Fleeing Home, Going Home
by Yvette Moore
When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Women’s Division Director Kady Herr-Yang escaped with her family on foot from Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand. She was just 5 years old. She returned to her birth country recently as part of a United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries’ mission-study tour of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Her return was bittersweet.
"Being Hmong-American, I was really afraid," Ms. Herr-Yang said. "I had nightmares while in Vietnam and Laos, I think because of the pressure and the history. My mind wasn’t at rest at all."
The history is not pleasant. The Hmong people of Laos were U.S. allies during the Vietnam War. While the Laos government supported North Vietnam, U.S.-backed Hmong soldiers intercepted North Vietnamese troops and supplies en route to South Vietnam along the renown Ho Chi Minh Trail, which wound through Laos. When South Vietnam’s capital city of Saigon fell to North Vietnam in 1975 and the United States pulled out of Southeast Asia, the Hmong were left on their own.
They did not fare well. Some continued to fight without U.S. support. Some fled into the jungles, where their enclaves were bombed and sprayed with deadly chemicals. Tens of thousands died.
Ms. Herr-Yang’s family was among the relatively few that made it safely to Thailand. She recalls only portions of the experience because she was so young, but her mother has rehearsed the family’s saga with her children for posterity, filling in memories of images and feelings with details of their survival.
Her mother has explained how they paid for boat passage across the Mekong River that separates Laos and Thailand. When they reached the refugee camp, they were shoved into a house the size of a storage room along with nine other Hmong families, each with nine to 10 children. Ms. Herr-Yang’s mother has explained that the United States gave Thailand money to buy and distribute food to the refugees, and later, provided schooling for the children.
"I remember my mom standing in line with a bucket so the Thai could weigh out rice in the morning," Ms. Herr-Yang said. "I remember fighting with my sister for food. I remember my mom saving a chicken drumstick for me. I remember us not having enough food, being hungry."
Ms. Herr-Yang also remembers fences surrounding the camp and being warned not to go beyond the fences. The Thais were hostile toward the refugees, no matter their nationality -- Hmong, Vietnamese or Cambodian -- she later learned. Aside from the hunger and the fences, Ms. Herr-Yang was with her family, and so, happy.
"I was 5 so I was pretty much carefree," she said. "I remember being dirty and playing outside in the rice fields. My mom would take a cornstalk, wrap cloth around it and say it was a doll."
U.S. life
Ms. Herr-Yang’s family was in the refugee camp for about 18 months before a group of churches in Broundbrook, N.J. -- United Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian and others Ms. Herr-Yang can’t remember -- sponsored the family to emigrate to the United States.
Church members were open and loving. With so many of them working on the family’s behalf, food and clothing were no longer problems. Still, the large family had to be split up. The Lutheran pastor’s family took in Ms. Herr-Yang, her parents and three older sisters. Another family took in her brother, his wife and their newborn.
Adjusting to U.S. life and culture was another hurdle for Ms. Herr-Yang’s family, especially when her father, who had been a governor of Hmongs in Laos’ Xieng Khouang Province, became ill with what they later learned was cancer. He died in 1981.
"It was difficult," Ms. Herr-Yang said. "My brother could understand a little French, so he was able to communicate in broken French to members of the congregation. As for us, we had no clue."
Adjusting to a new country, language and culture proved easier for the children than for the adults. Ms. Herr-Yang and her siblings began school speaking only Hmong, but soon began learning English.
"We started school with no interpretation," Ms. Herr-Yang said. "It was like being thrown into a room with no light and having to find your way out. The teachers were nice and and tried to help. They placed us in English-as-a-Second-Language classes. As the days went by, we picked up the language. We did it by pictures. We did it by numbers. I think I was in the fourth grade when I really was able to understand, to know English. And I understood that my mom and dad didn’t understand English, and we were on our own."
Language was not the only thing to adjust to in the United States. The functions and noises of appliances like the refrigerator and stove, even flushing toilets, were a challenge. When the township set off fireworks on New Year’s Eve, Ms. Herr-Yang’s father, terrified, woke everyone and ordered them to get under the bed. He feared Communists had followed them to the United States.
Not all of the adjustments were difficult. It was the Christmas season and the family, which had been reunited, was living in an apartment secured by their sponsors, when they experienced their first snow. When Ms. Herr-Yang and her sisters woke up and saw snow, they immediately ran outside.
"It was the neatest thing!" she said, "Of course, we didn’t know it was cold."
Their church sponsors took them sledding. They also bought and trimmed a Christmas tree for the family.
"It was very pretty with the ornaments, but we kept wondering, `What is a tree doing in the living room?’"
While her family was Christian in Laos -- as were many Hmongs -- Christmas there did not include gift giving, trees or Santas.
Ms. Herr-Yang’s family became United Methodist after the Lutheran pastor with whom they stayed moved and his replacement was not committed to sponsoring the family. The Rev. Al Olsen and the United Methodist congregation in Broundbrook, N.J., stepped in to help the family.
Life today
Ms. Herr-Yang is now married. She and her husband, Lu Herr-Yang, who is also Hmong, have four girls -- Tiffany, 10; Jessica, 8; Kimberly, 6; and Rebecca, 3 -- whom she is teaching to know and respect their Hmong heritage.
She is concerned for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, because of the poverty she witnessed during the mission-study tour. She is particularly concerned about Christian Hmongs who remain in Laos. They are a minority, and the government is hard on them because of their community’s cooperation with the United States during the war, she said. She is also concerned about Hmongs who are new immigrants to the United States.
"I think because we were among the earlier settlers, we stand in a place where we have to help the rest," Ms. Herr-Yang said.
Yvette Moore is managing editor of Response.