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Sweetland had grown up in a military family and was well versed in dealing with its culture.

It was all coded messages that I forwarded to Washington D.C.,” Sweetland said

“There started to be communication coming from him, rarely I might add, and most of it was not intended for me. Eventually, he was able to get letters sent to her periodically. Navy provide much support or information. Sweetland had no word from her husband for several years, nor did the U.S. Southwick as Missing in Action but assumed he had been captured. Sweetland found out through her father, a high-ranking U.S. Air Force officer, that his plane was shot down, but a parachute was spotted. Southwick was flying off the USS Kittyhawk in an F-4 Phantom. Southwick was shot down and captured on May 14, 1967, during a strike mission against the famous Than Hoa bridge in North Vietnam.Īt that time, Lt. The Nixon administration had made the return of POWs one of the central reasons for prolonging the war and bringing North Vietnam to the bargaining table. prisoners of war were being held by North Vietnam or their locations. Suffering from a lack of accurate intelligence, the United States never had a solid knowledge of how many U.S. The origins of the POW/MIA issue date back to the war itself.

The POWs in Vietnam suffered a much different fate, with families largely on their own to determine the condition of their loved ones. Most of those captured were eventually determined to have been killed in action.

CongressĪmerica had almost 2,500 servicemen captured during the entirety of the Vietnam Conflict as opposed to a handful in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The POW/MIA question came to dominate the post-war years, so much so that the POW/MIA flag was created for the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia and is officially recognized by the U.S. According to historians, the Vietnam Conflict is considered America’s second longest war with only our involvement in Afghanistan exceeding it by five months. It holds an outsized place in our collective historical and cultural memories.įor families of those who served in recent conflicts, they have stayed in the minds of the public and were supported by sympathetic media and various support organizations. However, families of those who served in Vietnam had it much differently.