National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 1998

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Part VII

The President

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Proclamation 7124--National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 1998

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 7124 of September 17, 1998

National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 1998

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

For more than two centuries, America has been blessed
by the service and sacrifice of the men and women of
our Armed Forces. Often leaving home and family, they
have fought to preserve our freedom, protect our
national interests, and advance American values and
ideals around the globe. These valiant heroes have
risked--and many have lost--their lives in service to
our Nation and for the well-being of their fellow
Americans.

Each year, on National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we
acknowledge with special gratitude and profound respect
those who paid for our freedom with their own, and we
remember with deep sorrow those whose fate has never
been resolved. Americans who were held as prisoners of
war throughout our history endured the indignities and
brutality of captivity without surrendering their
devotion to duty, honor, and country. With steadfast
hearts and indomitable spirit, these patriots never
gave up on America because they knew that America, and
the American people, would never give up on them.

In the same way, we will never give up on our efforts
to obtain the fullest possible accounting of every
American missing in service to our country. We reaffirm
our pledge to their families to search unceasingly for
information about those missing and to seek the
repatriation of those who have died and whose remains
have not been recovered. By doing so we keep faith with
our men and women in the Armed Forces and with the
families who have suffered the anguish of not knowing
the fate of their loved ones.

On September 18, 1998, the flag of the National League
of Families of American Prisoners of War and Missing in
Southeast Asia, a black and white banner symbolizing
America's missing and our fierce determination to
account for them, will be flown over the White House,
the U.S. Capitol, the Departments of State, Defense,
and Veterans Affairs, the Selective Service System
Headquarters, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean
War Veterans Memorial, national cemeteries, and other
locations across our country.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, by virtue of the
authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of
the United States, do hereby proclaim September 18,
1998, as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. I ask all
Americans to join me in honoring former American
prisoners of war and those whose fate is still
undetermined. I also encourage the American people to
remember with compassion and concern the courageous
families who persevere in their quest to know the fate
of their missing loved ones.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and ninety-eight, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two
hundred and twenty-third.