America's Secret War (2017) Movie Script
My fellow Americans, Laos is far away
from America, but the world is small.
Its two million people live in a
country three times the size of Austria.
The security of all
Southeast Asia will be
endangered if Laos loses
its neutral independence.
Its own safety runs with the safety of
us all, in real neutrality observed by all.
I want to make it clear to the
American people and to all the world
that all we want in Laos is peace, not war.
My father was part
of the heavy artillery
unit. I actually stayed
with him in his foxhole
overlooking Longcheng.
When the communists
infiltrated Longcheng,
he was out there firing
his 105 and 155 guns. So I was out there
with my father and I'll be in the foxhole.
So all I could hear
was, you know, all these
constant bombardment,
these cannons going off
and rockets flying.
During that time, at
night, they would fire
flares and these flares,
there'll be a little
parachute that will glide it
down. I mean, that's why
it came down really slow.
And so we as kids, we would often
seek out those parachutes for toys.
After the conflict calmed down,
the next day, I woke up really early
and went out and searched
for those parachutes.
And I got near the airfield
and I saw these dead
Vietnamese. It was all
quiet and everything, so I
decided it's probably
not safe for me to be here,
so I walked back home.
Home was a secret
military base in the
mountains of northern
Laos called Longcheng.
The base was also known
as headquarters for the
CIA's clandestine
operations in the country,
commanded by General
Vang Pao. To his forces,
he was a George
Washington-like figure.
General Vang Pao was not a person like
us. He was a courageous and powerful man.
Hmong people believed that the
heavens sent Vang Pao to be our leader.
To this day, Hmong people still
honor and believe in Vang Pao.
General Vang Pao had a calling,
fight against the violent North
Vietnamese communist invasion of Laos.
Few in the United States were aware
that next door to the Vietnam War,
in Laos, the CIA was running
a full-blown military operation,
minus most of the U.S. armed
forces. It was the so-called secret war.
The communist Pathet Lao, with the backing
of Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnamese army,
were the enemy. Hmong,
Khmer, Lao, Mien, and
soldiers of all ethnicities
defended Laos,
with the help of some very
powerful and secretive friends.
The war was run by the CIA and the State
Department. So the State Department and the
CIA are not part of the
Department of Defense.
The secret war became
a model for future war
operations carried out by
the CIA. The clandestine
war in Laos killed tens
of thousands of Laos
citizens. Among the
hardest hit were the Hmong of
northern Laos. Tens of
thousands died in the war,
even more lost their lives
escaping to freedom after the war.
While the Vietnam War
was televised nightly,
the secret war
lingered in the shadows.
They are left at a village
deep in enemy territory.
The reason why Laos
was important was during
that time, there was
the Red Scare, right?
So basically fear communism.
Communism is going
to dominate Southeast
Asia. We already have China
there. And so you have
North Vietnam, now it's
a communist state. And
so if the country of Laos
falls, then the rest of that region would
fall to communism. It would turn red.
So it's the domino theory, right? So if one
domino falls, the rest of them would fall.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was
particularly concerned that if Laos fell,
it would be a gateway to India, a communist
domination of an entire hemisphere.
After the Geneva Conference in 1954,
no one was supposed to be in Laos.
North Vietnamese was
using Laos as a staging
area to resupply. And
Laos was supposed to be
neutral. No one is to
touch the country of
Laos. In the end,
neutralism was impossible.
The efforts of a communist-dominated group
to destroy this neutrality never ceased.
In the last half of
1960, a series of sudden
maneuvers occurred,
and the communists and
their supporters turned
to a new and greatly
intensified military
effort to take over.
And so the United
States basically said, okay,
so if North Vietnam is
going to play this game,
we can do the same
thing. And instead of using
our own troops, right,
that we can use the
indigenous people. And
that's why Colonel Belair
was sent over to train
the Hmong people to fight
as surrogate soldiers
of the American armed
forces, because they
couldn't be there. Military
forces can't be there.
But they sent CIA advisors.
Colonel Belair was,
at that point of time,
the CIA agent in Southeast
Asia. And when Belair
got to Laos, the first
person that he sought
was General Vang Pao.
Colonel Belair came to ask him,
Lieutenant Colonel Vang Pao, if the Royal
Laos government sends you ammunition, guns,
I would like to ask
you, if someday you and
your Hmong people
are going to turn the guns
against the Royal Laos
government. Colonel Vang
Pao said that. Colonel
Belair, I am an officer
of the Royal Laos Army.
My soldiers and I, we
never turn our guns
against our Royal Laos Army,
and because of
that, I ask you for help.
Two days after, the
Royal Laos Army sent two
military Dakota to drop ammunition and guns
and food for Lieutenant Colonel Vang Pao
and his soldiers. In that moment, the U.S.
and the Hmong became bound to one another,
whether by choice or necessity, in a war
to keep the communist North Vietnamese
and Patut Lao from
overthrowing the Royal Lao
government. I think for
the Hmong, what they
really would want is
just forget about the war.
We don't want any
part of it. We just want to
live free. They had to choose either the
communists or the king in Vang Pao. Even if
the communists ruled
Laos or the king ruled Laos,
it's the same for them.
They're still a minority,
right? They're still
going to be discriminated
against. They'd rather
not pay the price if they
don't have to. The fact
that they ended up paying
the price in northeastern
Laos on both sides,
was because they were forced
to choose one side or the other.
Nobody questioned
whether it was a good or
bad idea. During that
time, it was mandatory.
If you didn't let your
family members, men, and
sons get recruited,
there were consequences.
The training team comes with Vang Pao.
If we became soldiers, then we would
have shoes, clothes, and hats to wear,
and receive monthly wages. We became
soldiers so that we wouldn't be poor.
During that time, I was still a young
boy and only able to babysit children.
I was probably 10 or 11 years old.
After I finished high school, I wanted
to go to Vientiane to learn English,
to become a teacher, and to teach
the Hmong children in the villages.
But because of this war, I had to let
the dream go and became a soldier.
CIA operatives like Jerry Daniels worked
hand-in-glove with General Vang Pao.
General Vang Pao was Hmong, an ethnic group
much persecuted by the dominant culture.
They were sometimes
called barbarians or male,
a holdover from the
Chinese who chased them out
of their country. The
United States and General
Vang Pao essentially
ran the northern part of the
secret war together.
They were a powerful team.
We Hmong people didn't know why
we were in this war and for what reasons.
General Vang Pao sent word to
the village heads to recruit soldiers.
When we got to Padang for training,
they taught us how to use knives and guns,
and told us that we were
going to fight in the war.
There were two goals. One goal was
to protect the country from the Patet Lao.
The second goal was
to help the Americans,
but we didn't know why
we were helping them.
The 57 millimeter recoilless
rifle is the ideal weapon.
The Hmong soldiers
were trained in guerrilla
tactics by Americans
and Thai specialists.
They were called special
guerrilla units or SGUs.
The SGUs are the
toughest, you know, the
ones who die first, the
ones who have to go,
you know, like the Marines, right, like the
American Marines that we always sent first.
In South Vietnam, the U.S.
fought conventional war tactics,
and then the communists fought
guerrilla tactics against the U.S.
In Laos, it's completely
opposite. The
communists had their
conventional war tactics,
and then the Hmong used
guerrilla tactics against them.
Soldiers were desperately needed,
so training was a hurried affair.
On the third day, we learned how to
shoot the 60 and 81 and throw grenades.
We learned the basic training for
three days and then went to war.
On the ground, the People's Army
of North Vietnam, the communists,
were known for their
unrelenting fighting style.
When one soldier fell, others
behind him kept coming.
The SGUs responded in kind. Battles
were fierce. Brutal injuries were common.
We were sent to Phuket
Mountain. I still feel bad to this day.
These soldiers didn't
have the proper training.
They were only here to try to make
a living, and they were sent to battle.
That day, we were on two helicopters.
These helicopters were transporting
us from Padong to Phuket Mountain.
The first helicopter was filled with
a group of Vu clan child soldiers.
They were new, so they
wanted to be in a group together.
There were about 12
of them in the helicopter.
As the helicopter started to
land close to communist lines,
everyone started jumping off.
Before they all could
get off, the communists
threw grenades and
they exploded near them.
The helicopter swerved off
immediately with two soldiers still in it.
There were eight child
soldiers that died there.
