The Viet Kieu in America: Personal Accounts of Postwar Immigrants from Vietnam

The Viet Kieu in America

ALSO

BY

NGHIA M. VO

AND FROM

MCFARLAND

The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975–1992 (2006) The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (2004)

The Viet Kieu in America Personal Accounts of Postwar Immigrants from Vietnam EDITED

BY

NGHIA M. VO

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

The Viet Kieu in America : personal accounts of postwar immigrants from Vietnam / edited by Nghia M. Vo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4470-0 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Vietnamese Americans — Social conditions. 2. Vietnamese Americans — Cultural assimilation. 3. Refugees — United States — History — 20th century. 4. Vietnamese Americans — Biography. 5. Refugees — United States — Biography. 6. Refugees — Vietnam — Biography. I. Vo, Nghia M., 1947– E184.V53V53 2009 973'.00495922 — dc22 2009029677 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Nghia M. Vo. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover photographs ©2009 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the Vietnamese-Americans and Allied Forces who have fought for freedom in Vietnam and to the Vietnamese who have suffered in silence under the communist regime.

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Table of Contents Introduction

I. PEACE

AND

1

WAR

1. The Lotus Pond Nghia M. Vo 2. Remembering Saigon Nghia M. Vo 3. The Vietnam War: Snapshots Chat V. Dang 4. A Pilgrim Nghia M. Vo

II. OPPRESSION

AND

ESCAPE

5. My Life as a Zombie Thien M. Ngo 6. Anatomy of an Escape Theresa C. Trask 7. The Guava Tree Anh Hai 8. The So-Called Reeducation Camp Trong T. Ngo 9. The Lady in Black Dieu Hien 10. A Second Chance Chau Dinh An 11. The Wish Thanh Cuc 12. My April Thach N. Truong

III. STRUGGLE, HEALING

AND

65 74 86 94 101 110 119 127

REMEMBRANCE

13. Shadow of the Past Mai Lien 14. A Refugee’s Life Hien V. Ho 15. Guam, the Transit Island Nghia M. Vo 16. I Left My Heart in ... Saigon Nghia M. Vo 17. April 30th Thach N. Truong vii

13 29 38 46

133 138 157 165 173

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TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

IV. THE PRESENT 18. A Love Affair Christina Vo 19. Little Saigon, Westminster, California 20. The Journey Home Hieu V. Ho 21. On Searching Christina Vo 22. On Being a Viet Kieu Nghia M. Vo

Nghia M. Vo

Epilogue 208 Chapter Notes 217 Suggested Reading 225 Index 227

179 183 191 195 199

Introduction The Viet Kieu, or overseas Vietnamese, came to the United States shortly after the end of the Vietnam War (1975). Within three short decades, they have acquired social visibility through their hard work and business dealings. They form large ethnic commercial enclaves in major U.S. cities with their distinctive pho restaurants, nail salons, realty agencies, food and video stores, as well as other businesses. They also make their presence felt in the computer and financial industries. Nguyen, Pham, Le, Tran and so on are ubiquitous names in telephone directories. While many hold doctoral degrees in sciences and medicine from U.S. universities, some have entered the show business, political, and sports arenas. Although a few Vietnamese-Americans have been elected state representatives in California and Texas, Anh Cao on December 7, 2008, became the first to be elected to the U.S. Congress by defeating the nine-term incumbent William J. Jefferson in a district that is 60 percent black.1 The purpose of this book is to retrace the lives of some of these immigrants — the second largest refugee group in the U.S.— from the war-torn Vietnam to the peaceful U.S. with the goal of understanding the reasons for their presence in this country. Although no two lives are similar, they all share many representative features that will be discussed throughout this book and especially in the chapter “On Being a Viet Kieu.” Although they arrived as war refugees — the largest diaspora in modern history — the fact that they came in different ways, by different routes and at different periods gives their experiences a varied and complex 1

2

INTRODUCTION

flavor. Some arrived by sea and others by air; some in 1975 and others in the 1990s. Some came straight from Vietnam right after the war while others languished for years in concentration camps or Asian refugee camps; some encountered minimal problems during their escapes while others faced insurmountable ordeals before landing in the U.S. and other western countries. Though the basic causes of their escapes — communist oppression, loss of human rights and religious freedom, economic loss — were similar, each experience was unique. In this book, the Viet Kieu describe their personal experiences of the war, their old country, their escape, and their new American homes. They share details of their lives — some intimate, others banal — as they look back at the two decades of war in Vietnam and the three decades they have spent in this country. Past remembrances differ from one person to another. Some talk mostly about the past while others focus essentially on the present. The common thread is the repercussions of the long and tumultuous war on their lives up until now. They have either witnessed or experienced different phases of the war and post-war years: (1) peace and war in Vietnam; (2) oppression that led them to escape; (3) laborious struggles in the new lands while trying to heal their wounds; and (4) the present. The book is therefore divided into these four main sections. Some overlap in the histories is inevitable. Some of the people in this book were officers in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), some were artists and doctors who went through the daunting post-war reeducation camps, while others were housewives and middle-aged women who suffered throughout the war and made new lives in the U.S. One was a midwife. One person was born after the war (“A Love Affair”). The majority come from South and central Vietnam. These are people from all walks of life. Their experiences form a kaleidoscope through which we can analyze their views and feelings about the society they lived in. Although their perspectives vary, they offer a rare view of a cross section of the Viet Kieu population. Their insights allow us to look at a group of immigrants who differ in opinions and views, but have in common an attachment to the old country and their presence in the United States. Although some books have described the Viet Kieu as a group, none so far has dealt with particular individuals from the time they lived in Vietnam until they have firmly settled in the United States. No one has

Introduction

3

previously looked at this group of people through the various stages of their lives from the 1950s peacetime in South Vietnam to their present life in the United States. The Viet Kieu in America is designed to fill that void. Who are they? Viet Kieu is a term that began to be used by the Hanoi government some three decades ago to label in a derisive way those who escaped abroad. As the refugees gradually became academically and economically successful while the Hanoi government was mired in regional wars with Cambodia and China, poverty, corruption, and isolation, perceptions began to change. The Viet Kieu have sent back medicine and money (more than $3 billion in 2007) to their relatives in Vietnam and have indirectly boosted the country’s economy. When they returned to Vietnam in the early 1990s, they brought with them knowledge and money. They were envied by the local people who, in the meantime, had suffered through two decades of economic crisis and political upheaval under the communist system. From defeated people trying to get out of the country in rickety boats, the Viet Kieu became “rich uncles, savvy investors, entrepreneurs, or knowledgeable people.” From that time onward, mainland Vietnamese desired to be associated with the Viet Kieu, who became the mirror through which they saw the free world, especially the United States. These are the voices of some of these immigrants who within a short period were transported from their war-torn land to peaceful countries. Changes in their social conditions and needs during the past three decades are also documented. If in the beginning they had to deal with the trauma of the war and post-war years and reeducation camps, they now talk about investment, empowerment, social issues and divorces. After 1975, men (and some women) associated with the Saigon government (Republic of Vietnam) were sent to the so-called reeducation camps. These were actually concentration camps designed to incarcerate, brainwash, torture, and suppress this southern elite or ruling class with the goal of completing on the social level the military conquest of the rebellious South. These were communist Vietnam’s Auschwitz camps, more than a thousand of them spread out from the South to the North. There were more reeducation camps than schools: over 600 district reeducation camps, more than 100 provincial camps and more than 20 national camps.2 There were military and civilian camps depending on whether they were run by the military or civilians. Military camps were

