War

RadioActive

A poem for my mother, a Vietnam boat refugee

At just 8 years old, my mom, Diem Pham, became a refugee of the Vietnam War. Her parents put her on a small boat, where she spent 10 days at sea and six months at a refugee camp in Malaysia. Decades later, I interviewed her about that experience, and wove her answers into a spoken-word poem.

RadioActive

The secret diaries my grandma snuck out of a Communist prison in Vietnam

My grandfather was a South Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam War. After the war ended, the Communist government imprisoned him in an re-education camp. As a way to connect with his family, he secretly wrote letters, poems and stories.

KUOW Newsroom

'They betrayed us, stabbed us in the back.' Seattle Kurds protest U.S. withdraw from Syria

Seattle's Kurdish community protested Turkish military strikes in Syria this weekend.

Throwback City

What's that big yellow box perched on Phinney Ridge?

The air raid siren is about the size of a VW Beetle, weighs almost 3 tons and was loud enough to be heard a mile and a half away.

RadioActive

My aunt was 16 when she ran off to join the Eritrean Liberation Front

The Eritrean War of Independence started in 1961 and lasted for 30 years, until the Eritrean People's Liberation Front defeated Ethiopian forces in 1991. Nearly one-third of all soldiers in the Eritrean People's Liberation Front were women, including my relative, Akberet Asfaha.

Speakers Forum

A second life: The poetry of Iraqi-American Dunya Mikhail

Speakers Forum

How Daniel Ellsberg learned to start worrying and hate the bomb

The acronym MAD stands for mutual assured destruction. The concept has been a cornerstone of U.S. military security policy since the creation of nuclear...