The Secret War, 1975, and the Camps — Foundational Event

If the Great Migration is the foundational demographic event of modern Black America, and 1991 of Somali Minnesota, the Secret War and 1975 are the foundational event of Hmong Minnesota.

The Secret War

From 1961 to 1975 the United States, through the CIA, recruited Hmong forces under General Vang Pao to fight in Laos — a war the Geneva Accords had said should not be there. Hmong soldiers blocked supply lines and died in large numbers. Boys were recruited. When the United States left in 1975, the Pathet Lao and Vietnamese forces treated Hmong allied families as the enemy.

Airlift, walk, camps

May 12–14, 1975: airlift from Long Tieng. About 2,500 people in those days. General Vang Pao left May 14. Minnesota later marked that date. Most people were not on the planes. They walked. Thai camps followed — Ban Vinai among the named ones. Years. Then resettlement.

Minnesota

The first Hmong family in Minnesota, Dang Her and Shoua Moua, arrived in December 1975. Church and voluntary-agency sponsors (Lutheran, Catholic, and others) placed people across the country so no one state would “take too many.” Clan and secondary migration undid the scatter. St. Paul became a hub because people chose each other.

U.S. policy at first treated Hmong people as “too primitive” for asylum. The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act had to be amended. That sentence is literacy for the meeting. It is not a speech you give the family.