photo courtesy of author



On September 24, NPR show Radiolab aired a 25-minute segment on Yellow Rain. In the 1960s, most Hmong had sided with America in a secret war against the Pathet Lao and its allies. More than 100,000 Hmong died in this conflict, and when American troops pulled out, the rest were left to face brutal repercussions. Those who survived the perilous journey to Thailand carried horrific stories of an ongoing genocide, among them accounts of chemical warfare.

Their stories provoked a scientific controversy that still hasn't been resolved. In its podcast, Radiolab set out to find the "fact of the matter." Yet its relentless badgering of Hmong refugee Eng Yang and his niece, award-winning author and activist Kao Kalia Yang, provoked an outcry among its listeners, and its ongoing callous, racist handling of the issue has since been criticized in several places, including Hyphen.

When Hyphen's R.J. Lozada reached out to Kao Kalia Yang, she graciously agreed to share her side of the story for the first time. What follows are her words, and those of her uncle.

***

I was pregnant.

In early spring, a dear friend of mine,

noted Hmong scholar and historian Paul Hillmer, contacted me to see if I knew anyone

who would be willing to speak to Radiolab, an NPR show with 1.8 million

listeners worldwide. On April 26, 2012, I

received an email from Pat Walters, a producer at Radiolab, saying the show was

looking for the Hmong perspective on Yellow Rain for a podcast. Pat wrote, “I’d love to speak with your

uncle. And no, I don’t have a single specific question; I’d be delighted to hear

him speak at length.” There were two New Yorker stories on Yellow Rain, and

neither of them contained a Hmong voice, so Radiolab wanted to do better, to

include Hmong experience. This seemed

like an important opportunity to give the adults in my life a voice to share

stories of what happened to them after the Americans left the jungles of Laos

in 1975. I asked Uncle Eng to see if he

would be interested. He was. I agreed to serve as interpreter. Before the date of the interview with Pat and

Robert Krulwich, one of the show’s main hosts, I wrote Pat to ensure that the

Radiolab team would respect my uncle’s story, his perspective, and the Hmong

experience. I asked for questions. Pat submitted questions about Yellow Rain.

On the date of

the interview, Wednesday May 16, 2012, at 10 in the morning,

Marisa Helms (a Minnesota-based sound producer sent by Radiolab), my husband,

and I met with Uncle Eng’s family at their house in Brooklyn Center. In customary Hmong tradition, my uncle had

laid out a feast of fruits and fruit drinks from the local Asian grocery

store. He had risen early, went through

old notebooks where he’d documented in Lao, Thai, Hmong, and a smattering of

French and English, recollections of Hmong history, gathered thoughts, and

written down facts of the time. The

phone lines were connected to WNYC studios.

Pat and Robert introduced themselves and asked

us for our introductions. The questions

began. They wanted to know where my

uncle was during the war, what happened after the Americans left, why the Hmong

ran into the jungles, what happened in the jungles, what was his experience of

Yellow Rain. Uncle Eng responded to each

question. The questions took a

turn. The interview became an

interrogation. A Harvard scientist said

the Yellow Rain Hmong people experienced was nothing more than bee

defecation.

My uncle explained Hmong

knowledge of the bees in the mountains of Laos, said we had harvested honey for

centuries, and explained that the chemical attacks were strategic; they

happened far away from established bee colonies, they happened where there were

heavy concentrations of Hmong. Robert

grew increasingly harsh, “Did you, with your own eyes, see the yellow powder

fall from the airplanes?” My uncle said

that there were planes flying all the time and bombs being dropped, day and

night. Hmong people did not wait around

to look up as bombs fell. We came out in

the aftermath to survey the damage. He

said what he saw, “Animals dying, yellow that could eat through leaves, grass, yellow

that could kill people -- the likes of which bee poop has never done.”

My

uncle explained that he was serving as documenter of the Hmong experience for

the Thai government, a country that helped us during the genocide. With his radio and notebooks, he journeyed to

the sites where the attacks had happened, watched with his eyes what had

happened to the Hmong, knew that what was happening to the Hmong were not the

result of dysentery, lack of food, the environment we had been living in or its

natural conditions. Robert crossed the

line. He said that what my uncle was

saying was “hearsay.”

