The prisoners: Kernan and Kasler

1966 – 1973

Joe Kernan: the city's own — St. Joseph's High School in South Bend, Notre Dame class of 1968, and later this city's mayor and Indiana's governor; his full civic life stands in the People section, and his prisoner record stands here. Kernan flew as a naval flight officer with Reconnaissance Attack Squadron Seven (RVAH-7) from USS Kitty Hawk, and on 7 May 1972, on his twenty-sixth reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam, his aircraft was shot down. He was held eleven months — in Hoa Lo prison, the "Hanoi Hilton," and in the prison the Americans called the Zoo — and was repatriated on 27 March 1973. His decorations, as the official record states them: the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Purple Hearts, the Navy Commendation Medal, two Air Medals, and the Combat Action Ribbon.

James Helms Kasler: the second pillar, cross-referenced to his own entry above — shot down 8 August 1966, held six and a half years until 4 March 1973, and decorated as a prisoner with his third Air Force Cross and his second Silver Star, both for resistance under coercion and torture. Between them, the two men carry this city's documented Vietnam prisoner record at its full size: the mayor who was held eleven months, and the South Bend-born colonel who was held for six and a half years and came home the only three-time Air Force Cross recipient in the service's history.

The gap, named: no systematic roster of South Bend or St. Joseph County prisoners of the Second World War or Korea was reached in any source consulted, and this section does not imply one. The hometown route to that record exists and is named in the Sources entry below: the South Bend Tribune's wartime "Service Notes" column, indexed by the St. Joseph County Public Library for 1941–1979. Whether any South Bend man remains unaccounted for from Vietnam is a check against the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's lists that this section has not completed; it claims neither way.

Sources:

1. Congressional Record, tribute to Joe Kernan, 7 May 1997 — the shootdown (7 May 1972, twenty-sixth mission), the prisons, the repatriation date (27 March 1973), and the decoration list.
2. POW Network biography of Joseph D. Kernan, compiled from U.S. government sources; University of Notre Dame accounts of Kernan's service and captivity.
3. St. Joseph County Public Library, Military Service Notes index — the Tribune's "Service Notes" column, 1941–1979, named as the hometown source for the uncompiled prisoner and service record.