Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Influence of the vietnam war on culture
Hmong IN VIETNAM WAR
Influence of the vietnam war on culture
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Influence of the vietnam war on culture
During the Vietnam war the Hmong people helped and fought alongside the United States, helping them to get their freedom and their independence back from Vietnam and the communist Laos. The Hmong people left Laos to find a better life away from the chaos of war and communism, so they left and tried to escape Laos to Thailand, leaving all of their family and belongings behind to leave Laos. The fearless Hmong people went through all the struggles so they can have a bright future for them and for generations to come. Their troubles did not end there, The Hmong people migrated to America to live in peace and to live a new life, the …show more content…
In 1960 the Vietnam war spread through to Laos, The hmong people decided to fight for their independence and gain back their freedom. The united states then assembled with them and fought with the Hmong to help them (Or so they said) The CIA Turned to the help of the Hmong, so in return they helped the CIA with the war. “Hmong rescued American pilots, identified targets for American bombs, fought Lao and Vietnamese communist forces, manned strategic mountain and jungle areas used by U.S. forces, disrupted and sabotaged supply lines, gathered critical intelligence and defended navigational sites in Laos that allowed precise, all-weather U.S. air strikes against enemy targets in northern Laos and North Vietnam.” said Jeffrey Hays. The Hmong people helped the CIA to gain back their independence, but when the Vietnam war ended the CIA dropped the hmong people who had helped them win the war, and forgot about …show more content…
Some of these people managed to escape Laos from the Vietnamese, the challenges they went through were traumatic and dangerous. The Hmong people only had one ambition at the time, to get to Thailand. My mother traveled for more than three months, that was the average amount of time for them to get to the border. Dozens of people would die during the journey to Thailand, the hmong refugees trying to escape laos were faced with thousands of technicalities, like land mines, North Vietnamese soldiers, but the most perilous obstacle was the infamous Mekong River, that claimed thousands of lives during the migration of the Hmong people. “We were left behind and were the very last people to get across the river to the island in the middle of the river. We heard people crying, screaming for help as they drowned and were thrashed by the rushing stream of river, we thought that nobody would come back to get us.” My mother said. By reading that you could tell that the people crossing the river were staring death in the eye and scared to their very soul. When the Hmong people arrived in Thailand after the treacherous journey from Laos they were
In The Latehomecomer, by Kao Kalia Yang shares her story and the story of her family’s search for a home and identity. Her family’s story voices the story of the Hmong people and their plight. From every stage of their journey, from the mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia to the freezing winter of Minnesota, Yang and the Hmong were compelled to redefine their identity, willingly or unwillingly. While growing up, Yang’s parents would often ask her, “’What are you?’ and the right answer was always, ‘I am Hmong.’” (Yang, 1) For “Hmong” to be the right answer, then what does it mean to be “Hmong”? From the personal story shared by Yang, and the universal story of the Hmong people, the Hmong identity cannot be contained in
How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
The US did the same exact thing except there were many people left behind that we could not transport due to the importance of emptying out embassy. Over fifty countries pooled resources together but out of all the United States had a much bigger sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of our young men. These men started coming into Vietnam as early as 1962.
The book I read to examine multicultural issues and cultural biases was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Faldiman. I found it helpful to use Google maps to get a visual of the location Hmong refugees came from in Laos and mentally trace their journey across the Pacific to settle in Merced, CA. There are two main cultures discussed in this book which includes the subordinate Hmong Lee family and the dominant White American doctors who tried to help Lia with her medical or spirit issues depending on which culture you asked. Faldiman stated in the preface, “I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet.” This statement would hold so much relevance because Lia’s treatments could have been less stressful if the two cultures reached a point of intersectionality. This is also congruent with what Tatum mentioned in Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria concerning, “Changes in immigration policy in 1965 dramatically increased Asian immigration, significantly altering the demographic makeup of the Asian Pacific American community.” In order to have a full
The Hmong people, an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam and Laos, greatly value their culture and traditions. The film “The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America” documents the seventeen year journey of the Hmong Shaman, Paja Thao and his family from the mountains of Laos to the heartland of America. This film shows the struggle of Paja Thao to maintain their 5000 year-old shamanic traditions as his children embrace the American culture. Moreover, the film shows that one of the major problems refugees like Paja Thao and his family face upon their arrival to the United States is conflict with the American medical system. Despite the dominant biomedical model of health, the film “The Split Horn” shows that
From the early 1950’s to early 1970’s during U.S. military involvement in Laos, Indochina, opium and heroin were flown by “Air America” into many countries, including Vietnam. As a result of CIA’s drug smuggling, Southeast Asia became the source of 70% of the world’s opium and heroin. South Vietnam was completely corrupted by a heroin trade that came from Laos, thanks to the CIA. The Hmong culture in Laos provided 30,000 men for the CIA's secret Laotian army. But in the process, opium production took over Hmong culture. To support the Hmong economy, the CIA's “Air America” transported raw opium out of the Laotian hills to the labs. By mid-1971, Army medical officers estimated that fifteen percent of American GIs were addicted (Stich 142).
