The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lists 684 POWs returned home alive from the Vietnam War — the majority after the U.S. pulled out of the war in 1973. (The war officially ended April 30, 1975). There are 1,582 Americans still unaccounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
There are no known living POWs left in Vietnam from the American War. Many veterans and survivors of those terrible years have returned to the country to visit and pay respects to their peers left behind.
Since World War I, over 142,000 Americans – including 85 women – have been captured and interned as POWs. Not included in this figure are nearly 93,000 Americans who were lost or never recovered. Nearly 30% of America's POWs since World War I are still living (29,350).
In 1973, after the peace accords, Hanoi returned 591 American prisoners and said these were all the prisoners they had. Yet more than 2,200 American military men are still missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Half or more of those men are known to be dead though their remains have never been recovered.
From 1964 to 1973, the North Vietnamese had captured Americans, mostly pilots and crews of downed aircraft, and delivered them to prisons. Among the most notorious of these facilities was Hoa Lo, known by Americans as the Hanoi Hilton.
According to the Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, there are currently 83,204 unaccounted for U.S. personnel, including 73,547 from World War II, 7,883 from the Korean War, 126 from the Cold War, 1,642 from the Vietnam War, and six from Iraq and other recent conflicts, including three Defense ...
The conditions at the prison were appalling, and prisoners were frequently tortured. American POWs bore this suffering until the end of the war. With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, the American withdrawal had a firm end date. As such, the North Vietnamese released the POWs they still held.
California had the highest number of Vietnam War casualties among all states, with 5,575 deaths. The state had the highest number of soldiers deployed to Vietnam, which contributed to the high number of casualties.
United States Army Colonel Floyd “Jim” Thompson, the longest held prisoner of war (POW) in American history, and his wife, Alyce, were products of the idealism of post-World War II America. When Thompson was shot down and captured, they began a journey that changed them forever.
From Florena Budwin, a Civil War woman who disguised herself as a man to join Union troops and was held in a Confederate prison camp, to the 67 Army nurses who were taken captive by the Japanese in World War II, there have been less than 100 military women held as POWs throughout American history.
More than 30,000 Australians became prisoners of war (POWs) between 1940 and 1945.
Eleanor Ardel Vietti became America's first female prisoner of war in Vietnam. She's still unaccounted for. In the dense jungle terrain in Darlac Province, near the provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, American doctor Eleanor Ardel Vietti had found her calling to heal.
The release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl highlights a fundamental difference between the war in Afghanistan and previous American conflicts. The U.S. has achieved a historic first: There are now no U.S. military personnel held captive in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was the last POW.
"Of the 2,709,918 Americans who served in Vietnam, Less than 850,000 are estimated to be alive today, with the youngest American Vietnam veteran's age approximated to be 60 years old."
Whitesides and Captain Floyd James Thompson was brought down by small arms fire. Whitesides was killed, and Thompson was taken prisoner; he would ultimately spend just short of nine years in captivity, making him the longest-held POW in American history.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
Some were held in South Vietnam (124), Cambodia (23), Laos (13) and China (2). Their experience was somewhat different from those in North Vietnam, and in some ways even more harsh. In South Vietnam and Cambodia, POWs were held by the Viet Cong, often imprisoned in bamboo cages or huts, and forced to move frequently.
Of the 22,376 Australian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, some 8,031 died while in captivity. After the end of the war, War Crimes Trials were held to investigate reports of atrocities, massacres and other causes of death.
STAINLESS STEEL BRACELETS can be made for any POW/MIA, or any remains returned, or any Killed in Action. Bracelets can be ordered with SILVER lettering on stainless, or BLACK lettering ($2 more) on stainless.
In 1973, when the POWs were released, roughly 2,500 servicemen were designated “missing in action” (MIA). As of 2015, more than 1,600 of those were still “unaccounted-for.” The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) of the U.S. Department of Defense lists 687 U.S. POWs as having returned alive from the Vietnam War.
From 1961 to 1973, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong held hundreds of Americans captive in North Vietnam, and in Cambodia, China, Laos, and South Vietnam. In North Vietnam alone, more than a dozen prisons were scattered in and around the capital city of Hanoi.
Nevertheless, the USSR was traditionally one of Vietnam's strongest allies and offered crucial military aid to North Vietnam during the war. Aid included air-defense equipment such as radar and surface-to-air missiles.
The event marked the start of the transition period toward reunification, which occurred in a national election for reunification on July 2, 1976, when the South Vietnam and North Vietnam were merged, forming the modern-day Vietnam.