Sep 13, 2016
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Each year, on POW/MIA Recognition Day, the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. salutes the families of the missing who continue to keep the candle of hope alive.
Together with U.S. veterans, service members and military families worldwide, this POW/MIA Recognition Day will be no different as the VFW reaffirms its resolve to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all of America’s heroes who have not yet come home.
Today there are 83,000 Americans listed as missing and unaccounted-for from our nation’s wars going back to the beginning of World War II. That’s 83,000 military and civilian men and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters.
It is true that the costs of war extends far beyond the last shots being fired, and for MIA families, the passage of time does not heal their wounds. For them, the days became weeks, the weeks became months, then years, and now, sadly, decades.
Fulfilling the soldier’s promise to never leave a fallen comrade behind on the battlefield is difficult, but we know how important the mission is to the families and to the military serving in uniform today. That’s why the VFW will always support this mission, and the men and women who accomplish it.
As time continues to slowly pass by, the VFW encourages every American to remember those who put country before self and didn’t return to their families; to remember the families of the missing who continue to burn the candle of hope; and also, to continue to tell the story that without the service and sacrifice of American servicemen and women, there would not have been a United States of America.