'Racist' POW-MIA Flag Has Florida Roots

As controversy over a recent column that decried the POW-MIA flag as a “banner of lies” and a “racist flag” continues to smolder, a Jacksonville newspaper is stepping up to set the record straight on the symbol’s origins.

Washington Spectator national correspondent Rick Perlstein gets the credit for sparking discussion about the flag. In an Aug. 10 column, he called out the flag as “one that supposedly honors history, but actually spreads a pernicious myth.” He went on to say it is “useful only to venal right-wing politicians who wish to exploit hatred by calling it heritage.” He also proclaimed that “it’s past time to pull it down.”

Perlstein claimed former President Richard Nixon invented “the cult of the POW/MIA” to justify continued action in Vietnam. He also asserted the flag went up in 1971 as the creation of the National League of Families of Prisoners of War.

Controversial statements aside, The Florida Times Union is calling out Perlstein on his explanation of the flag’s origins.

Perlstein “got it wrong,” the paper asserts. “The flag was an effort by one Jacksonville woman to make sure Americans did not forget that men were fighting, dying and missing in Southeast Asia,” the paper reported.

That woman responsible for the banner is Jacksonville’s Mary Hoff, wife of Navy Cmdr. Michael G. Hoff, the Times Union reported. Michael Hoff was shot down in his F-4 Phantom over Laos back in 1970.

Indeed, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs credits “Mrs. Michael Hoff” as the person responsible for developing “the idea for a national flag to remind every American of the U.S. service members whose fates were never accounted for during the war.”

The flag’s insignia was designed by Newt Heisley, a former World War II pilot, the department explains on its website.

Perlstein’s column sparked national outrage after it was picked up by Newsweek on Tuesday. As of Friday, more than 2,700 comments, mostly angry ones, had been posted to the piece.

By Thursday, Perlstein’s piece on the Washington Spectator website had been updated with an apology for the use of the term “racist” to describe the flag. No mention of Jacksonville’s Mary Hoff was included in that apology.

Internet claims that have sprung up since Perlstein’s column first ran that a Liberal/Democrat movement is growing to demand its removal from public display are patently false, Snopes.com reported. The organization dedicated to ferreting out the truth behind Internet rumors determined this particular rumor was fueled by the recent backlash against the Confederate flag and its association to racism.

“While it’s true a single opinion piece described the flag as ‘racist’ (in its title and opening paragraph), the view represented was that of an individual writer and is not one being widely espoused by any large segment of ‘the left,’ Democrats, or Americans in general,” Snopes concluded.

Whether or not Mary Hoff is bothered by the controversy or Perlstein’s failure to mention her remains unclear, the Times Union noted. The 84-year-old is in poor health, the paper reported. Her husband was never found.

“I never stopped thinking he wasn’t coming home,” she told the paper during a 2004 interview.

To read more about Mary Hoff’s story, visit The Florida Times Union.