I still feel bad. They must
have thought that they were safe
because they were fighting
together, but they all died.
The communists patrolled the roads. One
time, they shot at me and a bullet hit me
right in the rib and
lodged into my lung.
They threw grenades
and they exploded near me,
hitting my arms. The
bullet that hit me in my
lung caused blood to
rush up into my throat.
I started to feel the
blood clogging my throat,
making it hard to
breathe, so I spit it out.
I had some medicine in my
pocket, so I took it out and ate it.
I also had some morphine,
so I shot one in my arm.
There was so much blood that I had to
take off my shirt. I left my tank top on.
I continued shooting at the communists so
that they wouldn't be able to come get me.
I wrapped up my wound
and slowly walked away.
I took off my canteens and belt and
shoved a handful of bullets into my pocket.
I held my M16 as I continued walking.
A grenade then went off
about two feet behind me.
The logs behind me exploded into
my back, butt, arms, hands, and legs.
It was so hard to walk because
of the pain, so I started crawling.
The flies and leeches were everywhere.
They were getting into my
eyes and my wounds as I
laid to rest for a while
in my large pool of blood.
I came upon a group of soldiers near
a small hill and I called out to them.
They were not a part of my
group. They were Yao soldiers.
I was sitting inside an abandoned communist
bunker and so when I called to them,
they came to help me.
There were six of them.
They took me to their
base where they put me
by the campfire and
told me to warm up here.
My captain heard that I was at their base,
so he and another soldier came to get me.
My captain told me that
we needed to leave because
a helicopter was not
able to pick me up here
and the communists were
planning to attack this base tonight.
I told them that I was
in too much pain to walk.
They continued to convince me that if
we stayed then we would get captured
and I had already suffered this far.
I was in too much pain, so
they told me they would carry me.
As they held me up, I felt the bullet in
my lung and all the wounds on my legs.
It was so painful, I
thought I was going to die.
They both slowly carried me and
we walked back to an area overnight.
The next day, they attempted to
airlift me, but they were unable to.
So we waited for a second
plane to come airlift me.
They took me to Longcheng
and then eventually to Nasu.
As in all wars, witnessing
death pained the soul.
During war, when one of your soldiers
or friends dies, there will be tears.
But you think that it's
him and it's not me.
If you get hurt, you wonder, why me?
Will my family see me again?
You think about this all the time.
During the time that I was
in a leadership position,
I sent the dead bodies
back to their families.
And they came and cried to me.
They'd come and cry to me
and I didn't know what to do.
I wiped their tears and take them
to meet with General Veng Pal.
I would tell General Veng
Pal that my soldier died
and that this is their crying family.
I asked if there was any
financial assistance for them.
They would get some money and
then I wouldn't see these families again.
We had a group of widows.
We would put their
family name in this group
and there was someone
that took care of their needs.
This is what makes me sad.
While the special
guerrilla units were in
the midst of unforgiving
hand-to-hand combat,
air support and aerial
assaults piled up more
damage against the North
Vietnamese and Patet Lao.
The Royal Lao Army supplied pilots
while the Americans
supplied flight
training and the T-28
planes used in battle.
The CIA's Air America,
a so-called charter airline,
along with a secret group of
officially unofficial U.S. Air Force pilots
called the Ravens,
provided forward air support.
They spotted the enemy, relayed positions
and asked the T-28s to go after them.
Radar and satellite tracking
were crucial to air operations.
Only in recent years has
the U.S. acknowledged
an isolated installation
called Lima Site 85.
To the Hmong who called the
area home, it was Phu Ba Thi.
Lima Site 85 was run by the U.S. Air Force,
the only place in Laos
where Air Force personnel
are publicly known to
have served during the
secret war.
More than half of all
bombing operations against
North Vietnam were
guided by Lima Site 85.
The small group of U.S. airmen and
the Hmong soldiers who guarded the site
were of tremendous importance to
both the Vietnam War and the secret war.
During the war, most
Hmong women were charged
with the hard physical
labor of keeping their
family farms up and
running, raising their children,
and supplementing their family
income in whatever way they could.
You would see all these
dust rising, you know,
planes landing, taking off
constantly all day long and never stop.
A much smaller number of Hmong
women worked away from home.
Chua Thao was the first Hmong nurse
trained as a medic to care for the wounded.
One night we're at the
site, 72 is a small airport,
and the American wrong, the B-52,
yeah, bombed by mistake in Long Chien.
And they brought 270 casualties
to the hospital that night.
No doctor there.
Everybody go Vietnam, only
me and another Lao medic.
So I told him that,
hey, you and me, we
have to run for 270 to
check, hey, hey, hey,
are you all right?
Hey, hey, are you
bleeding? Are you leg
or arm broken, you know?
We work very hard.
And like I told General Van Pao,
I say, you better be nice to us.
And one time he hit his finger.
They tried to kill him on the back.
They hit this finger because in Lao
custom, a Lao believe, a Hmong believe,
that he had good protection with him.
He yelling when the nurses
washing his tiny finger.
Then I was angry.
I go and hold his hand
and say, come on, General.
You are my son-in-law because you
marry one of my nurses, the best nurse.
That's it.
Then I hold his hand and
I say, give me a syringe.
They give me a syringe.
I say, is that OK?
He said, what are you going to do?
I said, because he's yelling, I'm going to
give medicine in here and not hurting you.
Oh, no, I don't like the needle.
I said, Senior General, the soldier
cut off the arm, cut off the leg.
I never see you.
And now your tiny finger doesn't hurt.
And he look at me very strange
and say, stop looking at me.
Stop looking at me like that.
I want you to come and
visit those soldiers sometime.
But you are so busy, I never see you.
Then after that, yeah, he come visit.
An NBC news crew captured
the head of all Hmong forces,
General Vang Pao,
on one of his later visits.
Since 1961, the secret war
had swallowed northern Laos.
Losses were heavy on both sides.
The Paris Peace Accords
were signed in 1973,
ostensibly putting an
end to the war in Vietnam.
Next door, General Vang Pao was
pushing hard to continue fighting.
The communists, North Vietnamese
and Pathet Lao had not let up.
But a corner had been turned.
The U.S. wanted out of Southeast
Asia, and that included Laos.
Finally, they signed the Vietnam
Peace Accords on February 21, 1973.
The two sides, the communists
and the royal law government,
were to jointly rule
Laos with a third group,
neutralists, providing a middle ground.
All were to be equal.
It was a tenuous arrangement,
enemies coming together to rule.
After decades of war, the
people of Laos had hope.
They created a
representative congress called
the National Political
Consultative Council.
The leaders of the three
parties were meeting regularly.
Optimism was in the air.
I was asked by the royal
law government to be
part of a task force
to plan for the future.
My task force and I went to do
workshops from North Laos to South Laos
to plan for national reconciliation,
social and economic development.
And everywhere I went, I saw the population
was very happy to see peace coming.
Laos citizens were officially
going to be at peace for the first time
since the start of the
French-Indo-China War in the 50s.
But the North Vietnamese and the Batut Lao
were secretly making plans
to forcibly take the country.
General Vang Pao's headquarters
at Long Chieng were a prized target.
If the communists could take it,
then a march into the capital
of Vientiane was almost certain.
Communist forces
spent months sending
thousands of soldiers
to surround Long Chieng.
Then they waited for word to attack.
It was mid-May, 1975.
Saigon and Cambodia
had both already fallen.
General Vang Pao was said to
have known that they were coming.
He was ready to stay and fight,
but the CIA ordered him to make a
clandestine escape to safety in Thailand.
No one was to know for fear of
the chaos his absence could cause.
His closest soldiers engineered his escape
by first getting him out of his house.
When we got to the steps, I took off my hat
because it had a large
brim and put it on it.
I held onto his arm and we
walked side by side towards my car.
We popped the smoke signal
and yellow smoke rose to the sky.
The American U.S. aid helicopter
was already circling in the river valley,
waiting for us.
They circled up and
landed next to the fishpond.
The general started to enter with one foot
and used both hands to hold
onto the bars above his head,
and then he stepped back down.
I don't know what he was thinking.
He points his finger to
the sky and spins it around.
He then stamped his foot twice on
the ground and got on the helicopter.
The door closed and
the helicopter took off.
At that time, I felt
like I could have died.
I was sad and to this
day I still feel disappointed
because he had always said,
you will go with me.
When the helicopter
took off, he left me behind.
