Panel Three

At home, Americans campaigned for the immediate release and compassionate treatment of American prisoners of war (POWs). Sybil Stockdale, the wife of Navy officer James Stockdale, who had been shot down in 1965, was one of the most ardent POW and missing in action (MIA) activists.

The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia (“the League”) was established by Stockdale and the families of U.S. service members designated as POWs or MIAs. Led by Stockdale, the League and millions of other Americans raised money and their voices in support of the POW-MIA cause. By 1969, they had persuaded the US government to accept the families’ demands for a complete accounting and the humane treatment of prisoners detained in Southeast Asia.

Now called the National League of POW-MIA Families, the organization founded by Sybil Stockdale, continues its efforts “… to obtain the release of all prisoners, the fullest possible accounting for the missing, and the repatriation of all recoverable remains of those who died serving our nation during the Vietnam War.”