The Secret Fire: When the Land of a Million Elephants Turned Red

By Dr Laurie Jo Moore

This book tells the gripping stories of twelve men who were imprisoned in the death camps in Laos. It tells the truth about the hidden war in Laos. Together the stories of these men show how communism destroyed liberty, terrorised an entire nation, and tried to kill the essence of freedom itself. The author contends that the war in Vietnam was a just war and that the soldiers who risked and gave their lives in that prolonged conflict deserve our ultimate respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503503212

Dr Laurie Jo Moore

Dr. Laurie Jo Moore graduated from the University of California–Berkeley with distinction in 1969 during the height of the student resistance movement to the war in Vietnam. She completed medical school and an internship in Portland, Oregon, in 1975, the same year that SE Asia fell to the communists. Dr. Moore completed her psychiatric training and joined the faculty at the Oregon Health Sciences University in the 1980s when the first wave of SE Asian refugees immigrated to Portland. She has published articles on adversity, survival, posttraumatic stress disorder, racism, existential psychiatry, social psychiatry, and cultural psychiatry. She is triple boarded by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and she is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry. She has a broad experience in all areas of psychiatry, especially in cultural psychiatry, which brought her to work in New Zealand and Australia.

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Image267.JPG

Dr. Laurie Jo Moore graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with Distinction in 1969 during the height of the student resistance movement to the war in Vietnam. She completed medical school and an internship in Portland, Oregon in 1975, the same year that SE Asia fell to the communists. Dr. Moore completed her psychiatric training and joined the faculty at the Oregon Health Sciences University in the 1980s when the first wave of SE Asian refugees immigrated to Portland. She has published articles on adversity, survival, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, racism, existential psychiatry, social psychiatry and cultural psychiatry. She is triple boarded by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and she is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry. She has a broad experience in all areas of psychiatry especially in cultural psychiatry which brought her to work in New Zealand and Australia.

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.

Buddha

Three things cannot be long hidden:

the sun, the moon, and the truth.

Buddha

Copyright © 2015 by Dr Laurie Jo Moore.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/23/2015

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

650734

Contents

I Foreword

II Introduction

III Survival in Death Camps and Extreme Situations

IV Introductory History of Southeast Asia

V The Kingdom of Laos

VI The Interviews

1—Mr. Khamphan Thammakhanty

2—Mr. Kenchanh Meksavanh

3—Mr. Khoum Phouvanay

4—Mr. Khampoun Khammongkhoun Rangsith

5—Mr. Ounkham Souriyavong

6—Mr. Niphonh Thavonekham

7—Mr. Hongsa Chanthavong

8—Mr. Pany Phanouvong

9—Mr. Khampin Phandhamaly

10—Mr. Z

11—Mr. Vanthong Saysangkhy

12—Dr. Bounsang Khamkeo

VII Commentary

VIII The Secret War is still happening

Bibliography

I

Foreword

Entire nations can be led astray by the self-preoccupation of leaders who are seeking their own fulfilment and aggrandisement and have no true commitment to the welfare of the people they are supposed to be protecting and guiding. We have countless examples from history. The most horrifying involve leaders with serious and malignant flaws who have charismatic skills to engage a following of people. We neglect to emphasise that these leaders come to power and stay in power in part due to their followers who believe they will fulfil their own destinies by their involvement. During the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century the power and the devastation created by these people have exceeded the limits of human imagination. Hitler killed eleven million Jews, Gypsies and gays, Stalin murdered thirty-eight million of his own people, Mao eighty million ¹).

What is the role of ordinary citizens who assist in these theatres of massive destruction? We are the passive players who, in the end, give these people power, accept what we know are lies and stand by watching them destroy the core of our societies while they proclaim their virtues. What our country is doing is our responsibility. We have lost hold of the belief that this responsibility and power lay within our hands. When we have leaders who can help us, we choose instead to listen to propaganda and lies that belittle our leaders and seek to find salvation for our lack of courage and integrity in the inevitable predictions of the media controlled by those with the most wealth and power.

Most Americans are detached from a real sense of participating in a true democracy. Most people believe they know exactly what is going on and have some excuse for why there is nothing they can do. It is not a mistake that we feel this way. This sense of powerlessness has been intentionally manufactured by sophisticated political think tanks. We have stood by watching this process without knowing what has happened. Like the war in Laos, this has been a hidden war to take possession of the hearts and minds of the American people. We have been deceived; even though we believed we were watching the news, reading the paper and trying to understand our country. The problem is that the media is controlled by the right wing and they only tell us what they want us to hear. We have to be intelligent. We have to care enough about our country, our children and our values to take a step beyond this passive role of being indoctrinated. We have to find books and people who will give us accurate information and then we have to take intentional, collective social action. I challenge you to read this book and look beyond the twenty-second sound bites that define our common reality. Hear the stories of what communism did to people with a long history of peaceful and productive lives, very much like our own lives in America.

I believe in the American people. I believe that if we are given truthful information we will choose to live a just and moral life as a country and as a people. Freedom is not something that is given to you; it is something for which you have to fight. If you feel there is no purpose in your taking any action, you have been successfully brainwashed. If you feel that all politicians are corrupt and that no matter who is in power, you won’t be able to have any influence over what happens, you have been successfully brainwashed.