4

INTRODUCTION

especially designed for “political” inmates (army officers, soldiers, government officials, politicians) while the remaining people were channeled through civilian camps. Northern military camps were far worse than southern camps as far as discipline or length of incarceration was concerned (“The Guava Tree,” “A Second Chance”). Northern camp inmates were not allowed to meet with their relatives until the third year of their incarceration. A few were released after five years while the rest lingered in the camps from six to 25 years.3 They included high-ranking military and civilian officials: officers from captains or above and cabinet members, senators, politicians, lawyers, and other professionals. Many inmates died in these camps because of brutal mistreatment–torture, harsh confinement, starvation, and lack of medical care and medicine. Southern camps were reserved for low-level officers and soldiers who did not pose a direct threat to the government (“The So-called Reeducation Camp,” “My Life as a Zombie”). Although the exact number of inmates has yet to be released, it ranges from a few hundred thousand to more than a million. If the majority have released early on, about 343,000 people received the full harsh concentration-type incarceration.4 Treatment varied from camp to camp and ultimately was the decision of the camp commander or most likely the political cadre, the powerful representative of the communist party. Therefore anyone caught escaping could be shot to death in one camp but only severely punished in another. Overall, the treatment was repressive and brutal: those who did not comply with the rules were in a sense doomed. Their “disappearance or death” for unknown reasons (“A Second Chance”) resulted in many undocumented deaths in these camps. Their families were only notified many years down the road or not all. This explains the thousands of officers still unaccounted for on the South Vietnamese side. Sadly, no one cared about this fact for they were on the losing side. Besides brainwashing and brutal labor-type work, inmates were also starved to death.5 Their food ration consisted in general of two bowls of rice or its equivalent a day. They supplemented their diet with whatever they could catch or grab: tree roots, berries, snakes, insects, lizards, rats, worms and so on. This unusual and exotic diet caused many of them to die from poisoning or intoxication. During the incarceration period, women struggled to keep their families afloat and thus became the sole breadwinners. They peddled

Introduction

5

anything from food products to furniture, jewelry, and motorbikes in order to survive. They tracked down their husbands, who were usually incarcerated in remote areas, and visited with them in their jailed camps. While many patiently waited for their return (“My Life as a Zombie,” “The Guava Tree”), others, unable to handle the stressful situation, moved on with their lives. After their release, inmates were stripped of their citizenship and watched closely by the local police to whom they had to report daily. This was the ultimate blow to their pride for after suffering years of incarceration and indoctrination, they felt they were discarded by the wayside. Many developed mood changes, irritability, anger, nightmares, and depression that follows them until this day. These were signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that were noted in war combatants or inmates incarcerated in communist jails (“The Guava Tree”). Many immediately or soon afterwards planned their escape. Staying put meant accepting in a fatalistic way whatever the repressive communist regime imposed on them: loss of citizenship, jobs, homes, and even expulsion to the new economic zones (NEZ).6 Escaping abroad became one way to deny the communists any control over their bodies and minds, to regain their pride and to maintain their sanity. Escaping was, however, neither easy nor without danger. That the former prisoners were willing to face untold dangers to escape oppression spoke volumes about their yearning for freedom. “Give me freedom or give me death” seemed to be their motto at the time. After more or less harrowing trips, they landed in western countries and the U.S. after staying for various lengths of time in substandard refugee camps in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and other southeastern Asian countries.7 They left behind a few monuments to commemorate landing in these host countries as well as to honor those who had died at sea during their escapes. In a wicked move and with the goal of erasing all traces of the diaspora, the Hanoi government in 2005 pressured the Indonesian and Malaysian governments to destroy the commemorative monuments on the islands of Galang and Bidong. So far, the Galang monument has been destroyed. Surviving the diaspora and becoming economically independent in western countries has been the proudest achievement of the Viet Kieu. They have done it in less than three decades. Their successes have positively impacted American society as well as communist Vietnam. They

6

INTRODUCTION

have sent about $3 billion each year to help their relatives back home and to invest in Vietnam. They get involved not only in commercial ventures but also in various humanitarian projects through cultural, religious and medical organizations. In the U.S., they pride themselves on having among their ranks a National Football League player in Dallas, a few Rhodes Scholars in England, a NASA astronaut, a college student who has received seven degrees at MIT in five years, a CEO of a large electronics firm in Silicon Valley, another CEO at a Fortune 500 financial company, a New York hotel owner who gave $1 million to the 9/11 victims and so on. They are also proud of a refugee who came to the U.S. in 1980 and began selling Vietnamese sandwiches during lunchtime from a converted truck in California in 1981. He became so successful that he opened a Lee Sandwiches store that blossomed into a full-fledged company. He presently owns 25 sandwich stores and 500 sandwich trucks in California and Arizona. He teamed up with his partner to donate $1 million to Coastline Community College toward the goal of building a college dedicated to teaching English and technology in Westminster, California. And the list of achievers goes on and on. While some are big-time achievers, others who have met with moderate success have contributed their time, money, and effort to other Viet Kieu less fortunate than they. If they are successful financially, they also have their personal problems: their lives began to unravel because of social issues like love, money, rights, and gender equality. Problems that have been left sitting on the back burner while they struggled for financial stability re-emerge anew and have to be dealt with. Rifts that were barely visible became huge eyesores. Women who have previously been homemakers tucked inside their kitchens and told to serve their husbands and children have become wage earners and emerge out of their houses asking for rights and gender equality.8 They crack open the emancipation door and run away in droves. From taboo topics, divorces and remarriages have become mainstream topics in the Vietnamese community abroad. Housewives who have usually been shy and reserved about sharing their private lives have become more open and have volunteered their thoughts. Women who have never witnessed divorces previously have gone through series of divorces and remarriages themselves: one “Catholic” lady is presently going through her third divorce, all of them in the U.S. Marital bonds that have been