My hope was completely gone and I thought,
he left me and this is it.
I really felt as though I died.
While General Vang Pao's
escape was meant to be secret,
word got out.
Those who could made their way to Longching
in hopes of getting a flight to safety too.
Grandparents, cousins, aunts
and uncles were gathered together
to make the trek through
the mountains to Longching.
It was very chaotic during that time.
And when we got there, it was several
thousand people were all waiting there.
And then soon, the plane started to come.
And then it landed and
the people were just like,
wow, literally we know that those planes
were only reserved for military officers.
In fact, General Vang Pao
said that each of those planes
were designated for a colonel.
When the plane landed and they said,
this is Colonel San Dang Xiong's airplane.
And so my dad said, okay, if it's Colonel
San Dang Xiong's airplane, then let's go.
And so everybody flocked.
And then the, you know,
the C-46 were quite high.
So you need to climb the
stairs all the way to the door.
And so they pushed us
and then my dad pushed us.
My mom got in, my
brothers got in, I got in.
And then they closed the door.
And it was like sardines in that C-46.
You could probably fit
about 30 people in there,
but must have been over
a hundred people in there.
When we arrived in Phnom Penh,
we got out and looked around and
it was my dad, it was my brother,
it was my grandma, grandpa,
and aunts and uncle looked
around and didn't see them.
And I remember waiting
at the airport with my mom
to see when the next plane is going to land
and whether my dad and my grandma
and grandpa was going to step off.
So we waited until like nine
o'clock or so and the C-130 came.
And the C-130 landed and my dad
and grandma and grandpa came out.
The communist forces took
over Lung Kieng on May 15,
1975 and seized power in the capital
of Vientiane just three months later.
As one war ended for
the Hmong, another began.
This one was a fight to get out of
the country and then onto France,
America, Australia, or whichever
country would take the refugees.
During the time when
Vang Pao was still in Laos,
for me, life was very normal.
It didn't seem like a war.
What seemed like a war was
after, you know, afterwards.
Only a fraction of those who
wanted to escape were able to get out.
The rest had to stay and plot
other ways to leave the country,
for they were in danger.
The communists had declared that
the Hmong were to be hunted and killed
because they worked for
the much hated United States.
If they surrendered and cooperated,
they would be sent to
seminar or re-education camps.
Indoctrination, torture,
deprivation, food deprivation,
especially where you're given, you
know, just very minimal rice and water.
Called in daily to be beaten,
psychologically tortured,
where they would pull the gun to your head,
like Russian roulette type of things,
and you never know when
the bullet is going to hit you.
And if you survive it, then they
take you back to your barracks,
and the next day it starts over.
Rather than surrender, entire
multi-generational families
spent years hiding where they knew best.
In the dense mountain
forests or in remote villages
on the highest mountaintops like Pumbia.
Always on the move, alert for the
next phalanx of communist soldiers.
My father had already
anticipated, you know, the attack
because he had military experience.
So every night we would
go sleep in our field houses
rather than stay in the village,
you know, because he knew.
He knew that they were going to
attack the village at any moment.
At the actual time of the attack,
we were actually in our fields
on a mountain that overlooks the village.
So, you know, I watched from the mountain
the village being bombed and attacked.
And all the villagers, some of
them were killed, others scattered.
After that, we just ran from
our field houses, you know,
up to Pumbia, like run further up.
I ran out of food, just like eating roots
and whatever we could find in the jungle.
And then the communists just kept coming,
you know, just kept
attacking us as we're running.
We went around the mountain twice.
All the men left because
they felt that if they stayed
and they were captured,
they would definitely be killed.
And then they told the
women to go surrender.
So we came back to our village and
then we surrendered to the communists.
So after that, we lived with the
communists for a whole year.
Surviving in communist
villages meant wrenching choices.
The He family, Mom, Ku
Yang, and Dad, Sia Ying,
were perilously close to not having
their daughter Sia make it to America.
During that time, we were so depressed.
We didn't know whether we were
going to die today or tomorrow.
We were poor and starving.
Those of us living in the
village were so poor and scared.
We were afraid of being
killed by the Pekai Lao.
We were also afraid that the
Pekai Lao were going to find
and kill my father and
our husbands in the jungle.
We were afraid of everything.
During that time, my
sister-in-law was pregnant,
I was pregnant, and my cousin was pregnant.
My father and the men lived in the jungles.
And when we were pregnant,
we were afraid that the Pekai Lao
would know that my father
and his men were close.
And that was how we became pregnant.
I was pregnant with
you for about two months.
Everyone started telling me that I
should find some medicine to abort you.
They said that we might
have trouble with the Pekai Lao.
So I decided to find some
medicine to abort you.
We were all afraid that the Pekai Lao
would investigate and cause trouble for us.
So that's why we decided to abort.
My sister-in-law and cousin changed
their minds and decided not to.
They decided that they
were willing to take a risk
regardless of what the Pekai Lao would do.
But I decided that I would still abort.
I knew that your mom was pregnant with you,
but we were afraid that the communists
were going to cause problems for your mom.
So I also agreed to
finding medicine to abort.
I sought out people who were known
to have medicine that aborts babies.
They guaranteed that it would work.
They gave me their best medicine,
but for some reason it didn't work.
I gave birth to Sia in December.
Back then, we gave birth in the jungles.
When I gave birth to Sia, I knew
that I drank too much of the medicine.
Sia was black and blue when she was born.
As I continued to care for her
and raise her, she got older.
The black and blue colors slowly went away,
and she continued to get
bigger without any problems.
Whether families surrendered
or hid in the jungles,
the ultimate goal was escape.
Groups of people and sometimes
entire villages crept through the forests,
evading the enemy on their
way out of the mountains
to the lowland riverbanks
of the Mekong River.
Avoiding towns and roads,
going through the jungle,
literally hacking the jungle with knives,
and the women and children falling behind.
And eventually we did hit the Mekong.
On the other shore,
miles away, was Thailand,
and freedom from certain death.
My father said the trip to the Mekong,
for me, it was just like
one suffering after another.
I don't have memory of how many days,
but my father said it
actually took us 28 days,
because we got lost twice, you know.
We got lost twice.
First, we ran into a pack of elephants,
and some people were attacked and wounded,
and then our guides left us behind.
Next, we ran into a military fort.
The people in front were attacked.
A lot of people was killed.
The next big obstacle
was how do we cross it?
Of course, there's no boats.
We have no idea where
we were along the Mekong.
The river was also patrolled
by the Pathet Lao soldiers,
like these who were
interviewed for a documentary
by the French television channel TF1.
The Pathet Lao weren't the only threat.
Many Hmong did not know how to swim,
and with a fast-moving
river as wide as two miles,
many people drowned.
So my father say, okay, chop down
as much bamboo as we can carry,
come back, use that, you know, as floats.
Years later, people made story cloths,
or pandao, to process their experiences.
Put two poles, you
know, in triangle like this,
and they fit another pole,
and it fits right under your armpit,
and then you put another pole right
behind it, and you get in there and tie in,
and then they strung the bamboos together,
so one family would be floating together.
We waited until nightfall,
and then we just plunge,
right, right into the river,
and swim, you know,
literally swim for your life.
Even tiny things, like crying babies,
were a mortal danger.
Silence meant survival.
It was 1979 in March.
We had our third child,
who was a little girl.
We were about to escape to Thailand.
As we got closer to the Mekong River,
everyone in our group agreed
that we would be unhappy with anyone
who had a crying child,
which would have given away our location
and gotten us killed.
We didn't give opium to the older two.
We gave opium to our youngest one,
who was about 16 days old.
After we gave her some liquid opium,
she became unconscious as if she died.
After we crossed the river to Thailand,
she did wake up.
So we continued to heal her
and cure her with medicine.
Not everyone was lucky.
Children and the elders
were especially vulnerable.
When we crossed the Mekong,
my dad actually put me with
two other relatives of ours.
So I was actually separated from my family,
and I got to Thailand,
I was actually alone.
My biggest fear was that
my parents would die, right?
They would be shot, especially my dad.
And now they're really gone.
So I was just thinking like,
oh my God, I could be an orphan.
And somehow I knew
that there was a Ban Mi Nai,
and my parents had told
me that I had an aunt there.
So then I was thinking like,
wow, I may have to go to
Ban Mi Nai and find my aunt.
