[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2203-2204]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE LEGACY OF THE HONORABLE SAM JOHNSON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Olson) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. OLSON. Mr. Speaker, 42 years ago today, a POW came home from 
Vietnam.
  This Special Order was put on by Mr. Dold from Illinois. He will be 
here shortly.

[[Page 2204]]

  A man I love came home that day 42 years ago. He is our colleague, 
Sam Johnson. Sam first saw combat in Korea, 62 hair-raising combat 
missions in an F-86 Sabre. He told me he used to race Buzz Aldrin to 
get to where the bad guys were to get the first kill of the day. That 
same Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong.
  Sam shot down one MIG in Korea. He came home and quickly became one 
of our best pilots in the Air Force. He joined the Thunderbirds, the 
Air Force's flight demonstration team. He flew solo and slot in the F-
100C Super Sabre. He became an instructor pilot at the Air Force's 
Fighter Weapons School, their Top Gun.
  Sam saw combat again in Vietnam. He flew the F-4 Phantom into combat. 
Coming back after dropping his bombs on North Korea, he was shot down. 
It was his 25th combat mission over Vietnam, April 15, 1966. Sam bailed 
out and fell into hell on earth. He was taken prisoner, confined for 6 
years, 9 months, and 12 days.
  This was a new war for POWs. It was a war of propaganda, so every 
minute those men were alive, they were valuable. Their captors used 
starvation, disease, isolation, physical, and mental torture to push 
these men to confess to war crimes, to bombing hospitals and schools 
with napalm. They were beaten every single day they were held in 
captivity.
  The Viet Cong saw a fighter in Sam Johnson. They saw a man who might 
start a riot, a rebellion. They called him a ``diehard,'' and so--with 
10 other men--they moved him from the Hanoi Hilton to a place they 
called Alcatraz, hell within hell.
  Sam was alone for over 2 years. He stayed in a windowless concrete 
room, 9 feet wide, 4 feet, 9 by 4 feet. Every summer, it got up to 110 
degrees Fahrenheit in his cell.
  His legs were shackled with irons--both legs--every minute he was in 
his cell. Ten other men went with him: Jeremiah Denton, Jim Stockdale, 
Bob Shumaker, Ronald Storz, Harry Jenkins, Howard Rutledge, Nels 
Tanner, Jim Mulligan, George McKnight, and George Coker.

                              {time}  1745

  Ten came home. Ronald Storz died in Alcatraz in captivity. Sam and 
his 10 brothers all learned to lean on each other to survive. In 
Alcatraz, one day Sam was put in a cell and beaten and beaten and 
beaten to make him write a document and sign his confession of 
committing a war crime.
  Jeremiah Denton heard the clamor when Sam was thrown back into his 
cell hours after he was taken off from his cell with the Viet Cong. 
Admiral Denton said: Sam, Sam, it is okay, buddy. There was silence for 
a couple moments, and then Sam said: I made them write it, but I had to 
sign it. Admiral Denton said: It is okay, Sam. You are, okay. Hang on. 
You did a good job.
  Because of what Sam and others went through, every naval aviator, 
marine aviator, Air Force pilot, Army pilot, Navy SEAL, Marine Force 
Recon, Army Green Berets attend what is known as SERE school--S-E-R-E, 
survive, evade, resist, escape--POW school.
  I went to SERE for 1 week in the fall of 1991. I was fed little 
amounts of food. No sleep. The last 2 days were in the POW camp in a 
small concrete room like Sam, alone, stuffed into a small box in the 
dark, loud music and a waterboard. That training gave me a taste of 
torture--my strengths and weaknesses. Sam never had that training. He 
learned it with his blood and broken bones.
  I want to close by using the tap code, the way Sam and his fellow 
prisoners used to communicate without talking. It is a 5 by 5 matrix, 
25 letters. It omits the K.
  (Tapping on podium.)
  In the Hanoi Hilton and Alcatraz, that says: I salute you. Sam, if I 
was there that day, 42 years ago when you came home, I would say: Sam, 
I salute you.
  God bless them all.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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