Introduction

7

tight in the old country have loosened dramatically in the United States. If in Vietnam men tend to be polygamous because of tradition, in the U.S. women feel freer and either have boyfriends or remarry easily. Employment outside the home has freed many of them: financially stable, they divorce their mates on the first occasion. Other problems — jobs, money, social standings, and children — have also torn these marital bonds apart. A woman who would never have thought about divorcing her husband in the old country would now look down on him if he earns less money, is less qualified, or is socially inferior to her. Having lost their male attractiveness, husbands are easily discarded.9 Faithfulness and duty, which have been important virtues of women in Vietnam, have been replaced by rights and divorce abroad. This is not to say that virtues have been totally discarded by the wayside. On the contrary, many spouses have remained faithful to their mates. In this series, two women waited 12 and three years respectively for their husbands to return from concentration camps: they continued to live with and care for them long afterwards (“The Guava Tree,” “My Life as a Zombie”). What needs to be stressed is that changes are under way. The old Confucian values they have shared in the past have been forcefully assaulted by the war, western values, greed, money, and so on. The extent of damages caused by these forces will not be known until the dust has finally settled. What is certain is that traditional values will prevail to a certain degree, though to what extent is unknown at the present time. The social fabric of the Viet Kieu community tends to parallel the society they live in. A recent study showed that 18 percent of U.S. men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never been married, up from 6 percent a quarter-century ago. This is thought to be related to increasing female economic independence and the greater acceptance of couples living together outside of marriage.10 Many young women Viet Kieu feel free to pursue their careers even after marriage whereas they wouldn’t have three decades earlier. While Loan Chau’s father escaped successfully from Vietnam in 1979 after spending four years in reeducation camps, she, then six years of age, and her mother were caught during another escape attempt. Her mother landed in jail and she grew up in Vietnam. She moved to the U.S. in 1991, acquired a degree in Information and Management Systems and became a singer and entertainer. She continued her singing career after marrying a den-

8

INTRODUCTION

tist and fellow Viet Kieu.11 Singer Tran Thu Ha, 22, born and raised in Hanoi after the war, came to the U.S. in 2002 during an entertainment tour, married a Viet Kieu born in the U.S. two years later and continued her singing career.12 The end of the war was associated with a downhill slide for men and women in South Vietnam, which basically became a large prison camp. No country had ever enslaved its own citizens as ruthlessly and shamelessly and on such a scale as North Vietnam did — except maybe communist Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba. What the Viet Kieu had endured was beyond belief: incarceration in concentration camps, torture, starvation, forced indoctrination, strict police monitoring, loss of citizenship and property, escape and retraining in western countries, nightmares, stress disorders, and loss of self-esteem and self-worth for men, and loss of material and moral support, rapes, beatings and murders by pirates, and sorrows and nightmares for women.13 The road to freedom has been paved with torrents of tears, seadeep sorrows, and mountains of physical and moral hardships. The only choice was to escape abroad in order to get away from the vindictiveness of the communists. Two million people fled Vietnam during the 1975–1995 diaspora and many more would have taken a similar path had they had the financial or physical means. A joke at that time dramatically described that pathologic experience: if lampposts had legs, they too would have escaped from Ho’s paradise. It turned out to be the largest sea diaspora ever recorded in world history. The defeated, disillusioned and depressed Viet Kieu eventually landed on western countries’ shores only to emerge three decades later as a strong economic and political force that challenged the Hanoi communist government. This book is about some of the people who have survived death and despair in their country and built a new and brighter life for themselves and their families on foreign soils. Being a Viet Kieu is therefore synonymous to surviving the oppressive red tide regime and to rising free, unbound, and successful like a phoenix. Andrew Lam summarized it well when he wrote: “For though the story of how you suffered, how you lost your home, your loved ones and how you triumphed is not new, it must always be told.... It is the only light we ever have against the overwhelming darkness.”14 This collection of oral histories, although small, documents the lives of a group of refugees from their homeland to their adoptive country.

Introduction

9

They have become wanderers of the world, having established themselves in more than 50 different countries. Were it not for the mother tongue that remains the vital link between the Viet Kieu, they would not have understood each other. This book also details the progressive social changes these immigrants experienced in America. Although some of them have shed their Confucian beliefs and embraced western ways, others have remained fairly conservative. The fact that they have come to the United States within a definite period of time from 1975 to 1995 makes it easy for researchers to study them as a fairly homogenous group like no other immigrant group in the U.S. in the past. Finally, I would like to thank all participants for sharing their personal experiences, joys, pains, failures, and successes. Their contributions to the study of the Vietnamese culture and society in general and of the Viet Kieu in particular are invaluable. The story “A Second Chance” has been adapted from the news of the Voice of America.

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I. PEACE

AND WAR

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1

The Lotus Pond Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: Life in the bucolic sea resort of Vung Tau evokes the quiet times of the early 1950s when the Catholic and French colonial culture intersected with the local Vietnamese Buddhist culture. This was the time of peace and prosperity before the rumbles of war.

Ba Ria, my grandparents’ hometown, was in the 1950s a small transit town no one would have ever heard of had it not been situated in a strategic position between Saigon, the bustling capital of South Vietnam, and the seaside resort of Vung Tau. Buses loaded with passengers and belongings that bulged from its backside and rooftop made many daily trips between the two cities. They stopped every ten or fifteen minutes to pick up or drop off new passengers. Tilting heavily on one side or another under its cumbersome load, they sputtered through the crowded streets of downtown Ba Ria. In the process, they generated a lot of noise — helpers yelled or banged on the bus door to signal the driver to stop or move on — and left a trail of black diesel smoke behind them. They frequently made a ten-minute stop at the transportation center close to the market where they disgorged people, belongings, and at times live poultry destined for sale at the local market.

The Vietnamese Smile The ten-minute stop could, however, become a half-hour stop depending upon the circumstances. In a land where rice and food had 13

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always been plentiful and where peace had been present for some time, the South Vietnamese tended to take it easy and enjoy life. They took their time and dragged their feet because there was no pressure to complete any task. Work, although necessary in life, was never intended to be a goal in itself. Celebrations took precedent over other matters and people competed against each other to throw parties to entertain their guests. And there were plenty of reasons to celebrate: weddings, engagements, births, deaths, promotions, and new acquisitions besides the regular holidays. Time in this environment became “elastic” and punctuality is not a recognized Vietnamese virtue. Passengers who were left sitting on the parked buses in one hundreddegree heat without air conditioning might get angry and demand an explanation. The driver’s assistant, while apologizing for the delay, would state he was waiting for a few passengers or a shipment that had not yet arrived. He would promise the bus would leave “soon.” That remark was punctuated by either a big smile or a smirk. The Vietnamese smiled frequently.1 The smile, however, does not have any sarcastic meaning as elsewhere in the world. Intended to deflect the attention away from any embarrassing situation, it often inflamed the anger and irritation of westerners who perceived the inappropriate behavior as an insult. The Vietnamese smiled not only when they were happy, but also when they were sad or ambivalent about something. They smiled because as straightforward people they could not fib very well and were often at a loss for words to explain their complex feelings. They also smiled when they were caught in an embarrassing situation. Unable to produce an adequate explanation for what they had done right or wrong or to express the deep regret they felt, they just awkwardly smiled. This is known as a “sorry-smile,” a unique Vietnamese trait that has been misunderstood by westerners and Vietnamese alike. On the other hand, if they did not smile, they could become angry or answer in a blunt manner in order to protect the deep emotions they experienced. For beneath this smile or bluntness ran a wealth of often complex if not contradictory feelings or emotions.