Thai soldiers and aid
workers patrolled the Mekong
in order to collect those
who made it across.
Over 50,000 Hmong
were estimated to have died
trying to get into Thailand.
More than were killed during the war.
French television's TF1 documentary crew
happened upon some Hmong refugees
as they first stepped foot into Thailand.
Survivors were taken to temporary camps
to wait for permanent
placement in a refugee camp.
There'll be loads and loads of buses
that would keep coming, you know, and
I was just sitting there looking at the
people that disembarked from the bus
and thinking, where's my mom?
Where's my dad?
And every bus that came, I didn't see them.
And then finally I saw my mom came out.
Then I remember the relief, you know,
and I just ran toward
her and I was just crying
and my mom was crying too
because she thought I had died, you know.
There were 29 refugee camps
scattered across Thailand
with the northern one's home
to most of the Hmong refugees.
Minnesota was one of the states
that Hmong refugees sought out.
Local TV station WCCO sent
a crew to document Ban Vinai,
the largest of the Hmong refugee camps.
With around 40,000 people,
the population of a small
city crammed onto 400 acres.
To say it was crowded
was an understatement.
Each family was
assigned a tiny living space
with virtually no privacy.
There were many people living here.
There were the educated,
wealthy and poor people here.
There were also the
good, the bad and enemies.
We all lived here together.
We lived in poor conditions,
no bathrooms and bad hygiene.
If you needed to poop or pee,
you would have to dig holes for yourself.
Water was not good to drink.
These were some things that
everyone struggled heavily with.
Living here, there was
a lot of illness and death.
Everyone was faced with death and loss.
The path that we took to bury the dead,
there was not one day
where we didn't carry
the dead to be buried.
Thai officials wielded incredible power
over the Hmong in the camps.
In the mornings, they would
blare the Thai national anthem
and on the radio.
And then you're supposed to stand, right,
stand at attention with your
hand, of course, over your heart.
And Hmong people, they don't have that kind
of practice. They never saluted, you know.
They had a rule where if you move
while the national anthem is being played,
whether you are a child or an adult,
they would either hit you
or they could put you in
jail for a period of 24 hours.
And I remember probably one
time I moved for days and nights.
I had this nightmare about
some Thai officer coming in
and carting me off.
I did witness some
beating, you know, right,
where the Thai police
would be in there.
People didn't stand.
They continued doing what they want.
And then they would just
pick some guy and beat him up.
Kids did a lot of growing up in the camps.
I remember going to the market
with my father in the camp.
They would play these Thai songs.
Do I remember your favorite singer?
Dao Ban Don, right?
In that market was the
first time I heard him sing.
And I was looking at some yams.
And the only reason why I
remember that particular yam really well
was because I was examining it.
Only because the song was on
and my father looked really sad
and I didn't want to look at his face.
So I looked at this fruit
that was in front of me.
I remember that fruit because
of that scene in that market.
Some families spent more than
a decade in the refugee camps.
Children were born there.
People married.
Neighborhoods were created.
All the while waiting for
their names to show up
on the list of families approved to leave.
And even then, it wasn't simple.
Our name came up twice.
We didn't want to come.
Family was divided into two.
It was my parents, right?
And then it was my grandma and grandpa
and my aunts and uncle.
So if we were to leave, what's
going to happen to them?
What if they didn't get to come, right?
And so that was the fear.
Here we are.
We came all the way here.
We're going to leave them
here and we're going to
go to America and a country
we know nothing about.
We don't even know where it is, right?
Or what state we're going to be in.
Finally, my dad decided, okay, let's go.
And so we came on October 22, 1976.
I remember the first time
we walked to this place
to look at that list
and my father didn't see our name on it.
And that was when I
knew that going to America
was really important for my father.
Reaching the United States
after years of surviving endless war
brought one level of relief.
The daily chance of dying fell dramatically
but the absence of immediate trauma
released long suppressed
fears and emotions.
My father was really
depressed when we first came.
I think it's hardest for the men.
Hmong men don't want
to admit anything, right?
And so he may not want to say,
you know, I'm suffering from...
And we don't have a word for mental health
in the Hmong community,
in the Hmong language.
And so the only word for mental health,
the only equivalent is the person is crazy.
And so you don't want to
be labeled as a crazy person.
You know, I'm suffering through this.
When I sleep, I sometimes scream and yell
and my wife wakes me up
and asks me, what's wrong?
I would tell her that I dreamt
that we were still at war.
Sometimes when there's a loud noise,
it startles me and reminds me of the bombs
that the communists shot towards us.
For over 41 years,
these things haven't
disappeared from my head.
When I think about these
things, I feel my body get all warm.
I've been controlling myself
and so I haven't talked to any doctors.
You're always on the alert, you know,
and even to this day, you know,
I tell my wife and I tell my children
in the middle of the night,
don't just come screaming into my room
because you put me in that mode, right?
And this is where the
PTSD comes into play, right?
I think I may suffer, I may have PTSD
because if in the middle of the night,
if people come in and scream and yell,
I would just stand right up.
I mean, I'm just like,
what's going on, you know?
And if that's, I'm experiencing that,
just imagine someone in the battlefield.
They are still living with a war
that hasn't ended for them.
Soldiers also have to
live with old war wounds.
My wounds still hurt.
Two bullets have gone through my body,
but the one that hit my
rib is still lodged in my lung.
All the shrapnel in my body
is still painful when I work,
so I can't do a lot of hard work.
I wanted them to take
the bullet out of my lung.
The doctor said it was 50-50.
If the bullet was in my body for this long
and hasn't killed me,
and surgery might kill me 50-50,
then I would prefer not to do it.
In 1971, I got hit on the head by a bullet
from an AK gun.
It cut a piece of my brain.
Right now, on this side
of my head, it feels numb.
My memory is not that great anymore,
so if you are learning something,
you don't remember it after a while.
Talking like this is fine,
but when we talk about learning something,
you sometimes forget.
Hmong soldiers are not
considered U.S. veterans.
They receive no veterans benefits,
even though they were
paid by the American CIA.
One Hmong that died in Laos
meant one American from
South Vietnam going home,
because we prevented
the North Vietnamese Army
from going into South Vietnam
to massacre the Americans down there.
Towards the end of this war,
there were more than 35,000 Hmong in Laos
that died on behalf of the Americans.
We didn't value our own lives.
We were more than happy
to die for the Americans.
This is what we did.
To be frank, this was a secret war.
The Americans kept us a secret,
and the whole world didn't know.
After we lost the war,
the whole world knew about the sacrifices
we made for the Americans.
We were their soldiers,
and we fought for them in secret.
What's difficult is that
the Hmong did not officially serve.
When you look at the conditions, right?
Did you serve officially as an American,
you know, GI, right?
No.
And so it was through the CIA,
which is not a military branch.
Many of the veterans have been fighting
since the 80s to obtain veterans' benefits.
We don't receive anything.
Right now, what we have been lobbying
and asking for is benefits.
We want benefits to help with health care.
Whatever the American
Vietnam veterans get in benefits,
we would like the same.
We also want burials
for our dying soldiers.
We want to be buried in a
cemetery with other soldiers.
We hope that one day America
will recognize our efforts during the war.
They say that we are Hmong soldiers,
but we really are U.S. soldiers.
We want the SGU soldiers to be happy
when their sacrifices are
recognized by America
and that they are actual soldiers.
We don't want to be looked at as crazy,
that we just wanted to be soldiers,
but we really wanted to
help out the Americans.
I don't know whether we
should hold our breath.
I don't know if we should hold our breath.
Not many of these veterans are around,
and they're dying off every single day.
And many of the policy
witnesses are all dead.
I don't know why it's so difficult,
why we're caught up in
this bureaucratic paperwork.
You know, do the
morally right thing, I think.
There's kind of this moral
thing where, you know,
we can look at, okay, fine, you know,
we know you served, we know you did this.
It's no longer a secret war.
The CIA declassified
lots of these documents
where the president say,
recruit more Hmong people.
Even Ambassador Sullivan,
you know, basically said,
we funded these people.
We shipped them the supplies.
We fed them.
We clothed them.
They are all people.
This is from the
ambassador that ran the war.
You know, what more do you need, you know,
to get caught up in this
bureaucratic paperwork?
We served the United States of America.
We protected Americans' interest.
We died protecting Americans' interest.
Why their feet fracking
and their closed lips?
