POW, MIA

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POW, MIA

Prisoners of war (POWs) have played a major role in the conduct and outcome of America's wars. As far back as the Civil War, even as captured servicemen were removed from the field of battle, their status and treatment continued to influence the course of the conflict and the terms of the peace settlement. In both Korea, and Vietnam especially, in an age of increased media publicity, tales of POW brutality and suffering, as well as heroic resistance, greatly affected attitudes and morale on the home front. The large numbers of U.S. missing-in-action (MIA) in Korea and Vietnam, many of them pilots lost during shootdown incidents who were thought possibly to have been captured but remained unaccounted for after the war, continue into the twenty-first century to arouse strong emotions.

korean war

During the Korean War (1950–1953), approximately 7,100 U.S. servicemen were taken prisoner. Of that number, 2,700 died in captivity; the remainder who were known to still be incarcerated were released following the July 1953 armistice. Most of the American captives in Korea were young infantrymen lacking the survival training and discipline of the Vietnam era POWs, a majority of whom were officers and pilots and hence were generally older, more experienced, and more skilled. Those held in Korea were not only exposed to horrible physical conditions (frigid winters, severe malnutrition, primitive or nonexistent medical care, torture and other abuses, including long marches in knee-deep snow), but were subjected to intense psychological pressures and indoctrination to weaken their resistance and allegiance.

The so-called "brainwashing" of captured American soldiers in Korea would be much exaggerated after the war in sensational journalistic accounts and movies such as The Manchurian Candidate, which depicted returnees from the prison camps reduced to robots programmed to spout communist propaganda or react on cue to their former captors' instructions. In fact, although the enemy often achieved compliance through coercion, instances of outright collaboration were isolated and limited. Still, North Korean and Chinese Communist mistreatment of U.S. POWs in Korea flagrantly violated the protections guaranteed prisoners under the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war and contributed to a rising tide of anticommunist sentiment in the United States in the 1950s.

vietnam war

During the Vietnam War, American prisoners suffered under similar conditions and abuse, if less systematic indoctrination. Communist captors routinely applied torture to extract information and punish disobedience. Over the course of a decade, between 1961 and 1973, more than 700 U.S. servicemen, along with several dozen civilians, were seized by Communist forces in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and Laos. Over 100 of the group, many of them seriously injured upon capture, perished from mistreatment, neglect, or the harsh environment.

Prisoners of the Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam slept in bamboo cages, were required to move long distances through jungles infested with leeches and snakes, and faced years of lonely confinement while ravaged by starvation, dysentery, and malaria. In North Vietnam, U.S. POWs lived in dungeon-like prisons; the most prominent was an old French fortress in downtown Hanoi that the American pilots dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton." At another compound the POWs named "Alcatraz," the North Vietnamese jailed the toughest U.S. officers and resistance leaders. In these crowded camps in the North, the prisoners developed elaborate systems of communication and organization that sustained them through hunger, disease, and a strict regimen that punished resistance with vicious reprisals.

Far fewer Americans were seized during the Vietnam War than during the Korean War. Because of the length of the Vietnam engagement, the preponderance of high-ranking officers (mostly Navy and Air Force aviators) among the captured, and North Vietnamese and Viet Cong exploitation of the prisoners in a high-profile international propaganda campaign, the POWs of the Vietnam era had an unusual degree of visibility and impact. The enemy threatened them periodically with war crimes trials, paraded them before antiwar groups, and used them as bargaining chips in the peace talks. Spurred by angry citizens and worried families, President Richard Nixon gave the POW issue a high priority. After Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird divulged evidence of North Vietnamese atrocities in 1969 as part of the administration's "Go Public" campaign, the plight of the POWs became front-page news and resulted in international pressure to improve their treatment and secure their freedom. They returned home to a hero's welcome following their release in February 1973. Among many prisoners who became famous when their POW experiences came to light were Medal of Honor winner James Stockdale and Arizona senator John McCain.

The unresolved fate of over 2,000 MIAs soon eclipsed the celebration that accompanied the return of the prisoners from Vietnam. Families of the MIAs, along other concerned parties, charged that the head of the U.S. delegation at the Paris peace conference, Henry Kissinger, had not sufficiently pressed the Communists for information on the missing, and even that a conspiracy of silence in the U.S. government knowingly left captured Americans in enemy hands at the conclusion of the war. No concrete evidence exists to substantiate such claims, but the MIA matter remains a controversial issue that continues (even into the twenty-first century) to occupy scores of Defense Department analysts, search teams, and family and veteran organizations dedicated to a full accounting.

bibliography

Biderman, Albert D. March to Calumny: the Story of American POW's in the Korean War. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Grant, Zalin, ed. Survivors. New York: Norton, 1975.

Hubbell, John G. P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, 1964–1973. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1976.

Kinkead, Eugene. In Every War but One. New York: Norton, 1959.

Rochester, Stuart I., and Kiley, Frederick. Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999.

Stockdale, Jim and Stockdale, Sybil. In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.

Stuart I. Rochester

Americans at War