# Those "MIA-POW" Flags and Stickers? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 3, 2015, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569 "2015-06-03T19:33:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/1 "2015-06-03T19:33:53Z")
I see the stickers all the time on bumpers and rear windows of cars. the flags seem to be common as well. So I had a few questions: -are there any verified cases of any POWs being kept by Vietnam, long after the war was over? -Who makes money from selling the flags and stickers-is it a charity/non-profit organization? -if any actual MIA cases turned up as actual POWs, what would the US government do? I must admit i don’t see why an enemy would want to keep prisoners decades after hostilities ceased. What would be the advantage of this? ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/2 "2015-06-03T19:35:14Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I see the stickers all the time on bumpers and rear windows of cars. the flags seem to be common as well. So I had a few questions: > -are there any verified cases of any POWs being kept by Vietnam, long after the war was over? > -Who makes money from selling the flags and stickers-is it a charity/non-profit organization? > -if any actual MIA cases turned up as actual POWs, what would the US government do? > I must admit i don’t see why an enemy would want to keep prisoners decades after hostilities ceased. What would be the advantage of this? It makes no sense, why bother imprisoning and feeding someone for decades? ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/3 "2015-06-03T20:14:54Z")
In the 1980s, there was an entire “industry” around the concept of whether some POWs might still be alive. > **[Vietnam War POW/MIA issue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_POW/MIA_issue)** > > The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue concerns the fate of United States servicemen who were reported as missing in action (MIA) during the Vietnam War and associated theaters of operation in Southeast Asia. The term also refers to issues related to the treatment of affected family members by the governments involved in these conflicts. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, 591 U.S. prisoners of war (POWs) were returned during Operation Homecoming. The United States listed about 2,500 Americans as p... I met with Red McDaniel in his DC offices at one point, and he went over why he thought that there might still be some of our guys there: - various eyewitness reports of white guys in villages - the difference in return rates of pilots vs. back-seaters from our aircraft shot down (which rolled into that the back seaters, as the more technical of the two, were shipped to the Soviets for interrogation) - The paucity of releases after the war was over. Add in a Rambo movie and a Chuck Norris movie - and you get the picture. In my family, my grandfather talked about debriefing a guy from the Korean War who escaped after all prisoners were released at the end of war (aka the beginning of the armistice that exists today). I don’t know who has the license for the flags and stickers, but it is still an issue that strikes a chord with a lot of people. Start with the un-popular war, add in vets treated poorly upon return, mix in the concept of a Federal government that just wants to move on - you get a pretty good movement. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/4 "2015-06-03T20:15:25Z")
That depends. If you are going all Unit 731 on POWs and did not \*lose \*the war, then you may not want to return those prisoners and have the fact known to your enemy. Also, if Vietnam transferred any POWs to Russia or China, they may not have wanted that fact broadcast to the Americans, either. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/5 "2015-06-04T00:12:57Z")
At this point there are exceedingly few people who believe that there are POWs still held captive in Vietnam or Korea. As you said, the idea of feeding and/or caring for them is silly, especially since any intelligence they might once have had is long since obsolete. If they had been kept as hostages to influence policy or to extort their home countries they would have been used by now. Also, the youngest one would now be 61 years old, assuming they were 18 in 1972 when active involvement in the war ended. The focus now is on determining where their remains are and the circumstances of their deaths. People still want some sort of closure, which they’ll likely never get since the bodies were blown apart, lost at sea, left in some jungle somewhere, or otherwise lost. Warfare (and nature) has no regard for the feelings of the families of those left behind. There are, of course, still some nutters who believe that there are malnourished captives in bamboo cells tortured regularly by psychotic captors. Pay them no heed. If you ask them about it you’ll get some absurd theory on par with anti-vaxxers, truthers, and birthers. ---