This is 41 years later.
from America, but the world is small.
Its two million people live in a
country three times the size of Austria.
The security of all
Southeast Asia will be
endangered if Laos loses
its neutral independence.
Its own safety runs with the safety of
us all, in real neutrality observed by all.
I want to make it clear to the
American people and to all the world
that all we want in Laos is peace, not war.
My father was part
of the heavy artillery
unit. I actually stayed
with him in his foxhole
overlooking Longcheng.
When the communists
infiltrated Longcheng,
he was out there firing
his 105 and 155 guns. So I was out there
with my father and I'll be in the foxhole.
So all I could hear
was, you know, all these
constant bombardment,
these cannons going off
and rockets flying.
During that time, at
night, they would fire
flares and these flares,
there'll be a little
parachute that will glide it
down. I mean, that's why
it came down really slow.
And so we as kids, we would often
seek out those parachutes for toys.
After the conflict calmed down,
the next day, I woke up really early
and went out and searched
for those parachutes.
And I got near the airfield
and I saw these dead
Vietnamese. It was all
quiet and everything, so I
decided it's probably
not safe for me to be here,
so I walked back home.
Home was a secret
military base in the
mountains of northern
Laos called Longcheng.
The base was also known
as headquarters for the
CIA's clandestine
operations in the country,
commanded by General
Vang Pao. To his forces,
he was a George
Washington-like figure.
General Vang Pao was not a person like
us. He was a courageous and powerful man.
Hmong people believed that the
heavens sent Vang Pao to be our leader.
To this day, Hmong people still
honor and believe in Vang Pao.
General Vang Pao had a calling,
fight against the violent North
Vietnamese communist invasion of Laos.
Few in the United States were aware
that next door to the Vietnam War,
in Laos, the CIA was running
a full-blown military operation,
minus most of the U.S. armed
forces. It was the so-called secret war.
The communist Pathet Lao, with the backing
of Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnamese army,
were the enemy. Hmong,
Khmer, Lao, Mien, and
soldiers of all ethnicities
defended Laos,
with the help of some very
powerful and secretive friends.
The war was run by the CIA and the State
Department. So the State Department and the
CIA are not part of the
Department of Defense.
The secret war became
a model for future war
operations carried out by
the CIA. The clandestine
war in Laos killed tens
of thousands of Laos
citizens. Among the
hardest hit were the Hmong of
northern Laos. Tens of
thousands died in the war,
even more lost their lives
escaping to freedom after the war.
While the Vietnam War
was televised nightly,
the secret war
lingered in the shadows.
They are left at a village
deep in enemy territory.
The reason why Laos
was important was during
that time, there was
the Red Scare, right?
So basically fear communism.
Communism is going
to dominate Southeast
Asia. We already have China
there. And so you have
North Vietnam, now it's
a communist state. And
so if the country of Laos
falls, then the rest of that region would
fall to communism. It would turn red.
So it's the domino theory, right? So if one
domino falls, the rest of them would fall.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was
particularly concerned that if Laos fell,
it would be a gateway to India, a communist
domination of an entire hemisphere.
After the Geneva Conference in 1954,
no one was supposed to be in Laos.
North Vietnamese was
using Laos as a staging
area to resupply. And
Laos was supposed to be
neutral. No one is to
touch the country of
Laos. In the end,
neutralism was impossible.
The efforts of a communist-dominated group
to destroy this neutrality never ceased.
In the last half of
1960, a series of sudden
maneuvers occurred,
and the communists and
their supporters turned
to a new and greatly
intensified military
effort to take over.
And so the United
States basically said, okay,
so if North Vietnam is
going to play this game,
we can do the same
thing. And instead of using
our own troops, right,
that we can use the
indigenous people. And
that's why Colonel Belair
was sent over to train
the Hmong people to fight
as surrogate soldiers
of the American armed
forces, because they
couldn't be there. Military
forces can't be there.
But they sent CIA advisors.
Colonel Belair was,
at that point of time,
the CIA agent in Southeast
Asia. And when Belair
got to Laos, the first
person that he sought
was General Vang Pao.
Colonel Belair came to ask him,
Lieutenant Colonel Vang Pao, if the Royal
Laos government sends you ammunition, guns,
I would like to ask
you, if someday you and
your Hmong people
are going to turn the guns
against the Royal Laos
government. Colonel Vang
Pao said that. Colonel
Belair, I am an officer
of the Royal Laos Army.
My soldiers and I, we
never turn our guns
against our Royal Laos Army,
and because of
that, I ask you for help.
Two days after, the
Royal Laos Army sent two
military Dakota to drop ammunition and guns
and food for Lieutenant Colonel Vang Pao
and his soldiers. In that moment, the U.S.
and the Hmong became bound to one another,
whether by choice or necessity, in a war
to keep the communist North Vietnamese
and Patut Lao from
overthrowing the Royal Lao
government. I think for
the Hmong, what they
really would want is
just forget about the war.
We don't want any
part of it. We just want to
live free. They had to choose either the
communists or the king in Vang Pao. Even if
the communists ruled
Laos or the king ruled Laos,
it's the same for them.
They're still a minority,
right? They're still
going to be discriminated
against. They'd rather
not pay the price if they
don't have to. The fact
that they ended up paying
the price in northeastern
Laos on both sides,
was because they were forced
to choose one side or the other.
Nobody questioned
whether it was a good or
bad idea. During that
time, it was mandatory.
If you didn't let your
family members, men, and
sons get recruited,
there were consequences.
The training team comes with Vang Pao.
If we became soldiers, then we would
have shoes, clothes, and hats to wear,
and receive monthly wages. We became
soldiers so that we wouldn't be poor.
During that time, I was still a young
boy and only able to babysit children.
I was probably 10 or 11 years old.
After I finished high school, I wanted
to go to Vientiane to learn English,
to become a teacher, and to teach
the Hmong children in the villages.
But because of this war, I had to let
the dream go and became a soldier.
CIA operatives like Jerry Daniels worked
hand-in-glove with General Vang Pao.
General Vang Pao was Hmong, an ethnic group
much persecuted by the dominant culture.
They were sometimes
called barbarians or male,
a holdover from the
Chinese who chased them out
of their country. The
United States and General
Vang Pao essentially
ran the northern part of the
secret war together.
They were a powerful team.
We Hmong people didn't know why
we were in this war and for what reasons.
General Vang Pao sent word to
the village heads to recruit soldiers.
When we got to Padang for training,
they taught us how to use knives and guns,
and told us that we were
going to fight in the war.
There were two goals. One goal was
to protect the country from the Patet Lao.
The second goal was
to help the Americans,
but we didn't know why
we were helping them.
The 57 millimeter recoilless
rifle is the ideal weapon.
The Hmong soldiers
were trained in guerrilla
tactics by Americans
and Thai specialists.
They were called special
guerrilla units or SGUs.
The SGUs are the
toughest, you know, the
ones who die first, the
ones who have to go,
you know, like the Marines, right, like the
American Marines that we always sent first.
In South Vietnam, the U.S.
fought conventional war tactics,
and then the communists fought
guerrilla tactics against the U.S.
In Laos, it's completely
opposite. The
communists had their
conventional war tactics,
and then the Hmong used
guerrilla tactics against them.
Soldiers were desperately needed,
so training was a hurried affair.
On the third day, we learned how to
shoot the 60 and 81 and throw grenades.
We learned the basic training for
three days and then went to war.
On the ground, the People's Army
of North Vietnam, the communists,
were known for their
unrelenting fighting style.
When one soldier fell, others
behind him kept coming.
The SGUs responded in kind. Battles
were fierce. Brutal injuries were common.
We were sent to Phuket
Mountain. I still feel bad to this day.
These soldiers didn't
have the proper training.
They were only here to try to make
a living, and they were sent to battle.
That day, we were on two helicopters.
These helicopters were transporting
us from Padong to Phuket Mountain.
The first helicopter was filled with
a group of Vu clan child soldiers.
They were new, so they
wanted to be in a group together.
There were about 12
of them in the helicopter.
As the helicopter started to
land close to communist lines,
everyone started jumping off.
Before they all could
get off, the communists
threw grenades and
they exploded near them.
The helicopter swerved off
immediately with two soldiers still in it.
There were eight child
soldiers that died there.
I still feel bad. They must
have thought that they were safe
because they were fighting
together, but they all died.
