Unbroken The James Stockdale Story

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]On September 9th, 1965, Commander James Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam. Taken to the Hanoi Hilton, he became the highest-ranking naval officer captured. For seven and a half years, they tried everything to break him.

[00:00:14]Tortured 15 times, wore leg irons for two years, spent four years in solitary confinement in total darkness. His shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his legs shattered, his back broken, but James Stockdale did not break. In 1969, his captors planned to parade him before foreign journalists.

[00:00:34]Propaganda photographs to demoralize America. Stockdale knew he had to act.

[00:00:39]>> [music] >> He took a razor and cut his own scalp open. When they tried to hide the wound with a hat, he picked up a wooden stool.

[00:00:46]He beat his own face until it was too swollen, too disfigured for any photograph. The propaganda mission was canceled. Later, he broke a glass pane and slashed his own wrists. He would rather die than submit. His captors realized they could never win. Because of his defiance, >> [music] >> the torture of American prisoners was scaled back. Treatment improved for everyone in the camp. One man had drawn a line. He was released in 1973.

[00:01:12]Awarded the Medal of Honor in 1976, he received [music] 26 combat decorations, remaining unbroken until his death in 2005. Is this the single greatest act of defiance by an American prisoner of war? And what does his story tell you about that generation?