Jane Hamilton-Merritt has been a journalist, combat photographer and college professor, but also an advocate for the Laotian hill people, the Hmong, who were used by the United States in their secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War, and imprisoned, brutalized and systematically destroyed by the North Vietnamese after the Americans abandoned them at the end of the war. Hamilton-Merritt recounts the story of the Hmong, as well as her own efforts on their behalf, in Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992. The book offers insight into the Hmong people, Laotian civilization and the Indochina wars (French and the U.S.). Her methodology and informational sources include her own front-line experiences, over 1,000 interviews, and official French and U.S. documents. In spite of reliance on personal stories, the book is written in a scholarly fashion and includes maps, photographs, a Chronology of events and an Appendix of documents, extensive notes, a glossary, interviews and sources, and an index. The 580-page book also contains Hamilton-Merritt's impassioned views of the Hmong people and their plight. Her stated purpose is to present the story of the heroism of the Hmong people over a 50-year period, and "to help set the record straight" (xvii).
After presenting the background of the role of the Hmong people in the Indochina wars and American foreign policy, this paper will focus on the genocide of the Hmong people, and how they came to immigrate to the United States.
Tragic Mountains relates the story of the Hmong people's struggle for freedom of choice and survival, from World War II when they sided with the French against the Japanese, through the Vietnam War when they sided with the Americans against the North Vietnamese, through their abandonment by the United States at the end of the Vietnam War, and the genocide that followed. The Hmong are an ethnic minority of Laos, a tribal...