Snoqualmie Valley resident looks back at time inside Hanoi Hilton
May 30, 2012
By Sebastian Moraga
The interrogator Joseph Crecca nicknamed “The Agent” began speaking.
Speaking of how American Air Force pilots like Crecca had attacked the Vietnamese. How Vietnamese blood had been shed. And how the Vietnamese were “determined to fight and win.”
Then, American F-105 planes flew above their heads. And the speech screeched to a halt. Unlike The Agent, who fled, screaming.
Crecca, a Valley resident for 12 years, remembers and laughs. Some villain, he thought.
By Sebastian Moraga Joseph Crecca holds a photocopy of one of the notebooks he used to teach math, physics, and automotive theory and practice to his fellow prisoners of war in Hanoi. About one-third of the prisoners taught something, and they re-nicknamed their prison Hanoi University.
“People ask me what kept me going,” said Crecca, a Vietnam prisoner of war for six years who spent three months at the camp known as the Hanoi Hilton. “I had four pillars: faith in God, country, family and self.”
He also had a key fifth pillar: sense of humor.
A mechanical engineer and the son of Italian-Americans, Crecca inherited the brains and sense of humor from his folks.
Both would come in handy in Southeast Asia.
“We were in survival school in the Philippines, and they had these locals called Negritos,” he recalled. “And we were told to hide. If the Negritos found you, they would get a 100-pound bag of rice for each of us.”
Advantage, Negritos. They found them all and collected 13,000-plus pounds of rice.
“You got city boys in the jungle with the jungle boys,” said Crecca, who had attended college in Newark, N.J. “They knew where to go, they knew where we would hide.”
Shot out of the sky
Crecca arrived in Da Nang, South Vietnam, on Aug. 14, 1966. One hundred days later, a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down his F-4C Phantom.
From the back seat and over the shoulders of pilot Scotty Wilson, Crecca could see things were serious.
“All I could see were the bad lights, the amber and the red ones,” he said.
The engine was on fire, as well.
Crecca said he thought, “It’s all over,” but then Wilson yelled, “Get out!” before disappearing.
When his chute opened, Crecca could see the wreckage below and later the locals waiting. He also saw Wilson.
“I knew something was wrong. His head was down and his arms were down,” Crecca said.
When Wilson’s chute had opened, a second missile had hit him.
Crecca saluted an unconscious Wilson one last time and fell among peasants who beat him, stripped him down and held him captive for hours in wintry weather before sending him bound and blindfolded to Hanoi.
“That’s when the fun and games began,” he said.
Building a mental university
At the Hilton’s main prison, Hoa Lo, he disoriented and infuriated his captors with one-liners.
Some of the captors were interested in the speed of an F-4.
“I would tell them it was much faster than the MiG 21,” Crecca said.
They roped him, neck to wrist to ankles, and slammed his body against the ground. The second time, Crecca realized it was on purpose, so he took the slams with different shoulders, to minimize the damage.
After the torture and the interrogations stopped, they moved him to a solitary room for eight months.
“I realized I had nobody to talk to, nothing to read,” he said. “I realized I had to keep myself busy. I would learn the presidents in order, then the states alphabetically, then the capitals.”
Then he would solve physics problems in his head.
“It took me two weeks to make it through the 37 steps in my head” of the problem, he said. “When I had something to write with, it took me three weeks.”
After eight months, he got roommates. So he started memorizing the names and ranks of his roommates. At one point, he knew 252.
He invented nicknames for the other guys. The Agent for the travel agent-wannabe, Gyro Gearloose for the nutty one, Spot for the one with the scar, Dilligaf for the one with the emotionless face, Dum-Dum for the dimwitted captor, Dr. StrangeGlove for the camp medic who only wore one.
After the Vietnamese herded the POWs in groups of 45 to 50, Crecca and others began teaching the group. Physics, math, calculus, social studies, auto mechanics. Even cuts of meat, wine selection and classical music, without instruments.
“We whistled and hummed,” he said, adding that one-third of the group taught something.
Using paper and a stolen ballpoint refill, Crecca wrote math and physics books. He drew engines, pistons, pumps, with no room for error. The Hanoi Hilton carried no Wite-Out in those days.
Sometimes, he would write on the back of transmissions, “Made in Italy.”
Students used a broken roof tile as chalk. With all of the erasings, the floor became “cleaner than it had been in 100 years,” Crecca said.
He had one math textbook, in Russian. He would try a problem, check the answer and slowly decipher the language.
‘Out of SAM range’
He knew little about America anymore, mostly from Vietnamese magazines photos of American pilots and use of terms like “B-52.” That meant the fight continued.
Then, in February 1973, his fight ended.
“I am not a fatalist, but I didn’t allow myself to think it was over until it was over,” he said.
His excitement grew with each movement of his plane taking off for America. But he had not been in a plane in five years, and the last trip remained fresh in his memory. He did not let himself relax until the plane was 25 miles away from the coast.
“Because then we were out of SAM range, and I felt a little bit better,” he said with a wink.
Even at home, the Vietnam milestones continued for Crecca. Twenty years to the day they got shot down, in 1986, he eulogized the remains of Scotty Wilson, finally repatriated.
And this year, he had a reunion with former fellow POWs in Arizona.
Still, a return to Southeast Asia is out of the question for him.
“Why would I waste good vacation money on a place with constant power failures, where the rats were the size of cats?” he said, while wearing a baseball cap with the name of his squadron from 1967.
Determined to fight and win?
Memories abound, good ones and the other kind. Just like back then, he relies on humor.
