According to Wikipedia, “Missing in action (MIA) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants, military chaplains, combat medics, and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire. They may have been killed, wounded, captured, executed, or deserted”. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency researches, investigates, recovers and identifies American service members who never returned from wars and various other operational loss incidents and whose bodies have never been found and identified. These efforts involve historical research, field investigations, archaeological excavations, and modern anthropology. Currently, there are more than 81,000 American service members unaccounted for from those conflicts. 81,000 military whose families never learned their fate, never had a body to bury. Just…missing.

According to one estimate, over 14,000 Americans were listed as MIA from World War I. While high, the figure pales in comparison with the nearly two million considered missing from all of the countries involved in WWI – around 2 million. There are still more than 7,400 missing from the Korean War. Of these, the agency's researchers believe that about 5,300 are located in North Korea where we have very limited access. Over 72,000 service men and women from World War II have not been accounted for. And we cannot account for 1244 military in Vietnam and 285 in Laos. As of March 2024, according to the US Department of Defense, the total of unaccounted for from the Iraqi Theater and other conflicts is at 6.

The POW/MIA flag was created by the National League of Families and officially recognized by the Congress in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, "as the symbol of our Nation's concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the Nation".

The men and women of this country who have been forced by circumstances to become prisoners of war truly know the meaning of freedom. They know it has not come free. Their story is one of sacrifice and courage, their legacy, the gift of liberty. We, as individuals, should remember that when we see the black and white POW/MIA flag.