There was much significance in the events of the Prisoners of War during the time of the Vietnam War. The POW events affected the way in which war was conducted, the outcome and experience to soldiers, and America's future as well. The events that took place with the POWs were an important aspect of the way war was looked at during the war in Vietnam.

Prisoners of war, or otherwise known as POW, are members of the armed forces of an enemy country who have been captured in the event of wartime. In one of the stories in the book, Everything We Had, Admiral William Lawrence describes the events that took place for the duration of and after the time that he was captured while he was at war and held in Hanoi as a Prisoner of War during the Vietnam War.

Lawrence was a pilot who was shot down while flying and then was captured by Vietnamese troops after landing nearby the Red River Delta. He was then taken to Hanoi, where he would stay along with the other POWs for the next 7 years of his life. When they all first arrived there, the POW were blindfolded and tied up, and if they talked they would get hit "with the butt of a gun" or beaten even worse. The prisoners were kept in extremely small cells, usually separated with people from the same country. The prisoners weren't allowed to talk so Lawrence explained how they had developed a tap code in order to communicate with each other without letting the guards surrounding them know what was going on. Since the Vietnamese were always attempting to try and have a prisoner write a propaganda letter, or any other way of interrogation towards the prisoners, communication was a must and the prisoners were very intelligent in finding methods of transporting messages back and forth to each other without talking. The prisoners also got a radio played to them everyday which was about the US's involvement in the war.