**Author:** ![CraterLayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/87869e/32.png) [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/6 "2015-06-04T01:11:44Z")
Not all American POW’s were released after the Korean War. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia admitted that an unknown number had been imprisoned in Siberia for years after the war, but all had died by the 70’s. Red China also held American POW’s after the war, but many were quietly exchanged. North Korea: Many Americans were positively identified as alive and captured by NK, but not returned after the war nor acknowledged by NK as ever being held. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/7 "2015-06-04T01:22:15Z")
A cousin works/has worked in the identification of remains returned. Her professional opinion is that someone may have been alive into the late 70s but she is doubtful any made it much past 1980. Now this is for actual prisoners and not someone who may have deserted. We know there were at least 6 of those after Korea. And then you have cases like this we may never know about for sure. > **[U.S. Army veteran 'is found living in Vietnam village 44 YEARS after being...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316937/John-Hartley-Robertson-US-Army-veteran-living-Vietnam-village-44-YEARS-shot-down.html)** > > Did Green Beret Sgt. John Hartley Robertson survive his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in 1968 - only to marry a Vietnam woman and raise another family? A new documentary claims to have found him aged 76 living in the Socialist state ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/8 "2015-06-04T03:14:34Z")
Thanks OP for the question, because I was thinking the same thing. The neighbor at our lake house just put a flag pole near his dock, lit at night, with a US flag. He also is flying a POW-MIA flag below that, and I’m not sure why he thinks it’s necessary. I wonder if he’d take it down if I told him I thought it was an ISIS flag when I first saw it. ---
**Author:** ![CraterLayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/87869e/32.png) [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/9 "2015-06-04T03:30:45Z")
A reason for those flags is that a lot of young men could not be accounted for after the wars were over. These were not just soldiers but sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles and grandchildren. Their families will never forget, nor give up on them. A mother not knowing what became of her son is painful enough to think of. That is what the MIA flags represent. Please try to understand and respect that. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/10 "2015-06-04T04:04:42Z")
OP, you don’t seem to understand the feelings of gratitude behind those stickers. They are a recognition of the fact that we will never know just what happened to some of our people. “All gave some and some gave all.” [http://www.metrolyrics.com/some-gave-all-lyrics-billy-ray-cyrus.html](http://www.metrolyrics.com/some-gave-all-lyrics-billy-ray-cyrus.html) ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/11 "2015-06-04T23:38:16Z")
The Department of Water and Power building in downtown Los Angeles flies one of those flags (they might have stopped very recently but I haven’t paid attention lately). That always struck me as odd. I had only seen them on army surplus stores and redneck trucks before seeing one flying there. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/12 "2015-06-05T00:18:39Z")
That’s why I want to ask my neighbor why he chose to fly a POW/MIA flag: does he have a personal investment in knowing, or is he just doing it because it makes him look good. (If he lived in the south, I think he’d fly a Confederate flag.) I have an uncle killed in WWII and dated a girl in college who discretely wore a copper bracelet with the name of her cousin (the VIVA project) so I sympathize, just not with those who do it for self aggrandizement. It’s still an ugly flag, intentionally ugly I’m sure, but ugly. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/13 "2015-06-05T00:37:01Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > Thanks OP for the question, because I was thinking the same thing. The neighbor at our lake house just put a flag pole near his dock, lit at night, with a US flag. He also is flying a POW-MIA flag below that, and I’m not sure why he thinks it’s necessary. > > I wonder if he’d take it down if I told him I thought it was an ISIS flag when I first saw it. That seems rather mean. POW-MIA flags can be meaningful without believing that there are still POWs alive and captive. When I went to DC on a school trip in the late 90s, I bought a (replica, duh) MIA bracelet that included a brief bio. I still have it. Even as a kid I figured he was dead, not a POW. He had been MIA for 30+ years (wow… just checked it and this October will mark 50 years :(). But it was just really sad to me that no one knows for sure, and his family never got closure. I wanted to make sure that someone else remembered him, even though it’s not like they’d \*know \*. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/14 "2015-06-05T05:10:34Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > -if any actual MIA cases turned up as actual POWs, what would the US government do? [Account them](http://www.dpaa.mil/), of course. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/15 "2015-06-05T07:13:12Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > OP, you don’t seem to understand the feelings of gratitude behind those stickers. They are a recognition of the fact that we will never know just what happened to some of our people. This. I always assumed they were just in recognition of veterans who had served time as a POW or soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen whose remains were never recovered because they crashed in the jungle, went down with their ship or were blown to smithereens. But I suppose this is the internet and that flag must be a personal affront to someone, as it obviously represents the most absurd edge case of belief in gaunt Missing in Action style prisoners with scraggly beards living in bamboo cages on the border of Laos. Also, when I was a kid, I thought there was a war in the country of Pow-Mia. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/16 "2015-06-05T09:00:41Z")
This article is worth looking at: [http://www.unz.com/article/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/](http://www.unz.com/article/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/) While obviously it sounds very much like a conspiracy theory, the evidence here seems more robust than the usual. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/17 "2015-06-08T05:44:35Z")
To expand on this theme, this is an example of American exceptionalism in action. The US is unique among nations in its treatment and attitude towards soldiers who are MIA. > [@](#): > > The United States wants its dead back so fiercely that it spends more than $105 million a year trying to find, retrieve, and identify them as well as give them a proper burial with full military honors. More than 600 military and civilian personnel work full-time on the POW/MIA effort. > **[Bringing Home MIAs](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/mia-personnel/)** > > The U.S. spends over $100 million a year to find, I.D., and bury all American personnel lost since the start of WWII. [http://www.dpaa.mil/](http://www.dpaa.mil/) ---
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2022, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/18 "2022-01-31T00:04:07Z")
Sorry to raise this thread (or bring it back from MIA status), but as recently as today, I noticed a POW MIA flag flying directly under an American flag. At the US Post office. In West Lafayette, IN. In January 2022. So of course I came back here and scanned some older threads about these flags and the whole POW MIA issue and learned a few things, but questions remain. 1. It seems to mainly be a “boomer” generation issue, for that generation and their parents, who lost loved ones to the Vietnam war. The missing number in the low thousands (maybe 1.5k to 2k). 2. However, apparently there were far more such missing soldiers during WWII. That war was on an entirely grander scale, with (according to [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-evidence-is-there-that-american-pows-were-left-behind-in-vietnam/934087)) more than 2k missing from home front soldiers alone. But we don’t hear so much from this older cohort because most of them have passed on. 3. I hypothesized to my son that as the boomer generation gets older, these POW MIA flags are likely to start disappearing. That is, unless replaced by a whole new generation of MIA’s. I admit I was surprised that the local post office was flying this flag today. Who exactly does this flag benefit? Vietnam veterans, or anyone remembering someone lost in war? Is there perhaps a “better” way of doing this that doesn’t seem connected to a conspiracy-like theory (e.g. that the Vietnamese are for some reason still holding prisoners)? Living in WA near various military bases, there were a lot of yellow ribbons, which signified awaiting the return for a loved one who was currently deployed. Then of course, there’s memorial day. Both these seem decent and non conspiratorial. However I feel kind of funny about that flag. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2022, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/19 "2022-01-31T00:42:01Z")
It’s not just in West Lafayette, IN. Based on my non-lawyer reading of [36 U.S. Code § 902](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/902), _all_ post offices are _required_ to fly that flag, as are some other federal buildings. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2022, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569/20 "2022-01-31T16:24:57Z")
It’s a law that the POW/MIA flag has to fly at federal institutions. A law was passed in 2019 requiring it, although I recall it being flown over federal buildings in the 1990s or earlier. > **[National League of Families POW/MIA Flag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_of_Families_POW/MIA_Flag)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > > The National League of Families POW/MIA flag, often referred to as the POW/MIA flag, was adopted in 1972 and consists of the official emblem of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia in white on a black background. In 2019 the National POW/MIA Flag Act was signed into law, requiring the POW/MIA flag to be flown on certain federal properties, including the U.S. Capitol Building, on all days the U.S. f... [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-mia-pow-flags-and-stickers/721569.md?page=2)