he was alive or when he would be coming home and they couldnt talk about it. The government was afraid that anything the family said might upset North Vietnam and might mess up the peace negotiation process. The government also insured all the families that pows were really well treated and that was far from the case and jerry denton blinking torture in morris code was one of the early indications that america had that they were not well treated. They were able to communicate back to their families and the government to let them know what the real conditions were and as more and more families learned the truth. One of them was jane denton, they came together to start in the National League of pow mia families and its one of the most extraordinary movements in all of American History and they began to rally together to remind america to bring the pows home. They also lobbied the Nixon Administration to go ahead and come forth and go public with the noblg thknowledge they were mistreating american pows. He finally did that in may 1969. And it came forward and accuse the vietnamese. Worldwide pressure started to bear down on North Vietnam and by the fall of 1969 torture in other pow camps had stopped. So that was a very important shift in treatment because a lot of the pows were on their last legs at that point so the advocacy of the families helped their husband survive. So moving forward when was he released and when did he then set foot on u. S. Soil again . So he has been a pow for almost 7. 5 years. And they were so obnoxious that the North Vietnamese kick them out. Thats the kind of guy he was and focus on defientd but they were among the high quest ranking officers so on that first plane out on february 12th, 1973 jerry denton happened to be the highest ranking officer and played at Clark Air Base and walked out and stepped on to free soil for the first time. He ran for senate in alabama and won. How briefly did he serve and how was he as a legislator . A lot of pows returned home and found that america had changed. They had been behind bars in a foreign country for 7 or 8 years and jerry denton felt that the moral compass of the country shifted a little bit. He thought it was really important to be in Public Service not only to fight for the people in his home state of alabama but also try to restore the values that he thought maybe america had let slip a little bit. And its a funny story and when he got to washington he had High Aspirations and he was in awe of so many other people in the senate and you wondered how he got there to be among all of these other people. He had a pretty tough career though. He found out the politics of it all that everyone thinks he is and a couple of weeks later hes talking to his chief of staff and hes wondering how all of these other people got there and i think he had a tough time up there. He tried to do a lot of good. He was able to do a lot of good but only ended up serving one term. Mr. Denton passed away in 2014. He was 89. You interviewed him for your book. Can you give us your impression . Yeah there was one thing hed want me to tell you its this. I showed up on his front door and knocked and he opened the door and answered and i said senator denton its nice to meet you and he looked at me and said alvin i was a senator, ill always be an admiral. He was always a navy guy. Always a Fighter Pilot and had wonderful aspirations for this country and in a strange way he came to accept the situation there and that he was a prisoner and that was where he was going to fight his war but he felt like his purpose was there and he was an extraordinary leader to be able to hold together 500 american prisoners and the worst circumstance possible to go through the fortour that he did and still come out and be resilient and come home and love his family and serve his country. He was an extraordinary man and i was lucky to get to meet him. Thank you for speaking with us. Thank you my pleasure. Well show you three minutes of that interview where he blinks the word torture in morris code. Audio portions of this video curtesy of the National Archives are missing at the beginning and at the end. Youre watching American History tv on cspan 3. [ inaudible ] i get adequate food, adequate clothing and medical care when i require it. Well i dont know what is happening but whatever the position of my government is i support it. Whatever the position of my government is i believe in it, yes, sir. Im a member of that government and its my job to support it and i will as long as i live. With congress in recess American History programs are airing in primetime on cspan three. Including a vietnam war summit from the president ial library. A 50th anniversary retrospect tif on the conflict. Authors and historians on how americans are divided over the war and then film makers ken burns and lynn novak. By the time we got four or five decades away where the triangulation can take place and you can have the distance and perspective necessary to not make a reactive or journalistic response but something that is hopefully greater than the sum of its parts you begin to realize that almost everything you thought we knew was not true. Wednesday a look at the war from the perspective of those that fought it and u. S. After the war and our real america series looks at the 1975 Church Committee hearings convened to investigate the activities of the irs and nsa. With the National Museum of african American History culture opening in september friday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and all Day Conference with talks on African American religion and politics and culture and african American History as American History. I couldnt get that out of my mind that my students were thinking that somehow this african American History wasnt real because it there was no textbook textbook as there was in all of the American History courses taught in the department of history. And so i decided to write a real textbook. Go to cspan. Org. During world war ii they produced hundreds of document tears training films and news reels for the war department. Among these were 200 film bulletins created to inform officers and enlisted men about military developments during the war. Next on real america from 1945 evacuation of civilians, a 14 minute bulletin detailing the procedure for moving rev queue gees and displaced persons out of harms way by relocating them to temporary housing until its safe for them to return home. No school today it says. No, no school. Tomorrow or next week or next month or for a long time to come. No school in france or holland or italy. Germany or china or the philippines and no food or water or medicine or clothing. And no place to get warm and no place to sleep. And a problem and they interfere with our military operations and therefore it is an imperative necessary that they be controlled and its the job of the military police to see that this control is maintained. In some countries in some cases the refugees have to be confined to their homes. Others evacuated to the rear. In other case their control will be under the supervision of the theater commander. For use of local agencies is made whenever possible in cooperation with the military police. As unidentified individuals, some of these refugees may be criminals, hostile sympathizers of enemy agents by spreading rumors misleading information or false orders they can create panic and cause them to flee blindly into the streets or the open roads. Even before their homes have been touched plus making themselves a perfect target for the enemy. So it happened over china. There because of bombs and rumors of bombs people took to their streets and open roads. They too became homeless wanders and created a hazard by blocking the movement of troops and supplies. Its the same in every case. In every country. No matter where theyre going or where they are, refugees are actually an uncontrolled crowd