I had been trying valiantly to interpret

everything my uncle was saying, carry meaning across the chasm of English and

Hmong, but I could no longer listen to Robert’s harsh dismissal of my uncle’s

experience. After two hours, I cried,

"My uncle says for the last twenty years

he didn’t know that anyone was interested in the deaths of the Hmong

people. He agreed to do this interview

because you were interested. What

happened to the Hmong happened, and the world has been uninterested for the

last twenty years. He agreed because you

were interested. That the story would be

heard and the Hmong deaths would be documented and recognized. That’s why he agreed to the interview, that

the Hmong heart is broken and our leaders have been silenced, and what we know

has been questioned again and again is not a surprise to him, or to me. I agreed to the interview for the same

reason, that Radiolab was interested in the Hmong story, that they were

interested in documenting the deaths that happened. There was so much that was not told. Everybody knows that chemical warfare was

being used. How do you create bombs if

not with chemicals? We can play the

semantics game, we can, but I’m not interested, my uncle is not interested. We

have lost too much heart, and too many people in the process. I, I think the interview is done.”

Before we hung up the phone, I asked for

copies of the full interview. Robert

told me that I would need a court order. I offered resources I have on Yellow Rain, news articles and medical

texts that a doctor from Columbia University had sent my way, resources that

would offer Radiolab a fuller perspective of the situation in Laos and the

conditions of the Hmong exposed to the chemicals. My uncle gave Marisa a copy of a DVD he had

recorded of a Hmong woman named Pa Ma, speaking of her experiences in the

jungles of Laos after the Americans left, so that the Radiolab team would understand

the fullness of what happened to the Hmong.

After we hung up the phone, there was silence from the Radiolab

team.

On May 18, I emailed Pat:

"I can't say that the experience of the interview was

pleasant, but it is over now. I've had a day and some hours into the night to

think about the content of the interview. My heart hurts for what transpired.

Our dead will not rise into life. The bombs fell. The yellow powder covered the

leaves and the grass, and the people suffered and died. We can only speak to

what we experienced, what we saw.” I

followed up on my offer of resources, “I said that I had old newspaper

clippings that a doctor from Columbia sent me. I do not want it aired that I

offered material I did not follow up on. If you want them, let me know. I will

make photocopies and send. If you've no time to look through them before the

completion of your show, then please also let me know so I don't waste more

heart in the effort."

On

May 21, Pat wrote back, “I’m editing our piece now and I will

certainly send it to you when it’s finished. Unfortunately, I don’t think time

will allow me to review the articles you mentioned.” He ended the email with a request for me to

listen to an attached song to identify whether it was Hmong or not.

On August 3, 2012, my husband

and I went in for our first ultrasound. Our baby was 19 weeks old. The

black screen flickered to life. I saw a

baby huddled in a ball, feet planted on either side, face turned away. The room was very silent. I prodded my baby to move. I thought the volume hadn’t been turned

on. The technician was quiet. She did her measurements. She left the room. The monitor was on. I tapped my belly, asked my baby to move, so

I could see if it was a boy or a girl. Two doctors came into the room. The younger one held onto my feet. The older one said, “I’m sorry to tell you. Your baby is dead.” On August 4, after 26 hours of

induced labor, listening to the cries of mothers in pain and then the cries of

babies being born, I gave birth to a little boy, six inches long, head swollen

with liquid, eyes closed, and his mouth open like a little bird.

On August 6 my cell phone

rang. It was Pat, and he wanted me to

call in to an automated line at Radiolab reading the credits for the segment in

Hmong. I told him I had just lost my

baby. I told him I didn’t want to. He said, “If you feel better, you can call

in.” I didn’t feel better.

On September 24, 2012, Radiolab aired

their Yellow Rain segment in an episode titled “The Fact of the Matter.” Everybody in the show had a name, a

profession, institutional affiliation except Eng Yang, who was identified as “Hmong

guy,” and me, “his niece.” The fact that

I am an award-winning writer was ignored. The fact that my uncle was an official radio man and documenter of the

Hmong experience to the Thai government during the war was absent. In the interview, the Hmong knowledge of bees

or the mountains of Laos were completely edited out.

The aired story goes something like

this: Hmong people say they were exposed

to Yellow Rain, one Harvard scientist and ex-CIA American man believe that’s

hogwash; Ronald Reagan used Yellow Rain and Hmong testimony to blame the

Soviets for chemical warfare and thus justified America's own production of chemical

warfare. Uncle Eng and I were featured

as the Hmong people who were unwilling to accept the “Truth.” My cry at the end was interpreted by Robert

as an effort to “monopolize” the story. They leave a moment of silence.

Then the team talks about how we may have shown them how war causes

pain, how Reagan’s justification for chemical warfare was a hugely important

issue to the world -- if not for “the woman” -- because clearly she doesn’t care. There was no acknowledgement that Agent

Orange and other chemicals had long been produced by the US government and used

in Southeast Asia. The team left no room

for science that questioned their own aims. Instead, they chose to end the show with hushed laughter.

