While the U.S. government spares no expense to recover the remains of the 1,559 American soldiers still listed as missing in action in Vietnam, the Vietnamese people are engaged in an equally emotional but far more haphazard campaign to find their 220,000 MIAs. The Vietnamese government says it cannot afford to mount a serious nationwide effort. Instead, it relies on volunteers coordinated by a few local officials like Dang, who works on veterans' issues for the Department of Labor in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. Since the end of the war, about 80,000 of Vietnam's 300,000 MIAs have been recovered. Visiting U.S. veterans have also provided information that has led to several finds.
Progress is painfully slow.
Making matters worse, bodies decompose swiftly in Vietnam's tropical climate. While the Vietnamese government provides a small amount of funding to search for MIAs who fought for the North, there is no official encouragement to find those who fought for the South. If searchers happen to recover the remains of a southern soldier, they will return his bones to his home province. But South Vietnamese soldiers are not allowed to be buried in cemeteries for war heroes. Meanwhile, the MIA issue remains the top U.S. priority in relations with Vietnam and is invariably the first topic mentioned in any official meeting.