POW/MIA flag

How to read it

36 U.S.C. § 902 designates it 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”, and as the symbol of the commitment to account for those who may become prisoners or missing in future. The flag is black and white: a prisoner’s silhouette against a white circle, a guard tower and barbed wire, and the League’s motto, “You Are Not Forgotten”. The National POW/MIA Flag Act, signed on November 7, 2019, requires it on every day the US flag is displayed at the Capitol, the White House, the World War II, Korean War Veterans and Vietnam Veterans memorials, every national cemetery, major military installations, VA medical centers, every post office, and the buildings with the offices of the Secretaries of State, Defense and Veterans Affairs and the Director of the Selective Service System. Before the act it was required there on six days a year, Military Times reported, and about 82,000 Americans were still unaccounted for.

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Who designed it

The accounts differ in their details. The League’s own history says Mrs. Michael Hoff, the wife of a missing serviceman, saw the need for a symbol in 1970 and contacted Norman Rivkees, vice president of Annin & Company, who designed the flag with Newt Heisley, an Annin contractor. The VFW’s account, by a writer who spent two days with Heisley in 2008, dates Hoff’s idea to 1971, names Annin’s vice president as Alan Rivkees, and makes Heisley the creative director of Annin’s advertising agency. In the VFW’s account the silhouette was modelled by Heisley’s son Jeff, just back from Marine boot camp, and black and white was chosen for “the sorrow, anxiety and hope” of the cause and to set it apart from other flags. The League’s board approved the flag on January 22–23, 1972.

Its place in law

It first flew over the White House on National POW/MIA Recognition Day in 1988 and was installed in the Capitol Rotunda on March 9, 1989, the League says, the only flag ever displayed there. Public Law 101-355 of August 10, 1990 recognised it. The League sought no trademark or copyright, so its use isn’t legally restricted.