Inside Operation Barrel Roll, a covert US military campaign that dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos over 9 years

The small Asian country, which is about the size of the state of Michigan, is located between China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

It was an impoverished, former French colony and most of its people were farmers.

What he meant was that Laos could be used as a buffer to stop communism from overtaking Asia.

The following year, in 1962, the US signed an international agreement that stated none of the signing countries — including the US, Russia, and China — would invade Laos. 

The agreement was to ensure Laos remained neutral during the Vietnam War.

The earliest bombing was in June, but Operation Barrel Roll didn't officially launch until December.

Johnson made the order about three weeks before he signed the Civil Rights Act.

The North Vietnamese had been using a route called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which weaved through Laos. They also wanted to hurt Laos' local communist forces. 

Due to Laos' terrain, it was decided bombing was the most efficient way of stopping them.

It was more than the total amount of bombs the US dropped during World War II on Germany and Japan.

The bombs destroyed villages and fields, killing thousands of civilians as well as soldiers. 

Pilots who failed to find a suitable target in Vietnam would drop bombs randomly on Laos rather than return to base with unused bombs.

Under Nixon, the campaign reached a point where approximately 300 bomb flights were being conducted every day.

But the Laos bombings were run by the CIA, and for years, national media didn't report on it.

Along with the bombing, the CIA also trained and funded Laos soldiers against the local communists, according to the South China Morning Post. By 1970, the cost of the Laos campaign was about $3.1 billion per year.

But in other countries, it wasn't entirely a secret war. The international media had been covering it and people in the region knew what was going on.

Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, then the subcommittee chairman, said it was an "encouraging sign that the executive branch has finally agreed that much of what the United States Government has been doing in Laos may now be made public."

But he was critical of the fact a lot of information had not been provided. 

"The veil of secrecy which has long kept this secret war in Laos officially hidden from the American people has been partially lifted," he said.

It wasn't until 1973, when the US withdrew from Vietnam that the bombs stopped falling on Laos. Two years later, in 1975, the US left Laos, and its communist party took over the country.

By then, the bombings had killed approximately 200,000 people, many of whom were civilians — about 10% of the country's population. At least 400,00 more were wounded and 750,000 had to seek asylum due to the devastation.

In contrast, 728 Americans had died in the Laos conflict.

Cluster bombs are small bombs that disperse waves of shrapnel and ball bearings when they explode.

An estimated 30% of all the bombs the US dropped didn't detonate, meaning 80 million bombs remain scattered across the country. They were dangerous because their design allows them to explode under the slightest pressure or movement.

Bombs have exploded while farmers plow their fields or when people cook meals on fires.

Since the campaign ended, more than 20,000 people have been killed or wounded by dud explosives.

The first detailed study of the impact of the leftover bombs found that 42% of the bomb victims were children.

The bombs don't look like bombs and the children in many of these areas often live in poverty and can't afford toys.

"They look more like toys than weapons of death and maiming," Lewis M. Simons, the author of "To Tell the Truth: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent," wrote for NPR. "Bright yellow, red or black, some resemble whiffle balls, others miniature windmills, robots and Transformers."

In 1993, the US began to help with the clean-up. Then, in 2010, the US increased its funding for the clean-up.

In 2016, President Obama visited Laos — the first US president in office to do so. He promised $90 million more in funding to help remove the remaining bombs.

However, experts believe the bombs are so numerous it could take another hundred years before they are all removed.

"Laotians are a forgiving people, but as long as Laos remains riddled with explosives, nobody can forget, because forgetting can kill you," T.D. Allman, who broke the story of the CIA's secret war in Laos, said in National Geographic.

Laos is still a farming nation, and unfortunately, the danger is part of daily life.

A banana farmer named Sang Kham, whose relative was killed by a bomb while farming, told Al Jazeera, "We are always afraid in the field."