Army Captain Edward Hall returns to the US after two years in a prison camp in the Korean War. In the camp he was brainwashed and helped the Chinese convince the other prisoners that they were fighting an unjust war. When he comes back he is charged for collaboration with the enemy. Where does loyalty end in a prison camp, when the camp is a living hell?
In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.
A California commercial pilot sees a telecast in London of an interview with Sir Mark Lodden at his home. The Canadian is convinced that the baronet is a fraud, and he is actually a look-alike actor named Frank Welney.
In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories? The director would use this subject for the feature film Rescue Dawn (2007).
A war widow falls in love with the man who informed her of her husband's death.
A Korean man, forced into service in the Japanese army during WWII, marries his Japanese girlfriend despite everyone's objections. Later, he becomes the sole survivor when the Americans attack.
A U.S. Navy Commander Jeremiah Denton leading a plane sortie into North Vietnam was shot down and captured as a POW. For 8 years of his life, he was a prisoner at Hanoi Hilton where he and other POWs were tortured. In a press conference, being forced by the North Vietnamese to say he was being treated well he blinked out the letters TORTURE in Morse code.
Colditz Castle was a maximum security prison from which no one was meant to escape... but escape they did. Take a fresh look at the legendary escapes, featuring stories from both Colditz survivors and their extended families.