I state for the record that I have never sought funds from any POW family, nor led them to believe in any way that we were going on a mission to rescue their specific missing loved one.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.
It takes time to understand the difference between civilian POWs and military POWs. There's an educational process.
My mission is to support our service members. They're volunteers, and if they're going to go to a hostile place like Afghanistan, I think we owe it to them to back them up and try to help them get through it.
I didn't equate a POW camp with a concentration camp.
When our William was killed, there wasn't a child bereavement charity. I was extremely blessed with a very close family, wonderful friends, a supportive husband, and two further children.
Too often in our communities many families have not even been aware that certain charities exist; and at the same time, there are many who are willing to volunteer their energy and their resources to help these charities, yet they do not know these charities even exist.
The PoWs went through something so horrible, you don't know who's coming back.
Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.
I volunteered to deploy to Iraq. I was one of the few soldiers who were not on the mandatory deployment roster - close to 3,000 Hawaii soldiers were.
I went overseas hoping to prove that all our POWs were home. I came back convinced that they were still alive.