I saw one flying over the floor of the NYSE when I visited about 25 years ago.
The conflation of MIAs with POWs was a deliberate strategy to inflate the numbers of POWs to give the pro-war side more leverage in domestic politics. You had to support the war because otherwise you didn’t want to bring our boys home.
When only 500 some POWs returned, this ended up resulting in decades of conspiracy theories about how there were camps and camps full of aging American men just waiting to be freed.
This has mostly been forgotten, so the flag is now just a generic rah-rah support-the-troops symbol.
No they don’t. The US military and the State Department continue to negotiate with other government for the return of the remains of fallen soldiers from many past conflicts and wars.
The remains of soldiers from the Great War still occasionally are found. If identifiable, they are buried with full military honours, often under the auspices of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The remains of a Canadian soldier were buried last year, 112 years after he was killed in the Battle of Hill 70 in 1917.
ETA: when remains of a lost soldier are definitely identified and buried, his name is taken off the list of soldiers without a grave on the Menin Gate. The Belgians still remember and honour the dead from many nations.
Even assuming that’s in the US, I find that surprising. It’s fairly common IME as flag, bumper stick etc. including where I live in an ~80% Democratic area (it probably has a political flavor to some degree but it’s not strictly political and there’s practically no place where everybody is on one side of the political divide). It’s less common now than it once was. The issue has naturally faded as it becomes less and less plausible there are any living US POW’s and it’s more a tribute.
It’s pretty plausible some past enemies kept some US POW’s after agreements ending/suspending hostilities, Korean War also. Perhaps people they permanently injured by torture but hadn’t gotten around to killing by the agreed deadline to hand back POW’s, or had captured late in the war and felt they could still information useful enough to not hand them back, although it seems much less likely they would have been held for decades rather than killed eventually. There were also two firmly known gray area categories in the Korean War. Some airmen said to have been captured inside China were kept until 1955 (the armistice and main prisoner release was in 1953), and a couple of dozen US POW’s refused repatriation having gone over to the Communist side ideologically. But how do you evaluate the role of free will in that kind of situation?
This was also a much bigger issue in the Korean War when it came to Korean POW’s. The Communist side returned only ~9k ROK prisoners after having themselves cumulatively claimed to have captured 65k, and the number of ROKA missing was higher still. The mortality rate among prisoners was surely high but not that high. Several dozen ROK prisoners not repatriated in 1953 subsequently escaped from North Korea, so there’s no doubt it happened in that case, and they were held for up to decades, even to now (ROK govt believes several 100 remain alive of 1,000’s originally).
Well, yeah, Corry El, it’s in the U.S. You can see by looking in the top right corner of my posts that I live in Greenbelt, Maryland. I’ve lived here since 1990. I live in an apartment complex where I’m in the minority both by being a non-Hispanic white and having graduate degrees. Most cars here have no bumper stickers (and I don’t bother to look at the few that do). I rarely have political discussions with my friends. We talk about books and movies and trivia contests and such. When I communicate with my relatives (by E-mail and sometimes by phone), it’s mostly to plan our Christmas get-togethers in Ohio. Around that time I communicate with my nephews and nieces about the Christmas presents I sent them for my grandnephews and grandnieces, which consist of (often used) books, games, and little scientific experiment things.
To put together the facts about my background (which I’ve talked about in little pieces in various posts), I grew up on a farm in Ohio. Most of the members of my grandparents generation only went to elementary school. Most of the members of my parents generation only went to high school. Most of the members of my generation and the generation after ours went to college. I and one nephew have master’s degrees.
Here is a link to a photo of your local Post Office, which does NOT depict the POW/MIA flag. But, I hasten to add that the federal law requiring the facility to fly it only went into effect last December 5, and I don’t know the date that the photo was taken.
So, next time you venture out, take a spin past 7600 Ora Glen Drive, and you should see one. They appear to have only one flagpole, so it’ll probably be flying directly beneath the American flag.
[Off-topic / Persnickety grammarian stuff]
It seems jarringly odd to phrase it as “How many living Americans are suspected of being POWs?”. Let’s take that living American over there… points do you suspect that living American of being a POW? Should we investigate? Or do we just take their word for it: “Excuse me, but are you by any chance a prisoner of war?” Of course that doesn’t directly address the question, which isn’t about how many actually are but how many are the subject of someone else suspecting that they might be… “Pardon me, but would you mind making a list of all the living Americans you suspect of being a prisoner of war?” compiles list, removes duplicates to get a non-overlapping head count
[/Pedantic hijack]
Yeah, the title should have been something like “How many Americans are still alive and being kept as POWs by our enemies in some war?”.
I used to live 4 miles from where the first POW/MIA Flag was displayed.
Every Memorial Day there is a ceremony. Kids play music. Choral groups sing. Firefighters and Police stand at attention.
There’s a LOT of them in Orange County, NY.
I know that this is a different category, but has there ever been a counting of how many military personnel went AWOL in Vietnam rather than return with their units to the US when the war ended? They had met and established a relationship with a local Vietnamese lady and just decided to stay behind with her. Was there ever any attempt by the military to retrieve these deserters?
I think the important part has to be “You are not forgotten.”
Granted, it’s beyond belief that there are any living POWs now, but flying the flag is a way of supporting our military by saying, we will support you and not quietly stand by if the government tries to abandon you to the enemy, and it’s also for the families who lost a loved one with no knowledge of what happened to them and no “closure.”
