Mao Vang was a teenage nurse on the night shift at a secret military base in Long Tieng, Laos, when a soldier came into the hospital with a stomach injury.
The hospital had seen wave after wave of wounded soldiers — so many that the nurses, some as young as 11, had to fill in for doctors handling the most serious cases.
“The doctor was in surgery already, but [the soldier] was in pain, so every time he woke up, we had to give him a shot of morphine,” she said.
The next morning, she stopped hearing his moans.
“I thought he was still asleep,” she said. “By the time I go look, all his intestines – everything, come out.” She called for the doctor, but the soldier was already dead.
“At the time, I was so young,” she said. “I was so scared.”
As Hmong Americans mark the 50th anniversary of their arrival in the U.S. this year, and honor the contributions of Hmong veterans during the Vietnam War, the role of Hmong girls and young women, who were pressed into service as military nurses, is a less-known chapter.
But that period is still vivid for many Minnesotans, including Vang, Maylee Soung and Sia Vue Lor. Decades later, they remember working 24-hour shifts, witnessing terrible injuries and death, and their fear that the war would never end.
They also speak with pride of the training they received, and the opportunities it opened up to gain an education and step into nontraditional roles.
“I think we were too young to ask why,” Soung said. “The only thing we knew was that whatever was happening, we have to try to survive, to try to escape and to try to help however we can.”
‘Secret War’ upends Hmong communities
The recruitment of the Hmong began in the early 1960s, when the U.S. became embroiled in efforts to prevent the spread of communism in Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam.
As the CIA recruited thousands of Hmong men to join their “Secret War” in Laos and North Vietnam, Hmong women and girls were also pressed into service as nurses — upending their traditional village life and roles.
Soung, Vang and Lor say their options growing up in Laos were to stay in their home village to farm and babysit or become a teacher or nurse if their families had access to an education.
Soung was just 11 when her mother sent her to nursing school because her family couldn’t afford food or clothes for her.
“First, I think that’s why I go [to nursing school] so I could have food,” she said, “but in the end, you become a nurse and you become proud of yourself.”
Lor was still a first-grader when her mother died, leaving her aunt to care for her. When she was around 13, her aunt sent her to nursing school. The school provided food, dorm-style housing, clothes and training to become a nurse.
Vang dreamed of becoming a nurse for years before she was finally able to attend training.
“I saw my older sister, she was a nurse in [the U.S. medical hub at] Sam Thong,” Vang said. “Every time I saw her come home in the uniform, I just thought I would love to become one.”
Vang begged her mother to allow her to go to nursing school, but she refused.
“Over my dead body,” she said of her mother’s response. Vang said her mother wanted her to stay home and study, tend the family’s vegetable and rice plots and babysit her younger siblings. “For Hmong parents, they don’t want their girls to go away from their homes. The girls didn’t have much choice,” she said.
When she heard from her friend that nursing school had an open spot, “I begged her, crying,” Vang said, “and finally she gave me money to go to [the Hmong military base at] Long Tieng, to become a nurse.”
She started her training at 15.
Life as nurses
Traveling miles from local villages, Hmong girls left their families to attend nursing school primarily in Sam Thong Hospital, Laos, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Secret War.
Typically, training would take about two years to complete. They learned from USAID health practitioners about Western medicine. Hmong, Lao, Thai and Cambodian girls were split into about 20 to 30 per class. Near the hospital, there was a dorm for nurses.
Soung said they learned how to bathe patients, change bedsheets and monitor blood pressure. Then, she said students learned how to administer medication and set up IV bags on patients.
Since many nurses did not speak or understand English, Lor said they would memorize the numbers labeled on medications by doctors. The final stage of the training was to help doctors in emergency surgeries.
“A lot of soldiers came [into the hospital] each time, they had three or four people, with their legs or hands blown off,” Vang said. “I had to help the doctor clean up the patients before surgery.”
Some of the most common injuries from soldiers were blown-off body parts or bullet wounds to the stomach, arms and back. Soung said there usually weren’t enough doctors to help patients in medical emergencies.
“When a doctor takes a patient into surgery, the nurse has to do everything they can to help other patients,” Soung said. “The hardest part for me was taking the role of the doctor when they weren’t there.”
The hospital had more than 100 rooms for patients, Soung said. Sometimes the hospital was overcrowded with patients and nurses worked 24-hour shifts.
“You had to take care of 10 or 20 [patients] per day,” she said, “so you cannot count because they constantly come in.”
An estimated one-fourth of all Hmong boys and men died fighting in the Secret War including the brothers, fathers and uncles of many young nurses.
“As a young girl, I don’t think we knew about politics and to ask why we’re fighting,” Vang said. “We saw a lot of soldiers coming, and I felt sad and thought ‘When is the killing and dying going to end?’”
Many of the nurses became close friends, Soung said. They relied on each other for support to cope with the stress and pressure of the job, she added. When a nurse was busy working at the hospital, the other nurses would set aside food for them to eat later, Lor said.
“Mostly we were scared at night,” Soung said. “We told each other, we have to sleep together, because of ghosts.”
‘Changed the culture’
When many of the Hmong nurses turned 15, 16 or 17 years old, they left to get married and have children.
“After I got all my nurse training done, I married in 1972 and I no longer could work anymore,” Vang said. “As a Hmong lady, we had no choice, but to obey our husbands.”
Around 1975, Soung said she started noticing U.S. hospital supervisors leaving Laos. Lor said rumors began to spread about the communist armies winning the war and she saw other villagers preparing to flee.
Soung said she fled with her husband on a military aircraft, while Vang and Lor crossed the Mekong River to enter Thailand. For several months, they lived in refugee camps before immigrating to the United States in 1976.
Fifty years after fleeing Laos, all three women currently live in Minnesota. Since coming to America, Soung, Vang and Lao said they’ve seen Hmong women pursue higher education and excel in different jobs.
“They’ve changed the culture,” Vang said.
“I’m hoping the younger generation become doctors, lawyers, and educators to go much further than this generation that worked really hard to survive and have only made it this far,” Lor said.
