Coronado Exhibit Covers The History Of POW Wives Who Created A National Movement

Speaker 1: 00:00 A new exhibit at Cornetto museum looks at the founding of the national league of families of pow MIAs KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh says it started during the Vietnam war with a group of military wives in San Diego. Speaker 2: 00:18 Sid Stockdale was 11 years old when his father James Stockdale became one of the first American pilots shot down over North Vietnam. Now their family table from their home on Coronado is the centerpiece of a new exhibit. Well, this is, this is the table, the dining room table around which the wives of prisoners and missing first gathered on October the seventh 1966 his father was 40 when he was shot down and taken prisoner as the wife of the highest ranking officer. His mom civil Stockdale took it upon herself to begin organizing the growing number of wives who were in the same situation and they began to ask each other what they should do. That over time evolved into regular gatherings at our family house that gave birth eventually to the league of families of pow Mia, which became a nationwide movement. The movement sprung up organically at bases around the country. Speaker 2: 01:13 Karen Olson Butler was at Naval air station, Lamar near Fresno when her husband was shot down in 1965 there was an inference that he probably was killed in action. I found out he was alive five weeks later on the today show, a friend had called me and said that they had just noticed that he was a prisoner of war. Their group may be best known for eventually creating the black and white pow Mia flag that would become possibly the most enduring symbol of the Vietnam war. But that was years later in 1972 for the first several years, the wise were told to keep quiet, says author heathly. Speaker 3: 01:53 The government in the military wanted wives and families to say little to nothing of except for close family members and there was some merit to that. In previous words, where the prisoners weren't held that long, people feared it would derail negotiations. Now, Vietnam prisoners who were held up to eight years Speaker 2: 02:09 lead curated the exhibit, which is now at the corn out of museum based on her book league of wives. It Chronicles the growth of the national league of pow Mia families from small gatherings to a national movement. Civil Stockdale was the first wife to go public about the treatment of prisoners. In an article that ran in the San Diego union in 1968 he says at first the response was muted, but they kept finding ways to get themselves into the headlines. Speaker 3: 02:38 John McCain, who I interviewed in 2016 said it was like a light switch going off in 1969 the torture stopped. He was moved from solitary, but he said these women, and they're the awareness that they raised in the international community. Speaker 2: 02:53 He told her that made all the difference. Their story is parts by novel. Early on the Navy showed the wives how to write letters to their husbands and code later. It's mostly the story of this national movement, a rare moment of unity in a divisive war driven largely by these women. Civil died in 2015 walking through the exhibit, her son Sid was struck by a cluster of bracelets with the names of a pow, which was part of a campaign to connect with the public. Speaker 4: 03:22 Everyone mail their bracelet to the returned pow with a note. It was just amazing. Uh, when we went into my mother's attic, we found a cardboard box. Like this was just full of all these bracelets. Speaker 2: 03:36 Author Heath Lee originally curated the exhibit for the Robert J Dole Institute of politics in Kansas. Since 2017 it's been traveling the country, the exhibit was re-imagined for the Cornetto museum to emphasize the local history. It's now open to the public. Speaker 4: 03:54 Joining me is Kane PBS military reporter Steve Walsh. So first tell us who us Navy Admiral James Stockdale was. Speaker 5: 04:02 Well, he was actually famous. I would call him the second most famous pow from Vietnam after John McCain. It was a vice Admiral. He won the medal of honor for being a pow in Vietnam. Um, he was also Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate back in 1992. If you remember, there's actually a USX Stockdale. It's a, uh, a guided missile destroyer that's based here in San Diego, which is named after him. Speaker 4: 04:28 Interesting. So as you point out in your story, in the beginning, the prisoner's wives were told to keep quiet. What were military officials at that time worried about? Speaker 5: 04:38 So this was the Johnson administration and the Johnson administration did not want to call attention to some of the brutality that was going on in Vietnam at the time. Also, a, as we mentioned in the piece that, uh, this was the common practice was to keep quiet and that these prisoners of war would come home quickly. But in the case of Vietnam, prisoners of war were there for, for multiple years and no one was observing the Geneva convention. And what did the early days of this movement look like? It was springing up organically all around the country. We, uh, emphasize the, uh, the core aspect of it and insignificant with simple Stockdale. But this was happening at bases all around the country, both on the West coast and on the East coast. Uh, one of the more famous members of this group was a Mary Helen Hoff. She uh, designed the pow Mia flag, or at least she commissioned it, uh, that, but that wasn't until 1970 and the league is a board of directors adopted as their official flag in 1972. So the ideas were kind of springing up all around the country creating this national movement. Speaker 4: 05:45 So what eventually led the government to take the wives of the prisoners of war and more seriously. Speaker 5: 05:50 So we go from the Johnson administration to the Nixon administration and Nixon sees the PR value of having these wives on board. They are both popular with the right and to a certain degree with the left. Uh, I talked with one of the wives and she says she can't remember ever seeing any sort of protest around any sort of gathering of these wives. So they are eventually they go to the Paris peace Accords that kind of shame the Vietnamese into releasing these prisoners. Uh, so it has a, a real kind of halo effect for the Nixon administration and what happened once the prisoners came home. So there's a big dinner at the white house in 1973. It's supposed to be the largest state dinner that was ever held on the white house. There were tents set up everywhere. Uh, but there's sort of an undercurrent here. Speaker 5: 06:38 Even though all of the pow wives are invited, the wives of the still missing the MIAs are not included in this group. And this represents a real change in how this groups functions as a, the wives of pow is, is their husbands returned home. They start going more towards their families and trying to reunite and, and uh, bring about, you know, some reconciliation with their families. So it becomes the Mia wives who really take up the cause and create the organization that goes forward and is still operating today. Yeah, I was going to ask, you know, is the national league of pow Mia families still influential? It is. Well, and it is to a degree, but it's still around there. Obviously there are still MIAs from the missing from the Vietnam war. There's over 1500, uh, that are still declared missing from the Vietnam war. Actually, there are some 72,000. There's still good declared missing from the, uh, from world war II. I've been speaking with KPBS military reporters, Steve Walsh, Steve, thank you very much. Thanks, Jane. Speaker 6: 07:41 Uh.