In graduate school, I pulled together a term paper about “ecocide” and how that word was coined in relation to deforestation efforts during the Vietnam War. In college, I wrote about the Mekong River for my philosophy of water class and briefly mentioned the UXO in relation to hydropower projects and lack of requiring environmental impact assessments. The frustrating part is that more could have been and could be done to prevent this from happening. The legacy of this war was such that lives are still lost to it and the land continues to be marred by explosives. People, my people–and children at that were still dying from a war that had already devastated the land and its people. Frustrated that this was something I hadn’t learned about in history classes. I can’t remember what news article I had come across, but I can recall feeling gutted. I wouldn’t learn about The Secret War and the unexploded ordnance until late high school or early college. What it would sound like to hear Lao people conversing off in the distance. What it felt like to stand near the river’s edge. I would memorize facts about the Plain of Jars and close my eyes, pretending I was there. As a child, I would check out from the library the one picture book about Laos that was on the shelves. My therapist helped me find the words: “My father has horrific PTSD and cannot be around people.”īecause of this, school was my safe space. I would often wonder aloud in therapy sessions how to tell people about my father. We would never get to reach a place of knowing and understanding one another. These are stories that I cannot confirm, as he passed away in February 2021. My mother told me that on the day that they left, he tried to wear part of his uniform until a neighbor advised him against it. Sometimes I think that he expected a hero’s welcome, or at least, a little more than what was provided when he made it to the states.
I imagine that my father wanted to keep his family safe (limiting contact and experiences), preserve Lao traditions and values (controlling our every move and avoiding assimilation as much as possible), and didn’t know how to (or perhaps, really want to) navigate the new place in which he’d landed, so he refused to become part of the community or allow his family to do so. For the first decade and a half of my life, interactions with people at school were my window into what was outside of my very sheltered upbringing, but the window didn’t equal connection, just a view. I felt like the “other” for so many reasons. I knew that my background was different from those of the children I went to school within Dallas, Texas, in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Learning what little I could about Laos made me feel connected to a place where I thought I might belong. Growing up, I was deeply interested in my family’s history and my motherland. These hidden dangers and remnants of violence threaten people even decades after the war has ended.Īfter fleeing with the clothes on their backs and only the essentials that they could carry, my family spent a couple years in refugee camps in Thailand, and they arrived in Texas on Halloween Day in 1989 by the grace of a generous sponsor. Secret War in Laos that left millions of tons of ordnance ( two million tons during 580,000 bombing sorties, equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years) embedded in the land. The recognition is but a small nod toward healing and repairing the immense, still immeasurable damage caused by the U.S. Reviewing the paperwork that shows my father was recognized as part of the United States Special Guerrilla Unit during the Vietnam War from 1960-1975, I can’t help but feel my heart breaking. I am the only person in my immediate family to have been born in the United States, but I still exist between two worlds: one here and one across oceans and the Mekong River. My parents, Nai and Khamsy Kettavong, and my siblings were part of the thousands of Southeast Asians who fled the region in the second half of the 20th century due to war. Grief for my family and for every family that has had to leave their lives and homes behind under such circumstances.
As I thumb through the official documents from the refugee camp that accompanied my family’s tickets to the United States, devastating grief overwhelms me.