Decades after surviving more than 2,600 days as a prisoner of war, Vietnam veteran Harlan Chapman has been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

During the war, he was a Marine captain piloting his F-8E Crusader, deep in enemy territory. On Nov. 5, 1965, Chapman was flying fast and low over Vietnam, as he dodged heavy anti-aircraft fire and tried to get his Crusader’s 2,000-pound bombs to his target.

The last fighter in his 32-aircraft strike group, Chapman was facing the brunt of the enemy’s air defenses. He dived even lower, and as an anti-aircraft round ripped through his plane, he released his bombs on the target, he told the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. The next thing Chapman remembered, he was parachuting down into a muddy rice paddy. He was bound for seven years of captivity in a North Vietnamese prison camp, the longest endured by any Marine during the war.

Sixty years later, Chapman was laid to rest in Section 83 of Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 20, the cemetery announced on Friday. He died on May 6, 2024, at the age of 89 after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease several years earlier.

“It took a lot of sacrifice,” said Cmdr. Trenten Long, a Navy chaplain who presided over Chapman’s service, “and now he comes to his final resting place.” 

After a local militia captured him after he landed, Chapman was held at the infamous Hỏa Lò prison, nicknamed by American POWs as the “Hanoi Hilton.” There, he endured years of interrogations and torture, but refused to give his captors any information outside of his name, rank and serial number. At one point, when they asked him for the names of Marines in his unit at gunpoint, he replied with Superman’s alter ego, “Clark Kent.”

Chapman learned a “tap code” to communicate with his fellow POWs to evade the watchful ears of the prison guards to find out information about the camp and who else was being kept inside.

“They’re your comrades, your buddies — they’re in the same deep shit you’re in,” Chapman said in the Stockdale Center interview. “When you’re in the same trouble together, there’s a bond that’s formed.” 

Following the Paris Peace Accords that formally ended the Vietnam War, Chapman was released alongside 591 POWs during “Operation Homecoming” on Feb. 12, 1973, after having spent 2,656 days in the prison.

“He was not a public prisoner of war,” his wife, Frances “Fran” Chapman, told The Chronicle, a local paper in Elyria, Ohio, last year. “Harlan was very quiet about it. He thought it was much more important that people know who he is now and his character. […] He didn’t tout being a prisoner.”

Chapman continued his service in the Marines, earning the rank of lieutenant colonel and commanding Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314. He retired in 1976, having earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze stars, Legion of Merit and the Prisoner of War Medal. 

“All of us owe a debt of gratitude to the heroes of our Corps who came before us,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told Task & Purpose after Chapman’s passing last year. “Harlan Chapman is one of those heroes. We cannot possibly ever repay his sacrifice, and his Marine brothers and sisters together mourn with his family as we honor his life, his courage, and his commitment to our nation. We remain Semper Fidelis to his memory.”

With Fran, he eventually returned to Vietnam years after the war, as many veterans of the conflict have done over the last several decades, including to the site where his aircraft was shot down.

“I think if you asked him, the motto ‘Return with Honor’ is exactly what [former POWs] stood for,” Fran Chapman told Task & Purpose in May. “And they did.”

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