Steve Schofield, 62, a U.S. Special Forces veteran assigned to U.S.-funded military operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, says government secrecy deprived America's Hmong allies from the recognition they earned during the covert war. Schofield now seeks to unveil the tragic costs of the Hmong people as a result of their support for the U.S. in Laos during the 1960s and 1970s. Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers photo by Sam Castro 
Historic Hmong Photo by Steve SchofieldHmong soldiers' service, an untold history
Lawmakers and veterans push for recognition; bill seeks Secret War taught in schools
By Ed Lowe
Post-Crescent staff writer (Appleton, Wisconsin, USA)
Had the war in Vietnam ended in victory, much that is would not be. There would be no battle over a bill to teach Hmong history in Wisconsin schools, no news of a plot hatched in the U.S. to overthrow the Laotian government and no established Hmong community in the heart of the Midwest.
The Vietnam War did not end in victory, though, and the Secret War that raged in obscurity at the same time as the fight in Vietnam still is echoing today. It ties together forever the Hmong and America, and leads to oddities like the overthrow plot recently uncovered by American authorities.
The Secret War and its legacy is a long story, one kept as a government secret for too long in the judgment of Steve Schofield, a former Green Beret who served with the Hmong in the covert U.S. war in Laos.
"Because everything they did for us during the war was secret, nobody in our government told anybody what the Hmong had done for us," said Schofield, 62, of Manitowoc County.
"When they came here, they were just lumped in together with the boat people and all the other groups that most thought of as economic refugees."
Now, as another American war rages overseas, the untold history of the Hmong becomes a potential cautionary tale, said Schofield, a military-trained civilian stationed in Laos from 1969 until after the war's official end.
"We ended up with a couple hundred thousand immigrants after the Vietnam War," noted Schofield, who contends the Hmong people have paid dearly for America's lack of wartime resolve.
"What's it going to look like if we pull out of Iraq and we have two million Iraqis living here?"
Battles past and present
Some 50,000 Hmong live in Wisconsin. Many still are loyal to Vang Pao, 77, the former Laotian general who led some 30,000 Hmong soldiers fighting for U.S. military interests in Laos from 1960 to 1975.
Most Hmong Americans who fought in the Secret War, so called because the American military was operating covertly in parts of Southeast Asia, view Vang Pao's arrest as the betrayal of a trusted U.S. ally.
The passions aroused by Vang Pao's arrest were in full display in the past few weeks in Madison, where the school board reversed its decision to name a new elementary school for the Hmong war hero and supporters rallied at the Capitol.
Meanwhile, state Assembly Bill 78, which could help to put these current events in context by requiring Hmong history in the public school curriculum, is stalled in committee awaiting a hearing that likely will not come for the second straight legislative session.
The bill would require public school instruction on the role of the Hmong support during the Vietnam War era, their postwar persecution and explain "the reasons for the emigration of many Hmong" to the United States. Most have settled in three states: Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
"Because they were integral to our role during the Vietnam War, we invited these people to our country as refugees," said state Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, a Senate co-sponsor. "I've heard again and again of the American lives that were saved by the role that they played."
An author of the bill, state Rep. Tom Nelson, D-Kaukauna, said he has heard nothing to suggest the bill will get a legislative hearing, or a vote, anytime soon.
"It's unfortunate," Nelson said. "I think this is an easy way to give back to a community that has given so much.
"Under this bill, it's basically up to the school board to decide how much time it wants to spend on this period of history. It doesn't say you have to have a whole new class, or you have to spend a certain amount of hours. The parameters are pretty open-ended."
A soldier's mission
A piece of the history lesson was preserved by Chong Vang Xiong.
The Hmong soldier died in a Thai refugee camp in 1985, but not before passing a few wartime memories to his son, Kor Xiong, who came to America in 1992.
Kor Xiong founded Appleton-based Hmong Wisconsin Radio two years ago. The special-frequency station broadcasts to Hmong and Laotian families within a 70-mile radius of the city.
Chong Vang Xiong was assigned to try to recapture an allied military base in 1968, his son said. Members of his unit were dropped into the heart of the battle by unmarked U.S. planes.
"He was one of the lucky ones," Kor Xiong said, "In the unit, they had about 60 soldiers. Twelve of them came back, and my dad was one of the survivors."
Chong Vang Xiong "had three jobs that the Hmong soldiers would do," Kor Xiong said.
The Hmong protected the mountaintop American radar station monitoring North Vietnam, he said. They attacked the Ho Chi Minh Trail that supplied the communist troops fighting in South Vietnam and Cambodia.
"The third role was to rescue the American pilots," Kor Xiong said. "When an American pilot was shot down, they would go. It didn't matter what it cost."
Chong Vang Xiong and his family fled to Thailand after the communists took control of Laos in 1975. The new communist government rounded up the Hmong loyal to the United States, sending them to "training camps" soon after taking control.
Those sent to the camps were never seen again, Kor Xiong said.
