09/18/2026
More than 80,000 service members are still unaccounted for, from WWIl to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf. Korea alone had a nearly 40% death rate in captivity, worse odds than most faced on the battlefield.
Behind every one of those numbers is a level of guts most people can’t even imagine. So many of these service members were subject to torture, starvation, and years in isolation.
Here are six POW stories you should probably know.
2nd Lt. Louis Zamperini
World War II, POW From May 1943 - Aug. 1945
Zamperini was an Olympic distance runner turned B-24 bombardier. His plane crashed into the Pacific in 1943, and he survived 47 days adrift on a life raft battling sharks and starvation before Japanese forces captured him. He was sent to POW camps, where a notoriously sadistic guard nicknamed “the Bird,” Sgt. Mutsuhiro Watanabe singled him out for extreme abuse. After the war, Zamperini became a Christian and an outspoken advocate of forgiveness, even meeting former captors to extend forgiveness personally.
Cmdr. James Stockdale
Vietnam War, POW From Sept. 9, 1965-Feb. 12, 1973
As the senior-ranking naval officer among Hanoi’s POWs, Stockdale endured repeated torture, four years of solitary confinement, and years in leg irons. In 1969, facing forced propaganda appearances, he slashed his own scalp and beat his face with a stool to make himself unusable to his captors, and later slit his wrists rather than reveal information under torture. His resistance helped ease the treatment of fellow POWs, and he received the Medal of Honor in 1976.
Lt. j.g. Dieter Dengler
Vietnam War, POW From Feb. 1, 1966-July 20, 1966
Shot down over Laos on a Navy bombing mission, Dengler was captured by the Pathet Lao and tortured for months; his captors drove bamboo slivers under his fingernails and suspended him over biting ants. On June 29, 1966, he and six fellow prisoners overpowered their guards and fled into the jungle, though only Dengler and one other man ultimately survived. Alone, emaciated, and battling hallucinations for 23 days, he finally signaled a U.S. aircraft with a scrap of parachute and was rescued weighing just 98 pounds. His ordeal became the basis for the do