The day after the show aired, critical feedback

began streaming in on the Radiolab website. People from around the world began questioning the segment, particularly

Robert’s interrogation of a man who survived a genocidal regime. My cry had awakened something that was

“painful,” and made people “uncomfortable.” Pat wrote me to ask me to write a public response to the show so

Radiolab could publish it in the wake of the critical response and the concern

of its audience. I wrote one. My response was,

There is a great imbalance

of power at play. From the get-go you got to ask the questions. I sent an email

inquiring about the direction the interview would go, where you were headed -- expressing

to you my concern about the treatment of my uncle and the respect with which

his story deserves. You never responded to the email. I have it and I can

forward it to you if you'd like. During the course of the interview, my uncle

spent a long time explaining Hmong knowledge of bees in the mountains of Laos,

not the hills of Thailand, but the mountains of Laos. You all edited it out.

Robert Krulwich has the gall to say that I "monopolize" -- he who

gets to ask the questions, has control over editing, and in the end: the final

word. Only an imperialist white man can say that to a woman of color and call

it objectivity or science. I am not lost on the fact that I am the only female

voice in that story, and in the end, that it is my uncle and I who cry...as you

all laugh on.

Pat did not publish my response.

Instead, on September 26, Jad Abumrad,

the other main host of Radiolab, wrote a public letter offering more “context”

to the Yellow Rain segment. There was no

mention of the fact that they did not take up my offer to look at additional

resources that would complicate their assumptions. My friend Paul Hillmer had offered academic

research by another Ivy-league scientist that called into question the Harvard

professor’s conclusions, which the team had refused to look at. Jad wrote about journalism and integrity and

how Radiolab stands by Robert’s “robust” approach to Truth, the “science” of

the matter.

Radiolab went into the original podcast

and altered it. In Jad’s words, he “inserted a line

in the story that puts our ending conversation in a bit more context.”

Many Radiolab listeners used the Jad

response as a platform to dialogue and critique the show further.

On September 30, Robert wrote a

response to address concerns about the Yellow Rain segment. He wrote, "My

intent is to question, listen, and explore.” He apologized for the “harshness” of his tone. He stated,

In this segment, our subject was

President Reagan's 1982 announcement that he believed the Soviets had

manufactured chemical weapons and were using them on Hmong people in Laos --

and a subsequent announcement by scientists at Harvard and Yale that the

President was wrong, that the so-called ‘weapons’ were not weapons at all, but

bees relieving themselves in the forest. While there had been previous accounts of this

controversy, very few journalists had asked the Hmong refugees hiding in that

forest what happened, what they'd seen. That's why we wanted to speak with Mr.

Yang and his niece, Ms. Yang.

Robert

did not mention the research they did not look at. He did not mention the Hmong knowledge of

bees. He did not mention the racism at

work, the privileging of Western education over indigenous knowledge, or the

fact that he is a white man in power calling from the safety of Time, his

class, and popular position -- to brand the Hmong experience of chemical warfare

one founded on ignorance.

The

tides of audience response shifted. Whereas the majority of listeners were “uncomfortable” with what

transpired, and had called fervently for apologies to be issued to Uncle Eng

and the Hmong community, some of them were beginning to say, “Robert is a

journalist in search of truth.” Others

wrote, “At least the Hmong story was heard.” Few questioned the fullness of what had transpired; many took the

“research” of Radiolab to be thorough and comprehensive, despite the fact that

sound research by respected scholars and scientists believing that Yellow Rain

was a chemical agent used against the Hmong was not discussed or

investigated. Dr. C.J. Mirocha, the

scientist who conducted the first tests on Yellow Rain samples and found

toxins, and whose work has never been scientifically refuted, was not interviewed. The work of researchers who argued against

Meselson’s bee dung theory was also never mentioned.

On October 3, my

husband and I had a spirit releasing ceremony for Baby Jules. The day was cold. The wind bit hard. The ground was dry without the autumn

rains. We buried the memory box from the

hospital beneath a tall tree, much older than us, an old tree on a small island. We wrote letters to Baby Jules on pink

balloons and released them into the sky. I wrote, “Baby Jules, there is no need to be scared. You have been so brave already.”

On October 7, I

received an email from Dean Cappello, the Chief Content Officer at WNYC,

notifying me that Radiolab had once more “amended” the Yellow Rain podcast so that Robert could apologize at the end, specifically to Uncle Eng for

the harshness of his tone and to me for saying that I was trying to

“monopolize” the conversation. I

listened to the doctored version. In

addition to Robert’s apologies -- which completely failed to acknowledge the

dismissal of our voices and the racism that transpired/s -- Radiolab had simply

re-contextualized their position, taken out the laughter at the end, and

“cleaned” away incriminating evidence.

