Never To Be Forgotten

A Brief History of the POW/MIA Flag

On January 7, 1970, Navy Lieutenant Commander Michael Hoff’s A-7 Corsair was shot down over the jungles of Laos near the border with North Vietnam. Hoff was immediately listed as Missing In Action.

Back home in Florida, nearly everything in Mary Hoff’s world suddenly came crashing down, too. Then the wife and mother of five children joined a newly formed support group called the National League of POW/MIA Families.

After years of following strict U.S. policy and keeping quiet about the status and treatment of prisoners in Southeast Asia, the POW wives had had enough by 1970. Breaking from the past, they stood up and started publicly demanding action and accountability on behalf of their loved ones.

For her part, Mary Hoff had an idea to create a national symbol to keep the plight of all captured servicemen fresh in the public’s conscience. She wanted a special flag made and approached a flag manufacturer with a basic idea of what she had in mind.

“I don’t want a lot of colors,” she told them. “We need a stark, black-and-white flag.”

The company reached out to Newt Heisley, a graphic designer and World War II veteran pilot. Heisley went to work, creating the final design so recognizable today — the silhouette of a man with his head bowed, a guard tower, a strand of barbed wire, and below that the haunting yet powerful words YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN.

The National League of POW/MIA Families approved Heisley’s design in 1972, and ten years later it became the first flag other than the American flag to fly over the White House.

In 1998, a federal law decreed that this flag be flown over all government institutions on Armed Forces Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Memorial Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day, and Veterans Day.

As for the fate of Lieutenant Commander Michael Hoff, twenty-three years after his plane was shot down it was officially confirmed that he did not survive the crash. His body was never recovered.

And while the remains of a thousand Vietnam casualties like Hoff have been returned to the United States since 1973, the Defense Department still lists over 1,500 Americans as missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

The source material for this information is Alvin Townley’s Defiant — The POWS Who Endured Vietnam’s Most Infamous Prison.