Then and now
Vietnam and Iraq are exactly one generation apart from the perspective of Boua Chong Xiong, 63, of Appleton, a Hmong fighter not related to Kor Xiong.
Boua Chong Xiong fought the North Vietnamese and rescued U.S. pilots shot down on covert bombing runs over Laos. His son, Michael, 23, a U.S. Army specialist, is now serving his second tour of duty in Iraq.
After the war, "The communist government was looking for any old soldiers who had worked for the U.S.," explained Jan Xiong, a 25-year-old son working toward a degree in business management.
Boua Chong Xiong's words flow rapidly, his hands wave as he recalls the family's trek through the jungle, across the Mekong River and into the temporary haven of a Thai refugee camp after the Americans left.
"There is a lot of stress going on between that time and now," said his daughter Kia, interpreting her father's words. "A lot of the Hmong have kept the story of the war to themselves."
Kia pointed to a framed portrait of "the great General Vang Pao," which hangs high on the family's living room wall.
Vang Pao and the alleged accomplices, including a retired U.S. lieutenant colonel who served with Hmong fighters during the Vietnam War era, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges Monday.
The general long was critical of what he described as a lack of U.S. action to end the postwar persecution the Hmong in Laos.
An attorney for one of the alleged conspirators told The Associated Press the defense will stretch back to 1951, when covert American influence in Laos began.
A legacy of silence
"Because it was all top-secret, I didn't talk about what I did in Laos for probably 10 years after I came back," Schofield said.
"I was one of the last 26 Americans to leave the region. South Vietnam and Cambodia were already gone. We were the last ones out."
Once the information embargo expired, Schofield realized even Vietnam veterans who reached out to support the Hmong after the war knew little about them.
Few American soldiers saw combat inside Laos. In fact, the U.S. wasn't involved in military action in Laos when Schofield arrived as a civilian employee of the United States Agency for International Development, a division of the State Department.
Not officially, at least. Schofield supported search-and-rescue operations for the American pilots shot down in bombing runs over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He also served as the public health administrator for the troops led by Gen. Vang Pao.
"The Hmong are and were very hard-working, loyal, honest, tough. They weren't like a lot of the other Southeast Asians. The Hmong were different, and the Hmong and the Americans bonded almost instantly. I trusted them with my life and vice versa.
"In those last two years in Laos, you had tremendous casualties and the Hmong were thrown up against regular North Vietnamese army units with tanks and artillery. The Hmong had been fighting this war since 1960, and most of their older soldiers were dead" by 1973.
"They had started recruiting these Hmong boys, boys of 10 years old, who were thrown right into the front lines ... They were just slaughtered."
Schofield said other Wisconsinites who promote the wartime history of the Hmong do it for "the usual liberal reasons, the oppressed-minority type of thing.
"I'm doing this because of the veterans. I think we owe them that."
Ed Lowe: 920-993-1000, ext. 293, or elowe@postcrescent.com
The Vietnam War did not end in victory, though, and the Secret War that raged in obscurity at the same time as the fight in Vietnam still is echoing today. It ties together forever the Hmong and America, and leads to oddities like the overthrow plot recently uncovered by American authorities.
The Secret War and its legacy is a long story, one kept as a government secret for too long in the judgment of Steve Schofield, a former Green Beret who served with the Hmong in the covert U.S. war in Laos.
"Because everything they did for us during the war was secret, nobody in our government told anybody what the Hmong had done for us," said Schofield, 62, of Manitowoc County.
"When they came here, they were just lumped in together with the boat people and all the other groups that most thought of as economic refugees."
Now, as another American war rages overseas, the untold history of the Hmong becomes a potential cautionary tale, said Schofield, a military-trained civilian stationed in Laos from 1969 until after the war's official end.
"We ended up with a couple hundred thousand immigrants after the Vietnam War," noted Schofield, who contends the Hmong people have paid dearly for America's lack of wartime resolve.
"What's it going to look like if we pull out of Iraq and we have two million Iraqis living here?"
Battles past and present
Some 50,000 Hmong live in Wisconsin. Many still are loyal to Vang Pao, 77, the former Laotian general who led some 30,000 Hmong soldiers fighting for U.S. military interests in Laos from 1960 to 1975.
Most Hmong Americans who fought in the Secret War, so called because the American military was operating covertly in parts of Southeast Asia, view Vang Pao's arrest as the betrayal of a trusted U.S. ally.
The passions aroused by Vang Pao's arrest were in full display in the past few weeks in Madison, where the school board reversed its decision to name a new elementary school for the Hmong war hero and supporters rallied at the Capitol.
Meanwhile, state Assembly Bill 78, which could help to put these current events in context by requiring Hmong history in the public school curriculum, is stalled in committee awaiting a hearing that likely will not come for the second straight legislative session.
