The origins of the International Rescue Committee in Missoula lie in the Hmong refugees of the Vietnam War

Reporting by Hailey Smalley, University of Montana School of Journalism

In the United States, there are only ten organizations that officially work with the federal government’s refugee agency. One of them is the International Rescue Committee, which has offices in just 29 U.S. cities. The smallest city with an IRC is Missoula, Montana. It all started with a connection to the American war in Vietnam, which ended 50 years ago. In the years that followed, Missoula became a center for refugees.

Pam Roberts grew up in southeast Montana, but always had international ambitions. In the 1970s, she moved to Thailand to work with refugees from the Vietnam War. She knocked on the door of the IRC office in Thailand and offered to volunteer. Little did she know then that she would run the first refugee resettlement agency in Montana and help bring hundreds of refugees from Southeast Asia to her home state. The first few days in the refugee camp were overwhelming.

“The first day was really hard. There was a family, a young man with two children and his mother-in-law. They were with nine people who all died and were the only ones who made it out. I just can’t let go of that. It’s etched in my memory,” said Pam Roberts.

The refugees were mostly Hmong, an ethnic group living in the mountains of Laos that was allied with the United States in the Vietnam War. When American troops left Southeast Asia, things became particularly dangerous for the Hmong. It is estimated that over 10% of the Hmong community died in the 1960s and 1970s. Cities were bombed, men died in battle, and families made the arduous journey to refugee camps.

“The Hmong community was completely decimated,” Roberts said. “We had the remnants that came across, and a lot of them came across the Mekong, tied themselves to bamboo and then struggled across because nobody was swimming. So I would head out early in the morning in this little tuk-tuk and we would pick up the refugees that came across,” she said.

Life in the refugee camp was also hard. There was not enough food and medical supplies. Explosions and gunfire thundered through the jungle. The Hmong needed a safe, permanent home. “One day I was eating lunch in this little warung when someone said, ‘I heard they’re going to a place called ‘Hmongtana,'” Roberts said.

Bob Johnson, head of the IRC in Seattle, helped set up the Missoula office and praised the work of his colleague Jerry Daniels, saying, “Basically, it comes down to Jerry Daniels.”

Daniels, dubbed the godfather of Hmong relocation, grew up outside Missoula and was a skydiver before flying planes to Laos for the CIA. He helped thousands of Hmong escape war, first to Thailand and later to the United States, before he died in 1982. Many of the first Hmong immigrants settled in the Bitterroot Valley near the Daniels family. “We basically thought we could start a small business with Jerry’s mother as a contact, eventually open the office and hire employees,” Johnson said.

The office became Missoula’s first IRC, and Pam Roberts, a Montana native, became its first director. Her main job was to educate the community about the Hmong. “I tried to educate people about who they are. That’s mostly what I did,” Roberts said.

Roberts recalled some dissenting opinions, but she said the reception was overall positive and many people wanted to help. “Ordinary people stepped out of their role as teachers or whatever and taught English as a second language, and they helped people find housing, and they became friends with those people and taught them through friendship,” she said.

Over the next decade, more than 550 Hmong refugees moved to Missoula and the surrounding area. Hmong settlement numbers declined, and the IRC office in Missoula was closed in 1991.

Twenty-five years later, a group of local volunteers began advocating for the city to reopen its doors to refugees. Mary Poole led the initiative that eventually became the IRC Missoula it is today. “Our late mayor, John Engen, went to school with Hmong refugees and grew up with them,” Poole said. “The school’s principal at the time did his first year as a student teacher with refugee students in his class. So everyone had those touchpoints, but no one knew the specifics,” she said.

Bob Johnson helped Poole obtain the necessary letters of support from city and county officials and advocate for the reopening. “I think the fact that the early Hmong population had been settled in Missoula along with the Eastern Europeans was what provided the impetus,” Johnson said. “You know, people were already familiar with it. It was nothing unusual. Frankly, I was a little surprised at the lack of resistance,” he said.

The IRC reopened its office in Missoula and in August 2016 the first family arrived from Congo. Others followed from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Missoula has changed a lot since 1979, but it’s still one of the smallest cities in the country to host a resettlement agency. Mary Poole now runs a nonprofit called Soft Landing, which works closely with the IRC to help families settle in Missoula. Refugees are free to move to other cities in the U.S. “Most people have stayed because they feel so welcome here,” Poole said. “I feel like I live in a great place that makes up for its shortcomings with the great community and generosity of the people here,” she said.

The IRC has helped resettle around 800 refugees, including over 60 refugees this year.

Fifty years ago, the Vietnam War ended and the soldiers who survived it returned home. More than 36,000 Montanans served in the war. To mark the 50th anniversary of its end, students from the University of Montana School of Journalism spoke with Vietnam veterans across the state. YPR will share their stories throughout the month. This series on the Vietnam War is supported in part by the Greater Montana Foundation.