The Secret War and Exodus

       In response to a coup d'état in 1960, the freshly elected US president, John F. Kennedy authorized the utilization of ethnic minorities in Laos to engage in covert military operations to combat the spread of communism. Increases in Hmong troops, with American CIA and military support, as well as military equipment drops, signaled the beginning of a series of altercations now known as the Secret War. 19,000 men of the 300,000 Hmong served as Special Guerrilla Units and the Laotian royal armed forces, with Air America being contracted by the CIA under the labeling of “private” airline. Within the two harshest years of both the Vietnam and Secret Wars, 18,000 Hmong were vanquished in combat, along with thousands more civilian casualties.

        In February of 1973, a cease-fire and peace treaty was held in Paris, commanding all foreign powers to withdraw from their activities in Laos. Over 120,000 were abandoned and left to fend for themselves within their homelands. With 18,000 Hmong soldiers remaining in Laos, and 50,000 Hmong civilians either killed or wounded, the war left an entire people in a state of total disarray. With many following the military general Vang Pao, they moved to the United States, first to California but later to Minnesota. With the first Hmong family to settle in Minnesota in 1975, the greatest wave of emigration came after the passage of the 1980 US Refugee Act. The so-called “final wave” came with at least 5,000 Hmong emigrating to Minnesota, resulting in the 2010 census showing over 260,000 Hmong in the US and 66,000 in Minnesota, mostly concentrated in or around the Twin Cities, the largest population of Hmong in America to date.

Source: Minnesota Historical Society