The communists patrolled the roads. One
time, they shot at me and a bullet hit me
right in the rib and
lodged into my lung.
They threw grenades
and they exploded near me,
hitting my arms. The
bullet that hit me in my
lung caused blood to
rush up into my throat.
I started to feel the
blood clogging my throat,
making it hard to
breathe, so I spit it out.
I had some medicine in my
pocket, so I took it out and ate it.
I also had some morphine,
so I shot one in my arm.
There was so much blood that I had to
take off my shirt. I left my tank top on.
I continued shooting at the communists so
that they wouldn't be able to come get me.
I wrapped up my wound
and slowly walked away.
I took off my canteens and belt and
shoved a handful of bullets into my pocket.
I held my M16 as I continued walking.
A grenade then went off
about two feet behind me.
The logs behind me exploded into
my back, butt, arms, hands, and legs.
It was so hard to walk because
of the pain, so I started crawling.
The flies and leeches were everywhere.
They were getting into my
eyes and my wounds as I
laid to rest for a while
in my large pool of blood.
I came upon a group of soldiers near
a small hill and I called out to them.
They were not a part of my
group. They were Yao soldiers.
I was sitting inside an abandoned communist
bunker and so when I called to them,
they came to help me.
There were six of them.
They took me to their
base where they put me
by the campfire and
told me to warm up here.
My captain heard that I was at their base,
so he and another soldier came to get me.
My captain told me that
we needed to leave because
a helicopter was not
able to pick me up here
and the communists were
planning to attack this base tonight.
I told them that I was
in too much pain to walk.
They continued to convince me that if
we stayed then we would get captured
and I had already suffered this far.
I was in too much pain, so
they told me they would carry me.
As they held me up, I felt the bullet in
my lung and all the wounds on my legs.
It was so painful, I
thought I was going to die.
They both slowly carried me and
we walked back to an area overnight.
The next day, they attempted to
airlift me, but they were unable to.
So we waited for a second
plane to come airlift me.
They took me to Longcheng
and then eventually to Nasu.
As in all wars, witnessing
death pained the soul.
During war, when one of your soldiers
or friends dies, there will be tears.
But you think that it's
him and it's not me.
If you get hurt, you wonder, why me?
Will my family see me again?
You think about this all the time.
During the time that I was
in a leadership position,
I sent the dead bodies
back to their families.
And they came and cried to me.
They'd come and cry to me
and I didn't know what to do.
I wiped their tears and take them
to meet with General Veng Pal.
I would tell General Veng
Pal that my soldier died
and that this is their crying family.
I asked if there was any
financial assistance for them.
They would get some money and
then I wouldn't see these families again.
We had a group of widows.
We would put their
family name in this group
and there was someone
that took care of their needs.
This is what makes me sad.
While the special
guerrilla units were in
the midst of unforgiving
hand-to-hand combat,
air support and aerial
assaults piled up more
damage against the North
Vietnamese and Patet Lao.
The Royal Lao Army supplied pilots
while the Americans
supplied flight
training and the T-28
planes used in battle.
The CIA's Air America,
a so-called charter airline,
along with a secret group of
officially unofficial U.S. Air Force pilots
called the Ravens,
provided forward air support.
They spotted the enemy, relayed positions
and asked the T-28s to go after them.
Radar and satellite tracking
were crucial to air operations.
Only in recent years has
the U.S. acknowledged
an isolated installation
called Lima Site 85.
To the Hmong who called the
area home, it was Phu Ba Thi.
Lima Site 85 was run by the U.S. Air Force,
the only place in Laos
where Air Force personnel
are publicly known to
have served during the
secret war.
More than half of all
bombing operations against
North Vietnam were
guided by Lima Site 85.
The small group of U.S. airmen and
the Hmong soldiers who guarded the site
were of tremendous importance to
both the Vietnam War and the secret war.
During the war, most
Hmong women were charged
with the hard physical
labor of keeping their
family farms up and
running, raising their children,
and supplementing their family
income in whatever way they could.
You would see all these
dust rising, you know,
planes landing, taking off
constantly all day long and never stop.
A much smaller number of Hmong
women worked away from home.
Chua Thao was the first Hmong nurse
trained as a medic to care for the wounded.
One night we're at the
site, 72 is a small airport,
and the American wrong, the B-52,
yeah, bombed by mistake in Long Chien.
And they brought 270 casualties
to the hospital that night.
No doctor there.
Everybody go Vietnam, only
me and another Lao medic.
So I told him that,
hey, you and me, we
have to run for 270 to
check, hey, hey, hey,
are you all right?
Hey, hey, are you
bleeding? Are you leg
or arm broken, you know?
We work very hard.
And like I told General Van Pao,
I say, you better be nice to us.
And one time he hit his finger.
They tried to kill him on the back.
They hit this finger because in Lao
custom, a Lao believe, a Hmong believe,
that he had good protection with him.
He yelling when the nurses
washing his tiny finger.
Then I was angry.
I go and hold his hand
and say, come on, General.
You are my son-in-law because you
marry one of my nurses, the best nurse.
That's it.
Then I hold his hand and
I say, give me a syringe.
They give me a syringe.
I say, is that OK?
He said, what are you going to do?
I said, because he's yelling, I'm going to
give medicine in here and not hurting you.
Oh, no, I don't like the needle.
I said, Senior General, the soldier
cut off the arm, cut off the leg.
I never see you.
And now your tiny finger doesn't hurt.
And he look at me very strange
and say, stop looking at me.
Stop looking at me like that.
I want you to come and
visit those soldiers sometime.
But you are so busy, I never see you.
Then after that, yeah, he come visit.
An NBC news crew captured
the head of all Hmong forces,
General Vang Pao,
on one of his later visits.
Since 1961, the secret war
had swallowed northern Laos.
Losses were heavy on both sides.
The Paris Peace Accords
were signed in 1973,
ostensibly putting an
end to the war in Vietnam.
Next door, General Vang Pao was
pushing hard to continue fighting.
The communists, North Vietnamese
and Pathet Lao had not let up.
But a corner had been turned.
The U.S. wanted out of Southeast
Asia, and that included Laos.
Finally, they signed the Vietnam
Peace Accords on February 21, 1973.
The two sides, the communists
and the royal law government,
were to jointly rule
Laos with a third group,
neutralists, providing a middle ground.
All were to be equal.
It was a tenuous arrangement,
enemies coming together to rule.
After decades of war, the
people of Laos had hope.
They created a
representative congress called
the National Political
Consultative Council.
The leaders of the three
parties were meeting regularly.
Optimism was in the air.
I was asked by the royal
law government to be
part of a task force
to plan for the future.
My task force and I went to do
workshops from North Laos to South Laos
to plan for national reconciliation,
social and economic development.
And everywhere I went, I saw the population
was very happy to see peace coming.
Laos citizens were officially
going to be at peace for the first time
since the start of the
French-Indo-China War in the 50s.
But the North Vietnamese and the Batut Lao
were secretly making plans
to forcibly take the country.
General Vang Pao's headquarters
at Long Chieng were a prized target.
If the communists could take it,
then a march into the capital
of Vientiane was almost certain.
Communist forces
spent months sending
thousands of soldiers
to surround Long Chieng.
Then they waited for word to attack.
It was mid-May, 1975.
Saigon and Cambodia
had both already fallen.
General Vang Pao was said to
have known that they were coming.
He was ready to stay and fight,
but the CIA ordered him to make a
clandestine escape to safety in Thailand.
No one was to know for fear of
the chaos his absence could cause.
His closest soldiers engineered his escape
by first getting him out of his house.
When we got to the steps, I took off my hat
because it had a large
brim and put it on it.
I held onto his arm and we
walked side by side towards my car.
We popped the smoke signal
and yellow smoke rose to the sky.
The American U.S. aid helicopter
was already circling in the river valley,
waiting for us.
They circled up and
landed next to the fishpond.
The general started to enter with one foot
and used both hands to hold
onto the bars above his head,
and then he stepped back down.
I don't know what he was thinking.
He points his finger to
the sky and spins it around.
He then stamped his foot twice on
the ground and got on the helicopter.
The door closed and
the helicopter took off.
At that time, I felt
like I could have died.
I was sad and to this
day I still feel disappointed
because he had always said,
you will go with me.
When the helicopter
took off, he left me behind.