On October 8, I wrote Mr.

Cappello back:

Dear Mr. Cappello, Thank you for writing me directly. I

appreciate the gesture. When I lived in New York for several years, I became a

fan of your radio station, and grew to believe in the work you all do there in

furthering understanding. I just listened to the amended

podcast this morning. I am struck by how many times a podcast on truth can (be)

doctored, to protect itself. I don't know how much you are aware of in regards

to this matter, but I believe there are certain things you should know very

directly from me: My uncle and I were contacted by

Radiolab because they said they wanted to know the Hmong experience of Yellow

Rain. Ronald Reagan and American politics were not at all mentioned in any of

the correspondences between me and Radiolab. For the show to say that we were

not "ambushed" and that they have been completely honest with us from

the beginning is a falsehood. Before the interview, I wrote Pat

specifically to tell him that I wanted to make sure Radiolab would respect what

my uncle had to share about the Hmong experience of Yellow Rain. During the course of the entire,

unedited interview -- which I really hope that you have listened to -- Pat and

Robert dismissed my uncle's experiences again and again for two hours, thus in

the edited version: you hear me cry. Robert argues this was because my uncle

and I got angry and couldn't buy the "truth" of what the scientists

were saying, but that is not what happened. During the interview, I told Pat and

Robert that I had additional resources about what happened in Laos, that

complicate the "bee crap" theory, and that I would be happy to share

them. After the interview, despite the fact that it left us feeling horribly, I

honored my words and wrote Pat offering the additional resources. Pat wrote

back saying that Radiolab didn't have enough time. When the show aired, I was

distraught to hear all that had been edited out: particularly, my uncle's deep

knowledge of bees and the mountains of Laos, as well as his official role as

documenter for the Thai government on with the Hmong during this time. As well,

I was shocked to hear my uncle reduced to "Hmong guy" and me to

"his niece" while everyone else on the show was introduced with their

titles and official affiliations. This, amongst other aspects of this show,

showed a side of Radiolab and a clear privileging of Western knowledge that was

far from the truth. After the show aired, as criticism

appeared on their site, Pat wrote me asking me for a public statement of how I

received the show. I did so and he refused to publish it, instead Jad's further

"contextualization" was put up. Not only was this disrespectful but

it was a complete dismissal of my voice on the matter. *I reiterate what I

wrote to Pat, only a white man can say a woman of color is trying to

"monopolize" a conversation he has full power of in the asking of

questions, the editing, and the contextualizing and dares to call it

"objectivity" and science. My uncle and I agreed to an

interview on the Hmong experience of Yellow Rain. We spoke honestly and

authentically from where we were positioned. We did not try to convince anybody

of what we lived through, merely, we wanted to share it. Our treatment by

Radiolab has been humiliating and hurtful not only during the interview, the

editing process, and the airing of the original podcast, but in the continued

public letters by Jad and Robert to their audience, and revisions to the

original segment -- that continue to dismiss the validity of our voices and

perspectives, and in fact, silences them. While I will not presume to know the

intentions of the hosts, I am responding to you very directly about what

transpired, and what they continue to do. While I respect the work of

journalism, I believe that journalistic integrity was lost in the ways Radiolab

handled my uncle and the Hmong story. I appreciate what you have to say

about the role of journalism and the fact that many of your colleagues are now

interested in pursuing more of the Hmong story. I have a proposition for you:

that one of your colleagues do a story on the Hmong experience of what happened

in Laos after the Americans left, a story that will respect the Hmong voices,

and redeem all of our faith in good journalism that transcends cultures and

revives history so that our shared realities become more whole. I am happy to

help in any way I can. I cannot afford to give in to cynicism. For Radiolab specifically, my uncle

has put together a small message in English for the many listeners who have

responded to him compassionately and kindly. I want Radiolab to air his message

to their audiences, so that his voice can be heard and his message of love and

human rights can be delivered. It is short, and it is a clear reflection of

where he is positioned in all of this...as he has said to me throughout this

whole travesty, "Me Naib, bullets didn't kill me, so how can words uttered

on airwaves I cannot see hurt me?" -- even as he suffers before me. I await your response to this email.

There has yet to be a response.

I am no longer pregnant. I am no longer scared. I, like my baby, have been so brave already.

***

Introduction by Hyphen columnist Kirti Kamboj

[10/30/2012 UPDATE: Please join us at 18 Million Rising, to tell NPR that what happened is unacceptable, and Radiolab's dismissal of the Hmong experience must be addressed.]