My Grandparents’ Home My grandparents, who moved to Vung Tau in the early 1940s, bought a two-acre orchard planted with longan trees — Vung Tau’s lon-

1. The Lotus Pond (Vo)

15

gans are known in the country for their sweetness and texture. My grandfather, however, passed away shortly after the purchase. The orchard turned out to be a good investment for the future and stability of the family, since my grandmother, a housewife with at most an elementary education, did not work. Women were not allowed to go to school in the 1920s and 1930s and without education, they could not get a decent job. The orchard therefore provided the family with a steady source of income, though it was not big enough to feed a large family year round. They also bought a townhouse — a colonial import — with running water and electricity, which was rather uncommon in the countryside at the time. I still remember that house, which was located about a mile away from the orchard. It was the first of a row of seven one-story brick houses. It was divided into three almost equal sections: a family room, a bedroom, and a kitchen area with a bathroom. The front door opened directly into the family room that contained a hutch and a dining table as well as a five-foot tall altar made of fine black wood and encrusted with lacquered designs. On top of the altar was the picture of a handsome man I wished I knew: my grandfather. He passed away before I had the chance to meet him. On the side of the picture were two brass candleholders, an incense holder, a gong, and a brass plate with fruit offerings. Once a week my grandmother brought bananas, mangoes, or other fruit depending on the season, lit up a few incenses, beat the gong a few times, and mumbled prayers after bowing many times in front of the picture. I understood that this was “ancestor worship”2 through which the living conveyed their respects and debt to the deceased and kept the relatives’ soul happy in the other world (ben kia the gioi). In return, the appeased soul would protect the family from disaster or unhappy circumstances. It has been said that if a soul was not cared for properly through that worship, it could become an angry ghost and hurt the family. The whole family slept in the middle room on three seven-byfive-feet dark-brown, wooden divans. Instead of a mattress, a straw mat was spread over the hard wooden surface that remained cool and was therefore very inviting in the hot summer weather, but was definitely cold and unfriendly during winter. At night each person was required to hang up his or her own mosquito net, which would have to be folded back and taken down each morning. Without exception, everyone went through the same routine every day. Life thus became a monotonous

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routine that was necessary in order to fight against the buzzing and bloodthirsty mosquitoes. They were so hungry that they would dart to any unprotected skin and caused sharp and painful bites that swelled into red raised lesions or could lead to severe chronic malaria or Dengue fever.3 The back room of the townhouse consisted of a bathroom, kitchen and dining room and led to a small enclosed courtyard. Cooking was done with charcoal or wood. Smoke would fill up the kitchen area and darken its walls. Since refrigeration was not frequently used at the time, my grandmother, like other housewives, would go to the market every day to get fresh food, meat and vegetables with cooking done daily.

The Confucian Family According to Confucian rules4 that were ingrained in the psyche of the Vietnamese and were a relic of past Chinese influence (111 B.C.–939 A.D.), the society is patriarchal in nature. The wife should be obedient to her husband. He provides for her needs and she faithfully serves him. Should the husband die, his wife would faithfully raise the children, especially her eldest son who in the absence or death of the father represented the authority in the family.5 Family ties in a Confucian world were vital to the stability of the society; back then, no one dared to challenge these two-millennia old rules unless he was willing to be ostracized. The family was a miniature society with its often unwritten rules, regulations, and etiquettes. It is structured on many generations. As long as they were alive, grandparents, parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins were all part of the family. Everyone knew his or her own place in this “extended family,” for respect for the elders was de rigueur in this hierarchical society. They occupied the best place at the table and were cared for until their death. They were often served first and given the best portions of the meals. The family concept took precedent over the individual, as evidenced by the fact that the Vietnamese and Chinese family names (contrary to western rules) came first followed by the middle then the first names. People therefore addressed themselves by their titles and first names, like Mr. Paul, Ms. Mary, or Dr. Bill rather than by their last names.

1. The Lotus Pond (Vo)

17

Life at the Farm I spent a couple of years with my grandmother in the simple countryside and quiet atmosphere of Vung Tau. She first lived at the townhouse but later moved to the house at the orchard and rented out the townhouse to weekenders. The stay at the farm gave me a unique experience without which I would never have known what country life was like. Since there was no running water at the farm, rainwater was collected during the rainy season and stored in huge earthen jars that sat on the side of the house. During the dry season, workers were hired to carry water from the nearby well to fill up the jars. Because the water sat idle for a long time, it served as an ideal breeding ground for a swarm of mosquitoes. Geckos — up to six or seven-inches long — used to crawl on the walls and made their presence felt by making their characteristic noises: Cac Ke ... Cac Ke ... Cac Ke.... Outside, hens warned us in the morning they had laid their eggs with their Cu Tac ... Ca Tac ... Cu Tac ... calls. I knew it was time to run out and collect them. The orchard had about 40 to 50 longan trees as well as a few papaya and guava trees. The 20-to-30-foot-high trees produced flowers in spring then small longans that had to be covered until maturity. Ladders were used to reach the outermost branches where the clusters were the most difficult to cover. Workers peeled back the proximal leaves and carefully shoved the clusters of longans into straw bags. They then tied the neck of the bags to prevent bats from coming in contact with the fruits. Bats came out at dusk, made rapid circles above the trees, then dropped on their targets. They loved the juicy longans and could wipe out a whole tree in a couple of nights thereby greatly diminishing the harvest. Workers had to work fast for two to three weeks to prevent the destructive behavior of the hungry bats. Everyone would rest for the next two to three months during which the fruits matured. At the end of the summer, the air was filled with the fruity aroma of ripe longans. Grandmother would check whether they were ready for harvest. She would undo the straw tie and widen the neck of the bag before carefully pulling it back, making sure not to pull on the fruits themselves. At harvest time, workers broke the branches holding the bags and carefully passed them down to grandma. She opened the heavily loaded bags, pulled out the ripe longans and with great care set them aside. I remember the excitement in her voice, the sound of “uh ... ah”

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escaping from her lips as an expression of pleasure at the sight of the golden and ripe longans. She handled them with extreme gentleness as longans attached to their stalks were more valuable than loose ones. Ripe fruits were covered with a thin yellow-pinkish skin, which once peeled, let a sweet juicy liquid flow out. The trick was to catch the juice before it spilled all over one’s shirt. The fruit was then dropped into one’s mouth while the tongue was used to separate the soft velvety meat from its brown seed. It was time to spit out the seed and to enjoy the succulent meat. I loved longans’ sweet and juicy taste and could never resist the temptation to sample them, although over-sampling did result in indigestion or stomach cramps. Wholesale buyers came to the orchard to bargain. They bought large quantities of fruits and took them to the market for resale. Within two to three weeks, the harvest was completed and it was time for the clean up. The straw bags were left to dry in the sun then stored away so they could be reused next season.