My hope was completely gone and I thought,
he left me and this is it.
I really felt as though I died.
While General Vang Pao's
escape was meant to be secret,
word got out.
Those who could made their way to Longching
in hopes of getting a flight to safety too.
Grandparents, cousins, aunts
and uncles were gathered together
to make the trek through
the mountains to Longching.
It was very chaotic during that time.
And when we got there, it was several
thousand people were all waiting there.
And then soon, the plane started to come.
And then it landed and
the people were just like,
wow, literally we know that those planes
were only reserved for military officers.
In fact, General Vang Pao
said that each of those planes
were designated for a colonel.
When the plane landed and they said,
this is Colonel San Dang Xiong's airplane.
And so my dad said, okay, if it's Colonel
San Dang Xiong's airplane, then let's go.
And so everybody flocked.
And then the, you know,
the C-46 were quite high.
So you need to climb the
stairs all the way to the door.
And so they pushed us
and then my dad pushed us.
My mom got in, my
brothers got in, I got in.
And then they closed the door.
And it was like sardines in that C-46.
You could probably fit
about 30 people in there,
but must have been over
a hundred people in there.
When we arrived in Phnom Penh,
we got out and looked around and
it was my dad, it was my brother,
it was my grandma, grandpa,
and aunts and uncle looked
around and didn't see them.
And I remember waiting
at the airport with my mom
to see when the next plane is going to land
and whether my dad and my grandma
and grandpa was going to step off.
So we waited until like nine
o'clock or so and the C-130 came.
And the C-130 landed and my dad
and grandma and grandpa came out.
The communist forces took
over Lung Kieng on May 15,
1975 and seized power in the capital
of Vientiane just three months later.
As one war ended for
the Hmong, another began.
This one was a fight to get out of
the country and then onto France,
America, Australia, or whichever
country would take the refugees.
During the time when
Vang Pao was still in Laos,
for me, life was very normal.
It didn't seem like a war.
What seemed like a war was
after, you know, afterwards.
Only a fraction of those who
wanted to escape were able to get out.
The rest had to stay and plot
other ways to leave the country,
for they were in danger.
The communists had declared that
the Hmong were to be hunted and killed
because they worked for
the much hated United States.
If they surrendered and cooperated,
they would be sent to
seminar or re-education camps.
Indoctrination, torture,
deprivation, food deprivation,
especially where you're given, you
know, just very minimal rice and water.
Called in daily to be beaten,
psychologically tortured,
where they would pull the gun to your head,
like Russian roulette type of things,
and you never know when
the bullet is going to hit you.
And if you survive it, then they
take you back to your barracks,
and the next day it starts over.
Rather than surrender, entire
multi-generational families
spent years hiding where they knew best.
In the dense mountain
forests or in remote villages
on the highest mountaintops like Pumbia.
Always on the move, alert for the
next phalanx of communist soldiers.
My father had already
anticipated, you know, the attack
because he had military experience.
So every night we would
go sleep in our field houses
rather than stay in the village,
you know, because he knew.
He knew that they were going to
attack the village at any moment.
At the actual time of the attack,
we were actually in our fields
on a mountain that overlooks the village.
So, you know, I watched from the mountain
the village being bombed and attacked.
And all the villagers, some of
them were killed, others scattered.
After that, we just ran from
our field houses, you know,
up to Pumbia, like run further up.
I ran out of food, just like eating roots
and whatever we could find in the jungle.
And then the communists just kept coming,
you know, just kept
attacking us as we're running.
We went around the mountain twice.
All the men left because
they felt that if they stayed
and they were captured,
they would definitely be killed.
And then they told the
women to go surrender.
So we came back to our village and
then we surrendered to the communists.
So after that, we lived with the
communists for a whole year.
Surviving in communist
villages meant wrenching choices.
The He family, Mom, Ku
Yang, and Dad, Sia Ying,
were perilously close to not having
their daughter Sia make it to America.
During that time, we were so depressed.
We didn't know whether we were
going to die today or tomorrow.
We were poor and starving.
Those of us living in the
village were so poor and scared.
We were afraid of being
killed by the Pekai Lao.
We were also afraid that the
Pekai Lao were going to find
and kill my father and
our husbands in the jungle.
We were afraid of everything.
During that time, my
sister-in-law was pregnant,
I was pregnant, and my cousin was pregnant.
My father and the men lived in the jungles.
And when we were pregnant,
we were afraid that the Pekai Lao
would know that my father
and his men were close.
And that was how we became pregnant.
I was pregnant with
you for about two months.
Everyone started telling me that I
should find some medicine to abort you.
They said that we might
have trouble with the Pekai Lao.
So I decided to find some
medicine to abort you.
We were all afraid that the Pekai Lao
would investigate and cause trouble for us.
So that's why we decided to abort.
My sister-in-law and cousin changed
their minds and decided not to.
They decided that they
were willing to take a risk
regardless of what the Pekai Lao would do.
But I decided that I would still abort.
I knew that your mom was pregnant with you,
but we were afraid that the communists
were going to cause problems for your mom.
So I also agreed to
finding medicine to abort.
I sought out people who were known
to have medicine that aborts babies.
They guaranteed that it would work.
They gave me their best medicine,
but for some reason it didn't work.
I gave birth to Sia in December.
Back then, we gave birth in the jungles.
When I gave birth to Sia, I knew
that I drank too much of the medicine.
Sia was black and blue when she was born.
As I continued to care for her
and raise her, she got older.
The black and blue colors slowly went away,
and she continued to get
bigger without any problems.
Whether families surrendered
or hid in the jungles,
the ultimate goal was escape.
Groups of people and sometimes
entire villages crept through the forests,
evading the enemy on their
way out of the mountains
to the lowland riverbanks
of the Mekong River.
Avoiding towns and roads,
going through the jungle,
literally hacking the jungle with knives,
and the women and children falling behind.
And eventually we did hit the Mekong.
On the other shore,
miles away, was Thailand,
and freedom from certain death.
My father said the trip to the Mekong,
for me, it was just like
one suffering after another.
I don't have memory of how many days,
but my father said it
actually took us 28 days,
because we got lost twice, you know.
We got lost twice.
First, we ran into a pack of elephants,
and some people were attacked and wounded,
and then our guides left us behind.
Next, we ran into a military fort.
The people in front were attacked.
A lot of people was killed.
The next big obstacle
was how do we cross it?
Of course, there's no boats.
We have no idea where
we were along the Mekong.
The river was also patrolled
by the Pathet Lao soldiers,
like these who were
interviewed for a documentary
by the French television channel TF1.
The Pathet Lao weren't the only threat.
Many Hmong did not know how to swim,
and with a fast-moving
river as wide as two miles,
many people drowned.
So my father say, okay, chop down
as much bamboo as we can carry,
come back, use that, you know, as floats.
Years later, people made story cloths,
or pandao, to process their experiences.
Put two poles, you
know, in triangle like this,
and they fit another pole,
and it fits right under your armpit,
and then you put another pole right
behind it, and you get in there and tie in,
and then they strung the bamboos together,
so one family would be floating together.
We waited until nightfall,
and then we just plunge,
right, right into the river,
and swim, you know,
literally swim for your life.
Even tiny things, like crying babies,
were a mortal danger.
Silence meant survival.
It was 1979 in March.
We had our third child,
who was a little girl.
We were about to escape to Thailand.
As we got closer to the Mekong River,
everyone in our group agreed
that we would be unhappy with anyone
who had a crying child,
which would have given away our location
and gotten us killed.
We didn't give opium to the older two.
We gave opium to our youngest one,
who was about 16 days old.
After we gave her some liquid opium,
she became unconscious as if she died.
After we crossed the river to Thailand,
she did wake up.
So we continued to heal her
and cure her with medicine.
Not everyone was lucky.
Children and the elders
were especially vulnerable.
When we crossed the Mekong,
my dad actually put me with
two other relatives of ours.
So I was actually separated from my family,
and I got to Thailand,
I was actually alone.
My biggest fear was that
my parents would die, right?
They would be shot, especially my dad.
And now they're really gone.
So I was just thinking like,
oh my God, I could be an orphan.
And somehow I knew
that there was a Ban Mi Nai,
and my parents had told
me that I had an aunt there.
So then I was thinking like,
wow, I may have to go to
Ban Mi Nai and find my aunt.
Thai soldiers and aid
workers patrolled the Mekong
in order to collect those
who made it across.
