The history of America is full of instances where our youth have marched off to war. Every time this happened, we have sustained casualties. Some were killed in action, others wounded. Some were taken prisoner, and all too often others were declared missing.

     Our official participation in the Viet Nam War ended when a peace agreement called the Paris Peace Accord was signed on Jan. 27, 1973 by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the NLF (Viet Cong) provisional revolutionary government. The accord provided for the end of hostilities, the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops, and the return of prisoners of war.The numbers of POW were not negotiated.

     Operation Homecoming was the name given to the return of POW to the United States. We expected that at least 3000 POW/MIA would be returned. We got 591. This is because the Communist government of North Vietnam withheld some prisoners as political bargaining chips to be used after the war. In addition, "neutral" Laos and Cambodia were not included in the bargaining process, and were not bound by the Paris Peace Accord, even though much of the war had been fought there, and they held hundreds of POW. This oversight on our part doomed these men to a life of imprisonment and continued torture.

     In this country the return of some of the POW marked an end to an extremely difficult time. The Peace Protestors had what they wanted... we were out of Vietnam. The government had what it wanted... "Peace with Honor." The general population had what it wanted... the return of the POW. What nobody would say publicly was that there was no honor in a peace that abandoned American brothers and sons on foreign soil. As long as they remain there we are not out of Vietnam. The families of those left behind did not get the return of their POW.

     The youth of America that had been the collective social conscience of the country now turned its attention to becoming the Disco Generation. The media focus became the Watergate Scandal. The POW issue was considered closed to all but a few Americans. The only way to get them home would be for the politicians and diplomats to raise an international hue and cry over the POW, or to return militarily to Vietnam and continue the fight until we got our servicemen back. To do so would reopen the social wounds the country was only beginning to heal. So we did nothing. In effect the POW had been declared expendable and sentenced to life imprisonment because of political expediency.