A Journey To Hope

Story by: Chuckua Yang

1975-1978

May 15, 1975 was the day the Hmong lost hope.

     “They were gone!”

    My father said there was no signal from the radio. The Radio Station was General Vang Pao’s Daily Air Addressing Station which broadcast every day and night. For a few days later words heard from everywhere saying, the leaders, General Vang Pao and his top officers, have gone into exiled. Weeks, months had passed with no word about the leaders. As time went by, people became more because the red Laos Armies (the Pathetlao) was everywhere.

    A continuous Hmong Laos radio broadcast from the Pathetlao (LPDR) urged the people not to be frightened, leave or escape to the jungles or elsewhere. They said, “We are the new Lao People's Democratic Republic, we love the nation, and we will treat anyone as dearly and equally as we’ve treated ourselves.”

    At first, the Pathetlao “LPDR” armies and its government acted nicely to the people everywhere they reached. But as the time went by, words were heard and, as eyeswitnesses have said, more people were caught, taken away, raped and killed – women, children and men. In some other cases  former soldiers who served under General Vang Pao were forced away. The reason's given were seminary or training. But, they were gone, with nobody saying they heard of them.

    This kind of ruling of the LPDR brought stung those who  served under General Vang Pao with fright and fear that they would be targeted. Their only chance was to move out secretly to the jungles, mountains, or to the other villages where the Pathetlao have not been to for their safety.  While the Communist Pathetlao realized that people left for, they sent troops to capture and kill anyone they could find, including children. They said, “Any children must be killed with none of General Vang Pao’s seeds left behind.”

In the jungles, the people had no choice but to regroup, recruit men, women and children as young as 10 years old to fight against the Pathetlao. They had to protect their family in the villages, and jungles. They formed a group known “Choa Fa” in Laotian – which means the “Lord of the Sky” or  soldiers of the sky. My family moved to the jungles in April of 1976, and I was recruited to be a soldier of the sky at the age of sixteen. Life In the jungles was not easy. You couldn't make a fire during the day because of the smoke, and not at night, because of the light that the Pathelaos could see. If they saw either, the jungles will be bombs by the Pathetlao Air Force.

To find more security and food, we moved on often from place to place, so that we would not targeted by the Pathetlao’s ground troops or from the sky.

My parents were killed when they went to gather food for the family by poisons called yellow rain dropped by the Pathetlao planes. 

More people died from starvation, disease, illness, poison, bombings, ambushes and road mines. In February of 1978,  the Pathetlao  had almost taken control everywhere. The people had no choice, but to  fight to the death or move on to the unknown and die later. Some people chose to stayed. My family among those that moved and aimed for Thailand.