Weekends at the Beach Vung Tau exhibited the simple and quiet atmosphere and the charm of a small town. It has two beaches: bai truoc (front) and bai sau (back). The two-mile long bai truoc was bordered by row after row of hundredyear-old palm and pine trees that gave it shade and protection from the hot tropical sun and an atmosphere of year-round greenery. It was bordered by a large mountain on the right side and a smaller one on the left. It was always crowded, especially on weekends because it was part of the town itself. The bai sau was remotely situated on the other side of the smaller mountain. It was less crowded and cleaner than the bai truoc. Without foliage, it did not provide any protection from the sun. The countryside peacefulness was shattered every weekend by the influx of thousands of Saigonese who suddenly doubled or tripled the town’s population. Demands for room, food, and entertainment skyrocketed and usually exceeded local capacity. Housewives — my grandmother included — put their houses up for rent. They went to the beach every Friday afternoon to look for their own customers. Visitors paraded their cars around town and drove aimlessly along the usually deserted roads. Cars and motorcycles that were rarely seen

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during weekdays appeared out of nowhere. Bumper to bumper traffic was common especially on beach roads. Vroom... Vroom.... Drivers fought for the right of way as they negotiated the narrow streets amidst heavy traffic. Yells, screams, laughs were heard everywhere. The beach suddenly became crowded, noisy, and bright with lights and sounds. Street vendors descended in swarms on the beach peddling all kinds of food. Spicy braised shrimp, boiled clams, and especially salty roasted crabs were offered along with the ubiquitous roasted dried squids that were consumed with hot hoisin sauce. Loud music could be heard hundreds of yards away. After the lively Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday morning peace descended on the town as one by one the “strangers” packed up and departed, leaving behind tons of garbage. It was time for grandmother to clean up the house, put everything back in order, and get ready for next week’s guests. My memories of my grandmother are still very strong. Like other Vietnamese women, she enjoyed chewing betel leaves and areca nut mixed with a little tobacco. During social gatherings, as guests chatted about their families and businesses, she would offer them betel leaves and areca nuts. The mixture was supposed to give them an “aphrodisiac” feeling. They then spat the red liquid into a jar or sometimes onto the ground, which when stepped on would stick to the soles of shoes like gel.

The Shrine of the Whale I also remember the time I went to the dinh, a large community hall about two-and-a-half miles from the orchard. Four gilded dragons, one in each corner, decorated the curved roofs of the dinh where all the county’s activities took place. A whale that had beached and died the night before gave the villagers an occasion to celebrate since it is unusually rare for a whale to beach close to the village. According to traditions borrowed from the Chams centuries ago, villagers would pay their last respects to the Ca Ong (King of the Fish) so that the spirits inhabiting the fish would help fishermen in their business. The Chams6 were a Hinduized civilization that flourished in present-day central Vietnam between the 7th and 15th centuries A.D. The Vietnamese, being selective, had adapted this foreign tradition and made it their own. Not as

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adept in seafaring as the Chams, they kept this tradition hoping whales would protect their fishermen from the perils of the sea. Monks dressed in saffron robes presided over the unprecedented ceremony. There were the usual offerings of fruits, flowers, and food that seemed to be more abundant than usual. I stood there in awe looking at the large plates of plump grapefruits, tropical green oranges, juicy longans, purple mangosteens, and spiny and suspiciously smelly durians. My eyes opened wide at the view of the graceful pink and white lotuses, yellow-gold chrysanthemums, and deep-red gladioli that were carefully arranged in gigantic earthen vases. A haze of lingering smoke emanated from the hundreds of lit incense sticks and candles. The villagers had brought home-made sticky rice cakes along with a variety of vegetarian dishes as offerings to Buddha and the spirit of the Ca Ong. The food was later served along with drinks to all the guests. The whale looked so huge that I was afraid of getting close to it. Although it was dead, it still looked frightening with its large, hazy eyes and its massive weight resting on a row of tables set up in the middle of the dinh. Never before had I seen such a large fish. I remember wondering how the villagers could have transported such a huge mammal from the beach to this place, especially through narrow, winding countryside roads. Nor did I know how they would dispose of it. The town must have mobilized all the villagers just to lift the whale off the beach. I only found out years later that they had disposed of the flesh but kept its skeleton stored in huge glass cases in the Lang Ca Ong (Shrine of the Whale). Vung Tau could then boast of having one of the few shrines in South Vietnam dedicated to the “cult of the whale” where visitors could come and revere this fishermen’s savior. On another occasion, Hat Boi was also performed at the dinh. These were traditional Vietnamese musical plays during which classic themes were rehashed: good versus evil, sages versus demons. Characters with given superhuman features engaged in fantastic adventures during which they tried to prove their moral greatness against evil creatures or devious people. The actors and actresses dressed in traditional multicolored costumes carried swords and spears with flags sticking out of pockets sewn to their backs. The heavy make-up they wore not only gave away the role they played but also conveyed their own emotions. For example, a strong and valiant prince always had his face painted in red with dark black eyelashes and a long silky beard. To the rhythm of traditional musi-

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cal instruments such as cymbals, gongs, tambourines, and flutes, the actors would retell familiar stories while gesticulating and moving around. Each gesture or facial expression was symbolic and full of historical meaning. These musical plays were magical and grandiose and drew audiences from near and far. I remember how fascinated I was by the display of colorful costumes, the facial expressions, armaments, and movements of actors and actresses. I especially loved the plays in which the good characters always won over the evil ones and I would ask my grandmother to take me to see the next play.

