Laos

It was a normal day in Laos. Children went to school, adults went to work. All of a sudden, a plane flew over and dropped weirdly shaped items out of the belly. One by one, the items started to explode. Nobody knew why. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the supply line for offensives of the actual war going on between the North Vietnamese Army, U.S., Thai, and South Vietnamese forces. There are many causes that made the United States decide to bomb Laos. Laos was bombed with millions of tons of bombs, but, they are being given money to take care of removing the bombs. It all began in March of 1964, a normal day in Laos. The United States president, Lyndon B. Johnson, declared the CIA to drop bombs over Laos to stop the supply. This was, and still is, known as the Secret War. American warplanes dropped over 270 million bombs over the country, with a third not exploding, otherwise being known as unexploded ordnance. The bombings were part of this war to support the Royal Lao government against the Pathet Lao and to prohibit traffic along Ho Chi Minh Trail; the United States, along with several other countries, were called the Cold War Superpowers. The CIA dropped over 2.5 million tons of munitions, coming to 260 million cluster bombs. Cluster bombs contain roughly 600-700 small bombs, also known as “bombies” (MAG…

Laos, or the Lao People 's Democratic Republic, is a land locked-country in Southeastern Asia. It has a vast array of terrains that are traversed by the Mekong river. Sharing borders with Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and Myanmar, Laos has a population size of approximately 6.77 million. This is roughly the size of Utah for population and size. Why leaders of the LPDR are in its capital Vientiane, along the Thailand border, the rest of the country’s population is extended across its…

Health in Lao PDR BACKGROUND Organizational Background Pathfinder International (PI) is a leading international non-profit organization engaged in the area of sexual and reproductive health. PI with its mission ‘to ensure that people everywhere have the right and opportunity to live a healthy sexual and reproductive life’ believes that the reproductive health care is not only a part of basic human right, but also an essential way for creating better opportunities for women, which further leads…

The war in Laos impacted the Hmong people; many men had left their families to become a soldier. During the war, many families were split up, some families stayed in the villages and other families decided to fled Laos because the country fell into communist forces. The families who decided to flee the village were technically fighting in the war. Many family members such as: wives, children’s, and grandparents had died because of starvation or being left behind. Coming into the United States,…

History of the Hmong The Hmongs are a group of people that originated from Southern China and migrated to different parts of Southeastern Asia, including Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam. Many of the men were recruited and trained by the CIA during the Vietnam War to help prevent the North Vietnamese to invade Laos and South Vietnam through the Ho Chi Min Trail (Cobbs, 2010). After the war, Laos fell to the communist party in 1975 and the Hmong were targeted for annihilation by the new…

Since 1975 the Hmong have experienced and accomplished many milestones in the United States. Previously in Laos there was a secret war which was a part of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. This secret war was the reason that about half of the Hmong of Laos became refugees and resettled in the United States of America. “Many Hmong who had formerly been allies of the Unite States and supporters of the Royal Lao Government become targets of postwar mistrust, retaliation, and retribution by the…

My Cultural Group and Family History Hmong soldiers help fought in the secret war against the Pathet Lao after being recruited by the United States CIA. Thus, after the United States withdrew from the war, thousands of Hmong were killed by the Pathet Lao or were forced to abandon their homes, lands, and livestock in Laos and fled to the refugee camps in Thailand. Ultimately, this resulted in the immigration of Hmong settling down in the United States in the late 1970s through 2007 in waves.…

The Hmong had a folktale, that expressed how they became mountain dwellers. For a multitude of years they lived high in the mountains, where they were very independent and maintained very little contact with those who lived in the plains. They had this belief that it would make them sick. As mentioned by Yoost and Crawford (2017) culture is symbolic in many ways; signs, sounds, clothing, tools customs, rituals, and other items were able to represent meaningful concepts to people (p.395). The…

Edwin Starr was a well-known American singer from the 1960s. In the 1960s, there were many social issues, such as African-American civil rights movement, feminism, and the Vietnam war. Many artists stood out and spoke loudly to against unequal treatment and war, Edwin Starr was one of the great singers during that time. Before 1945, French had the highest status in Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia; however, after 1949, with communist became more and more powerful at that time, Ho Chi Minh who led…

We see the first chapter of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien to be the foundation for the rest of the novel, with exquisite descriptions of everyone and everything, to the foreshadowing and symbolism that embodies each character and “what they carry”. O’Brien offers us basic descriptions of what each member of Alpha Company carries that is described as “largely determined by necessity” (2). Some would carry knives, extra rations and what seemed like an overkill of supplies, while others…