"Simply put,’ the officials warned, ‘we are quickly heading toward an environmental and life-threatening catastrophe.’”

"Thanks to the Pulitzer Center's tools & training sessions, I was able to explore the supply chain of wood pellets from Vietnam to Korea & Japan, tracing the journey from manufacturer to end user.” - RIN Fellow @baouyen.bsky.social.

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5/5 Her cousin, who was close to her age and like a close friend to her, was lost amidst the tumultuous flow of evacuees in March 1975, just a few weeks before the war ended on the ground. He was right behind her - my mom never forgets this - but then he vanished, never to be seen again.

4/5 Even now, my mom is haunted by these memories. Her legs were too tired to keep going, her feet blistered from walking so much. She was stepping on bodies along the way. "Dead people were all over, lying on top of each other," she recalls.

3/5 They had to evacuate repeatedly from one place to another to avoid the shelling and bombings by both the US and communist forces.

2/5 Among our family's group of evacuees, there was also another kid, my mom's older brother - and an elderly woman, my grandma's mother-in-law. My grandfather had been killed previously, leaving my grandma to care for the whole family during the war.