The bill would require public school instruction on the role of the Hmong support during the Vietnam War era, their postwar persecution and explain "the reasons for the emigration of many Hmong" to the United States. Most have settled in three states: Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
"Because they were integral to our role during the Vietnam War, we invited these people to our country as refugees," said state Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, a Senate co-sponsor. "I've heard again and again of the American lives that were saved by the role that they played."
An author of the bill, state Rep. Tom Nelson, D-Kaukauna, said he has heard nothing to suggest the bill will get a legislative hearing, or a vote, anytime soon.
"It's unfortunate," Nelson said. "I think this is an easy way to give back to a community that has given so much.
"Under this bill, it's basically up to the school board to decide how much time it wants to spend on this period of history. It doesn't say you have to have a whole new class, or you have to spend a certain amount of hours. The parameters are pretty open-ended."
A soldier's mission
A piece of the history lesson was preserved by Chong Vang Xiong.
The Hmong soldier died in a Thai refugee camp in 1985, but not before passing a few wartime memories to his son, Kor Xiong, who came to America in 1992.
Kor Xiong founded Appleton-based Hmong Wisconsin Radio two years ago. The special-frequency station broadcasts to Hmong and Laotian families within a 70-mile radius of the city.
Chong Vang Xiong was assigned to try to recapture an allied military base in 1968, his son said. Members of his unit were dropped into the heart of the battle by unmarked U.S. planes.
"He was one of the lucky ones," Kor Xiong said, "In the unit, they had about 60 soldiers. Twelve of them came back, and my dad was one of the survivors."
Chong Vang Xiong "had three jobs that the Hmong soldiers would do," Kor Xiong said.
The Hmong protected the mountaintop American radar station monitoring North Vietnam, he said. They attacked the Ho Chi Minh Trail that supplied the communist troops fighting in South Vietnam and Cambodia.
"The third role was to rescue the American pilots," Kor Xiong said. "When an American pilot was shot down, they would go. It didn't matter what it cost."
Chong Vang Xiong and his family fled to Thailand after the communists took control of Laos in 1975. The new communist government rounded up the Hmong loyal to the United States, sending them to "training camps" soon after taking control.
Those sent to the camps were never seen again, Kor Xiong said.
Then and now
Vietnam and Iraq are exactly one generation apart from the perspective of Boua Chong Xiong, 63, of Appleton, a Hmong fighter not related to Kor Xiong.
Boua Chong Xiong fought the North Vietnamese and rescued U.S. pilots shot down on covert bombing runs over Laos. His son, Michael, 23, a U.S. Army specialist, is now serving his second tour of duty in Iraq.
After the war, "The communist government was looking for any old soldiers who had worked for the U.S.," explained Jan Xiong, a 25-year-old son working toward a degree in business management.
Boua Chong Xiong's words flow rapidly, his hands wave as he recalls the family's trek through the jungle, across the Mekong River and into the temporary haven of a Thai refugee camp after the Americans left.
"There is a lot of stress going on between that time and now," said his daughter Kia, interpreting her father's words. "A lot of the Hmong have kept the story of the war to themselves."
Kia pointed to a framed portrait of "the great General Vang Pao," which hangs high on the family's living room wall.
Vang Pao and the alleged accomplices, including a retired U.S. lieutenant colonel who served with Hmong fighters during the Vietnam War era, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges Monday.
The general long was critical of what he described as a lack of U.S. action to end the postwar persecution the Hmong in Laos.
An attorney for one of the alleged conspirators told The Associated Press the defense will stretch back to 1951, when covert American influence in Laos began.
A legacy of silence
"Because it was all top-secret, I didn't talk about what I did in Laos for probably 10 years after I came back," Schofield said.
"I was one of the last 26 Americans to leave the region. South Vietnam and Cambodia were already gone. We were the last ones out."
Once the information embargo expired, Schofield realized even Vietnam veterans who reached out to support the Hmong after the war knew little about them.
Few American soldiers saw combat inside Laos. In fact, the U.S. wasn't involved in military action in Laos when Schofield arrived as a civilian employee of the United States Agency for International Development, a division of the State Department.
Not officially, at least. Schofield supported search-and-rescue operations for the American pilots shot down in bombing runs over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He also served as the public health administrator for the troops led by Gen. Vang Pao.
"The Hmong are and were very hard-working, loyal, honest, tough. They weren't like a lot of the other Southeast Asians. The Hmong were different, and the Hmong and the Americans bonded almost instantly. I trusted them with my life and vice versa.
"In those last two years in Laos, you had tremendous casualties and the Hmong were thrown up against regular North Vietnamese army units with tanks and artillery. The Hmong had been fighting this war since 1960, and most of their older soldiers were dead" by 1973.
"They had started recruiting these Hmong boys, boys of 10 years old, who were thrown right into the front lines ... They were just slaughtered."
Schofield said other Wisconsinites who promote the wartime history of the Hmong do it for "the usual liberal reasons, the oppressed-minority type of thing.
"I'm doing this because of the veterans. I think we owe them that."
Ed Lowe: 920-993-1000, ext. 293, or elowe@postcrescent.com
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