| Mrs. Jones
Radicalization can be an
instant process. For Mrs. Mitch Jones, it came the minute
President Nixon said he would keep a small force of American
troops in South Vietnam as long as the communists held American
prisoners of war. Mrs. Jones quit her job, sent out hundreds of
letters to enlist support and became a full time, unpaid lobbyist
for peace and helped form a group called "Families for Immediate
Release." Mrs. Jones was convinced Nixon's policy would continue
the war forever - and that the prisoner problem would then be
solved - they would die waiting for the war to end.
Mitch Jones had been through
this before. Her brother, Lt. Frank N. Mitchell, a Congressional
Medal of Honor recipient, had been declared Missing In Action in
Korea. Her family struggled for years against a growing tide of
indifference to her brother and the other men missing in Korea.
She watched helplessly as the war ended, and the men were written
off one by one. She had lived her years as a military wife
knowing her husband could also be captured or become missing, but
not fully realizing that the handling of the American POWs in
Korea was not to be unique. Final recognition came when she
realized Nixon would continue the war with no seeming regard for
her husband or the other POWs.
When the war ended, not a
single man held in Laos was released, although many were known to
have survived. Still, no word of Louis Farr has been received,
even though Mrs. Jones travelled to Laos in 1969, and the U.S.
engaged in publicity campaigns to renew relationships with the
countries of Southeast Asia, while ignoring and debunking
mounting evidence that Americans are still alive in Laos and
Vietnam.
Mrs. Jones no longer walks the
halls of Congress, and since an 18-year-old clipping described
her activities, she has disappeared from public view. Louis
Jones, if he is alive, must also have decided, in disappointment,
that the country he proudly served would not bring him
home.
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