NORCROSS, Ga. — In one photo, James Williams sees what once seemed unthinkable: a man of his color with the stance of a survivor, the blue jacket representing his HBCU alma mater, and the ten-toothed smile in a place that still brings nightmares.
“Me going back to a place where I spent almost a year locked up? I was a little hesitant about that," he said.
Today, Williams lives in Norcross. His man cave houses mementos from five decades ago, an Air Force captain set to tour in Vietnam.
“With 40 days left on my tour, one of the guys got sick," he recalls. "They asked, 'Will you go fly?' And that’s the day that I got shot down.”
On May 20, 1972, Captain Williams became a prisoner of war.
“For the next two days, I was going around to different villages, where they were putting me on display, because in the jungle they hadn’t seen a black guy, especially a pilot. So they would feel my hair," he said. "I would wake up, and they would start screaming and beating on me. From there, they took me across the Red River to Hanoi.”
He still keeps the actual photo of him captured -- with the cup he used to eat from and the uniform he was forced to wear. In a war so complex, Williams says he couldn’t think that way.
“It was, 'I’m fighting a war. You’re killing us, and we’re killing them.' That was the approach," he said.
He was held for more than 10 months. Finally, the following March, Williams was released and brought home.
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Photos: Local Veteran returns to Vietnam
“I occasionally think about some of my buddies, where we flew together and they’re not here," he said. "So I think God has some plan for me, because I could have easily gotten killed, but he had his protective arms around me and said, ‘I got something else planned for you.’”
Williams served 28 years in the Air Force, then 20 as a teacher at Tucker High School. Today he speaks at veterans' events, stands up for veteran issues, and leans on companions.
This past fall, a group called Valor Administration offered him the chance to go back to Vietnam.
“They said, 'We’re planning a trip to Vietnam, and we’d like to you to be our guest,'" he said.
For one week, now-Lieutenant Colonel Williams returned to Vietnam. He smiled for sketches, wore Tennessee State blue, and learned that his group had prepared a powerful meeting.
“They had already pre-planned for me to meet the pilot who shot me down," he said. “But then they said, ‘No, he actually passed away in 1980, but we made plans for you to meet his wife.’”
For one hour, Williams joined Nguyen Thi Lam, wife of pilot Do Van Lanh. One interpreter and 47 years of time brought the ability to sit together.
“I had a little Air Force pin that you wear on your coat," he said. "I gave her that.”
New progress cannot erase old pain. But today, Williams can stand in photos and see how progress can produce the unthinkable.
“She’s the wife of the pilot who shot me down … and I’m the guy her husband shot down ... but we’re all God’s children," he said. "That’s the way I look at it.”
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