The following article was submitted by Dr, Pao Lor, the Department Chairperson for Applied Leadership for Teaching & Learning, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Today, home to my family is Kimberly, Wisconsin. It is a home that is a long, long way from my first home. Fifty years ago, home was an ancient culture cocooned in the jungles of central Laos where I constantly moved, and then I had to leave. To where was rarely important. Survival consumed my every breath.
Growing up, I didn’t realize it, but my home was the most secret place on earth in the 1960s and 1970s and one of the most dangerous places in the world. After leaving it, it would take me over four decades to learn some of the reasons why.
In Modern Jungles, I share my memories of such tempestuous beginnings, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, and of my transition from ancient culture to establishing a new life in the United States, an unassuming journey capturing the essence of humanity destroying, transforming, and transcending life, cultures, peoples, histories, and civilizations, and asking “Does life have to be this way?”
So, what brought on such destiny?
Well, at the center of it all is Long Tieng, a village about one hundred fifty miles northeast of Vientiane, capital of Laos. Long Tieng was the location of the headquarters of the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s classified military operation against communism in Laos—an operation that would be called The Secret War in Laos, where the CIA recruited and trained Hmong men to fight against the opposition, destroy the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, rescue shot-down American pilots, and protect the American radar on Pho Pha Thi.
For about ten years, Long Tieng had the busiest airport in the world, busier than Chicago O’Hare. On a daily basis, hundreds of military and civilian missions departed and arrived at Long Tieng Airport, which was a one-mile asphalt strip.
Dr. Pao Lor
Our family and many Hmong Americans once called Long Tieng home. In fact, our temporary hut, perched on one of the several mountainsides surrounding Long Tieng, was about one hundred yards from the Long Tieng airstrip and fifty yards from the vacation residence of Sisavang Vathana, King of Laos. Such life juxtaposition is a defining essence of my life and that of the Hmong American experience.
Aside from having the busiest airport in the world, my birthland has another infamous and senseless record: we are the most bombed country in the history of air warfare. For every eight minutes, for about a decade, American pilots dropped all types of bombs on my birthland, which is slightly larger than Minnesota. I only became aware of these records most recently. Today, millions of unexploded bombs remain and continue to impact life.
Worse yet, when the majority of Hmong men had been killed from the decade long Secret War, the US-funded paramilitary recruited children to fight. I once watched a video of a Hmong boy solider who could not have been more than twelve years old being asked about having to fight in a war. He replies, “My heart does not want to fight, but I was told I had to.” I cringed hearing his words, as they revealed the punishing and intricate balance of humanity’s soul.
Miraculously, l survived all of these.
When the United States’ clandestine operation in Laos ended in 1975, though it took some convincing, the United States opened its borders for the Hmong, and this was when another chapter of my journey begins—this time to a place I believed to be a “heavenly kingdom above the clouds where cities glittered of gold.”
Fifty years later, my ancient world is finally safe enough for the world to see, visit, and experience. I, too, am seeing my ancient world in “real time” for the first time, mainly via YouTube and Facebook. The mountains, mists, names of villages, people and their way of life, rivers, my past, my parents’ homeland, and Long Tieng airport are still there. Also, the mysteries and stories I grew up hearing and reading about of such a world are now slowly becoming a reality. I yearn to return, discover, touch, experience, and feel my past once again. This time, however, the experience will be without war, fears, uncertainty, starvation, hopelessness, and tragedies.
I hope that you will be able to join me at Manitowoc Public Library on Thursday, November 11, at 6 PM in the Balkansky Community Room to hear more about my story. I look forward to meeting you all.
