On this page
What each country did, what its archives are believed to hold, and what PIP is trying to get out of them.
Americans reported held after the Korean, Cold and Vietnam wars were not held in one place. They were reported in North Korea, in China, in the Soviet Union and its republics, in Vietnam and in Laos, and moved between them. This page is the country-by-country view: what each government did, what its archives hold, and what PIP is trying to get out of them. The individual leads are narrower and sit inside these pages. We have a large number of other POW profiles and country report information, which we will be adding.
North Korea
Defector and refugee reporting places Americans in and around Pyongyang from the 1950s into the 1990s, in prison camps, on collective farms and in a residential compound at Mandal-ri. North Korea has never accounted for a single unreturned prisoner and no American investigator has been allowed to look.
- Americans in North Korea — the full set of defector and intelligence reports
- The Oh Young Nam sightings — a police defector on 20 to 30 elderly Americans at Mandal-ri
- All North Korea leads
China
China held American prisoners after the Korean armistice, admitted holding some of them, and released others years later. Chinese records on Americans captured in the 1950s have never been opened, and Beijing has told U.S. officials it holds a file it has not handed over.
- Secret U.S. POW camps in China
- Americans hunted in Shantou
- The secret file Beijing would not turn over
- All China leads
Russia and the Soviet Union
Soviet forces shot down American aircraft along their borders and took prisoners from them. Returning European and Japanese prisoners reported Americans in the Gulag — at Vorkuta, Taishet, Inta and Magadan — into the 1950s and beyond. Moscow has released shootdown files while withholding prisoner files.
- U.S. aircrews secretly imprisoned in the Soviet Union
- U.S. POWs taken from Korea to the Soviet Union
- Americans abducted during the Cold War
- All Russia and Soviet leads
Vietnam
Hanoi returned 591 prisoners in 1973. U.S. intelligence carried reports of others still held, and Vietnamese sources described Americans in camps and in Hanoi itself after the releases.
Laos
The Pathet Lao said openly that it held American prisoners and would negotiate for them. Not one man was released from Laos in 1973.
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics
Warsaw Pact services kept their own files on Americans, and some of those archives are now open in ways Moscow’s are not. PIP is working Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Ukrainian and Baltic holdings.
- The reported POW camp at Zdolbuniv
- U.S. POWs reported in Czechoslovakia
- Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact — the country-by-country file
- All leads and clues
Help us in your country
If you live in one of these countries, or came from one, you can help. Archivists, former officials, veterans, journalists and families all hold pieces of this. Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org in any language. We protect our sources.