ABSTRACT
In the period during and after the Vietnam War (1960-1975), the country of Laos gained the distinction of being subjected to “some of the heaviest aerial bombardment in the history of warfare” (Stuart-Fox, 1997, p. 139). US aircraft dropped almost 2.1 million tons of bombs on Laos, an amount approximately equal to the total tonnage dropped by the United States air forces during all of World War II, in both the European and Pacifi c theatres (Cummings, 1994). Had the bombing been spread out evenly throughout the country, there would have been almost nine tons of bombs per square kilometer. In the most densely bombed part of the country, Xieng Khouang Province, an “estimated 300,000 tons of bombs were dropped, equaling more than two tons per inhabitant . . . [while] 25% of the country’s villages remain severely contaminated [with unexploded ordinance]” (MCC, 2000, p. 1). Between 1964 and 1973, the Americans dropped the equivalent of one B-52 planeload of bombs in Laos every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (Eberle, 2008). By the end of the war, Laos had become the most heavily bombed country per capita in the history of the world.
