Robert C. Ode -- 19 april 1980

April 19. 1980: Wonder of wonders! Were served fresh, scrambled eggs, jam and really fresh unleavened bread this moming for breakfast! What a welcome change from the usual stale bread and insufficient jam. However, for lunch we had cold chicken (it was supposed to have been warm!), a big glob of cold mashed potatoes and another huge glob of cold spinach! So one can't win around here! Later in the day we were shown a new exercise room on our floor with a better Ping-Pong table and told that our new hour (we now have been assigned a full hour) will be at 11:00 a.m. daily and if we want to play again we can do so after 10:00 p.m.!
By chance another hostage was in the toilet when I was admitted. (This is never supposed to happen.) He was Don Hohman, a U.S. Army nurse stationed at Frankfort, Germany who was here on a six months temporary assignment in our Medical Unit when he too was captured. He said he shares a room with Bill Delk, a Communicator. His wife lives in Frankfort and he said he has written her 100 letters and she has reccived only 8 of them. Likewise, he has received only 7 or 8 from her! He is as fed up as I'm sure everyone else is around here, not only with our captors but equally with our own government for its inaction in getting us out of here. While I have only had a chance to talk with a few captives, everyone I have spoken with so far is of the same opinion.

April 22. 1980: Another noisy demonstration today. Lasted about 3 to 4 hours. This time was not directly in front of the Embassy but close enough so that we had a diet of the usual amplified chants of "Allah -is greater"; "Khomeini—is great", etc. Then in the afternoon Hamid I, our supervisor, dropped in for no apparent reason and started in on the usual harangue. Seems he must have listened to a Press Conference given by President Carter and began to tell us, in a rambling, almost incoherent manner, about how Carter had lied about Iran; how the press asked him many questions about the hostages that he refused to answer ... said "We are working on it", etc; how Carter must return the Shah; tried to impress on us how good the students were to the hostages, etc, etc which I told him was a lot of B.S. and reminded him about our treatment, especially during the first four months. The usual pointless discussion!


Robert C. Ode (1916-1995) was een Amerikaanse ambtenaar die in 1979-1981 gegijzeld werd in Iran. Zijn dagboek uit die tijd staat hier.