Most of the museum exhibits focus on the shackles, instruments of torture, isolation cells and guillotines used by the French colonial forces.

This room purports to represent comparatively benign prison conditions during the "American War." The central image in the row of prisoners in the display is that of John McCain, whose plane crashed in a lake near the center of Ha Noi. That incident is commemorated by a monument at the edge of the lake, showing the wounded flyer being fished out by a group of young men