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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 prisoners of war or missing in action but only 1,200 Americans were reported to have been killed in action with no body recovered. Many of these were airmen who were shot down over [[North Vietnam]] or [[Laos]]. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived being shot down. If they did not survive, then the U.S. government considered efforts to recover their remains. POW/MIA activists played a role in pushing the U.S. government to improve its efforts in resolving the fates of these missing service members. Progress in doing so was slow until the mid-1980s when relations between the United States and Vietnam began to improve and more cooperative efforts were undertaken. Normalization of the U.S. relations with Vietnam in the mid-1990s was a culmination of this process.
 
Considerable speculation and investigation have been devoted to a hypothesis that a significant number of missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces and kept as live prisoners after U.S. involvement in the war concluded in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese and U.S. governments since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the "live prisoners" theory, most notably in the 1985 film ''[[Rambo: First Blood Part II]]''. Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the [[United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs]] of 1991–1993 led by Senators [[John Kerry]], [[Robert C. Smith|Bob Smith]], and [[John McCain]] (all three of whom had served in Vietnam and one of whom had been a POW). It found "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."<ref name="report-exec"/>▼
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 prisoners of war or missing in action but only 1,200 Americans were reported to have been killed in action with no body recovered. Many of these were airmen who were shot down over [[North Vietnam]] or [[Laos]]. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived being shot down. If they did not survive, then the U.S. government considered efforts to recover their remains. POW/MIA activists played a role in pushing the U.S. government to improve its efforts in resolving the fates of these missing service members. Progress in doing so was slow until the mid-1980s when relations between the United States and Vietnam began to improve and more cooperative efforts were undertaken. Normalization of the U.S. relations with Vietnam in the mid-1990s was a culmination of this process.
 
▲Considerable speculation and investigation have been devoted to a hypothesis that a significant number of missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces and kept as live prisoners after U.S. involvement in the war concluded in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese and U.S. governments since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence.
 
Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the [[United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs]] of 1991–1993 led by Senators [[John Kerry]], [[Robert C. Smith|Bob Smith]], and [[John McCain]] (all three of whom had served in Vietnam and one of whom had been a POW). It found "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."<ref name="report-exec"/>
 
The fate of those missing in action has always been one of the most troubling and unsettling consequences of any war.<ref>{{cite book | title=Missing: Persons and Politics | first=Jenny | last=Edkins | publisher=Cornell University Press | location=Ithaca, New York | date=2011 | pages=xii, 131ff}}</ref> In this case, the issue has been a highly emotional one to those involved, and is considered a depressing, divisive aftereffect of the Vietnam War for the United States.<ref>{{cite news | title=Rage, questions continue for families | author=Greenway, H.D.S. | newspaper=The Boston Globe | date=1991-07-21}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,969996,00.html | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120913174041/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,969996,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=September 13, 2012 | title=Vietnam 15 Years Later | magazine=Time | date=1990-04-30}}</ref>
 
Popular culture has reflected the "live prisoners" theory, most notably in the 1985 film ''[[Rambo: First Blood Part II]]''.
 