It is time for the American people to stand up for ourselves and get involved in understanding the truth of our own actions. We have not, for example, learned the lessons of WWII. We have not learned the lessons of the Vietnam War. We partook in these terrifying and profound wars for compelling reasons. In the case of Vietnam, we turned our back on our own people and we have not yet restored our own dignity. ‘We don’t want another Vietnam’ but we really don’t understand what was done to us in that war.

I grant that understanding the truth in a world marked by the importance of national security makes it exceedingly difficult to know whose national security if being protected. We have allowed huge organisations to become self-serving and to take away the basic rights of the American people.

I am going to be painfully honest with you because there is no time left for pretences. I will tell you the way I see what is happening because I don’t want our country to be further destroyed and I believe we are in grave danger. In President Barack Obama we have a leader who wants to help us. Are we going to turn our backs on him as well and listen to the lies and the propaganda of people who not only have no interest in our welfare but give away our essential rights and hand the power of who is in control of American jobs and economy over to multinational corporations who serve their own needs and not ours?

This book is a small part of the story of the Twentieth Century but the story that it tells is clear. The American people were deceived by communist propaganda and we turned our backs on our own soldiers and politicians. We lost our dignity and we have not yet reclaimed it. It is time to get involved in our own lives, to take responsibility for what our country is doing and to stop listening to what we know are lies and distortions. Today the lives of our soldiers matter, the education and welfare of our people are in jeopardy. Who is attending to these vital national interests? Look at your leaders. Don’t listen to what they say; look at what they do. You have great powers of intuition and I believe that you know when someone is lying to you and using you to advance their own agendas and not those that will benefit you, you family, your community and your country.

Stand up. Listen to your heart. Give a damn. Don’t let the dignity and integrity of America be stolen again by people who are destroying the soul of America. America is a great country and it has done great things that no other country has ever done in the history of the world. We are only human and we make mistakes but we can learn from them and we can change the course of our own history. We are a brave people. We are not brainwashed robots. Use your brains. Listen to the stories of people who have lived through the catastrophes of our time. Learn their lessons. Take them to heart. Break free of the need to have someone else tell you what to do so you don’t have to take any responsibility for the future of your lives.

II

Introduction

Stories from the Lao Death Camps confirm the need for US involvement in Vietnam.

One

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.

Under all heaven… all can know good as good only because there is evil. ²)

The answers to our current dilemmas appear as darkness within darkness and this process is part of the mystery of life, but it is one where we can touch and understand the manifestations. This book endeavours to unravel what has been hidden in the darkness to shed the clear light of day in our present way of understanding what happened in the Vietnam War. I believe these stories will redeem our soul and the broken promises we made to our veterans and the veterans of our allies. Knowing this part of the truth will help us see the path to take in the future.

There has been very little said or written about Laos during or after the Vietnam War. Laos was involved in a hidden war and its further history was also concealed because after the war it lay behind the Iron Curtain. We cannot hope to know the whole truth just as we cannot see or know the eternal Tao. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, suggests, we can be going in the right direction.

Eight

The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows to places people reject and so it is like the Tao. In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep into the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In ruling, be just. In business, be competent. In action, watch the timing. No fight, no blame. ²)

We don’t really understand why the story of Laos in the war and the Pathet Lao Death Camps has not been told. Just as the history of Laos is obscure and largely unknown, the country of Laos itself has largely remained an unexplored and remote country. In the 1800s the French financed an extensive expedition up the Mekong River through Laos with the hope of finding a water passage to the riches of China. The Mekong River passes through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Tibet and reaches into a province in China. The expedition through Laos was complex and met unexpected and profound obstacles. There were massive areas where the river stretched out into thousands of cataracts. The depth of the water in these areas varied with the season but after repeated failures to navigate large areas of the river, the expedition was abandoned. The Mekong River through Laos was impassable by water. It could not be transgressed. ³) For the same reason the country of Laos has remained largely untouched until recent times when timber thieves have initiated massive destruction of the pristine forests.

Laos has been a peaceful country with democratic values. It has supported at least sixty different ethnic tribes living in the mid-highlands and high-highlands following their own cultural practices and living independently within the country.

Marx in the 19th century expressed the political dichotomy of Taoism as dialectics and proposed that the principle contradiction was between capitalism and communism ⁴). Wilhelm Reich in observing the spread of Fascism across Germany and Europe felt that Marx made a grave error in underestimating the material power of peoples’ desires ⁵).

I did not believe in evil as a child or young adult. Looking back at all the fairy tales and children’s stories and movies I find this astonishing. Not believing in evil is perhaps the definition of naïveté. I was naïve but I did encounter evil and each time it has struck me down I have suffered a severe and incapacitating blow. Europeans often say that Americans are naïve. This is perhaps true because as a formed nation America has only been involved in two wars on its territory, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Our naïveté may be part of what compromised our national integrity during the War in Vietnam.

