--- title: National POW/MIA Recognition Day: Story Behind the POW Flag description: The figure on the now-iconic flag, designed to stand for American troops who went missing in Vietnam, was modeled on the designer's son. canonical: https://time.com/4934501/national-pow-mia-recognition-day-flag-history/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-15T13:00:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:54:07.685Z article:section: History og:title: National POW/MIA Recognition Day: Story Behind the POW Flag og:description: The figure on the now-iconic flag was modeled on the designer's son og:url: https://time.com/4934501/national-pow-mia-recognition-day-flag-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae1ed47032d8b4ce/6988dd22cf40a823e6c49515/gettyimages-828424640.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4398 og:image:height: 2474 og:image:alt: Colorado Rockies v Washington Nationals og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: National POW/MIA Recognition Day: Story Behind the POW Flag twitter:description: The figure on the now-iconic flag was modeled on the designer's son twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae1ed47032d8b4ce/6988dd22cf40a823e6c49515/gettyimages-828424640.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is the Story Behind the POW/MIA Flag > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=969748c6-917d-42ad-99e5-bd5c20041968&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=969748c6-917d-42ad-99e5-bd5c20041968&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger [Watch (HLS stream): the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ApkZjOyL.m3u8) (6:16)  _Published 2017-09-26. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger on war and human nature_  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Sep 15, 2017 1:00 PM UTC  The American flag and POW/MIA flag fly during a game between the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals at Nationals Park on July 30, 2017, in Washington, DC. The American flag and POW/MIA flag fly during a game between the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals at Nationals Park on July 30, 2017, in Washington, DC. Joe Robbins—Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Sep 15, 2017 1:00 PM UTC National [POW/MIA Recognition Day](http://time.com/4488422/pow-mia-day-history/) may be Friday, but many Americans are accustomed to seeing the now-familiar flag of [their cause](http://time.com/4932924/vietnam-pow-photo-story/) — the silhouette and white letters on a black background — flying outside post offices, military properties, hospitals and government buildings all year round. Far less well-known are the people who created the flag. Mary Hoff of Orange Park, Fla., gets credit for coming up with the idea for such a flag. She had just given birth to her fifth child when her husband, Navy Lieutenant Commander Michael Hoff, was shot down in a flight over Laos in 1970, during the Vietnam War. His body was unaccounted for. “I once asked in Washington, ‘What do I bury?'” she told[ the Florida _Times-Union_](http://jacksonville.com/2016-03-04/stub-1552) in 2009\. “And they said, ‘Well, we’ll give you all the artifacts from the aircraft.'” Sensing that other families might want something more ceremonious, she asked a New Jersey graphic design company called [Annin & Co.](http://www.annin.com/about%5Fpowmia.asp) to create a flag that fellow members of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing could rally around. The company hired illustrator Newton “Newt” Heisley for the job. And for Heisley, the mission felt personal. “I used to fly within range of the Japanese and wondered how I would hold up if I ever got captured,” the World War II veteran once [said](http://www.annin.com/about%5Fpowmia.asp), according to the company’s site. He ended up basing the gaunt, silhouetted profile on the flag on that of his son Jeffrey — who was not a prisoner of war. Rather, he had been forced to leave the Marines because of a case of hepatitis. “You are not forgotten,” the words below the figure read. Hoff claims the color scheme was her idea, however. “I said, ‘I don’t want a lot of colors,'” she told[ the _Times-Union_](http://jacksonville.com/2016-03-04/stub-1552). “I had seen a picture of one of those POWs wearing black-and-white pajamas. And because of that I said, ‘We need a stark, black-and-white flag.'” Heisley told the Colorado Springs _Gazette_ in 1997 that the flag was intended for use merely by “a small group” of people personally affected, and that its widespread appeal came as a surprise. Nevertheless, it boasts “the distinction, historians and flag experts believe, of being the only non-national flag that any federal government anywhere in the world has mandated to be flown regularly,” [according to](http://www.historynet.com/the-story-of-the-powmia-flag.htm) Marc Leepson, author of _Flag: An American Biography._ In 1982, it became the only flag other than the American flag to fly over the White House. In 1990, Congress recognized the flag as a “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 the 1998 Defense Authorization Act mandated that federal buildings fly the flag on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day. But not everyone thinks it should be flown everywhere. Some [scholars argue](http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/Missing21.htm) that it’s a painful reminder of a war that went on longer than necessary in order to find people who couldn’t be recovered. [Some argue](http://www.courant.com/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-pow-flag-20140606-story.html) that, as the last known [Vietnam POWs](https://www.army.mil/article/160491/Operation%5FHOMECOMING%5F%5FRepatriation%5Fof%5FAmerican%5Fprisoners%5Fof%5Fwar%5Fin%5FVietnam%5Fdescribed) came home in 1973, the flag may not be [relevant](http://www.deanza.edu/faculty/swensson/essays%5Fmikekelley%5Fflag.html) anymore. But even in 2014, it remained newsworthy: After the return of the only U.S. soldier captured by the Taliban, Bowe Bergdahl, the residents of his hometown Hailey, Idaho, cancelled a homecoming celebration after years of [parading the flag](http://nwpr.org/post/idaho-town-marks-soldiers-4th-year-taliban-captivity) for his return, due to national uproar over the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. In defending his city, [Mayor](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/05/why-bowe-bergdahls-hometown-canceled-its-celebration/?utm%5Fterm=.d3cfb99ba886) Fritz Haemmerle essentially paraphrased the motto of the flag: “For the men and women who choose to serve, the City of Hailey believes we do not leave our soldiers behind.” And so, the flag has come to be seen as a symbol of a principle that doesn’t just apply to those who fought and were lost in Vietnam, but to all members of the U.S. armed forces serving their country abroad. ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We study war because we know, obviously, it brings out the worst. But we study war because it also brings out the very, very best. [ MUSIC ] The demonstrators resisted when police attempted to arrest a young man who tried to rip down an American flag. We spent ten years working on the Vietnam war. We wake up, and our films about mass demonstrations taking place all across the United States against the current administration. About a White House obsessed with leaks, in total disarray. About a president who thinks the press is lying and making stuff up about him. About asymmetrical warfare, about huge document drops of stolen classified material into the public sphere. And about accusations that a political campaign reached out during the time of a national election to influence that campaign And we kinda go wait a second, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. A quote that's attributed to Mark Twain. This is all Vietnam and hundreds of other things rhyme, and I'm thinking what you're doing and the kind of stuff you're trying to grapple with seems almost exactly the same thing we're trying to grapple with. But specifically about who these people are that we make Do the fighting that we ask to put their lives on the line. Well, you know I'm anthropologist and I look at all my journalism and film making through that lens. We're a dominant species because we're capable of organized aggression against enemies, we are mean. [ FOREIGN ] [ SOUND ] And I think you have this dynamic tension in human society which is why you keep getting these stories repeated over and over and over again You have the sort of the collective will of the people and there's a certain sense of egalitarianism and fairness. And then you have a very necessary sort of hierarchical structure that keeps order in society. And people in power then resort to a kind of top- down hierarchy and abuse it. If war is human behavior, human nature on steroids, then Also it shows the exaggerated positiveness of our species because in these moments of our worst behaviour we also see this empathetic tendencies, the love. The lost soldiers that I know of [ UNKNOWN ]. Right. A lot of people that I know who look through catastrophes. [ INAUDIBLE ] I know a woman who [ INAUDIBLE ] my first [ INAUDIBLE ] early 90's Right . >> Now decades later, I interviewed her and she said a lot of people in [ UNKNOWN ] missed the war - >> Yes, right . >> Because it brought everyone together [ MUSIC ] You know, from the Vietnam era as you were talking I'm thinking it's not just soldiers who feel that way, it's people who protested the war. They were part of something that was deeply meaningful to them and they thought they sacrificed. Some of them went to jail, went to Canada. You know, really committed themselves in a deep way to something they though was right. It didn't involve aggression in the way that Going to wars but there was a sense of life being higher, more powerful, more [ UNKNOWN ] like I was saying. [ UNKNOWN ] primarily two things a sense of meeting within our community and closeness and the closer you get to a catastrophe, to a disaster, to a war. The more people depend on you and vice versa. And that's what humans are evolved for. You clearly have studied this. I wanna know stuff to do. I don't mean no more wars. We know that's never gonna happen because, as you suggest, people are kind of excited about that stuff. But what is it that we and do? I mean we remember that sense of collective solidarity in a Few weeks post 9 / 11 that got squandered by the hierarchy that said go shopping, rather than please pay 50 cents more a gallon per gas. Right. Please don't do this. Please do this All of which every single American would have done. Done with glee but now we just got a kind of political sense in which we don't ask anything of Americans, we want to cut their taxes even more we want to do all this stuff and have the same smoke and mirrors. I'm not suggesting a political answer from you but there's a social and human set of actions, perhaps is the way to say it, that might help This. Psychologists will tell you the more you sacrifice for something the more you value it and the problem in modern America one says very lucky that we're such a wealthy safe nation that we don't require individual sacrifice of anyone. In some sense that's very lucky. But in other sense is actually not very good for us. I'm against the draft, I think it's [ UNKNOWN ] for someone to fight a war that they don't believe in but I would be completely for national service. Yeah, we agree completely. Yes. [ CROSSTALK ] And if you do that, because people are sacrificing a year or two of their lives towards this collective goal of having this nation You raise the value of the nation in people's hearts and that's when you start to feel a real part of something. I mean, just thinking about Vietnam and we've been thinking about it for so long that the lack of [ UNKNOWN ] was usually traumatic for soldiers and for the people on the other side, too. That the country didn't know there was such incredible. Profound cognitive dissonance That's right. About what we were doing. And it was on every level. Modern society is easy on the body and hard on the mind. Most of the country, Democrat or Republican, either way, I think most people want a kind of collective good for country Yes, I agree. Right? The country has to come up with norms of behavior that confront and contradict what has happened in our political world. In a crisis obviously, we've seen in Texas, people do that immediately. Right. Right, no black, white, rich, poor, no one cares. Right. That's humans at their best. But can we achieve that without the hurricane, without the war, without the fight, can we do it? I think we can, but we have to espouse it in a proactive way. Well, it seems like counting on the politicians to beat in the lead on that is probably unlikely, but it can bubble up through the way people tell stories and the way human experiences [ CROSSTALK ]. 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