By Fred M. Apgar
Commander, VFW Post 8870, Edmonds

On Friday,Sept. 15, our nation will observe National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Hopefully, communities across America will conduct appropriate ceremonies to honor those Americans who have returned from their ordeals as Prisoners of War (POWs), and honor the memory of those Americans who are listed as Missing In Action (MIA) and have either died while in captivity or are still unaccounted for. At present, over 83,000 Americans are still missing from past conflicts.

The National POW/MIA Recognition Day was created by the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.  These families were frustrated by the lack of information regarding the status of family members who had either never been repatriated after having thought to have been held captive in Southeast Asia or who had been listed as MIA and were still unaccounted for. In response to the League’s initiative, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the first-ever National POW/MIA Recognition Day to be observed on July 18, 1979. This became an annual event, starting in 1986, and since then has been held on the third Friday in September.

Prominently displayed during all recognition ceremonies is the POW/MIA flag. Designed by Newt Heisley, it features a white disc bearing the silhouette of a young man, a watch tower with a guard on patrol and a strand of barbed wire. Above the disc in white letters is written POW and MIA.  Below the disc is a black-and-white wreath above the motto, “You Are Not Forgotten.”

Our search for our MIAs is an ongoing effort, and at the forefront is the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), which was officially established and activated on Oct. 1, 2003.  The organization was created from the merger of the Army’s 30-year -old Central Identification Laboratory and the 11-year-old Joint Task Force-Full Accounting.

This Command was established to combine the expertise and resources of these two organizations into one so that the DOD mission could be more effectively accomplished. Over 400 military and civilian personnel from all branches of the Armed Forces are assigned to JPAC, and their mission is to conduct global search, recovery and laboratory operations to identify unaccounted-for Americans from past conflicts. The Command is located at Hickam AFB in Hawaii and continues the search for the Americans who remain listed as missing.

The Command maintains four permanent detachments that provide logistics and in-country support during investigation and recovery operations.  These detachments are located in Bangkok, Thailand; Hanoi, Vietnam; Vientiane, Laos; and Honolulu.  Day-to-day operations of JPAC involve researching case files, investigating leads, excavating sites and identifying Americans who have been killed in action.

Once a recovery mission succeeds in finding some remains of an MIA and artifacts from the site, the Central Identification Laboratory uses its state-of-the-art facilities and forensic techniques to establish the identity of the military personnel. Based on the laboratory’s conclusions, JPAC prepares an extensive report of its findings, which is given to the surviving family members of the deceased. These comprehensive reports summarize all of the actions that had been taken to investigate the conditions and locations of the disappearance, recover the remains and artifacts, and identify the MIA. Family members are given copies of these reports and the remains of the family member are returned to the family with full military honors.

JPAC and its predecessors have recovered the remains of thousands of MIAs. We salute the efforts of JPAC to bring closure to the surviving family members of our nation’s soldiers who are missing in action.

Fred Apgar is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.