Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos [Hardcover]

Keith Quincy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

America's secret war in Laos from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories, but it actually happened. Keith Quincy uncovers the secret war America denied for over 30 years. From the Hmong's war of independence with France to America's use of Laos as a military staging point during the Vietnam War, the Hmong were exploited because of their geographic location and passive culture. "Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat" traces the history that led to the mass exodus of the Hmong people and their immigration into neighbouring Thailand and the United States in the early 1980s. Keith Quincy is professor of government at Eastern Washington University. He is the author of "Hmong: History of a People" and other books.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 13-year covert, American-run war against North Vietnam and the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos ended in 1973. Quincy's dense but rewarding study--which takes its title from a messianic Hmong farmer who led an armed rebellion against the French in the early 1920s--gives a detailed history of political upheavals and wars in the region, beginning in the 14th century, but the focus is on the upland Hmong tribespeople who were U.S. allies for the Laotian campaign. Several other well-researched books have covered much of the same territory in depth. Quincy, chair of the department of government at Eastern Washington University, adds more voices to that research, using hundreds of interviews he conducted with the Hmong (many of whom now live in the U.S.) in the 1980s and 1990s to bring the corruption and brutality among the group's leadership further to light. (One researcher involved with the project has received death threats.) By 1977, more than 100,000 Laotian refugees, not all of whom were Hmong, had crowded into camps on the Thai border. Some remained for 15 years, Quincy argues, because agents of the exiled Hmong leadership "were able to persuade, cajole, and intimidate most refugees to forego resettlement... to provide guerrillas for the Neo Hom resistance, the magnet for financial contributions." This well-written narrative clearly shows that the secret war's biggest losers were the Hmong, who did most of the fighting--and dying--against the North Vietnamese. (July)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Hmong people, also known as Miao or Meo, are active participants in and tragic victims of modern nation formation and the Cold War. Quincy (Hmong: History of a People), an established scholar of Laos and the Hmong, energetically relates their experience and the history of Laos over the last century with deep feeling, telling detail, and occasional dark humor, using written sources, personal observation, and interviews. The Hmong started as a tribal society in the south of China, where contending Hmong family leaders fought both against each other and the outsiders who tried to dominate, co-opt, or exterminate them. Eventually, they migrated to Laos, where they established themselves by force. French colonialists enlisted Hmong leaders as allies. Then American Cold Warriors took over the murderous battle against the Vietnamese and their revolution, until finally the remaining Hmong fled to Thailand and the United States. This sad but colorful story will appeal both to general readers interested in Cold War history and to scholars.DCharles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Eastern Washington University Press (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0910055610
• ISBN-13: 978-0910055611
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,100,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #82 in Books > History > Asia > Laos

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mythical War in Never Never Land, March 22, 2006

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos (Paperback)

"Pa Chay's Wheat" is a better book than its title which suggests a stoned hippie's fantasy about Laos. Quincy has actually written an engaging and opinionated history of the Hmong's war against the communists. The phase of that war in which the Americans helped the Hmong began in the late 1950s and continued until 1975 when Hmong commander Vang Pao and his CIA advisor fled the country. The written record of the war is sparse, so the author has relied mostly on Hmong informants. There are many events described here by Hmong that you won't find in any other book that I'm aware of. It is to be hoped that Hmong scholars will follow up on Quincy's work with some research among their elders who still remember that nearly mythical secret war in Laos. No doubt they will find some errors in "Pa Chay's Wheat" as books relying on old memories are wont to have.

Quincy goes back to the beginning of the 20th century in describing the Hmong (or Meo as they were called in those days) and their place in Laotian society. He brings their history up to about 1990, at which time many of them have fled to the United States or to squalid refugee camps in Thailand. General Vang Pao is, of course, the central character of the book, as well he should be. The supporting cast of Americans includes legendary figures from the shadow war in Laos: Pop Buell, Colonel Billy (Bill Lair), Jerry "Hog" Daniels, Tony Poe, and others.

I would say the book is objective in describing the war. Quincy doesn't waste any words about the failures of the United States, the Royal Lao government, or Vang Pao. Nor does he sugarcoat the brutality of the commununists. His point of view seems to be pro-Hmong, admiring their bravery and their accomplishments and deploring the shabby treatement they received from a retreating America and the conquering communists. "Pa Chay's Wheat" is a book worth reading.

Smallchief

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hmong History best be presented by Hmong Intellecuals !, December 22, 2000

By 

"tubmoobzaag" (Clovis, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos (Paperback)

I rate this book a five stars. One for Quincy's interest in Hmong by putting out his time and effort, two for another volume added to the Hmong Historical Record, yet still just another presentation through an outsider point of perspective. And the last three I reserved for my Hmong intellectual brothers and sisters to take up the book and begin analyzing the fact that No one, no matter how competent they are, are not going to accurately write a Hmong History and handed to the world bypassing the very blood connecting our veins to that of our ancestors which upon millennia had etched our place on the human existence!

I poured over Quincy's work twice in the span of one month making sure I had one week's break time from his presentation to digest everything. Though Quincy had obviously put his Political Science mind to good use, most inside - very intimated Hmong information best left be authored by Hmong Intellectuals through whose blood run the very life of Hmong civilization. It's so ironic that Hmong History had to be presented to the world without choice, on a western platter. Western and Asian sources alike, up to now had dissected Hmong History without even experience a lifetime's worth of understanding Hmong's unique make up. Most of them did not even care for correct Hmong name and spelling, let alone a unique philosophical mind that even rival that of other Asian race. I found it unrealistic that every single author had managed to add to the myth that Hmong are nothing less than civilized???

Quincy like Hamilton and many others before them painted a Hmong picture by merely observing and researching and not through LIVING. Take the Chinese sources for example, how could one assume that it is accurate to cite when they had only two things in mind. One, to assimilate or exterminate Hmong at any cost and two, to record only their emperor's ambitious achievement? Notice that I have not even mentioned the so ever prevalent racist attitudes toward Hmong that Quincy so intimately pointed out in his book, that even an uneducated Laotian deemed a Hmong not worthy of a human life by refusing to take order from...

Overall Quincy had still more to educate about Hmong and its civilization issues, if he ever will work on another Hmong projects in the future. However I assured you, Mr. Quincy, that you are certainly being appreciated for your work. I personally applaud you for showing the intellectual Hmong, the way........

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After the fighting stops, the devastations of war continue, February 17, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos (Paperback)

In Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong & America's Secret War In Laos, Keith Quincey reveals the American military's involvement in Southeast Asia in what came to be called the Laotian "secret war" and its tragic consequences for the America's allies, the Hmong people and their culture. By the early 1980s, the entire Hmong society had fled out of Laos and into Thailand and the United States, making them a people in exile from their ancestral homeland. Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat is a seminal work explaining how and why this terrible outcome came about, and is a chilling reminder that even after the fighting stops, the devastations of war continue on. Also available in a hardcover edition ..., Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat is highly recommended reading for students of Hmong history, the Vietnamese conflict, and American foreign policy.