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Last Updated March 10, 2004

This article appeared in the Sacbee online on July 11, 2003

Hmong war heroism to join history texts

By Stephen Magagnini -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Friday, July 11, 2003

During the Cold War, Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy justified U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia with the "domino theory" -- if one country fell to the communists, the rest would topple.

The first domino was Laos, and in 1961, the United States sent CIA operatives to Laos to draft and train a clandestine jungle army of more than 10,000 Hmong tribesmen.

For nearly 15 years, more than 40,000 Hmong and Iu Mien mountain guerrillas -- some as young as 12 -- fought the CIA's secret war against the Pathet Lao Communists and the North Vietnamese army. Though vastly outgunned and outnumbered, the Hmong and Mien tribesmen fought the Communists to a standstill in northern Laos until 1973, blocked the Ho Chi Minh Trail -- the communists' main supply route into South Vietnam -- and rescued more than 100 downed U.S. pilots.

Top-ranking CIA officials have credited the Hmong and Iu Mien with prolonging the Vietnam War and saving hundreds of American lives, but there is no mention of their contribution, or the secret war, in California's history books.

But all that's about to change, said Gov. Gray Davis, who Thursday signed into law a bill that strongly encourages seventh-through 12th-grade history teachers to include the Hmong and Iu Mien role in the the history of the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, said the governor, "We want our history books to tell the story of their heroic service to America."

He said he expects state education officials to develop and implement a curriculum that includes the secret war.

Davis, a Vietnam veteran, signed the bill in front of several dozen Hmong educators, students and war veterans dressed in camouflage fatigues.

Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno, said she authored the bill after a dozen Hmong teenagers in the Fresno area committed suicide between 1998 and 2002.

Reyes was inspired by Doua Vue, a Hmong educator whose father, a Hmong pilot, was shot down shortly after she was born -- one of at least 30,000 Hmong killed in the secret war, so called because the United States was officially neutral in Laos.

"I'm the child of a fallen war hero I never knew," Vue said tearfully. "It wasn't until college that I learned of the important role he played."

Vue said the Hmong teens commit suicide because they feel lost in America. There are more than 100,000 Hmong in California.

"Hmong youths are not aware of their history, they are not proud of their heritage," she said. "We are left out of the history books, and our courage is still a secret. We cannot afford to keep any more secrets or there will be many more tragedies."

Peter Vang, whose son Richard, 17, committed suicide in 2001, said the law will not only teach Hmong youth "about why they are here and who they are, but also help thousands of other students understand Hmong kids much better."

The bill was signed shortly after the death of legendary CIA operative Anthony "Tony Poe" Poshepny, who recruited Hmong and Iu Mien armies in Laos and led them into battle.

Poe, who died at his San Francisco home June 27 at age 79, fought in Laos until 1971, longer than any other agent. He twice won a CIA Star -- the agency's top award -- though the CIA had a hard time controlling him. Like the mythical Col. Kurtz in the film "Apocalypse Now," Poe was a bald rogue agent who built his own hill-tribe empire deep in the jungles.

He dropped grenades -- and sometimes enemy heads -- from reconnaissance planes, paid his guerrillas $10 for enemy ears, and free-lanced raids far beyond his authority.

"Wherever I went, I carried a big Magnum .45, a baseball bat and my 13-inch Bowie knife," he once told The Bee.

But he married a Hmong princess, and the Hmong and Iu Mien loved him for his bravery and loyalty. The secret war ended with the communist victory in 1975, but Poe didn't come out of the Thai jungles until 1993. Back in California, he was a tireless champion of his former soldiers. In 1995, he helped stop the deportation of Chun Hung Saefong, a Iu Mien veteran from Sacramento convicted of opium use.

This article appeared in the Sacbee online on July 11, 2003