ANOTHER EXODUS : KOCE TO AIR THE HMONG STRUGGLE

Six years ago as an influx of Hmong refugees from Communist-controlled Laos reached dramatic numbers in the United States, 6,000 in Orange County alone, the mountain people of Southeast Asia were struggling to make their way in a vastly different society.

Their plight as strangers in a very strange land was the focus of “No More Mountains: the Story of the Hmong,” a 1981 documentary co-produced by Orange County’s KOCE-TV and aired nationally by the Public Broadcasting Service when there were an estimated 40,000 Hmong in the United States.

Since then, yet another stunning Hmong exodus is taking place as the rural tribespeople, more accustomed to farms than factories and freeways, migrate to California’s central valley and agrarian areas of the Midwest. The Orange County enclave, once the largest concentration of Hmong people in the United States, has dwindled to 2,000, according to a new KOCE documentary airing tonight at 10:30 on Channel 50.

The 30-minute documentary, “From Laos to Santa Ana,” shows that the struggle of the Hmong clans to retain their unique culture and still adapt to a fast-paced, urban environment has eased little since the filming of the first documentary.

As a result, thousands of Hmong, who had been raised in a centuries-old rural society, have fled to less stressful environments of farming lands in the San Joaquin Valley and in Minnesota.

According to the Lao Family Community Inc., a refugee-founded organization in Santa Ana, the San Joaquin Valley now has the largest concentration of Hmong in the United States at 25,000, followed by Minnesota with 15,000 tribespeople. Hmong colonies in both those regions date back to the initial refugee influx in the late 1970s.

“Those areas are more like their (Laos) homelands. They can do what they have long done best-- that is, to farm,” explained Marilyn Anderson, an Orange Coast College journalism student and co-writer of KOCE’s “From Laos to Santa Ana.”

“To these refugees, the acculturation process in the urban areas was just too frustrating,” Anderson said.

Like the 1981 national special, tonight’s documentary devotes a key segment to the Yang family of Santa Ana, a Hmong clan headed by a former tribal chieftain, 70-year-old Yang Chiachue.

The chieftain’s 46-year-old son, Yang Toua, explained their situation this way:

“Our new lives have not been easy. We understand why so many of our people are leaving for the other areas. It is more like home. But, no, we do not plan to leave, too. We will do the best we can here.”

“From Laos to Santa Ana” doesn’t pretend to match the scope of the 1981 effort, a one-hour documentary co-produced by Boston’s WGBH-TV and involving German and French film makers.

Beside the Yang family segment, the PBS special reported on the lives of the Hmong in their mountain homelands in Laos and in refugee camps in Thailand. It also discussed the much-criticized use of Hmong guerrillas in the Central Intelligence Agency’s “secret war” in Laos.

“We weren’t seeking a full-scaled sequel,” said Don Gerdts, station manager of Huntington Beach-based KOCE. “Our aim this time was a purely local follow-up report limited to Orange County.”

Gerdts said a national show would have been too costly. The 1981 PBS project, he said, had cost an overall $250,000 to make, including $25,000 put up by KOCE.

Tonight’s 30-minute program was developed under the District Cooperative Television Academy--an expanded student training program--established last year at KOCE by the station’s owner, the Coast Community College District, Gerdts said.

The script is based on a class project that Anderson had done for Don Jacobs, associate professor of communications at OCC. (Jacobs is also narrating the KOCE program.)

Working closely with Cheu Thao(, executive director of Lao Family Community Inc., KOCE staff producer Ed Miskevich, who co-authored the documentary with Anderson, filmed scenes at a Hmong day-care center and interviews with Hmong businessmen, families and high school students.

Some Hmong refugees interviewed by the KOCE/OCC team had gained a measure of success with small businesses or in professional fields. But the majority, they found, still were working in small factory jobs, assembling electronics equipment and circuitry and struggling to learn English.

For the Yang family patriarch, Yang Chiachue, little has changed in his daily rounds since his family was featured in the 1981 PBS documentary. He still helps tending to the younger children at home. And he is still treated by other Hmong as a chieftain--often acting as arbiter in community matters.

His three sons also serve as counselors. The oldest, Yang Toua, is vocational administrator for the Lao Family Community Inc.’s center in Santa Ana. Both younger sons, Yang Xang and Yang Bee, are employed as community aides for county agencies.

Physically, as well as culturally, the Yangs seek to remain a tightly woven clan. The entire family, including Yang Chiachue’s mother, Yang Ger, 86, lives in a Santa Ana duplex that the family purchased 6 1/2 years ago.

And as with many other immigrant groups to enter the U.S. melting pot, it is the young who appear to be adapting more easily to life in this country.

“Our young people are doing the best in acculturation. They are fluent (in English) and receive good grades in American schools. They have taken very well to the new ways,” said Yang Toua, who had fought with Hmong forces in Laos.

While Hmong elders are pleased at the adaptability of their young, they also are concerned about preserving their culture.

“We worry that our children, too, will no longer respect the old ways,” Yang Toua said. “In our homes and festivals, we try as best we can to pass on our history, our language and our arts. We don’t want our children to forget who they are--and why they are here.”