Despite their insistence that the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops was the condition for the release of prisoners of war, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam took little action to account for American POWs at the end of the Vietnam War. Almost two decades would pass following the end of the war before significant internal political changes, shifting regional alignments, changing Western interests, Sino-Soviet rapprochement, a nonmilitary settlement of the Cambodian conflict, and the collapse of the Soviet Union would bring Hanoi to the point of recognizing the importance of mending its relationship with the West. From the Paris peace talks to the U.S. government’s decision in 1994 to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam, Hanoi’s policy on American MIAs and POWs is examined, with particular focus on the influence of individual decision-makers on the process and the ways the Vietnamese leadership arrived at their negotiating strategies.
The Hanoi March: American POWs in North Vietnam’s Crucible
The Vietnam War lasted nine years (1964-1973) with Americans finally leaving in 1975 during the fall of Saigon. In 1966, two years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, fifty American pilots and aircrewmen held captive by the North Vietnamese in the most horrible conditions were put on dramatic public display
