Prisoners Of War

The old wounds, physical and spiritual, healed long ago. When Lou Zamperini returned to Japan recently, it was in the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. If any American during World War II had earned the right to hate, it was Louis Silvie Zamperini. Once one of America's best track and field athletes, he was beaten almost daily for 2 1/2 years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and fed a near-starvation diet.

WASHINGTON - When men who served in the Korean War with Emil Kapaun describe him, they do not talk about the acts most commonly associated with the Medal of Honor: He fell on no grenades, captured no enemy machine guns, killed no enemy soldiers. For those who spent time with him in North Korean prison camps, the Army chaplain's most heroic acts were sharing food he stole from nearby farms, washing men sick with dysentery and persuading many to keep up the brutal struggle for life.

Ecuador and Peru have released nine prisoners of war, and three Peruvian pilots are still missing, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The simultaneous exchange--the first since the two nations' month-old border clash--was carried out under Red Cross auspices after the two countries' foreign ministers signed a second cease-fire accord.

Cornelius Reagan, shot down over Indonesia during World War II, survived on his wits, tropical fruit and the raw flesh of animals. Then Japanese forces found him and imprisoned him in internment camps for more than three years. This week, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Miami honored his sacrifice by awarding the U.S. Army Air Corps second lieutenant, now 95, the Prisoner of War Medal ? 65 years after he was released by the Japanese weighing just 92 pounds. "I thought to myself, if I can just survive, I'll be able to get home," a beaming Reagan said at the ceremony, as he stood proudly with his new medal pinned to the lapel of his gray suit.

Iraqis' complex and contradictory relationship with the dictator who dominated them for decades got even more tangled Saturday, as the country digested reports that the Pentagon has determined that Saddam Hussein is a prisoner of war. Cab driver Jassam Said expressed hope that the decision by U.S. Defense Department attorneys that Hussein is protected under the Geneva Convention means he may be tried in the United States rather than Iraq.

Monika Jensen Stevenson's husband advised her not to get too deeply involved in an investigation of American soldiers abandoned in the jungle after the Vietnam War. If she did, he warned, she would awaken one morning to find she was "chasing the dragon," a reference to opium smokers in the dens of Hanoi. "When you become addicted," Stevenson told his wife, "the dragon chases you." But in the end, did the dragon devour the Stevensons, particularly Monika Jensen Stevenson?

U.S. and allies say: 16 U.S. and allied aircraft lost to Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. 15 Iraqi jets shot down in aerial combat. 23 Iraqi prisoners of war captured. 3 Americans are POWs. Iraq says: 154 U.S. and allied planes shot down. 7 allied prisoners of war, including Americans.

President Reagan on Tuesday proclaimed National Former Prisoners of War Recognition Day, to be observed Saturday. "To their brave families we offer solace and salute," Reagan's statement said.

Following are excerpts from the 1949 Geneva Convention covering the protection of prisoners of war, of the sick and wounded and of civilians in international conflicts: * Members of the armed forces and (prisoners of war) who are wounded or sick shall be respected and protected in all circumstances. * Prisoners of war must at all times be protected particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Britain has decided to treat any Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters it might capture in Afghanistan as prisoners of war and turn them over to the interim Afghan government. British representatives said they lack sufficient ground forces to conduct legal hearings about the appropriate status of individual prisoners. So far, the British have no captives in Afghanistan. The British decision further isolates the U.S.

Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption Laura Hillenbrand Random House: 480 pp., $27 As I read Laura Hillenbrand's stirring and triumphant account of the harrowing experiences of American Olympic runner and World War II POW Louis Zamperini, I thought of the double load that the research and writing of "Unbroken" had put on its author. Hillenbrand is herself a steely example of triumph over more than 23 years of debilitating illness.

The wife who waited, the fiancee who didn't. A young man's first meeting with his father. The girl, once little, now older than her dead brother. These are scenes from "Prisoners of War," a TV series that touches on one of Israel's most sensitive issues: the return of soldiers from captivity. The series, which in Hebrew is called "Hatufim" ("abductees"), revolves around three Israeli reservists captured in Lebanon, their fates unknown. To their families, they are seen with something between hope and memory.

The plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Saturday gutted a nation's leadership and silenced some of the most potent human symbols of its tragic and tumultuous history. It was, in a sense, a nation colliding with its past: The aircraft ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

In his first public defense of the arrest of a Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb an airplane on Christmas Day, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that he personally made the decision to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and that no one in the Washington intelligence community objected that the alleged Al Qaeda operative should instead be turned over to military interrogators as a prisoner of war. Holder also applauded the work...

A federal judge on Wednesday approved U.S. plans to send former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to France to face money-laundering charges, finding the French government had given sufficient assurances it would continue to treat Noriega as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Paul Huck followed three other court decisions approving extradition.

President Bush surprised Congress by refusing to sign a Defense Department authorization bill, in part because the legislation could revive a lawsuit brought by American prisoners of war during the 1991 Persian Gulf War who say they were tortured by the Iraqis. Their suit sought to establish the principle that war prisoners who were tortured in violation of the Geneva Convention were entitled to sue the country that tortured them.

All former American prisoners of war who have suffered from heart disease or have had a stroke will receive government healthcare benefits without having to prove the ailments were linked to their captivity, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi said. He announced the benefits while addressing the annual convention of the American Ex-Prisoners of War, an Arlington-based group with about 21,000 members nationwide.

Jane Maury Denton, 81, the wife of former U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton Jr., died Thursday at a Norfolk, Va., hospital of complications from a heart attack, family members said. The native of Mobile, Ala., helped organize the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, after her husband, who was then a Navy pilot, was shot down and captured in 1965. He was held for nearly eight years in a North Vietnamese prison.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- In 1981, rookie Rep. Bill Hendon left a Capitol Hill intelligence briefing convinced that there were American prisoners of war from Vietnam still alive and in captivity in Southeast Asia. Nearly three decades later, he says, they're still there -- and still alive. "Absolutely," Hendon said. "No question about it." It's a position ridiculed by both government officials and former POWs who spent years in captivity during the Vietnam War.