Records on Military Personnel Who Died, Were Missing in Action or Prisoners of War as a Result of the Vietnam Conflict

The agency created this series as the official repository for records on U.S. military casualties in the Southeast Asian combat areas during the Vietnam Conflict and used the database as the source for official information about U.S. military personnel casualties related to the Vietnam Conflict and for disseminating statistical data concerning them. This series contains records of U.S. military officers and soldiers who died as a result of either a hostile or nonhostile occurrence or who w ere missing in action or prisoners of war in the Southeast Asian combat area during the Vietnamese Conflict, including casualties that occurred in Cambodia, China, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Thailand.

The records derive from information submitted by each of the military services on Department of Defense Form 1300, Individual Report of Casualty. The database has both final and nonfinal records; a data field in each record distinguishes between them. Final records, also referred to as the "last" records, represent the most current official information about a deceased casualty or about repatriated personnel; nonfinal records, also referred to as "previous " records, are those that precede the final records.