Hmong Americans reflect on journey from wartime Laos to America

Hmong Americans reflect on journey from wartime Laos to America

Fifty years after she fled Laos as a child, Pam Thao still remembers the percussion of bombs exploding, the shock of a man dropping dead before her, the warmth of blood on her feet as she ran home to her village through the dark.  Every year on the Fourth of July, the pop of firecrackers brings back those harrowing moments. Thao is among the thousands of Hmong who arrived in the United States as refugees in the 1970s following the “Secret War,” …