[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 38 (Monday, September 21, 1998)]
[Pages 1823-1824]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 7124--National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 1998

September 17, 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.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:58 a.m., September 
18, 1998]

[[Page 1824]]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on 
September 21.