I first traveled to Laos in 2006 to research my novel Across the Mekong River, and immediately fell in love with this beautiful country and its warm, kind people. Traveling to the Plain of Jars in Xieng Khouang Province—where many of the Hmong refugees in the U.S. came from—I wandered among the ancient stones vessels scattered across the beautiful landscape. I heard a loud explosion and saw a plume of dark smoke rise from a rice field below. My guide explained it was an unexploded cluster munition that had gone off. There are close to eight million unexploded cluster bombs remaining in Laos from the civil war during the Vietnam War-era. 

 

I soon learned that from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2.5 million tons of ordnance in 580,000 bombing sorties, targeting over one-third of Laos: equal to a planeload of bombs, every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Since the war ended in 1973, over twenty thousand civilians have been killed or maimed—losing limbs, being blinded, or severely burned—from cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance (UXO), many of them young children. The problem has also created many economic and social impacts for the country. I was deeply moved by this ongoing tragedy more than fifty years after the last U.S. bombs fell.

On returning home, I wanted to find a way to help end the insanity of what the unexploded bombs were doing to the Lao people. I connected with a newly formed American non-profit, Legacies of War (https://www.legaciesofwar.org), founded by a group of Lao immigrants and other interested people. It led me down a very rewarding path, as I served for six years on the Legacies’ Board of Directors, working with a wonderful group of people. I continue to occasionally help out when needed. Legacies has been successful in dramatically increasing U.S. funding to clear cluster bombs and other UXO. But much remains to be done.

 

I traveled to Laos with Legacies of War to assess the situation first hand and coordinate with the efforts of other organizations working on this problem. During a second trip, our group attended the First Meeting of the State Parties to the Cluster Munitions Convention. Laos was the first country to sign on to the Convention, as it is by far the country most heavily contaminated with unexploded cluster munitions.

 

As part of my work with Legacies of War, I authored two articles on the history of the civil war in Laos (part of the wider Vietnam War), the roll of the U.S., and the aftermath of the bombing campaigns. These articles were published in two anthologies:

 

“Legacies of War: Cluster Bombs in Laos,” by Channapha Khamvongsa and Elaine Russell, The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory, Edited by Mark Pavlick with Caroline Luft. Chicago, Illinois, Haymarket Books, June 2019. 

 

“Living with Unexploded Ordnance: Past Memories and Present Realities in Laos”. In: Vatthana Pholsena & Oliver Tappe (eds.), Interactions with a Violent Past: Reading Post-Conflict Landscapes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Singapore: NUS Press, 2013.