Colonial Education I lived in two worlds: one of Vietnamese tradition and the other made from remnants of French colonialism, which in the late 1950s coexisted uneasily before finally giving way to a predominant Vietnamese society. The Europeans came to Southeast Asia looking for spices and trade and for an access route to China as early as the 16th century. Others used the occasion to proselyte and teach Catholicism. At first, the Vietnamese kings and emperors looked away and tolerated them with some uneasiness. Believing they were sons of Heaven and in their mandate as emperors, they did not feel threatened by the infidels. However, as the influence of the priests grew, uneasiness turned into suspicion, then fear; at the urging of the mandarins (high court officials), the kings shut down all doors and contacts, trying to keep foreign influence at bay. The self-imposed isolation kept them in their backwardness and away from modern technological advances that could help improve the welfare of the people. Economic and cultural stagnation soon led to the downfall of the feudal monarchy in the face of foreign invasion. While living in Vung Tau, I first attended a grammar school managed by a French schoolmistress — a relic of French colonization. Looking back, I remember a rainy day in October when my grandmother unexpectedly showed up at the school with a raincoat for me. The teacher called me over to pick it up. Although thankful for her gesture, I was embarrassed because of all the parents it had to be MY own grandmother who showed up with a raincoat. I did not know how to deal with the situation and mumbled something the teacher could not understand. A big and loud “Thank you, Grandma” might have helped. The shy, soft,

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and lacking-warmth words I uttered did not, however, satisfy the teacher who sent me to the back room to sit in for the rest of the day. As I was not very adventurous, I had not explored the back of the building. I knew vaguely that there was a storage area but did not realize its real use. There, to my big surprise, I found many other students who were also “serving time” for various reasons. Amazingly, I wound up spending an interesting day in the back room and never enjoyed school that much. We made airplanes out of paper and threw them into the air. We were free to do anything we wished except make noise. The teacher, who was always in the front room busy taking care of the “good” students, rarely set foot in the back room. As I came home from school one day, I noticed a beautiful young lady sitting in the living room of our townhouse polishing her nails. Since I did not know what this stranger was doing in our house, I went to the back and asked my grandmother. She told me the lady was vacationing while waiting for her husband to pick her up. For a few days, I had a wonderful time with her. The lady, despite not being my mother, took me to the market and bought me toys, the delight of any child. There was nothing fancy, although I appreciated her care and warmth. She took me to the beach and let me swim in its warm waters while she read magazines. There was no question I missed her a lot when she left. It was only later that I thought what I missed was a real mother like her. I did not realize until years later that I was involved in a swap. My uncle and one aunt went to live with my mother in Saigon to further their schooling (there were no French high schools in Vung Tau), and in order to cut down on her workload — she had five children — she sent me to Vung Tau to stay with my grandmother. So for two school years, I lived apart from my parents and siblings. It never came to my mind to ask my mother why she singled me out for the swap because I knew she did the right thing and I really enjoyed living in the countryside during all this time. This period actually gave me another insight as to what life was all about. The following year, I went to study with the sisters at the St. Bethany convent. As in any Catholic institution, the beginning and the end of the day were devoted to prayers. Overall, the sisters were good teachers and I enjoyed studying with them. But I always thought they were best at making money. Since they knew very well that students could not resist sweet temptations, they brought out all kinds of candies

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and cookies to sell to the students during recess times. We all rushed out of classes to buy these candies and gorge ourselves. The sisters also sold books, pencils, papers, and other school supplies. From my youthful perspective, it looked as if the sisters were making a lot of money from us. The sisters were also great motivators. During the fall season (although Vietnam actually has but two seasons — rainy and dry), leaves would fall and cover the whole school ground. I did not know why they did not hire workers to rake the leaves. Perhaps they could not afford it or maybe they just did not want to. Whatever the case, the students were asked to do the job and therefore had to show up earlier than usual for that purpose. Later, we would be rewarded for our good deeds. After class began, we would line up in front of the sister and in turn would name our own prize: forty points for my friend Tam. And the sister dutifully would mark down the number in a big black register book — impressive in its size. I thought I would deserve a higher mark since I did more work than Tam. I settled for 80 points. And the sister dutifully wrote down the number. We then returned to our seats happy about having done a good deed while at the same time earning some extra points that would be added to our marks and could raise our overall standing in the class. And so every morning, we would come back and volunteer to work. This may explain why the sisters’ schoolyard was always the cleanest in the neighborhood. During the lunch recess that took place between 12 noon and 2 P.M., we walked home to take our lunch and to nap. Someone would beat a gong around 2 P.M. to advise children and employees to either return to school or to their offices. The tropical weather was so hot in Vietnam (air conditioning was not available at the time), that a long siesta during which schools and offices were closed was necessary. I later noticed that other countries like Mexico and Italy enjoy similar lunch breaks. During these recesses, I sometimes stayed back, waded in a small puddle of water in the back of the school or looked for crickets in the bushes. There was nothing like the freedom to roam around and search for the unknown. When I arrived home late for lunch, I would sustain a barrage of questions from my grandmother with occasional spanks on the butt if I did not give her the right answer. At the end of the school year, each family had to contribute to the commencement in order for us to obtain our reward. This came in the

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forms of books, crayons, pens, and so on, which were presented at a special ceremony. Students accompanied by their parents and relatives crowded a gathering hall. Following the usual speeches, students whose names were called came to the podium to receive their reward.

Buddhist Influence In that provincial atmosphere, besides countryside life and French education, I was also exposed to two major religions: Buddhism and Catholicism. Had I been brought up in busy Saigon like my brothers, that influence would not have been significant. The simple and relaxed life in Vung Tau brought people closer to religions. While Catholicism was brought into Vietnam by the French fairly recently, Buddhism has been present since the second century A.D. Buddhism permeated Asian society the same way that Christianity was the main religion in Europe and America. Coming from India and China, it spread into Vietnam from the second to the sixth centuries and reached the height of its glory between the seventh to fourteenth centuries A.D. Although not all Vietnamese actually practiced strict Buddhism, they followed a Buddhist code of living that explained why the South Vietnamese are benevolent, compassionate, and pacific. Contrary to their northern counterparts, they did not like to engage in war or killing, except under extenuating circumstances.7 On one occasion, I went with grandmother to her hometown, Ba Ria, to see her adviser, a hermit monk who lived on top of the Ba Ria mountain. Since there was no asphalt road to the top, we had to climb steep slopes through narrow mountain trails that accommodated only one person at a time. These trails that were not designed for visitors, but only for monks wanting to live in seclusion, were rugged and barely passable. Some steps were as short as a child’s foot or as high as a foot and a half. Others were missing or even non-existent. Time and traffic had taken its toll on these steps. By the time we reached the summit, I was so exhausted that all I wanted to do was to sit down on the porch to rest my cramped legs. I looked at the rugged but peaceful hills that spread all the way to the horizon while grandmother talked to the monk. I was impressed by the ascetic and simple life these monks led, far away from the corrupting ways of modern society. Visitors came to ask monks’

