Aug. 11, 1964 - One of two American pilots shot down in the Aug. 5 United States air strike on North Vietnamese naval bases was marched through the streets of Hongay, the Hanoi radio announced tonight.
It said that Lieut. (j.g.) Everett Alvarez Jr., “pale, weary, and awe-stricken, staggered along the streets of Hongay in his dirty United States uniform under the escort of proud Vietnamese People’s Army men.”
A picture published by the North Vietnamese showing Alvarez’s heavily damaged plane indicated he had parachuted from the craft.
The radio did not report on Alvarez’s condition. But from the Communist account, it seems that the 26-year-old pilot had suffered no serious injury when his plane went down over the coastal city, about 80 miles east of Hanoi. Alvarez is from San Jose, Calif.
The other pilot missing in the air strike is Lieut. Richard C. Sather of Pomona, Calif.
Nhan Dan, the official North Vietnamese newspaper, called the captured pilot a “U.S. pirate, one of McNamara’s ‘strong men’ who had been trained for years at the Pensacola airfield in Florida.”
It continued: “This professional American officer, whom a Western paper has for the past few days not ceased to praise as a ‘symbol of the fighters bringing civilization to the new world,’ dared not raise his eyes to look at the fresh evidence of the crimes he had committed in the Hongay town.
“Neither dared he look at the towering cranes at the port which had immediately returned to their normal job of shifting coal onto the fueling vessels.”
In Washington, State Department officials said effort to free Alvarez are being made through the International Red Cross.
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