I wear a POW/MIA bracelet. It’s for a soldier in Vietnam who was declared MIA the day I was born.
The only place I’ve seen this flag flying is outside the American Legion chapter in Hawaii, which is just outside Waikiki and a short walk from my home.
Having spent 25 years in Thailand, and traipsing all over Southeast Asia, and seeing how the current and former communist countries opened up to Western tourists also traipsing all through their lands, I’d be surprised if any old POWs were being held against their will today. Some sign of them would have turned up, and what would be the point of holding them now anyway?
I agree the question could have been asked different to make it more clear.
As for the POW/MIA flag I see them frequently. At my previous employer (25+ years ago) the employes asked plant management if they would put a POW/MIA flag out by the USA and State of Iowa flag poles. Management agreed and a fundraiser was started to do this. Corporate management got wind of it and put a stop to it. The company was owned by a European conglomerate and as they did business worldwide and viewed the POW flag as a political statement and not allowed. Simply put, in their words, the flag is anti-Vietnam/anti-Korea and they do business with companies located there and didn’t want to “offend” them.
Does your company do business with North Korea? I can’t imagine how this would be anti South Korea.
Russia and China do business with North Korea, The company did business with China and Russia and very well could have did business with North Korea.
This was my former employer from over 25 years ago. They may not even be owned by the conglomerate anymore.
More about the flag, slightly OT:
In 1966 my family lived in Petersburg VA. My mom and dads best friends were Newt and Evy Grubb. I knew them as Major and Mrs. Grubb because my dad was an officer and everybody we knew was “Major Smith”, “Captain Jones” or “Lieutenant HuffandPuff”
My dad resigned his commision right after Newts plane went down. My mom kept up her relationship with Evelyn until Evy’s death.
I had and wore Lt Col Grubbs MIA bracelet for years.
Evelyn Grubb oversaw National League of Families POW/MIA flag development and also campaigned to gain its widespread acceptance and use by the United States government and also local governments and civilian organizations across the United States.
https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/20263/WILMER-N-GRUBB/
The Grubb siblings trip to Vietnam
RIP Newt and Evy
Pretty much (exactly) what Lord Feldon said. The myth that conflates “MIA” with “POW” also provides the basis for Rambo: First Blood Part II.
Reviving this thread. Everything previous is from 2020.
I wanted to say a couple of things about the POW/MIA flag itself, since this thread started with it. (I don’t want to talk about American personnel held in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, the USSR or anywhere else that conspiracy mavens claim were kept past their negotiated release in 1973, still out there, with Deep State coverups plotted and perpetuated for years by our own government. That myth was roundly busted long ago.)
It’s long past time that official status be removed from that flag - mandates that it be displayed on certain days over government buildings, federally and as may vary from state to state. Of course any private citizen can fly the flag or make T-shirts and bumper stickers as they wish, and I suppose in some form it will still be seen long into the future, but as a thing sanctioned by authority its days have passed.
It was designed in 1971, and at that time there really were American POWs held in prison camps in Southeast Asia. The National League of POW/MIA Families asked a designer to create a symbolic flag to keep the issue visible at a time when it needed to be. It was not copyrighted, anyone was free to reproduce it however they wished, and it soon became visible as a familiar sort of “support the troops” gesture.
But that was then. The war ended, the remaining POWs all came home, but the flag never really went away. Eventually it just became a generic patriotic thing that, if you were displaying it, you didn’t really want to take it down. Complicating matters was a fairly well-circulated belief that not all prisoners had been released, many missing and unaccounted-for troops were still alive, and our government was not exactly doing a lot to bring them home; in fact for nefarious reasons would just as soon forget them entIrely. Some people were sincere about this, particularly families who didn’t want to believe their loved ones had died and might never be accounted for; others were more cynical and glommed onto the matter as a way to promote themselves or raise money. This still goes on to some degree, but the Bo Gritzes who used to barnstorm the country raising bucks for “rescue missions” that never happened (there was no one to rescue) have faded from the scene.
At some point, the flag was sort of rebranded to stand not specifically for Vietnam, but as a remembrance of “all imprisoned or missing soldiers from all wars” the US ever engaged in. Around the same time, Congress gave its stamp of approval by passing acts that stipulated the flag be flown on certain occasions - it was now to be a bona-fide, authorized symbol - of what?
Turning it into a catch-all has its problems. Eternally displaying it sends a sort of America Held Hostage message: we won’t forget our boys in captivity, but there’ll always be more in wars that haven’t happened yet, so more POWs, and there’s nothing we can do about it except fly this flag, so please be kind to us! Weak.
Also, if you take a closer look, the guy in the guard tower is wearing a conical hat, the sort associated with Asians, so obviously our glum silhouetted American is not being held by Redcoats in 1777.
And, frankly, the design is pretty creepy - white on a black field, a look better suited to Isis or the Symbionese Liberation Army. The legend says “You are not forgotten”, but the downcast soldier seems to be thinking “why have they forgotten me?”. (Cheer up, at least you have a special flag of your own, not like the unlucky ones Killed in Action, or the many who came home who were often damaged and neglected.)
So yes, it’s time to retire this baby. I won’t be the first to suggest that a better, prouder, stronger symbol of support for American troops, American values, American military might is Captain America! (Of course I’m kidding, it’s the Stars and Stripes, silly.)
Following yesterday’s post: it occurs to me what I wrote really belongs in Great Debates, so don’t reply to it here. I will reformulate it and start a new topic there sometime soon, which will be specific to the POW/MIA flag.