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 Cher
Yang Vang
As the war in Vietnam escalated, anti-communist forces - including the
United States - realized they needed ground troupes in Laos if they were
to overcome the North Vietnamese and Vietcong armies. But since Laos had
been officially declared a neutral country at the most recent Geneva Peace
Accord, U. S. and South Vietnamese ground forces were forbidden to enter
the country. So the Americans persuaded the famous Vang Pao, a Hmong military
hero and Major General in the Royal Lao Army, to recruit and train a "secret"
army. Its soldiers could carry out essential military actions on behalf
of U. S. interests without, technically at least, violating international
law.
Vang Pao, whom the Hmong revered and trusted implicitly, personally came
to Cher Yang and asked him to join his "Armee Clandestine." He visited
hundreds of villages in northern Laos and convinced thousands of young
men like Cher that they should help the Americans. He said the Americans
were their friends and would help the Hmong if their situations were reversed.
He added, "If we take care of them, they will take care of us."
Cher and his peers (largely as a result of American propaganda) were also
in fear of a communist takeover of their precious land, and felt that
joining forces with the Americans would strengthen their ability to defend
what was theirs. And they had the American promise: "If we win the war,
you keep your land and country. If we don't win, we will take you back
with us." Cher had no idea where "back with us" was, of course, and he
felt that there were two choices: fight with the Americans, or wait around
to lose his freedom or be killed. He calls it a "had to" situation. So,
at the age of 21 - circa 1963 -- with a wife and 3 children at home, Cher
Yang Vang joined the 60% of the Hmong population in Laos that would ally
itself with the United States military.
The Hmong recruits became foot soldiers, communication specialists and
spies. Cher Yang's duties included serving as a bodyguard to Vang Pao.
He was the general's main security officer in what he compares to the
U. S. Secret Service. He constantly screened and searched visitors, scouted
locations where Vang Pao planned to travel and saw that he was duly informed
of what was happening on all fronts. Cher Yang was also a platoon leader
and joined in combat on many occasions. In one particular battle that
broke out while he and four of his men were on patrol, he was wounded
near both eyes, in both legs and in the stomach. He still carries a bullet
from that bloody encounter near his right eye.
Cher Yang's wounds, though, are much deeper than the black scar on his
cheek. While fighting and bombing raged around their home, Cher's first
wife lay in a weakened condition on the verge of delivering her seventh
child. Her fever and lack of stamina combined with the chaos of the war
were more than she could endure. She died from what was termed "complications
of childbirth." Not long after that, before anyone realized they had been
given incorrect information and could warn them off, American warplanes
seeking North Vietnamese mistakenly fired into the area where Cher and
his family and other Hmong allies were living. Their machine guns killed
many Hmong soldiers and their family members - including Cher's three
oldest children. Those deaths from "friendly fire" were only the beginning
of the pain his American allies would inadvertently inflict on him and
his family.
On May 14, 1975, after the United States had withdrawn all military support
from the war, Vang Pao was flown out of Laos to exile in Thailand. Many
of his close comrades, including Cher Yang Vang, were also transported
in aircraft to safety there. Others, thousands of others, had to get there
on their own, on foot and in small boats, hiding from and sometimes falling
into combat with, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers. Hundreds lost
their lives in trying to slip through the jungles and across the Mekong
River.
Cher and his remaining three children found temporary homes in what came
to be known as "settlement camps" in Thailand. Realistically they were
more like concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wire fencing and gates
through which the "visitors" were not free to come and go. In 1978, after
almost three years in one of these "camps," Cher married his wife of today,
Mai, and they started their family with their first son, Seng. Then they
had to decide where they could find permanent homes. His commanding officers
from the military, including Vang Pao, told Cher that the best thing for
him and his family's safety would be to go to the United States. He didn't
want to leave Southeast Asia, the only home he had ever known, but he
trusted completely in the advice and opinions of his superiors. So as
1978 came to a close, Cher Yang Vang and his family became refugee residents
of Rhode Island in the United States of America.
The next year they moved to Louisville, Kentucky because that's where
the church under whose sponsorship they had been transported from Thailand
was headquartered. Cher readily found work at the docks in Louisville,
but also found that most of his relatives had moved on to Wisconsin. In
keeping with ancient Hmong passion for family, Cher felt that's where
he should be, too. So in 1981, the Cher Yang Vang family moved to Green
Bay, Wisconsin, where they still live today in the company of over 5,000
other Hmong residents of the area.
While he was delighted to be amidst family again, Cher was devastated
to learn that the work he could find easily in Louisville was not to be
had in Green Bay. Nearly all the available jobs in the area required an
education and the ability to understand, speak, read and write English.
Cher couldn't read or write in Hmong. There was no written form of the
Hmong language, in fact, until the mid-1950s, and education in that area
never spread to the villages and farms in Laos until long after the war.
English and Hmong are extraordinarily different languages. In Hmong, for
example, the meanings of words often depend on how they are sounded. Also,
sounds are spelled differently than they are in English. The word for
the "story cloth" is pronounced pan-dow, but in Hmong writing it is spelled
paj ntaub. The word "Hmong" itself is spelled "Hmoob." Not surprisingly,
very few Americans are able to understand or speak the Hmong language;
even less surprisingly, virtually no Hmong immigrants from Cher's generation
have been able to grasp English adequately. For that reason, a federal
law was passed just before Memorial Day of 2000 that waives the English
language requirement for U. S. citizenship for Hmong veterans like Cher
Yang. Said Philip Smith, Washington Director of the Lao Veterans of America:
"On the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in Laos, it's a
fitting memorial to the Hmong veterans who served this country so nobly
in battle." Unfortunately, the legislation wasn't passed until ten years
after it had been introduced in Congress.
Cher's family didn't starve after they moved to Green Bay, of course.
He had some benefits as a war veteran; they were able to have a garden;
he found odd jobs here and there; Mai worked; the children worked as they
grew old enough to do so. Still, he found it nearly impossible to achieve
the sense or dignity and security he had in Laos. Most troubling was the
inability to communicate. He says, through Seng's translation, "We couldn't
correct people who misunderstood us and we couldn't even say 'thank you'
to those who helped."
When asked if he ever wanted to go back to his old life, Cher said without
hesitation, "If Laos would become free tomorrow, my wife and I would be
on our way there the day after tomorrow. We would be happy to again work
from first light until last seven days a week and to sacrifice all the
conveniences (electricity, cars, indoor plumbing, etc.) here. Back there
we knew what we were dealing with for sure. Here everything is still new
and strange. It's still hard to communicate with everyone. We want to
go back where it is nice and peaceful, where there is so much less uncertainty,
where there is so much less to fear."
No doubt the recent murder of Cher's son Zong by two teenaged thugs, as
described in Being Hmong Means Being Free, added immensely to Cher's
and Mai's uncertainty and fear. All of those who have come to know and
admire them hope that this latest tragic incident will prove to be the
last blow the Vangs will have to suffer from "friendly fire."
The story of the Hmong immigrants in the United States, though, is filled
with "friendly fire." They have all been dealt as much pain by their allies,
the United States, as by their military/political enemies in Southeast
Asia. They were drawn into a war they didn't cause and in which they had
no real stake. Many were abandoned to fend for themselves by people who
promised them protection. Those who weren't abandoned or managed somehow
to survive abandonment were forced to take refuge in a society that they
couldn't understand and that couldn't understand them - a society that
treated them with scorn and contempt and told them to "go back where you
came from." And until recently they were denied citizenship in the country
for which they fought, were wounded and lost loved ones simply because
their language was too difficult for adults to translate into English.
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