Tomorrow American History tv is for more information about our travels, youre watching American History tv, all week gen and on holidays, too, only on cspan3. Each were american artifacts visits the vietnam collection since it opened in 1982. The collection are we visit the National Parks resource center. To see a selection of items left at the wall. Hi, my name is janet donlin. I work specifically for the Vietnam Veterans memorial collection, which is housed herous in landover, maryland. Its a center curatorial facilities for the capitol region parks, but the collection is housed entirely in this building. We are a collection of objects that are left at a memorial in d. C. , the Vietnam Veterans memorial. Visit ovrs come by the memorial every day, leave objects which our park rangers collect, and then every two weeks or so we do a pickup at the memorial, we bring them out here to the Museum Resource center, where we sort through them, and catalog them and make them a part of our colle
Hes on the wall. So this flag and note were left on veterans day 1992, the tenyear anniversary of the wall. And it was left by john parks, who was a prisoner of war for five years in vietnam. He coincidentally has done an oral history project for the library of congress, which is very interesting. You can hear about his experience as a prisoner of war. But he left this flag, which was presented to him upon his return to the United States after he was released. On it is a crucifix, which he made out of a tooth paste tube, and the tie is from his prison uniform. And right here, theres a pin for the pow mia, which is prisoners of war missing in action. And the note is essentially saying hes dedicating his flag to all the other men who are missing in action or prisoners of war in vietnam. A lot of times veterans, if they want to come see the things that they left, we are always willing to give them a tour and show them around. It also really helps us, because we can connect specific names