By Associated Press
A proposed memorial to honor Hmong who fought for the United States during the Vietnam War has been questioned by some in the Sheboygan, Wis. community, where more than 5,000 Hmong American residents make up about 10 percent of the population.
Some opposing it say a number of Hmong fought against the United States.
“There’s a lot of hard feelings out there,” said Joel Walker, state commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who has urged the city to reexamine the plan. “This could be a volatile and emotional issue.”
Sheboygan attorney Tim Hall, who proposed the memorial last summer, said he learned about the Hmong role in the Vietnam War a few years ago. After moving to Sheboygan and working with the Hmong American community, he felt a memorial would properly honor the Southeast Asian group’s sacrifices.
The proposed memorial would depict an injured American pilot and two Hmong guerrilla fighters guiding him to safety. Hall said that if all three bronze figures are included in the memorial, which would be located in Sheboygan’s Fountain Park, the project would cost about $200,000, all of which would be raised through private donations.
The Common Council’s Public Works Committee has backed the plan. But Vietnam War veteran Jerry Wenninger and Walker were able to get the full council to send the proposal back to committee last week. Because the park is a historical site, the Historic Preservation Commission also will review the plan.
“We’re open to both sides, and just going to listen to both sides, and make a decision after that,” said Alderman Terry Van Akkeren, who chairs the Public Works Committee.
Walker said the city should establish uniform standards for any war memorial it builds, including one for the Hmong. He also said it was possible that many of the Hmong Americans granted refugee status in the United States may have actually fought for the North Vietnamese and other Communist groups.
“At this stage, there’s no paperwork designed to my knowledge that [would prove] any of the Hmong were involved in the war effort themselves,” Walker said. “A lot of them were just airlifted over here. There’s no way to verify if infiltrators got in there in these mass departures.”
He said there also is a feeling among Vietnam veterans that Hmong Americans received too much assistance from the U.S. government.
Local Hmong American leaders deny that Communist infiltrators were granted refugee status in the United States, or that the Hmong have received too much aid.
“The only free thing we got was the chance to come to a new country and start a new life,” said Chasong Yang, executive director of the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association in Sheboygan.
“The Hmong that we have here in Sheboygan and the state of Wisconsin, they all 100 percent support the U.S. government,” Yang said.
Alfred McCoy, a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that the division within the Hmong community over Communism was so deep that no Hmong Communist would have dared enter the Thai refugee camps, where Hmong people who had fled their native Laos lived before they came to the United States.
“The bloodletting was horrific,” he said. “Their sacrifice was phenomenal.” |
