Former child soldier James Bior, pictured below in camouflage fatigues, came to America as one of the Lost Boys, a group of about 3500 young refugees who became separated from their families when soldiers from northern Sudan raided their villages.
Related: South Sudan is world's newest nation.
Bior drifted around Ethiopia and southern Sudan and was drafted by the Sudan People's Liberation Army at the age of 12 in 1991. He said he trained and fought with SPLA until its leader John Garang visited his group and sent away the underage soldiers. Bior then lived for several years at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, before joining his cousin Mawut Mayen in the Seattle area. Here's a recent interview with Mayen, who now works as an industrial engineer at Boeing:
Here's more about Mawut Mayen, here's a slideshow from South Sudan, and below are more images from the celebration in Tukwila, Wash.: