POW/MIA adoption aids in cause of recovery
Many choose to adopt a POW/MIA to keep the thousands of missing from being forgotten.
By Emily Baker
Features Editor

An eerie feeling comes over many who visit the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C., or any other memorial dedicated to fallen soldiers and sailors. That feeling is often a potent mixture of sorrow, anger, reverence and vengeance that sours the stomach and burns the soul like vinegar.

For some American families, those feelings never go away because a loved one didn’t come home from war. He or she has been labeled as “Missing In Action” and has practically been forgotten by the government and the nation, according to organizations dedicated to finding every person with MIA or POW (prisoner of war) status.

It is the mission of thousands, including 14-year-old Nikki Mendicino of Springdale, Pa., to make sure each of those POW/MIAs are accounted for.

“There have been more than 10,000 live sightings of POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia since the end of the Vietnam War,” Mendicino said. “Maybe they haven’t been found by now because we haven’t looked hard enough, or maybe we haven’t looked at all. Our soldiers would be very valuable to countries like this, so why wouldn’t they keep them, especially when we never showed any signs of coming to get them?”

“We can never, ever just say, ‘What’s the use?’,” she said. “These people are still Americans, and every last one of them deserves to be accounted for.”

Mendicino is widely known for her passion for POW/MIAs. She has earned dozens of awards for her service to veterans and for her dedication to accounting for all POW/MIAs. The ninth-grader was also invited to open Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show that aired on Memorial Day in 2001.

The POW/MIA problem
Mendicino said the U.S. government doesn’t do its part to bring home POW/MIAs, and to her, that is blasphemy.

“Well, our government — the Army’s CILHI (Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii) — does do ‘recovery missions’ a few times a year in different parts of the world to look (for) and return remains of our troops,” she said. “As far as looking for or doing anything for any live POW/MIAs, they don’t.”

Sheer numbers have convinced Mendicino and those like her that the government isn’t doing its part. Thousands of POW/MIAs have not been recovered, even after reports of sightings and other evidence. The government admits the existence of Americans being held in North Korean prison camps, according to official congressional reports. They have been there since the Korean War and have been marched to coal mines to work, according to the POW Network, an organization of family members of POW/MIAs.

In a 1990 letter, Sen. Jesse Helms confirmed that “Vietnamese Foreign Minister Thach in fact confirmed to the United States (in October 1990) that his country still held 10 U.S. POW/MIAs.”

The POW Network says that evidence shows the government has not done much to recover POW/MIAs. For instance, in 1991, Col. Millard Peck, chief of the Pentagon’s Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, resigned in protest when he was ordered by policy makers in the POW/MIA Inter-Agency Group not to investigate reports of sightings of American POW/MIAs.

Also in 1991, Sen. Bob Smith addressed the Senate because none of the more than 1,400 live sightings of POW/MIAs had been investigated.

What the government has done
Many government offices have said it isn’t that they don’t want to look — they can’t look because they lack adequate funds and public support, according to the POW Network. The funding for the CILHI is millions short of what the facility needs to adequately process remains, according to the POW Network.

“The nation knows (POW/MIAs) are there,” former C.I.A. Director William Casey said in 1986. “But there’s no groundswell for support for getting them out. Certainly you are not suggesting we pay for them, surely not saying we could do anything like that with no public support.”

According to a report by the Defense of Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Office in the Department of Defense, the government has recovered, identified and returned the remains of at least 552 servicemen as of Jan. 14.

A possible solution
There are ways Americans can promote the cause of recovering POW/MIAs. Two main methods are remembrance vigils and adopting a POW/MIA.

Arnold Air Society, the service organization made up of members of TCU’s Air Force ROTC, hosts a 24-hour POW/MIA vigil each fall.

“We do this to pay tribute for their (POW/MIAs’) sacrifices, and we try to remember their dedication and the sacrifices of their families,” said Cadet Maj. Sheila Berry, a member of the society who has been a key coordinator of the vigils. “Cadets care about this because we respect those who were given this special calling. They did not choose to be prisoners of war, and their families cannot rest if they are presumed ‘missing in action.’ We try our best to understand the sacrifices even though many of us will never know the extent to which these individuals have served our country.”

The vigil involves raising the POW/MIA flag with the American flag, a changing of the guard every 15 minutes during the vigil, a moment of remembrance as a candle, that is to burn for the entire 24-hours, is lit and a formal retreat ceremony at the end of the vigil to retire the POW/MIA flag.

POW/MIA vigils are also hosted online. Mendicino’s Web site (nikkiusa.com) is an example. These vigils are designed to prevent the memory of POW/MIAs from dissolving. Most Web sites are devoted to specific POW/MIAs.

One of the more popular ways to promote the issue of POW/MIA remembrance and recovering is by adopting a specific POW/MIA. There are several ways to do this including dedicating a Web site to the person and purchasing a small bracelet with the person’s name, date the person went missing, branch of service and home state.

The POW/MIA bracelets have become somewhat of a tradition that began in 1970 by three college students and a college advisor, according to a Washington Times story published Feb. 7, 2000. During this Vietnam Era, the group was receiving as many as 12,000 orders for bracelets a day, the story stated.

According to the story, the bracelet program raised almost $10 million until 1976 when the student organization stopped producing the bracelets. The tradition is continued by many groups nationwide.

This tradition states that a person is to wear or keep their bracelet until the POW/MIA they adopted is returned to the United States, according to the POW Network. At that time, if the POW/MIA is returned alive, the bracelet is returned to the family. It is not uncommon for a returned POW/MIA to receive thousands of bracelets, according to the Washington Times story. If the POW/MIA is not alive when he/she is returned, many decide not to return the bracelet to prevent deepening family members’ wounds.

The TCU Air Force ROTC is offering students the opportunity to adopt a POW/MIA by selling bracelets for $10 each. Students interested in adopting a POW/MIA can request a home state and a branch of service of the POW/MIA. For informaion, call Berry at (817) 923-7310 or e-mail her at (berry@tcuafrotc.com).

Emily Baker