Although the Vietnam conflict lasted for 20 years - from 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in 1975 - the United States government never officially declared war. Over 3 million people perished in the conflict, and hundreds of American and Vietnamese citizens were held in prison camps as unofficial POWs. The North Vietnamese captured American troops and the South Vietnamese held hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers. These POWs were treated in different but perhaps equally awful ways. Americans suffered terrible treatment and years-long solitary confinement, while the South Vietnamese left their captives in miserable health conditions that ended many lives.