(26 Aug 2018) Tributes continue to pour in from around the world to US senator John McCain, who died on Saturday at his ranch in Arizona after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.
In the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, where McCain was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years, some locals on Sunday expressed sadness at the politician's death and hailed his role in normalising relations between the countries.
A missile blew the wing off of McCain's Skyhawk dive bomber over Hanoi on 26 October, 1967.
McCain, then a 31-year-old lieutenant commander in the navy, parachuted out of the plane and landed in a Truc Bach lake in what was then North Vietnam.
He broke both arms and a leg in the fall, was dragged from the lake by an angry crowd, and was beaten and bayoneted.
Thus began a harrowing, five-year ordeal that was to define the future senator and presidential candidate's life.
Before his imprisonment in Vietnam, McCain was Navy royalty - the grandson and son of four-star admirals - as well as a self-described lousy student at the Navy Academy and a hotshot pilot who had survived three accidental crashes.
His time in captivity gave his life purpose.
"I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned me," he wrote in his 1997 memoir.
When McCain was shot down, his father was poised to assume command over the entire Pacific theatre.
Once his son gave his captors his name, rank and serial number, they realised they had a potential propaganda coup on their hands.
McCain was taken to the hospital for some basic treatment - his left arm was left broken, to heal on its own.
His captors filmed him there for propaganda purposes and McCain later found out the North Vietnamese had crowed: "We have the crown prince."
After six weeks in the hospital, McCain, who had lost about one-third of his weight, was transferred to a prison cell.
After a brief time with cellmates, McCain began two years in solitary confinement in a 10-by-10 feet (3-by3 metres) room.
In the midst of this deprivation, McCain's captors asked him if he wanted to go home.
It was a trick question - the US military's code of conduct required prisoners to be released in the order they were detained.
The North Vietnamese wanted to make a show of releasing McCain early, as his father assumed command over the Pacific.
McCain refused and was then in for the worst bout of torture yet.
For four days after he refused release, he was beaten every two hours to three hours by 10 guards.
Filled with thoughts of suicide, McCain broke and agreed to sign an anti-US propaganda statement confessing to "black crimes".
He later wrote: "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."
It was the last time McCain would break.
He refused to sign any other statements or meet visiting American anti-war activists.
Eventually, McCain was removed from solitary confinement and mingled with other US prisoners of war.
In December of 1972, McCain and his fellow prisoners cheered as American bombs fell around the prison complex where he was held - the "Hanoi Hilton" - during the Christmas bombing that marked an escalation of the US offensive.
They might die in the attack, but the prisoners figured it was the best chance of subduing the Vietnamese and getting home.
On 14 March, 1973, it was finally McCain's turn to be released.
For the rest of his life, McCain would be unable to lift both his arms over his head because of the injuries he suffered during his captivity in Vietnam.
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