Fifty Years of Living with America’s Unexploded Bombs
Laos Was Collateral Damage in the U.S.’ Secret War. The Wounds Are Visible in the Land and in Generations Still Waiting on Justice
A horrific image haunts me: my father amputating a little girl’s leg to stop her from bleeding to death. The girl attended the same village school as my siblings and me. She was about my age, around 5. As blood flowed from her tiny body, my father’s snow-white lab coat turned bright crimson. The girl’s cries and her mother’s painful screams terrified me. I stood frozen, unable to turn away until my mother swept me to the safety of our home.
My father worked on countless victims of unexploded ordnance, or …
