EVENTS
Learn how a handful of hidebound military wives, during the 1960s, changed the way America fights its wars today.
Were they wives or widows? Between 1965 and 1979, when a growing number of military aviators started disappearing over the skies of North Vietnam, their wives started asking the U.S. government this question. They were told to keep quiet, out of fear these men would become bargaining chips. But as the years passed and stories of torture and depravation leaked out, it became impossible for these women to stay silent. Shining a spotlight on these men became imperative if they were to even survive the ordeal.
In 1969, American women could not get a credit card or rent an apartment by themselves, nor could they buy a car or a house on their own. These transactions required the approval of a husband or a father.
It was uncommon for women to go out to dinner or to travel by themselves. And, yet, in 1969, a handful of wives of our missing and captive men, raised in the traditions and societal norms of the 1950s and bound to the rules of the U.S. government, found a way to defy all these restrictions.
Between 1969 and 1973–when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, these women traveled around the world and to the United Nations, pounding the pavement and their fists in the halls of Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and the Oval Office. They did what military family members had never before done: they became the face of international diplomacy. Consequently, their husbands became what POWs had never before been: strategic pawns.
The fate of these 591 men–a tiny fraction of the more than 58,000 casualties and the 3.1 million Americans who served in the Vietnam War–had become a national obsession. More than five million iconic POW and MIA bracelets were worn by Americans and the stark black and white POW-MIA flag was ubiquitous–all to show national solidarity and support for these men, the longest-held group of POWs in our nation’s history.
How did these POWs become such a presidential priority? With winning the war itself no longer an achievable goal, how did bringing them home justify the continued fight and casualties on the front lines?
In cinematic detail, Unwavering: The Wives Who Fought to Ensure No Man is Left Behind plunges you directly into the political maneuvering the women navigated, onto the international stage they shared with world leaders, and through the landmark legacy they created.