HANOI – As I listened to the speeches at the Sheraton Hotel the other night, as the dignitaries from the US and Vietnam commemorated the 25th anniversary of joint efforts to find traces of American servicemen who vanished in the war, my thoughts drifted to another day more than 20 years ago.

I was at film set near Los Angeles that portrayed the red-light district of war-time Saigon for a TV series called "Tour of Duty." Somehow, the set had been enlisted by a group of Americans bound together by a profound sense of loss and betrayal, convinced that something more sinister than war itself was preventing them from learning the fates of hundreds of American servicemen who did not return home from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

"If I give you my husband's bracelet," said Marian Shelton, sitting behind me in the audience, "will you wear it?"

She meant the POW-MIA bracelet engraved with his name. I was a teenager when about 5 million bracelets engraved with the names of America's POWs and Missing In Actions were distributed. The war had divided America politically but people on both sides hoped for an end and a return of the POWs and resolution of the MIAs. Many people vowed to wear the bracelet until the serviceman came home, or his fate was resolved.

Marian's husband, Col. Charles E. Shelton, was a special case. He was shot down over Laos during a secret reconnaissance mission in 1965, and was known to be taken prisoner by Lao forces. The prevailing judgment, short of definitive evidence, was that he had died, yet he would be the last U.S. serviceman officially classified as a POW. Marian disputed suggestions that Charles' unique classification had been a political gesture by the Air Force and the Reagan Administration – as a symbol of hope and solidarity with the activists.

Marian was gracious as I awkwardly declined her offer. I didn't tell her that, to me, the bracelet would have simply been a journalistic souvenir, not a keepsake.

Perhaps no other people, in no other war, have been more obsessed with a war's unaccounted for casualties than Americans were with its losses in Vietnam. Actually, the number of American KIA/BNR – killed in action, body not recovered – was relatively small, a tiny fraction compared to the Americans who vanished in Korea and the two world wars. At the time of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, the U.S. listed 1,350 POWs (with an uncertain number believed to have died in captivity) and sought the return of the remains of 1,200 missing. Meanwhile, Vietnam estimates its unaccounted for casualties from the war as exceeding 300,000 – and that doesn't include those who lost while fighting alongside Americans in the war here.

Certainly Americans would have been less obsessed if their forces prevailed, and there wasn't the sense that the lives were lost in vain. The post-war politics was thick with emotion, and the POW-MIA cause also sprouted a cottage industry, much of it sincere and much of it the cynical and venal work of charlatans, sometimes both at once. My coverage for the Los Angeles Times included a profile of one former Air Force officer who, after winning acclaim for his work with refugees, raised millions of dollars for dubious missions that produced bones he claimed to be human but were determined to be those of pigs. He didn't get most of the money; the professional fundraising firm took the biggest cut of the action. Today, I'm told, the charlatans tend to Vietnamese who rip off their countrymen by selling bones and artifacts that they claim will help them get money or visas from U.S. officials. A woman from Da Lat is said to have recently spent about $120,000 on a large collection of bones – and forensic analysis showed that none were those of American servicemen.

The biggest bucks were made by Hollywood, with Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" topping a spate of POW rescue fantasies that sold plenty of popcorn and soda, as well a vicarious notion of American redemption.

My "military brat" upbringing, as the son of a career Marine, may have drawn me to the story. I felt for families who had lost loved ones and wanted answers. But I also understood that the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknowns, erected in Arlington National Cemetery after the First World War, represented the fundamental truth that, in war, some answers may never be obtained. 

Hearing the speeches in that ersatz Saigon so long ago, it may have been hard to imagine that the U.S. and Vietnam had already started working together to investigate and excavating crash sites, finding remote burials and repatriating remains. To many POW-MIA activists, obsessed with conspiracy theories, this was just a window-dressing for an elaborate cover-up. One man, himself a former POW, spoke of recent aerial spy photos depicting "tall shadows" – American shadows, he insisted, of men still held prisoner. Covering the quixotic movement, it occurred to me the activists possessed a zeal that was practically religious. If a missing man could be found alive and returned, it would have been like a resurrection.

Hundreds of families, however, have received a measure of closure through the process, and the efforts are credited with building trust between the former enemies. U.S. Ambassador David Shear spoke about how the joint investigation starting in 1988 "laid the foundation" for a new relationship between the nations. Diplomatic relations were normalized in 1995. Shear noted that, while working to resolve the MIA cases, the U.S. also helps support the removal of unexploded ordnance, the clean-up of Agent Orange and provides aid for the disabled. The value of two-way trade between the countries in the past year exceeded $25 billion, and more than 15,000 Vietnamese are now studying in the U.S.

Over the 25 years, there have been 112 joint missions to recover remains, often in extremely difficult terrain, and hundreds of the missing have been positively identified. It's considered the greatest effort to account for lost servicemen in the history of warfare, and advances in DNA analysis have helped.

For Americans who were stuck between denial and anger in the classic process of grief, the obsession could have a terrible cost. Some months after she offered me her husband's bracelet, Marian Shelton took her own life in the backyard of her San Diego home while wearing a St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Twenty-five years had passed since her husband disappeared. Her hopes had been raised and dashed many times, often by other believers in the cause spreading rumors. She had carried the burden of the POW-MIA movement, and the pressure led to depression and alcoholism. Four years later, at the request of Marian and Charles' five children, the last POW was reclassified as killed in action. The Shelton family wanted to finally put the war behind them.

Over dinner, Ha Kim Ngoc, Vietnam's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, reminded everyone that the joint mission itself has come at a great human cost as well. In 2001, nine Vietnamese and seven Americans participating in the MIA investigation were killed in a helicopter crash in 2001 in Quang Binh Province.

At Ha's suggestion, we stood to observe a moment of silence to honor their sacrifice.