Graham's Vietnam tour of pirates, prison among the Hmong

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........We almost made it to Laos that night, but as we drew near, the brush line above the shore was suddenly peppered with what looked like flickering white stars as the Pathet Lao covered us with machinegun fire. I lost all my cameras in the escape over the side and clawing for depth in the blackness, the sound of bullets ripping the water around us like steel guitar strings snapping.

By the time I made it back up to the surface and saw them still firing at one of the other long boats, slowly spinning like a propeller because of a dead Hmong slumped over the tiller of its idling motor, I had drifted clear. That’s when I heard the low pleas for help from a young 13-year-old I had earlier befriended. When I got to him, I tried to keep his head out of water, and that’s when I realized one of the bullets had unzipped the front of him. Gingerly trying to keep more of his entrails from spilling out, I swam with him back to Thailand.

Further help came in the form of a truck sent out from a Hmong resistance safe house near Ban Vinai, a refugee camp from where most of Hmong refugees from Laos were processed to such places as Minnesota, Michigan and the fertile farmlands of California. After the ride to the camp, a relief agency doctor was called to the family’s home. But, the boy didn’t make it.

Gaining a reputation as a photojournalist willing to take on extreme risk in order to get a story, a month later I was invited by a British actor-turned treasure hunter on an expedition to an island off the west of coast of Vietnam, forbidden to all but Soviet Bloc advisors, and loyal communist Vietnamese. French colonials had named the island as Iles des Pirates, Pirates Islands. Whether we found treasure or not didn’t matter, just the fact someone was going into an area of Vietnam no other American journalist had been permitted since 1975 was enough for me. And, perhaps, I could get some information on MIAs Gritz had not been able to in Laos.

As it turned out, I ended up listed as MIA by the US Department of State, and reported by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as KIA by Thai pirates, though Hanoi knew full well I was being tortured and interrogated at the Kien Giang Provincial Prison.

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Graham's Vietnam tour of pirates, prison among the Hmong