John Gurda

Special to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Editor's note: This column has been revised from an earlier version.

The scene practically defined the word “poignant.” At the Hmong New Year, which is celebrated every December at State Fair Park, one vendor had set up a photo booth with a mural of a sun-splashed, vibrantly green bamboo grove as his backdrop. With snow swirling outside and temperatures plunging toward zero, the children and grandchildren of Hmong refugees posed in traditional costumes before a scene from a tropical homeland most of them may never see.

I got to experience that homeland on a recent trip to Southeast Asia. Traveling in February, my wife and I weathered a temperature swing of 120 degrees, from 25 below in Wisconsin to 95 above in Laos and Vietnam. The Hmong have endured the same extremes but in reverse, and they didn't get to fly home when the trip was over. Spending four weeks in their native lands gave me a healthy respect for the group’s resilience.

The Hmong are not in Wisconsin by choice. Of all the newcomers who have made their homes in this state — and that includes everyone but Native Americans — few have traveled such a circuitous path to get here, and fewer still endured so much hardship before they arrived.

From Laos to Thailand to Wisconsin

The Hmong story, in fact, is an epic of survival. The group emerged thousands of years ago in China, where they were a beleaguered minority frequently at odds with the ruling dynasties. In the mid- to late 1800s, many crossed the border into Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, where they became a marginalized minority for the second time. The Hmong settled in the region’s mountainous northern region, sharing it with other so-called hill tribes. There they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, exhausting the soil on one steep site after another and moving every 10 or 15 years.

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What the Hmong carried with them from place to place was a clan structure that has been a key to their survival. There are 18 clans in all—Her, Xiong, Yang, Thao, Lee, Lor and a dozen others — with the result that some 4 million people worldwide have basically the same 18 last names — a looming challenge for genealogists of the future. Strong clans and a tradition of powerful elders have kept this distinctly stateless group together through multiple dislocations.

When France colonized Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the late 1800s, some Hmong clans in Laos sided with the newcomers in hopes of improving their status. In the early 1950s, with French influence waning and Communism on the rise, the United States decided to intervene. As we waded into the morass that became the Vietnam War, the pro-French Hmong transferred their allegiance to us. By the early 1960s, they were in the thick of the fighting.

Vang Pao, a charismatic but controversial Hmong general in the Royal Lao Army, recruited legions of his countrymen to defend their homeland by fighting in the “secret war” the CIA was conducting outside Vietnam’s borders. Hmong farmers couldn’t drive cars because there were none to drive, but they learned to fly American fighter planes. The pilots made thousands of sorties against the North Vietnamese, and their colleagues on the ground gathered intelligence, rescued downed American pilots and engaged in direct combat. Tens of thousands died as the result of military action, hunger, disease and massacres.

When the United States pulled out of the region in 1975, the Hmong in Laos were basically hung out to dry. They faced three choices, none of them enviable. Thousands crossed the Mekong River into Thailand, sometimes under a hail of bullets, and eventually found homes of a sort in refugee camps sponsored by the United Nations. Their ordeal is preserved in meticulously embroidered “story cloths” that have become collector’s items. Others who fought on the losing side stayed in Laos and took their chances with the new Communist regime, a choice that ended in execution for some and extended time in “re-education camps” for others. An uncounted number simply melted into the jungle and, against impossible odds, continued to fight. In a country roughly comparable to Wisconsin in size and population, their hit-and-run attacks tended to attract attention.

Our Hmong neighbors in Wisconsin came largely from the Thai refugee camps, where the enemy was not bullets but boredom. The United States, after some hesitation, acknowledged its debt to our former allies. In a migration that began in the mid-1970s and continued into the early 2000s, more than 130,000 Hmong refugees were resettled in America. After losing so much — their possessions, their traditional way of life, and too many of their loved ones — the Hmong suffered one more loss: their place on the continent that had been their home for millennia.