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advice on all subjects including affairs of the heart and family problems, as well as questions about religion and afterlife. In return, they offered the monks either goods, fruits, or money. The monks functioned as spiritual guides, advisers, and occasionally fortunetellers. They were the “learned” men who spent all their time studying, thinking, praying and dispensing their wisdom to lay people. Grandmother had a large prayer room at her orchard house with a three-foot tall bronze Buddha sitting atop the altar. This was her “sacred” area, and I used to walk into this place with awe, apprehension, and respect. The bronze statue inspired not only peace with its eternal and enigmatic smile, but also, for a youngster like me, a sense of power, mystery, and force. One could feel that there was something more in the air than just a simple statue. Grandmother insisted that everyone (usually my two aunts and I) be present at the hour-long nightly prayer session. It could take up to two hours, especially during certain Buddhist occasions. No exceptions were allowed as Saturday and Sunday were also prayer days. I used to dread these long prayer sessions. Worshippers donned brown gowns while saffron robes were reserved for monks. The worst thing I remember about these nightly sessions was the need to wear one of these brown robes. They were infrequently washed, and the pungent acid odor of the sweat from all worshippers who had worn them before clung to them. Only swarms of buzzing mosquitoes were attracted to this odor. I almost became sick every time I had a robe on. Grandmother began her nightly session by lighting up candles and incenses; slowly, in a very religious manner, she began reciting Nam Mo A Di Da Phat ... Nam Mo A Di Da Phat ... while beating on the gong. The rhythmic pounding of the wooden stick on the gong induced rapid relaxation and peace in the quiet evening. Once in a while, she hit a bronze bell that tolled a clear, sharp, and metallic sound: bong ... bong.... The sound disrupted the peacefulness of the night and marked the signal for everyone to bow down. Recitations would go on and on and were interrupted only by another bell sound. Soothed by the monotonous incantations, I fell asleep in the middle of the long and “challenging” prayer sessions. Neither the incantations nor the bell sounds could disturb my nap. My aunt would wake me up, but soon I fell asleep again and had to be brought to bed. While living in Vung Tau, during daytime, I had to say prayers to

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Jesus and the Virgin Mary at the sisters’ school, but at night, I had to don a brown robe to say prayers to Buddha. I keenly remember the routine: Praise the Lord or Ave Maria songs in the morning then Nam Mo A Di Da Phat incantations at night. Melodious songs and hymns in the morning were followed by the monotonous recitations of Buddhist texts in the evenings. That was enough to give any youngster a split personality, although I moved from one religion to another without difficulty. I had no problem talking to a Buddhist nun one minute or to a Catholic sister the next one: for me they were both good people. I was reciting the verses like a bird because I really did not understand the meaning of the Buddhist and Catholic texts at that time. I was therefore repulsed by their stiffness and routine. I only realized years later that they were the foundations of my upbringing and would help me in my search for peace of mind and meaning of life. More than the reciting of incomprehensible texts and monotonous incantations, these hours of prayers forced me to turn inward and look at another dimension of life. This was my introduction to spirituality without which life could not reach its full potential and meaning. The local pagoda in Vung Tau housed many Buddhist monks, apprentices, and nuns. It was a huge one-story spread-out complex with lodgings, kitchens, working areas, and a large gathering hall located at one end of a large lotus pond. The main hall was presided over by a 15foot-tall bronze Buddha statue along with numerous smaller statues of all sizes from different countries. There were even a few Indian Buddha statues with twelve arms, six on each side. Each Buddha had its own and particular gaze: peaceful for some and stern for others. A soft and permanent smile graced the face of some statues while others remained stone-faced and tight-lipped. An overall air of mystery, majesty and power permeated the praying area and caused guests to enter the hall with awe and respect. The poorly lit hall (due in part to the absence of windows) increased the mystery of the environment. Hundred of incenses and candles were lit during main celebrations. Swirls of dense incense smoke gracefully floated around the statues suspended in limbo in midair while emanating celestial aromas all over the area. Offerings of bananas, oranges, pineapples, and durians were prominently displayed on the altar along with a multitude of flowers. Monks sang prayers while hitting gongs and bells intermittently during these celebrations that could last a long time.

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The Lotus Pond I was too young, bored, and uninterested to participate in these major celebrations. I therefore joined the young apprentice monks behind the pagoda close to the lotus pond. We jumped into one of the canoes anchored on the shoreline and paddled around the pond, admiring the thousands of green lotus leaves that seemed to float on the surface of the water among beautiful pink lotus flowers, some in full bloom. Nothing instilled an image of peacefulness and permanency more than these green lotus leaves sitting still, impervious and unsinkable on the surface of the water. It was no wonder that people had always painted Buddha sitting and meditating on a lotus leaf. The apprentice told me about how they used lotus flowers to decorate the altars, stems of the flowers to cook side dishes, and lotus seeds to eat. The lotus flower thus had multiple uses besides symbolizing the purity and freshness of the soul that even mud could not stain. Then one of the apprentices would recite the famous folk song: Nothing is more beautiful than the lotus in the pond, Green leaves, white flowers, amidst yellow stamens, Yellow stamens, white flowers, green leaves, Close to mud, yet does not smell muddy at all. We paddled slowly, savoring every minute of freedom and peacefulness looking at the fish swimming just below the surface of the limpid water while butterflies and dragonflies swirled around us in complete silence. The barking of a dog in the distance or the chirping of the birds occasionally interrupted this quietness. There was nothing more peaceful than taking a ride around this isolated lotus pond: no wind, no ripples, and no noises. The overall atmosphere conveyed an image of serene peacefulness that symbolized Vietnam just emerging from colonialism. It also allowed me to let my thoughts wander in the quiet and deserted countryside among the beautiful lotus flowers, a time for recollection and healing. That was the reason I always came back to take more rides around this pond. The full circle around the pond took us some time to cover. When it was time to turn around, I would beg for another trip around the pond to no avail. As the canoe reached the shore, I jumped into the water trying to get to the ground first. Once though, the bottom of the pond

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turned out to be deeper than expected and I got all wet. I remember how the apprentices started laughing, then brought me inside, took off my clothes to dry, and gave me a snack while I was waiting for my clothes. On another occasion as I was sitting in front of the boat, I leaned forward and saw minnows swimming right under the still surface of the water. I dropped the iron chain to see whether it would scare the fish. When I turned around, to my surprise I found a minnow swimming in a small puddle at the bottom of the boat. I tried to do it again, but this time no new fish got trapped into the boat. I never found out whether it was just a coincidence or whether the chain had forced the fish to get in through a small hole at the bottom of the boat. This was life in Vung Tau and South Vietnam in general as I knew it in the early and mid–1950s. Life was bucolic, tranquil and simple, and the people were happy and benevolent. Life unwound itself before us, lovely and peaceful like the stillness of the pond with its lotus flowers, its minnows and its absence of ripples. There was no rumor about war or killing. My countrymen and I were lulled by this peacefulness that in retrospect left us unprepared for the fact that this idyllic life would not last long and that worse things were about to fall on all of us.

