Old myths, like old soldiers, never die. When the myths concerned are the common property of the political left, they do not even fade away. They are kept, like holiday slides, to be inflicted on every hapless visitor who might venture within range. The so-called “tiger cages” of Vietnam provide a perfect illustration. The myth was hatched in a Life Magazine story of July 17, 1970, which first added the term “tiger cage” to the left wing lexicon. The story derived from a visit to Con Son prison island by Don Luce, a peace campaigner, and photographer Tom Harkin, who were accompanying two congressmen. The photographs which accompanied the story were emotive masterpieces, looking down through horizontal bars to what appeared to be dark underground pits of human suffering. Two to four prisoners lived, “crouched” as the story put it, in each cell. The rest of the tale is easily told. To the left wing, determined in its opposition to both South Vietnam and the U.S., the story was a godsend.
The real “tiger cages” are cells which were built in 1941 by the French colonial regime as a means of restraining and punishing uncooperative prisoners. Each cell contained a metal shackling post sunk into the concrete, to which prisoners could be chained. When the French left in 1954, all of their prisons, including the cells at Con Son, were transferred to the South Vietnamese authorities. Inside the main office at Con Son, where the names of previous prison governors are displayed, the names change abruptly at 1954 from French to Vietnamese.
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