“It was a real boon to being there,” he said. “If you maintained your sense of humor, you could use it to help you get through the very harsh situation you were in. It was like the oil that lubricated the bearings.”
His bearings are well-lubricated and all accounted for. He followed his career in the Air Force with years as a commercial pilot, before retiring in 2005.
“I do nothing now,” he said, before reconsidering. “Wait, I talk to journalists.”
Long since remarried (“you have to write, ‘he remarried the same year I was pooping my diapers,’”) he has rebuilt his life, first in Bellevue and then in North Bend, where he moved to escape urban sprawl. These days, the only agents he talks to are the travel kind. When they give speeches, they don’t pause in fear of a 737 flying over.
“‘Aaaaa! American airplanes!’ he screamed,” Crecca remembered with a grin. “Determined to fight and win, my ass.”
Scholarship created in former POW’s name
Joseph Crecca’s class at Bloomfield High School has created a scholarship in his honor, another accolade for one of the class’ most distinguished alumni.
“I consider him our hometown hero for what he did for our country,” said Marion Reynolds Leonard, a member of the class.
Scholarships will give $500 to a student with a record of outstanding academic achievement and a commitment to higher education, she said. The first recipient will be Nicole Couto, a Bloomfield High student bound for Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The scholarship shows the class of 1958 cares about the younger generations, Reynolds Leonard said, and wants to see them succeed.
“In order to succeed, you have to have higher education and that goes right along with Joe’s philosophy,” she said. “You gotta keep learning.”
Crecca praised his former classmates, calling the class of 1958 “absolutely unique.”
“They have a luncheon every year, we went on a cruise,” he said. “You will never find another class like this one.”
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9 Responses to “Snoqualmie Valley resident looks back at time inside Hanoi Hilton”
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Great fighting spirit! And to see a fellow Newark boy amusing the quiet, wide-eyed residents of the Evergreen state. A well written article too!
It is also rather sad that his bitterness remains directed at the recipients of America’s failed efforts to wage “military action” abroad — rather than the cynical US politicians, military and companies that conspired to squander the time and resources of good men like Mr. Crecca. Today’s US airlines fly from Seattle to Hanoi and the pilots get out and throw back twenty cent fresh beers with local friends. There are fewer headlines when the US is engaged in Peace, but oh, the payoff abounds.
As a Veteran, class of 68 I honor your service.
God Bless you Joe.
You’re a true hero.
I met Joe Crecca in 2003 while working on his new home in North Bend. Being ex-military myself I met many a returning soldier with serious issues not only physical but mental. I never met a returning soldier let alone a prisoner of war, quite like Joe. His mental stability and general uplifted attitude is inspirational considering what he had to endure. He has chosen to take the high road and put the past, albeit a painful past aside, and live life to the full. I salute you Major Crecca for your unwavering, uncompromising zest for life. I also salute you for the price you paid so that others didn’t have to.
Thanks for sharing your info. I truly appreciate
your efforts and I am waiting for your next
post thank you once again.
Re: Jake Loves: Thanks for the compliment. But where do you find bitterness in this article? Throughout the interview I had Sebastian laughing so much he couldn’t make notes. And how can any so-called “Payoff” make up for the 58,267 names on the Vietnam Wall or the million or more Vietnamese, Cambodians & Laotians that lost their lives?
To the rest who posted, thank you very much.
Regarding the Agent: He was interrogating my cellmate Loren Torkelson. He told Loren, “You American air pirates have shed the blood of the Vietnamese people. But [imagine his stern, resolute countenance] we are determined to fight! And to win!” Just then four F-105s roared over the camp at over 700 mph at tree top level, shattering the silence and shaking everything and everybody on the ground. Despite his verbal outpouring seconds earlier about “determination to fight and win” he ran from the room screaming, “American airplanes” and headed for the nearest bomb shelter. Loren was left behind in the interrogation room all by himself. He sat there, alone, until the air raid was over and one of the camp guards discovered him there, sitting by himself. We had a lot of laughs about this.
Sorry to be so bitter.
What Mr. Crecca said regarding me not being able to make notes is 100 percent correct. He was a lot of fun.
Sebastian Moraga.
Education reporter
SnoValley Star.
Thank you so much for your service and for so bravely facing the ordeal you went through at the hands of the enemy.
Just as a side note, I wore the POW bracelet for Loren Torkelson until he was released. Thanks for posting the anecdote about him.
It’s Veterans Day, 2012 and I’m just learning Joe’s story for the first time after knowing him for over 30 years. Joe & I were in the same new-hire class with the Flying Tiger Line all-cargo carrier in July of 1978. Everyone in our class of 20 pilots knew that Joe had been a POW and respected him for what he endured during his time at the prison in Hanoi. I really wanted to hear Joe tell his story, but we all respected his privacy.
Our DC-8 groundschool with Tigers lasted about 2 weeks, during which we were all together in class about 7 hrs a day. After class, guys would go back to the hotel, near LAX, and study, exercise or whatever, and then have dinner. One night, I went out to a restaurant nearby, and when I returned to our hotel, there was Joe, in a booth in the bar, surrounded by most of our classmates. I could tell by the spellbound look on the faces of the guys that Joe must have just told the story of his capture and imprisonment. I looked a Joe and said “did I miss it?” and Joe just smiled and probably said something funny, like “ya, Stevie Wonder, you’re a day late and a dollar short again.”
Joe is an amazing person. Whenever I would see Joe out on the line, he always had a smile on his face. Truly a sense of humor is one of the most worthwhile characteristics a human being can possess.
Joe, thanks for sharing your story and thanks for your service.