Three

Not exalting the gifted prevents quarrelling. Not collecting treasures prevents stealing. Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion in the heart. The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening, ambitions and strengthening bones. If people lack knowledge and desire, then it is best not to interfere. If nothing is done, then all will be well. ²)

One might say that not exalting the gifted is a founding principle of communism. Perhaps there were good intentions in the foundation especially of socialism. However, something that came out of that gate of mystery when communism was manifest went terribly wrong.

In preparation for this book I was reading a recent contribution about the Soviet Labor Camps. I have wanted to understand atrocities of this kind and I usually have no trouble maintaining mental objectivity. I had to stop reading this book, however, because the indiscriminate brutality of the Soviet guards was absolutely vicious, venomous and completely arbitrary and there was no reasonable excuse for their behaviour. The victims who were being tortured had done nothing wrong. They were being persecuted for who they were, not for anything they had ever done. In fact, they were being tortured because the guards had been given permission to blame them for all their suffering. ⁶)

Suddenly, after reading and trying to understand about communism for the last forty years, I was struck with utter terror. I realised that this was the revenge of the proletariat and that it had no mercy, no logic, no just cause, and no rational or legal justification. It was purely and simply evil. For the first time I understood the terror of communism from a different perspective.

I don’t believe that American people have any real idea what the consequences of communism have been. We were shielded behind the Iron Curtain for decades and only in the last ten years have we been able to discover some of the truth. I remember the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn when I was a teenager (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). There were a few of his books that somehow escaped the almost absolute media blockade. But it was clear to see that when books like Wild Swans and Goodnight Mr Lenin were published that Americans and the world had no idea what had been happening in Russia or China under the domination of communism. I also remember the unusual courage of the American Psychiatric Association when they sent a delegation to the Soviet Union to investigate the abuse of psychiatry. The Chairman of my department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health Sciences University, Dr Joe Bloom, was part of that delegation. I was so proud that our professional organisation was doing something real to investigate what was happening. I also remember the opening speech of the APA that year. It was made by a psychiatrist, Dr Anatoly Koriyagin. He spoke in Russian and there was a translator. He spoke for forty-five minutes and during his entire speech he did not make a single emotional comment. Everything he said was cognitive. This was not a surprise because he had been tortured and persecuted in a mental hospital for his political beliefs for fourteen years and he undoubtedly suffered some of the consequences of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Nonetheless, the crowd of psychiatrists were restless and agitated by the horrifying story he was telling.

Gone are the days when individuals or organisations take the lead in diplomatic work for the government. It is not a mistake that our participation in democracy has changed so much nor is it a mistake that the average American understands very little about why we are waging war across the world. If I were a politician, I would do my best to explain this to you. However, I am not a politician; I am an average American citizen and a psychiatrist. This book is my effort to contribute of body of information I came to understand over a long period of years that helps make sense of the Vietnam War.

Evil has been defined as the process of people blaming others for their suffering when they are unwilling to take on the process of working through their own feelings. Instead of taking responsibility for our unwanted feelings we project them onto others and persecute them for this ⁷). This happens all the time in our close personal relationships and in our families. It happens in our communities and in the world. This may be a largely unconscious process and like other unconscious dynamics it is influenced by the social consciousness in the community around us. In totalitarian regimes those in power give ordinary people the mandate to punish and persecute others while at the same time they create an atmosphere of fear so that everyone is afraid they may be subjected to the same treatment. ⁸)

Somewhere in the initial invocation of communist principles this violation was imposed. Having and not having arise together. Communism promised to revenge those who did not have and to change the world so that everyone would be equal. This is not what they delivered. They did not have the answers; they still do not have the answers. And in their wake came terrible evil.

This is not an investigation of capitalism versus communism but I would like to comment that it would be beyond imagination to conceive that capitalism is free of dichotomies or evil. My intention in this book is to dispel several gross distortions about the Vietnam War that linger and distort our perception of reality.

The darkness of communism that came out of the gate of mystery was to engulf the entire county of Laos and all the Lao people. What do we know about what happened during this time in Laos?

Very little.

Books about Laos

In 1975 Saigon fell and with it all of SE Asia except Thailand which had always been maintained as a free country by agreement as a buffer zone between what was previously French Indochina and Burma or Myanmar which was controlled by the British. From the stories of the survivors it is clear that Vietnamese forces were spearheading all fronts in SE Asia with support from the Soviet Union. China played a much less prominent role but there were instances when China was involved.

Anti-war propaganda in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s promoted the idea that there was no Soviet agenda and devalued and scoffed at the Domino Theory, the proposition that if one country in SE Asia fell to communism, they all would follow. People went so far as to say that the Soviet Union never had any imperialistic ambitions and had never colonised another country.

After the end of the war I had the occasion to speak to a Vietnamese teacher who stayed behind to rebuild his country. He said life was very hard. For years all he had to eat every day was a small bowl of rice but that the spirit of the people was very high. His patriotic efforts came to a halt when he was advised that he would be sent to a re-education camp, a euphemism for a concentration camp. He and I learned in the course of some very long conversations that we had both been indoctrinated with the same propaganda – this man in Vietnam and me as a student in America at the University of California in Berkeley and then in a liberal alternative community in Portland, Oregon where I was attending Medical school. I was stunned.