==Origins==
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The most visible film in this theme was [[Sylvester Stallone]]'s ''[[Rambo: First Blood Part II]]'' in 1985, which did the most to popularize the idea that U.S. POWs had been left behind after the war and that the government had no real interest in their rescue.<ref name="daniel">{{cite web | url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/lundy/v/cinematic2.html | title=Left Behind: Cinematic Revisions of the Vietnam POW | author=Cathleen Lundy Daniel | publisher=University of Virginia | year=2001 | access-date=2008-01-25 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080214022333/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/lundy/v/cinematic2.html | archive-date=2008-02-14 | url-status=live }}</ref> The Rambo character, who in this film may have been partly modeled after Bo Gritz,<ref>McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', p. 174.</ref> was a Vietnam veteran commando still haunted by the multiple failures of the war. The pivotal moment of the film occurs when Rambo, realizing he was betrayed by the U.S. government and under torture from the Vietnamese and their Soviet allies, is put into radio communication with the officer who ordered the mission and tells him, "Murdock. I'm coming to get ''you''!"<ref>{{cite book | title=Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back | first=Harvey | last=O'Brien | publisher=Columbia University Press | location=New York | date=2012 | pages=46–49}} O'Brien's discussion includes [https://books.google.com/books?id=b6OeW-PHMTQC&pg=PA48 a still from the film of that scene].</ref><ref>{{cite book | title=Vietnam Images: War And Representation | editor-first=Jeffrey | editor-last=Walsh | editor2-first=James | editor2-last=Aulich | publisher=Macmillan | date=1989 | first=Robert J. | last=McKeever | chapter=American Myths and the Vietnam War | pages=52–53}}</ref> Rambo and the Norris films were commercially successful in both the United States and in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, and did much to perpetuate the stock image of American prisoners held in bamboo cages.<ref name="inside-170">McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', pp. 165, 170.</ref>
 
''Rambo'' was followed by Norris's 1985 prequel ''[[Missing in Action 2: The Beginning]]'', as well as other films such as ''[[P.O.W. The Escape]]'' (1986) and ''[[Dog Tags (1990 film)|Dog Tags]]'' (1990) that shared similar conceits.<ref name="daniel"/> The Vietnam war POW/MIA issue was also explored in some U.S. television series. The long-running series ''[[Magnum, P.I.]]'' included multiple episodes in the mid-late-1980s whose central theme was the possibility of U.S. POWs remaining in Vietnam.<ref>Magnum Mania! [http://magnum-mania.com/Episodes/Season8/Unfinished_Business.html "Unfinished Business Episode Recap"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141007075736/http://magnum-mania.com/Episodes/Season8/Unfinished_Business.html |date=2014-10-07 }}, Note 2. Retrieved on 1 September 2014.</ref> The 1997 ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "[[Unrequited (The X-Files)|Unrequited]]" also dealt with this notion. The POW/MIA issue was also part of a key story-line in the series ''[[JAG (TV series)|JAG]]'' in the late 1990s where the father of central character [[Harmon Rabb]] had been an MIA in Vietnam. During the second, third and fourth seasons, evidence gradually mounted that Harm Sr. had been relocated to the Soviet Union where he had later escaped and been killed by Soviet soldiers in Siberia.<ref name="JAG">{{cite episode|title=Gypsy Eyes|series=JAG|series-link=JAG (TV series)|airdate=22 September 1998|season=4|number=1}}</ref> The TV show The District's episode Bulldog's Ghost centers around a Vietnam War veteran considered one of the 'Walking Dead' in reference to veterans of the war who were left behind after the United States' withdrawal/war's conclusion in which many of the veterans left behind were returned to the United States in an event called 'The Secret Return' of POWs from the war years after the end of the war.
 
Many Vietnam War songs released in the United States dealt with various aspects of the POW experience, with over 140 such songs identified by the [[Vietnam War Song Project]]. Many were obscure and never reached a popular audience or achieved commercial success. In the early-to-mid-1970s they largely looked at welcoming the prisoners home, and the impact of the war on veterans and their families. The only one to become a hit was [[Merle Haggard]]'s 1972 number one country single "[[I Wonder If They Ever Think of Me]]". In the 1980s, some POW/MIA songs took a similar approach to American Vietnam War films, which suggested that many hundreds of U.S. prisoners remained in Vietnam and that the U.S. government had abandoned them.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Brummer|first1=Justin|title=Vietnam War: P.O.W. / M.I.A. Songs|url=http://rateyourmusic.com/list/JBrummer/vietnam_war__p_o_w____m_i_a__songs/|publisher=[[Rate Your Music]]|access-date=2015-03-17|archive-url=https://archive.today/20150317094754/http://rateyourmusic.com/list/JBrummer/vietnam_war__p_o_w____m_i_a__songs/|archive-date=2015-03-17|url-status=live}}</ref>
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