Former POW, U.S. envoy to Vietnam reflects on swapping hate for hope

Kyodo News

13-05-2025

By Rachael Bayliss-Chan, KYODO NEWS - 4 hours ago - 10:04 | All, World
Walking out of the "Hanoi Hilton" prison a free man after six and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Douglas "Pete" Peterson never expected he would become a bridge between that country and its enemy, the United States.
But that's exactly what happened when President Bill Clinton appointed Peterson as the first postwar U.S. ambassador to Vietnam in 1997. Peterson had decided to "leave his hate at the gate" and follow a path directed not by vengeance, but by purpose.
As a U.S. Air Force pilot, Peterson was captured in 1966 after his plane was shot down by the North Vietnamese while he was on a nighttime mission near Hanoi.
Locals discovered him badly hurt after he fell into a mango tree, Peterson explained in an early account of his capture. They paraded him through villages in a motorbike sidecar before he was taken to prison and brutally interrogated.
He would be transferred from prison to prison until his release on March 4, 1973. At one point, a captor threatened him with a gun when forcing him to do something.
"I said, 'Shoot. I don't care. Go ahead. You want to kill me? It's all right.' You know, I'd been there six years anyway, so I thought I'd be there the rest of my life. For him to come up and threaten me with a gun, it was laughable."
Fifty years on from the end of the Vietnam War, Peterson, now 89, reflected on his unique journey in an interview with Kyodo News at his home in Melbourne, Australia.
"I had hated the Vietnamese so much for so long that I kind of felt like I'd run out of hate," he said of his state of mind immediately after being released from the infamous Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi, known as the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs.
"When I ended up going back to the States, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to be a POW the rest of my life," he said. "I really did think that I had something to contribute, and maybe that experience would help me make those changes in the future."
The opportunity came after he was elected to Congress as a representative for Florida in 1991 and made several trips back to Vietnam.
"I couldn't believe how poor the people were and how friendly they were," Peterson said of his first return to Vietnam, also in 1991. "They knew who I was, and they still treated me with great respect and in a very friendly way."
Peterson had gone back to seek accountability for the approximately 2,600 Americans missing in action -- a mission that continued in his work as ambassador, though initially he had strong misgivings about taking on the role. Sending a former POW back as ambassador did not strike him as sensible.
"I felt (the Vietnamese) would be quite unhappy with that idea. And I wanted reconciliation. I didn't want to cause any problems in that regard."
But his role as a former POW and as a congressman turned out to be helpful in breaking the ice to forge a new diplomatic relationship.
Peterson credits his upfront approach, which had helped him during his captivity, with enabling him to speed up progress on gaining trust.
"I was that way with my captors, and I had that similar feeling when I was dealing with their diplomats. Be as open and transparent as possible," Peterson said. "I think by being that way, they understood, and we made faster progress than we would have otherwise."
As ambassador from 1997 to 2001, Peterson oversaw the negotiation of a key trade agreement between the United States and Vietnam, and started the "Safe Vietnam" program, in which he worked with the Vietnamese government to improve safety awareness in the country, including a law to make helmet use mandatory for motorbike riders.
Since his ambassadorship, Peterson has devoted himself to improving safety for children throughout Asia, a cause he became passionate about on his early trips across Vietnam as envoy, where he made a point to visit a school, hospital and business in each new province he traveled to.
It was on these visits to overcrowded hospitals where Peterson noticed most of the patients were children and young people, with doctors telling him most cases were caused by accidents.
"I just couldn't get that out of my mind," he said.
In 2002, he set up a nonprofit with his Vietnamese-Australian wife, Vi Peterson, dubbed The Alliance for Safe Children, dedicated to preventing accidental childhood injuries and death throughout Asia.
Extensive door-knocking surveys conducted by the group in several countries across Asia revealed drowning as the biggest killer of children in the region, spurring the organization to establish programs to teach children to swim in China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
While they have no hard numbers on the lives saved through the program, which was disbanded last year, Peterson and his wife remain proud of the organization's legacy, with swimming lessons continuing in some countries.
"We definitely are very proud that we've been able to save lives, even though we can't count them. I'm sure it's thousands and thousands."
As he approaches his 90th birthday in June, Peterson anticipates he won't be moving on to any new projects, content to finally enjoy his retirement. However, looking at major conflicts in the world today, he worries about the perilous state of international relations.
"The things that we did in the past wouldn't work now because they're too old-fashioned," said Peterson. "They're based on the old school of trust -- diplomacy, mutual respect and transparency -- those things are gone."
The bonds that once united friendly nations in the past have been "severely broken," he said, and reestablishing trust will be a great challenge.
"Diplomacy is not personal, but we have certain individuals, leaders in the world now, who have made diplomacy personal. That then really makes it difficult to find solutions and to find a way to rectify differences."