Craters from U.S. air strikes, often used as fishponds or for irrigating crops, pock rice fields in Xiangkhouang Province. Years of bombing didn’t oust communist forces in Laos.
Craters from U.S. air strikes, often used as fishponds or for irrigating crops, pock rice fields in Xiangkhouang Province. Years of bombing didn’t oust communist forces in Laos.

Laos Finds New Life After the Bombs

The U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos from 1964 to 1973 during the Vietnam War. That’s equal to a planeload every 8 minutes for 9 years. How does a country recover?

This story appears in the August 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine.
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