At the September 23 Rotary Club of San Antonio luncheon, Air Force veteran and Rotarian Dr. Angelica “Angel” Pilato described a war that remains present in Laos through unexploded ordnance — and the project she created to help remove it.
Pilato served at Udorn Air Base in Thailand during the Vietnam War. She was the first Air Force woman officer assigned to manage an Officers’ Club and the first to manage one on a fighter-pilot base in Southeast Asia. Years later, while researching her memoir, Angel’s Truck Stop, she began to understand the lasting danger across the border in Laos.
Her talk covered three connected themes: how cluster munitions continue to threaten Laotian communities, how her No More UXO in Laos project funds clearance work, and what safe land makes possible for families.
A War Still in the Ground
Pilato explained that cluster bomb units opened in the air and scattered hundreds of smaller bomblets across a wide area. Many failed to explode. An estimated 80 million remain in Laos, still capable of killing or maiming people more than 50 years later.
She compared their dispersal to popcorn flying from an open kettle, with one deadly difference: the pieces that did not “pop” remain active. Some are small and round enough to resemble baseballs, creating a particular danger for children. The contamination also limits where people can farm, build homes or move safely.
To bring the scale home, Pilato placed Laos over a map of Texas. San Antonio, she said, would not have escaped the bombing footprint.
From a Memoir to a Mission
Pilato first directed 10 percent of her book sales to unexploded-ordnance removal. After retirement, she set a larger goal: $50,000. In 2023, she formed No More UXO in Laos in partnership with MAG, the Mines Advisory Group.
She said $50,000 supports a five-month clearance team, including local training, supervision, protective equipment and field operations. It can clear about 110,000 square meters — roughly 25 football fields. She has now raised more than $150,000, and the work has cleared the equivalent of 75 football fields while benefiting more than 3,100 people.
Pilato walked the club through the painstaking process. Clearance workers sweep the ground with detectors, mark each signal and investigate everything from scrap metal to live ordnance. Larger devices require specialists; others are destroyed in place. When a site is finished, the team walks the cleared ground in front of villagers so they can see that it is safe.
Safe Ground, Ordinary Life
The result is measured not only in explosives removed but in land returned to use. Pilato showed a woman who had hidden in mountain caves during the bombing and can now plant rice on her own plot. Elsewhere, families have been able to build homes on cleared land.
Pilato’s next goal is to involve 50 Rotary clubs. Contributions from participating clubs have ranged from $500 to $2,500, she said. Speaking as one Rotarian to others, she framed the request as support for a practical act of repair.
“Every bomb that’s found helps,” she said. Each cleared field replaces fear with the possibility of farming, building and children playing safely.
The room included Vietnam veterans, whom Pilato thanked and welcomed home at the start of her talk. The discussion afterward connected her mission to veterans and San Antonio’s Asian community — two local paths for extending the work beyond the luncheon.
