Not so long ago.

Fascinating tale of tracking McCain’s POW story in Hanoi:

When I moved to Hanoi in 2003 to work as a foreign correspondent, I began taking Vietnamese lessons from a teacher whose office was located just north of the city’s Old Quarter. On the corner of the street stood a light-blue villa with a war propaganda frieze on its side, depicting anti-aircraft gunners firing at American planes. As my Vietnamese improved, I could read that the inscription commemorated the heroism of civil air defence forces defending Hanoi’s electric power plant against a particular bombing raid. At some point, I jotted down the date on the frieze, which proved to be one of those crucial dates that inextricably bind America’s political history to its war in Vietnam: October 26, 1967, the day John McCain was shot down.

Prisoners – The National Newspaper.