A Ferocious Place: Long Binh Jail

Long Binh Jail — nicknamed LBJ — was the U.S. Army's largest prison in Vietnam, and many soldiers feared it more than the battlefield. Overcrowded, brutal, and seething with racial tension, it held men imprisoned for resisting an increasingly unpopular war — going AWOL, defying orders, refusing to fight. In the summer of 1968, that tension exploded. Black inmates rose up, overwhelmed the guards, and took control of the stockade. 

In this episode of A Matter of Conscience, we go inside LBJ — through the voices of two veterans imprisoned in the stockade. You'll hear what it meant to arrive at the stockade, survive the conex boxes baking in 105-degree heat, navigate the racial fault lines that divided the prison, and still find moments of defiance, humor, and humanity. One of those veterans is our own Bill Short, who was imprisoned there in 1969.

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