Captain Yang Fang
SGU Veteran
St. Paul, MN
File No.: 19/50
April 2024

Yang Fang was born in Mouang Pheng, Laos in 1950. From 1963 to 1967, he went to school in the village of Phou Fa-Phou Nong Phi in Xieng Khouang Province. In 1967, he was recruited into the Special Guerrilla Units to defend his country from the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army. Soon, he enrolled in the military program to become a Forward Air Controller at the training base in Savannakhet. As a part of his job, he flew with American pilots on bombing missions. On one of the missions, his plane was shot at by the NVA and a bullet struck through, injuring him on the hand. A tiny piece of shrapnel still remains today. Fang had also accompanied American bombers to take out the NVA forces near the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a route the NVA used to supply their troops in South Vietnam. As the war faded to an end in 1975, he and his family escaped to Thailand in October of that year. In 1977, they departed to San Diego, California, as refugees. In 2002, they moved to Minnesota for better opportunities. ∆

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