In 1975, as the Vietnam War was coming to a close with the fall of Saigon, the Naval Institute Oral History Program undertook a project to collect the firsthand accounts of U.S. Navy personnel who had endured imprisonment at the hands of the North Vietnamese during the conflict. From 1975 to 1976, Naval Institute oral historian John T. Mason Jr. took to the field along with Etta Belle Kitchen and Paul B. Ryan to record these memories while they were still fresh in the minds of the former captives. The result was a two-volume anthology filled with vivid recollections in the aftermath of the war — a vital resource for researchers and historians.