Shot down over Hon Gai Harbor on August 5, 1964, Navy pilot Lt. Everett Alvarez, Jr. became the first American prisoner of war in Vietnam. He would not be the last. During the course of the conflict, hundreds of Americans served time in Vietnamese prisons in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China. Many did so in barbaric conditions. Of these, 591 were released during Operation Homecoming, the prisoner repatriation program that was instituted at the war's end in the spring of 1973. More than 2,000 Americans remained unaccounted for at that time. Over twenty years later, many groups and individuals remain convinced that despite the efforts of the US and Vietnam, a complete accounting of missing Americans has yet to be delivered. As the United States attempts to forge an expanded postwar relationship with Vietnam, the POW/MIA issue remains a morass of incomplete data, shadowy reports of Americans still alive in Indochina, insistence by the US and Vietnamese governments that no American MIAs remain alive, and allegations by MIA advocates of cover-ups and foot-dragging on the part of those same governments.
From 1964 to 1973, North Vietnamese captured Americans, mostly pilots and crews of downed aircraft, and delivered them to jails. Among the most notorious of these facilities was Hoa Lo, known by Americans as the Hanoi Hilton. Conditions at "the Hilton," along with the other large urban prisons and jungle camps throughout Vietnam were horrifying.
Although the Geneva Convention of 1949 called for the decent and humane treatment of prisoners of war, these terms did not apply in Vietnam. The Vietnamese were accused of brutally torturing their captives -- beating them with fists, clubs, and rifle butts, flaying them with rubber whips, and stretching their joints with rope in an effort to uncover information about American military operations. GIs were forced to record taped "confessions" to war crimes against the Vietnamese people and to write letters urging Americans at home to end the war. Poor food and medical care was standard. Prisoners were often isolated to prevent communication amongst each other, in addition to being denied communication with family members. American prisoners sometimes died in captivity, from wounds sustained in combat, or at the hands of their captors.
Despite these oppressive conditions, American POWs worked to confound their jailers, resisting torture, delivering spurious or nonsensical "confessions" and developing clandestine communication networks in prison. POWs compiled mental lists of imprisoned personnel, along with information about their physical conditions, in hope of delivering this information to the outside world at the first opportunity.
Because the Vietnamese held many of their prisoners at facilities in well-defended urban areas, a military solution to the POW problem eluded US forces. On November 21, 1970, a unit of US Army Special Forces troops raided the Vietnamese prison camp at Son Tay, twenty miles from Hanoi. The raiders killed more than thirty Vietnamese troops, but no prisoners were freed -- the Americans had been moved some time earlier.
At home, Americans lobbied for the decent treatment and rapid return of US prisoners of war. Among the most active POW/MIA advocates was Sybil Stockdale, wife of Navy Commander James Stockdale, who had been shot down in September 1965, and was held at the Hoa Lo. Mrs. Stockdale organized the National League of Families of POWs and MIAs. She and millions of other Americans used their pens, voices, and money in support of the POW cause.
In Paris, on January 27, 1973, representatives from the US and Vietnam signed agreements for a cessation of hostilities and a repatriation of war prisoners. Operation Homecoming began the next month and ended in April. During that period 591 American POWs returned home. Representatives of the US military debriefed returnees for information regarding the more than 2,000 Americans still listed as missing. According to the US, none of the POWs were able to provide definite information about any remaining captives. Both the Nixon administration and the Vietnamese government insisted that all living POW/MIAs had been returned.
Some veterans and families of missing soldiers insisted otherwise. Thus began a long period of conflict between the US government and its citizens over the MIA issue. While a series of presidential administrations maintained that no living American soldiers remained in Indochina, contradictory reports from the intelligence community and from private citizens kept the hopes of MIA families alive.
In 1989, former UN worker Ted Schweitzer, who had risked his life to aid boat people fleeing Vietnam after the war, gained access to the Central Military Museum in Hanoi. During subsequent trips to Vietnam, Schweitzer photographed or scanned thousands of photographs and documents compiled by the Vietnamese during the war. Schweitzer's search revealed that the Vietnamese had information confirming the deaths of eleven American servicemen -- information that Vietnam had previously denied holding.