The wonder is where they ended up. California was perhaps an obvious destination, given its location on the Pacific Ocean, but the states with the second- and third-highest numbers of Hmong refugees were, and are, Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the climate and culture were radically different from what they left behind. The Hmong presence here reflects the influence of resettlement agencies run by Catholics and Lutherans, religions brought over by the standard Midwestern mix of immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, Poland, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. In a wonderfully symmetrical act of generational payback, the descendants of one wave of transplants helped another put down roots.

Thousands arrive in Wisconsin

In Minnesota, St. Paul has become a Hmong capital of national importance, comparable to Fresno, Calif. In Wisconsin, the Hmong are easily the largest Asian group, outnumbering Indian and Chinese residents combined, but their settlement pattern has been one of extreme dispersal, and by no means limited to large cities.

In 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, Sheboygan had 4,691 Hmong residents, Wausau 4,399, Appleton 3,874, Madison 3,858 and Green Bay 2,879. Those are significant numbers, and several other communities — Eau Claire, La Crosse, Manitowoc and Oshkosh — each had more than 1,000 Hmong in their midst.

The group’s impact has been profound. In Wausau, for instance, the number of Hmong students in the public schools exploded from 160 in 1981 to 1,010 a decade later and 2,214 in 1998. Buildings were quickly overcrowded, and English became a minority language in several schools. In Wausau and elsewhere, the inevitable process of mutual adjustment has not taken place without tension or even tragedy, but the presence of a visible minority has broadened the worldview of communities whose diversity was traditionally measured in gradations of whiteness.

In Sheboygan, the community has given a Hmong war memorial a place of pride on its downtown lakefront. Dedicated in 2006, the circular wall of polished stone panels was only the third Hmong monument in America, following earlier projects in Arlington National Cemetery and downtown Fresno.

It will come as no surprise that Milwaukee County has the largest Hmong population in Wisconsin—14,192 people, more than a quarter of the 55,792 who live in the state.

The first Hmong newcomers reached Milwaukee in 1976, and they gravitated to both sides of the 27th Street viaduct, settling in Merrill Park on the north side and Clarke Square and Silver City on the south. What followed was a slow mass migration to the north and west. One cluster developed in the Midtown neighborhood, where many found a spiritual home at St. Michael’s Catholic Church and actual homes through ACTS Housing. A second, larger community has emerged on the northwest side, in the general vicinity of North 76th St. and West Mill Road, where post-World War II ranch homes and duplexes are both abundant and affordable.

Like every other group that arrived with nothing, the Hmong have not had an easy time in their new surroundings. Poverty, underemployment, racism and intergenerational tensions have all marred their transition to life in America. They have, at the same time, demonstrated an ability to adapt. Their clan structure gives the Hmong solidarity, and the result is a robust array of mutual aid groups, religious congregations, businesses and schools.

One example: The Hmong American Peace Academy, a K-12 charter school founded in 2004, now enrolls 1,700 students on two northwest side campuses. HAPA’s goal, says founder and director Chris Her Xiong, is to get kids “to and through college,” and the results to date have been impressive. Many HAPA graduates move on to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which now enrolls nearly 700 Hmong-American students, easily the most of any UW campus. As new traditions are being formed, old ones are still honored. The Hmong have renewed their ties to the land in Wisconsin, and they are a fixture in virtually every farmer’s market in the state.

As the Wisconsin Hmong move forward, how are their relatives doing back in Southeast Asia? Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), the group we traveled with, stresses cultural exploration, and we spent time in three villages with significant Hmong populations. The good news is that the fighting is over. There have been massive repatriations back to Laos, and there are welcome signs of integration in both Laos and Vietnam.

And in the U.S., despite the obstacles, Hmong cultural identity has survived, even thrived. In just two or three generations, Wisconsin’s Hmong have created lives light-years removed from Southeast Asia, and yet they remain identifiably, insistently Hmong. As flexible as bamboo, as tough as teak, they have lost old ways but found new ones. After so many moves and so much suffering, where is home? Home is here.

John Gurda, a Milwaukee historian, writes for the Crossroads section on the first Sunday of each month (www.johngurda.com).