Vang Pao
| Vang Pao | |
|---|---|
Vang in 2004
|
|
| Born | 8 December 1929 Xiangkhouang Province, Laos French Indochina |
| Died | 6 January 2011 (aged 81) Clovis, California, U.S. |
| Allegiance |
 French Indochina Kingdom of Laos United States of America
|
| Service/branch | Royal Lao Army |
| Years of service | 1940s–1975 |
| Rank | Major General |
| Commands held |
GCMA Laos "Secret Army" |
| Battles/wars |
Second Sino-Japanese War First Indochina War Laotian Civil War Second Indochina War |
Vang Pao (Hmong: Vaj Pov; 8 December 1929 – 6 January 2011) was a Major General in the Royal Lao Army. He was a leader in the Hmong American community in the United States.
Vang, an ethnic Hmong, was born on 8 December 1929, in a Hmong village named Nonghet, located in Central Xiangkhuang Province, in the northeastern region of Laos, where his father, Neng Chu Vang, was a county leader.
Vang began his early life as a farmer until Japanese forces invaded and occupied French Indochina in World War II. His father sent him away to school from the age of 10 to 15 before he launched his military career, joining the French Military to protect fellow Hmong during the Japanese invasion.
While taking an entrance examination, the captain who was the proctor realized that Vang knew almost no written French. The captain dictated the answers to Vang so he could join the army. Vang insisted the captain gave him the answers but did not actually guide his hand on the paper. Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, said Vang did not express any embarrassment over this cheating. Fadiman added "it is worth noting that in this incident, far from tarnishing Vang Pao's reputation — as, for example Ted Kennedy's fudged Spanish exam at Harvard University tarnished his — merely added to his mythology: this was the sort of man who could never be held back by such petty impediments as rules."
The term "Mèo Maquis" was originally used by Free French and Allied intelligence officers to describe the Hmong resistance forces working against the Japanese forces occupying Indochina and China during World War II. After World War II, French Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (GCMA) authorities recruited Vang as a lieutenant during the First Indochina War to combat the Viet Minh (archive video on YouTube by Col. Jean Sassi).
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