In April 1993, Harvard scholar Stephen Morris discovered a document in a Soviet archive indicating that Vietnam may have misled Americans about the numbers of POWs it held at the war's end. The document, a translation of writings allegedly prepared by North Vietnamese General Tran Van Quang, states that North Vietnam held 1205 American POWs as of September 1972, just a few months before the release of 591 POWs in Operation Homecoming. US government officials suggested that the discrepancy in numbers might have been an exaggeration on the part of Tran Van Quang, or that a confusion of statistics between American soldiers and South Vietnamese commandos caused by an error in translation. Several independent analysts, however, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the document appeared authentic.
Veterans and families of MIAs cite additional evidence that they believe shows American soldiers may still be alive in Vietnam. Thousands of live sightings of American soldiers in Vietnam have been reported since the war ended. Satellite photos have revealed images that POW/MIA advocates insist are coded distress signals burned or trampled into fields by American prisoners. In 1980, a reliable CIA contact reported seeing about 30 Americans working on a prison road crew in Laos. The US Joint Special Operations Command prepared a rescue force, but press leaks and a badly bungled CIA reconnaissance mission stopped the rescue before it started.
Since the war's end, official US government investigations have consistently concluded that no living GIs remain in Vietnam. In 1988, after hearing testimony from more than 20 witnesses, including former POWs, intelligence officials, and members of the families of MIAs, a panel from the US House of Representatives Committee on Veterans' Affairs found "no evidence to support the belief that some Americans were still held captive in Indochina," adding that there was "only a small hope that a small number of Americans might be alive." In January 1993, a Senate committee released similar findings, but added that Americans could have been left alive after the war and since died.
In addition, official statistics, and the way in which they are kept, have caused controversy. Of the more than 2,000 American soldiers still missing in Vietnam, most are listed as dead -- despite a lack of supporting physical evidence. The US prefers to concentrate search efforts on what it calls "discrepancy" cases -- those soldiers believed to be alive when they lost contact with American forces. Such discrepancy cases now number well below 100.
While some families of American MIAs agree with the government's accounting of the war's lost soldiers, many POW advocates insist that until an MIA is determined to be dead by tangible physical evidence, he should not be considered so. Some members of Congress share this opinion. In 1996, at the urging of California Republican Bob Dornan, Congress attached a provision to the US defense budget requiring that the Pentagon review the status of a missing soldier every three years if the soldier was last known to be alive. MIA families who wish to do so can be present at the review. The law also prohibits the government from declaring an MIA dead without proof.
Years of hostile American/Vietnamese diplomatic relations also hindered the resolution of the POW/MIA issue. Slowly, however, relations have improved, spurring more operations to locate missing Americans. In a speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee explaining President Clinton's 1994 lifting of the US trade embargo on Vietnam, Winston Lord, Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, cited hundreds of searches for the remains of American soldiers conducted by Vietnam. Yet few recoveries have resulted; the remains of only 67 Americans were returned home in 1993.
While some POW/MIA advocates insist on nothing short of a complete accounting of all American MIAs, even some optimists consider this unlikely. The heavy foliage in Vietnam's jungles quickly covered many aircraft crash sites, and Vietnam's hot, rainy weather caused rapid decay of clothing and human remains. Many soldiers were buried hastily in unmarked graves.
Scores of Vietnamese families also endure the pain of not having a full accounting of the fate of their missing loved ones who fought in the war. The bodies of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered and given proper burial.
The Clinton administration has made a public commitment to a full accounting of American MIAs. Yet over the objections of Republican congressmen and some MIA advocates, who accuse Vietnam of foot-dragging, Clinton has resumed official diplomatic relations with Hanoi. By naming Douglas "Pete" Peterson, a former Vietnam POW as the first US postwar ambassador to Vietnam, Clinton insists he has sent a strong message -- that a complete accounting of MIAs is the United States' first and foremost concern. Meanwhile, POW/MIA advocates show no sign of letting the issue rest. According to one of their slogans, "Only the United States Government has Forgotten."