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Missing in action (MIA) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants, military chaplains, combat medics, and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire. They may have been killed, wounded, captured, executed, or deserted. If deceased, neither their remains nor grave has been positively identified. Becoming MIA has been an occupational risk for as long as there has been warfare.
Bùi Tín was a Vietnamese dissident and People's Army of Vietnam colonel. After the war, he became disillusioned by corruption and the continuing isolation of the newly-unified Vietnam and decided to leave Vietnam and live in exile in Paris to express his growing dissatisfaction with Vietnam's Communist leadership and their political system.
Rolling Thunder is a United States advocacy group that seeks to bring full accountability for prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIA) service members of all U.S. wars. The group's first demonstration was in 1988. It was incorporated in 1995, and has more than 90 chapters throughout the US, as well as overseas.
The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), as part of the United States Department of Defense, was an organization that reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy through the Assistant Secretary of Defense. DPMO provided centralized management of prisoner of war/missing personnel (POW/MP) affairs within the Department of Defense.
Sybil Elizabeth Stockdale was an American campaigner for families of Americans missing in South East Asia.
Mount POW/MIA is a mountain in the U.S. state of Alaska that has been dedicated to all the soldiers that are or have been given the status of Prisoner of War or Missing in Action (POW/MIA). The mountain is just north of Eklutna Lake and is west of Twin peaks and Bull Peak, six miles southeast of Wasilla in Chugach State Park. There is a POW/MIA flag placed atop of Mount POW/MIA and is replaced annually by the Local Colony Army JROTC program during Memorial weekend in May. The black and white flag was designed by the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia and has been flown at the White House.
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The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, commonly known as the National League of POW/MIA Families or the League, is an American 501(c)(3) humanitarian organization that is concerned with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. According to the group's web site, its sole purpose is "to obtain the release of all prisoners, the fullest possible accounting for the missing and repatriation of all recoverable remains of those who died serving our nation during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia." The League's most prominent symbol is its famous flag.
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Baron 52 was the call sign of a United States Air Force EC-47 carrying eight crew members that was shot down over Laos during the predawn hours of 5 February 1973, a week after the Paris Peace Accords officially ended the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The remains of four crewmen were recovered from the crash site, but those of the remaining four have never been found. Although the U.S. government considers them to have been killed in action and as late as 1996 listed them as "accounted for", family members and POW/MIA advocates believe the four survived the crash and were taken captive and possibly sent to the USSR. The intelligence gatherers and their equipment would have been highly valued by the Soviets who maintained a presence both in Laos and North Vietnam. The incident has been featured on several nationwide news programs and a 1991 episode of the U.S. television series Unsolved Mysteries.
Theodore Lane Sampley was an American Vietnam War veteran and activist. He primarily advocated for those servicemembers still considered missing in action or prisoners of war (POW-MIA) as of the end of hostilities in 1975. A staunch political conservative, he also ran for local political office several times. He is credited with the research that identified Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie as the Vietnam fatality buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and for his role in organizing the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle event in Washington. In Kinston, North Carolina, where he lived for much of his adult life, he was known for his local civic activism, most notably his effort to build a replica of the Confederate ironclad CSS Neuse, the only full-size replica of a Confederate ironclad, in the city's downtown.
Phillip Neal "Phil" Butler was the eighth-longest-held U.S. prisoner of war (POW) held in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Butler, a Navy pilot, who was forced to eject after a mid-air explosion on April 20, 1965 and served as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam until his release as part of Operation Homecoming in 1973. Butler was one of the four POW's credited with establishing the tap code. The code enabled the prisoners to communicate with each other.
References
- 1 2 Keating, Susan Katz (1994). Prisoners of Hope:: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-43016-4. p. 52.
- ↑ McConnell, Malcolm; Theodore G. Schweitzer III (1995). Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives: Solving the MIA Mystery. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-87118-8. p. 390.
- 1 2 Barbara Crossette (1992-06-16). "Gulag Held M.I.A.'s, Yeltsin Suggests". The New York Times .
- ↑ Clifford Kraus (1993-01-14). "Senate Panel Report Fails to Settle M.I.A. Dispute". The New York Times .
- ↑ "Vietnam-era unaccounted for statistical report" (PDF). 5 August 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 26, 2012.