Recently I was invited to speak about Hmong culture to a group of missionaries working with the Hmong people in Wisconsin. My family used to be part of a Hmong branch in Appleton, Wisconsin and we have enjoyed associating with many of the Hmong people in the area. We heard many of their stories of fleeing genocide in Laos, making harrowing escapes into Thailand, losing family members, suffering in refugee camps, and then experiencing new stress and confusion as they came halfway around the world to live in the brutal cold of Wisconsin or some other part of a strange new country. Through my experiences with them, I gained a profound respect for their courage, their love of freedom, and their rich heritage and culture.
In my comments, I discussed a few things about the history of the Hmong people, including the recent history that forced many of the Hmong people in Laos to flee their once-peaceful and beautiful mountain homeland. It was painful to recount how our CIA recruited them to risk their lives for us to fight a secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War, when we were not supposed to be meddling in Laos at all. The Hmong people trusted the Americans and their power, and took the risk of fighting for us in several ways. Many would lose their lives in courageous missions to rescue pilots who were shot down near the Ho Chi Minh trail, which supplied the Viet Cong in the south with supplies coming from Hanoi and nearby Haiphong Harbor in the north. Sometimes as many as 100 Hmong soldiers would die in a rescue mission to bring back a single pilot. Their bravery continued when Hmong men were trained to be pilots. The courageous but doomed pilots flew mission after mission until they were shot down.
All their sacrifices were based on their faith that America would not let them down. We told them that we would have their backs and protect them from the vengeance of the Communists. On and on they fought, but then suddenly, their friends from the U.S. evacuated and left the Hmong people on their own to deal with angry enemies in Vietnam and Laos. Genocide was on its way.
Only after the tragic war did we learn from the leak of the “Pentagon Papers” that it was ultimately a no-win war, a war fought under self-imposed “rules of engagement” that abandoned the opportunity to shut down the enemy’s supply chain by, for example, mining the Haiphong Harbor where supplies from Russia were brought to Vietnam, or by refusing effective methods to stop shipments along the Ho Chi Min Trail. See, for example, Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana University Press, 1993). On the “ineptitude” (I think that is too kind a word) of the handling of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. see Dr. John F. Guilmartin, Jr.,”Bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail: A Preliminary Analysis of the Effects of Air Interdiction,” Air Power History 38, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 3-17. Also see my article, “Why Are the Hmong in America?,” Future Hmong Magazine, June 2002.
The point is that the Hmong bled for us, with over 10% of their population killed by the war we dragged them into with false promises of protection. The genocidal attacks on all those suspected of having aided the United States were vicious. Only after they had suffered for years did Congress recognize their sacrifice and pass legislation to bring refugee families here if they had fought for us. The Hmong people now are a source of strength in the United States, though they came with nothing and with very little education. I recently visited the home of young mother whom I knew years ago when I served as a counselor to her father in a Hmong branch. Like so many of the rising generation of Hmong people, she went to college, earned a degree, worked hard, got married, is raising great children, and has become a force for good in the community. She now runs a successful business with 25 or so employees impacting many people in our community. It was a joy to see her family and beautiful home. She has much to teach America’s young people.
As I was speaking, feeling grieved at how the United States left the Hmong people behind, ensuring that tens of thousands would be persecuted and face terrifying perils for years, I told the missionaries to recognize how much we owe that people for what they did for us and what we didn’t do for them. I thought of the pain and fear of being a refugee with every day so uncertain. And then as I encouraged them to respect them for what they had been through, it suddenly occurred to me that because of their experience as refugees, the Book of Mormon is especially for them. Yes, of course — the Book of Mormon is a book for refugees.
The connections suddenly became numerous, though I hadn’t dwelt on the refugee angle of the Book of Mormon before — but how did I miss that? From the first pages to the last, the Book of Mormon is about the challenges of refugees, fleeing from enemies. Lehi and his family feel Jerusalem and eight years later arrive in a promised land, with a timetable similar to many Hmong families. Moroni at the end is a lone refugee surrounded by enemies, seeking to protect the precious plates he carries for a future generation. Nephi flees his home a second time, and his descendants flee their homes again and reach Zarahemla, where they team up with other descendants of refugees. Lamanite converts are victims of genocide and must flee their homeland, depending on the mercy of the Nephites to accept and protect the Anti-Nephi-Lehites. And then they in turn will welcome outcast Zoramites, a Nephite people whose converts are also persecuted, apparently losing everything as a tyrannical local government drives them out.
Other stories still tell us of refugees, persecution, genocide — the suffering of modern refugees is reflected time and time again in the pages of the Book of Mormon, with guidance on both how to cope with faith in God, but also guidance for us on how to receive and love them, but also how to resist the evil that forces people to flee desperate situations. We need the blessings of the Gospel around the world to bring peace and to teach mankind to resist evil. The Book of Mormon is for all of us, more relevant than ever. It is a book for refugees.
Postscript
As I was writing this, I found a related article making a similar point: Alicia Alba, “Refugees in The Book of Mormon: Ancient Light for a Modern Crisis,” By Common Consent (blog), April 13, 2017. Let me know of other works I should consider. The practical issues of refugees are complex both here and in Europe. There is a need for reasonable processes and respect for the law as well as concern for the great dangers of human trafficking and other disasters when the law is ignored or corrupt agendas are pursued. But in any case, I find it very meaningful that the Book of Mormon has so many stories related to refugees that fit our day, and this very time, so well, just as it has so much to say about the complex and nuanced issue of government corruption and secret combinations in a time when they seem to be posing the same kind of dreadful risks that the Book of Mormon foretells. There is no better way to ensure that refugees will be an increasingly tragic and common tale than to ignore the secret combinations that create the blood, horror and greed that is behind so many refugee crises.