Proclamation 4342

January 25, 1975

January 27, 1975, marks the second anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement ending United States combat involvement in Vietnam. Although the Agreement contains specific obligations on accounting for the missing and the return of the remains of the dead, the communist authorities have failed either to provide this information or to follow through on the return of the remains of our dead. Over 2400 Americans are still unaccounted for-some 900 of them still listed as missing, the remainder declared dead with their bodies never recovered. The families of these men continue to live with the anguish of uncertainty about the ultimate fate of these loved ones.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Monday, January 27, 1975, as National MIA Awareness Day, dedicated to the many Americans who remain missing or unaccounted for in Indochina, and to their families. I call upon all Americans to join in voicing once again the clear, continuing commitment of the American people and their Government to seek the fullest possible accounting for Americans missing in Southeast Asia and the return of the remains of those who died.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-ninth.



GERALD R. FORD