Over 50,000 Hmong
were estimated to have died
trying to get into Thailand.
More than were killed during the war.
French television's TF1 documentary crew
happened upon some Hmong refugees
as they first stepped foot into Thailand.
Survivors were taken to temporary camps
to wait for permanent
placement in a refugee camp.
There'll be loads and loads of buses
that would keep coming, you know, and
I was just sitting there looking at the
people that disembarked from the bus
and thinking, where's my mom?
Where's my dad?
And every bus that came, I didn't see them.
And then finally I saw my mom came out.
Then I remember the relief, you know,
and I just ran toward
her and I was just crying
and my mom was crying too
because she thought I had died, you know.
There were 29 refugee camps
scattered across Thailand
with the northern one's home
to most of the Hmong refugees.
Minnesota was one of the states
that Hmong refugees sought out.
Local TV station WCCO sent
a crew to document Ban Vinai,
the largest of the Hmong refugee camps.
With around 40,000 people,
the population of a small
city crammed onto 400 acres.
To say it was crowded
was an understatement.
Each family was
assigned a tiny living space
with virtually no privacy.
There were many people living here.
There were the educated,
wealthy and poor people here.
There were also the
good, the bad and enemies.
We all lived here together.
We lived in poor conditions,
no bathrooms and bad hygiene.
If you needed to poop or pee,
you would have to dig holes for yourself.
Water was not good to drink.
These were some things that
everyone struggled heavily with.
Living here, there was
a lot of illness and death.
Everyone was faced with death and loss.
The path that we took to bury the dead,
there was not one day
where we didn't carry
the dead to be buried.
Thai officials wielded incredible power
over the Hmong in the camps.
In the mornings, they would
blare the Thai national anthem
and on the radio.
And then you're supposed to stand, right,
stand at attention with your
hand, of course, over your heart.
And Hmong people, they don't have that kind
of practice. They never saluted, you know.
They had a rule where if you move
while the national anthem is being played,
whether you are a child or an adult,
they would either hit you
or they could put you in
jail for a period of 24 hours.
And I remember probably one
time I moved for days and nights.
I had this nightmare about
some Thai officer coming in
and carting me off.
I did witness some
beating, you know, right,
where the Thai police
would be in there.
People didn't stand.
They continued doing what they want.
And then they would just
pick some guy and beat him up.
Kids did a lot of growing up in the camps.
I remember going to the market
with my father in the camp.
They would play these Thai songs.
Do I remember your favorite singer?
Dao Ban Don, right?
In that market was the
first time I heard him sing.
And I was looking at some yams.
And the only reason why I
remember that particular yam really well
was because I was examining it.
Only because the song was on
and my father looked really sad
and I didn't want to look at his face.
So I looked at this fruit
that was in front of me.
I remember that fruit because
of that scene in that market.
Some families spent more than
a decade in the refugee camps.
Children were born there.
People married.
Neighborhoods were created.
All the while waiting for
their names to show up
on the list of families approved to leave.
And even then, it wasn't simple.
Our name came up twice.
We didn't want to come.
Family was divided into two.
It was my parents, right?
And then it was my grandma and grandpa
and my aunts and uncle.
So if we were to leave, what's
going to happen to them?
What if they didn't get to come, right?
And so that was the fear.
Here we are.
We came all the way here.
We're going to leave them
here and we're going to
go to America and a country
we know nothing about.
We don't even know where it is, right?
Or what state we're going to be in.
Finally, my dad decided, okay, let's go.
And so we came on October 22, 1976.
I remember the first time
we walked to this place
to look at that list
and my father didn't see our name on it.
And that was when I
knew that going to America
was really important for my father.
Reaching the United States
after years of surviving endless war
brought one level of relief.
The daily chance of dying fell dramatically
but the absence of immediate trauma
released long suppressed
fears and emotions.
My father was really
depressed when we first came.
I think it's hardest for the men.
Hmong men don't want
to admit anything, right?
And so he may not want to say,
you know, I'm suffering from...
And we don't have a word for mental health
in the Hmong community,
in the Hmong language.
And so the only word for mental health,
the only equivalent is the person is crazy.
And so you don't want to
be labeled as a crazy person.
You know, I'm suffering through this.
When I sleep, I sometimes scream and yell
and my wife wakes me up
and asks me, what's wrong?
I would tell her that I dreamt
that we were still at war.
Sometimes when there's a loud noise,
it startles me and reminds me of the bombs
that the communists shot towards us.
For over 41 years,
these things haven't
disappeared from my head.
When I think about these
things, I feel my body get all warm.
I've been controlling myself
and so I haven't talked to any doctors.
You're always on the alert, you know,
and even to this day, you know,
I tell my wife and I tell my children
in the middle of the night,
don't just come screaming into my room
because you put me in that mode, right?
And this is where the
PTSD comes into play, right?
I think I may suffer, I may have PTSD
because if in the middle of the night,
if people come in and scream and yell,
I would just stand right up.
I mean, I'm just like,
what's going on, you know?
And if that's, I'm experiencing that,
just imagine someone in the battlefield.
They are still living with a war
that hasn't ended for them.
Soldiers also have to
live with old war wounds.
My wounds still hurt.
Two bullets have gone through my body,
but the one that hit my
rib is still lodged in my lung.
All the shrapnel in my body
is still painful when I work,
so I can't do a lot of hard work.
I wanted them to take
the bullet out of my lung.
The doctor said it was 50-50.
If the bullet was in my body for this long
and hasn't killed me,
and surgery might kill me 50-50,
then I would prefer not to do it.
In 1971, I got hit on the head by a bullet
from an AK gun.
It cut a piece of my brain.
Right now, on this side
of my head, it feels numb.
My memory is not that great anymore,
so if you are learning something,
you don't remember it after a while.
Talking like this is fine,
but when we talk about learning something,
you sometimes forget.
Hmong soldiers are not
considered U.S. veterans.
They receive no veterans benefits,
even though they were
paid by the American CIA.
One Hmong that died in Laos
meant one American from
South Vietnam going home,
because we prevented
the North Vietnamese Army
from going into South Vietnam
to massacre the Americans down there.
Towards the end of this war,
there were more than 35,000 Hmong in Laos
that died on behalf of the Americans.
We didn't value our own lives.
We were more than happy
to die for the Americans.
This is what we did.
To be frank, this was a secret war.
The Americans kept us a secret,
and the whole world didn't know.
After we lost the war,
the whole world knew about the sacrifices
we made for the Americans.
We were their soldiers,
and we fought for them in secret.
What's difficult is that
the Hmong did not officially serve.
When you look at the conditions, right?
Did you serve officially as an American,
you know, GI, right?
No.
And so it was through the CIA,
which is not a military branch.
Many of the veterans have been fighting
since the 80s to obtain veterans' benefits.
We don't receive anything.
Right now, what we have been lobbying
and asking for is benefits.
We want benefits to help with health care.
Whatever the American
Vietnam veterans get in benefits,
we would like the same.
We also want burials
for our dying soldiers.
We want to be buried in a
cemetery with other soldiers.
We hope that one day America
will recognize our efforts during the war.
They say that we are Hmong soldiers,
but we really are U.S. soldiers.
We want the SGU soldiers to be happy
when their sacrifices are
recognized by America
and that they are actual soldiers.
We don't want to be looked at as crazy,
that we just wanted to be soldiers,
but we really wanted to
help out the Americans.
I don't know whether we
should hold our breath.
I don't know if we should hold our breath.
Not many of these veterans are around,
and they're dying off every single day.
And many of the policy
witnesses are all dead.
I don't know why it's so difficult,
why we're caught up in
this bureaucratic paperwork.
You know, do the
morally right thing, I think.
There's kind of this moral
thing where, you know,
we can look at, okay, fine, you know,
we know you served, we know you did this.
It's no longer a secret war.
The CIA declassified
lots of these documents
where the president say,
recruit more Hmong people.
Even Ambassador Sullivan,
you know, basically said,
we funded these people.
We shipped them the supplies.
We fed them.
We clothed them.
They are all people.
This is from the
ambassador that ran the war.
You know, what more do you need, you know,
to get caught up in this
bureaucratic paperwork?
We served the United States of America.
We protected Americans' interest.
We died protecting Americans' interest.
Why their feet fracking
and their closed lips?
This is 41 years later.