The Vietnamese refugees fled to America in a few waves, one was after the Vietnam War in 1975 and was aided heavily by the US. The US did not support Communism and with the fall of the South Vietnam government and Communism taking over, the US did everything they could to help get them out. The US provided military cargo ships, planes, whatever they could do to help. The Vietnamese were transferred to US government bases in Thailand, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines. When they got over to the US, they were put in refugee camps like Camp Pendleton in California, and one of the biggest Fort Chaffee. At first the American people did not welcome the Vietnamese. Fortunately when Ford passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which assisted refugees who fled from Vietnam and Cambodia, Americans got used to the Vietnamese being in the US. There were about 100,000 Vietnamese that left Vietnam and came to the US. Most who fled Vietnam ended up in California. In California they had one pretty big refugee camp in Camp Pendleton. From there, that’s how the Vietnamese ended up in Orange County.
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
The Hmong culture is firmly rooted in their spiritual belief of animism, ancestral worship and reincarnation. These beliefs connect them to their sense of health and well-being. They view illness as having either a natural or a spiritual cause. A spiritual cause results in a “loss of souls” or is an action or misdeed that may have offended an ancestor’s spirit (California Department of Health Services, 2004, Purnell, 2013, p. 317). The soul escapes the body and may not be able to find its way back home. The Hmong also believe that a combination of natural and supernatural cause’s results in illness, and spells or curses, violation of taboos, accidents, fright, and infectious disease are other causes for illness (Centers for Disease Control
From the year 1955 when the United States vowed to help support the South Vietnamese fight off the Northern communist, a total of about 60,000 soldiers dead and 300,000 wounded. The soldiers who offered their lives were on average the age of 23 meaning many gave up education and a family to fight for the lives in the bloody massacre we call the Vietnam War. At the beginning the United States only gave minor assistance to South Vietnam, but as the years continued and the Northern Communist began crippling the South, the United States offered more military aid. In 1961 after President John F. Kennedy sent a group of officials to assess the progress of preventing the spread of communism. It became evident that more military support was needed. “Working under the "domino theory," which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention”(History 1). After a group of generals over threw Ngo Dinh Diem the president of the government of the public of Vietnam the South Vietnam government become very unstable. Three weeks later President John F. Kennedy was assassinated befo...
... Southeast Asia due to the wars taking place, it was hard for the Hmong to find jobs in America. With little work skills and hardly and language understanding, Americans were getting frustrated with trying to teach a Hmong how to do their job. The Hmong were also taking up all the jobs because they would work for less than an American worker. This angered some Americans because they could not find jobs. The Hmong were also gobbling up Welfare and resources provided by a government that they didn’t even belong to. The Hmong were just trying to make a living for themselves but this was making many lower class Americans frustrated when trying to find a job to feed their families.
It saves them money during the war. When Ha leaves Saigon for a better life they
“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”
There were many events that lead up the Vietnam War, it started in 1945 with the hostilities between the French and Vietminh. “Geopolitical Strategy, economics, domestic US politics, and cultural arrogance shaped the growing American involvement in Vietnam” (Anderson 1). As a matter of fact, the Vietnam War was several wars, but it was not until 1962 that America had their first combat mission, however, Americans were killed during ambushes by the Vietnamese before the first combat mission. There is much controversy over the reasons for the Vietnam War, supported by the several different books and articles written about the war. “The most famous atrocity occurred in a tiny hamlet called My Lai in March 1968” (Detzer 127). History shows that the reaction of many Americans to the attack by US soldiers on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War was opposition, and the actions of the US soldiers during the My Lai Massacre will be forever remembered as a significant part of the Vietnam War and American History.
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation of Vietnam but on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded presidency and the problems of Vietnam were left to himself. In 1963, the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred where, the U.S.S Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese naval ships on august 2 1964. Two days later an even more controversial attack happened where it was reported another ship was attacked again but has later been proven false. Johnson used these events to gain congressional approval to enter into Vietnam. However the Tonkin Gulf Incident was questioned to have even happened which makes the war undoubtedly questionable Immediately after the incident . Many troops were killed in Vietnam and the United States eventually lost the war and does not achieve their goal to stop communism. Despite the large amount of conflict in Vietnam that needed to be resolved, escalating the war was the wrong idea by Johnson, as the many consequences of the war for the United States outweighed the potential spread of communism.