EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Fort Bliss will pause to recognize and honor the nation’s prisoners of war and missing in action during a special ceremony on Friday, Sept. 20.
The POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony will be at 9 a.m. Friday at Memorial Circle on Fort Bliss.
National POW/MIA Recognition Day was established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. Since then, the day has been recognized on the third Friday of September, a date that is not associated with any particular war.
“The Defense Department remembers and honors those Americans who were prisoners of war and those who served and never returned home. DOD’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues the search for the missing, fulfilling the nation’s promise to leave no service member behind,” according to the Defense Department’s website.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency says more than 81,600 Americans remain missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars and other conflicts, according to U.S. Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum.
Out of the more than 81,600 missing, 75% of the losses are located in the Indo-Pacific, and over 41,000 of the missing are presumed lost at sea, according to the same U.S. Army museum.
The official POW/MIA flag has flown just below the U.S. flag at the White House for every POW/MIA Recognition Day since 1982, according to the airborne museum.
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