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Remembering Saigon Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: In “Remembering Saigon” a Viet Kieu remembers the old Saigon with its flower market, soccer games, autumn festival, and lengthy preparations for the Tet festival. The Cho Cu market where food was served outdoors, the French architecture, the influence of the Americans and the languorous times spent at the Saigon pier are recounted. It was a city with diverse backgrounds and strong Chinese, French, American and Vietnamese influences. The women in their tightly fit ao dai with their free ends floating in the wind evoked an image of yin in a yang environment. Saigon was and remains an entrepreneurial, rebellious, and non-conformist city that personifies the South Vietnamese spirit.

The largest city in the country was a bustling commercial city. It was a sleepy Cambodian (Khmer) fishing settlement known as Prey Nokor when the Vietnamese settled around it in 1624 and began to control it in 1698.1 In the early 1970s at the height of the American intervention, it boasted almost two million people, although that number could be two to three times higher due to the large influx of refugees coming from the countryside. It was the economic center of South Vietnam, the eye, ear, and heart of the country. Rice harvested from the lush paddy fields of the Mekong Delta, fish and shrimp farm-raised along the banks of the river, rubber from the surrounding plantations, and tea and coffee from the central highlands were all shipped to Saigon for trade. Imported goods arrived at the port of Saigon. This was where commerce began and ended in Vietnam.

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Downtown Saigon Remnants of French architecture were apparent in many sections of the city, among them the Opera House (former Congressional Building), the City Hall, the Main Post Office, and Notre Dame Cathedral. Majestic boulevards lined with hundred-year-old trees and dotted with high-rise buildings and chic villas coexisted with small winding alleys lined with corrugated-steel covered shacks and crumbling houses. Saigon was crowded, dirty, and disorganized in some areas, while it was serene, upscale, and almost deserted in others. Beautiful women were seen wearing exotic ao dai —Vietnamese tunics slit on both sides from the waist down — or tailored European outfits, and mixed with poorly-dressed people in multicolored shirts with black pants. Saigon was a city of wide contrasts, a city for rich and poor that served at one time as a French provincial city: It was once dubbed as the “Pearl of southeast Asia.” Giant tamarind trees grew on both sides of certain streets. They became so huge and had such dense foliage that they provided a perfect shade from the sizzling summer sun. I once felt like I was biking under a canopy of jungle trees each September when I returned to school. Nowadays, the sight of a tamarind immediately brings back to me the memories of these school years where I got my first taste of freedom, met my first school friends, and played and competed against them in many curricular and extra-curricular activities. Close by stood the Gia Long School, where beautiful, shy and giggling girls wearing their white ao dai could be encountered. I remember fondly watching them walking on the sidewalks with one hand clutching their books and the other holding onto their non la (conical hat) as the wind frequently displaced the hat off their heads. The free ends of their ao dai undulated in the breeze and their thick, black, and silky hairs fell like a nape all the way down their waists. The ao dai molded tightly against the curvatures of their bodies exposing their beauty. It has been said that they hid everything but also exposed everything. The girls wore wooden guoc (clogs) that beat the pavement with rhythmic noises Coc ... coc ... coc. I used to marvel at how they could move with such ease and precision in their slippery guoc while holding onto their non la, hair, and ao dai that floated in the wind. The grace and gentleness with which they moved, still strikes me to this day. They conveyed an image of the frailty of the Vietnamese in the middle of political storms and war

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tragedies. This was the picture of yin in the middle of a yang environment. I often biked down Cong Ly Avenue and the Presidential Palace would appear on my right. If I turned left in front of the Palace, I ended up on Thong Nhat Avenue. There stood the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral, the main Post Office, the American Embassy and at the end of the avenue the Saigon Zoo and National Museum. Cong Ly Avenue led me straight to the Intercontinental and Majestic hotels. During the height of the war, these places became favorite gathering areas for American GIs, foreign journalists, and businessmen who exchanged tips or traded news about the war and Saigon politics. Further down the road flowed the Saigon River, which brought an array of foreign ships and with them merchandise, tales, and news from abroad in exchange for rice, seafood, rubber, and the local charm of the jewel of Southeast Asia. My parents used to take us to the Bach Dang pier to watch the huge foreign ships load and unload their merchandise and to look at sampans and rowboats gliding quietly on the dark waters of the river. This was another image of yin (sampans) and yang (ships) at work and Saigon was full of these contrasting images. The river, which must have been clear at its source, had collected all the garbage humans dumped into it throughout its journey to the sea. When the river waters finally arrived in Saigon, they had acquired a dark and sad color that was beyond recognition. They nonetheless made their way into the ocean where they would dump their load and regain their fresh color by mixing with ocean water. Once in a while, the noise of a motorized engine ripped the air and disturbed the quiet peace. A few ducks waddled in the cold waters and quacked relentlessly. We sat on the pier under a large umbrella sipping cold drinks and savoring the light breeze that swept the area while dreaming about a boat trip to a faraway island. Close by was the My Canh floating restaurant where people could dine while watching river activities. The exotic location attracted many customers — mostly foreigners. The Viet Cong used the occasion to terrorize the population: They blew it up in June, 1965, killing 124 people including 28 Americans. We were brought back to reality when sunset rays signaled the time to go home. We then went to the Cho Cu (Old Market) to have dinner together. There were many indoor restaurants along with excellent outdoor dining areas that served dishes from noodles with Peking duck to

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pho.2 Meals were washed down with delicious desserts of lychee drinks and xam bo luong, Chinese fruity drinks that were claimed to be energy boosters. As in many Asian cities, outdoor dining provided some of the best food in the city in a casual and relaxed atmosphere. On weekends, while ladies enjoyed shopping, their husbands went to the stadium to enjoy soccer matches between Saigonese and foreign teams. Soccer was the main sporting attraction in the country with the two best teams being “Army” and “Customs.” I remember these times when my father took us to the large Cong Hoa stadium in Cho Lon to watch these games. A smaller downtown stadium had been torn down because of its inability to accommodate large crowds. We had to arrive early to the stadium otherwise there would be no good places left. We pushed and shoved trying to squeeze through the small gates and sat through rain and heat to watch our team play and cheer it up. We either came home jubilant or depressed depending on whether our team won or lost, although the experience was always entertaining.

Flower Market Saigon would not be Saigon without its flower market that gathered a few weeks before the Tet festival. Tet fell between January 19 and February 26, and marked the Oriental New Year as well as everyone’s birthday. According to oriental customs, everyone was considered one year older on Tet day no matter which month he was born in. This explains why Tet was such a big holiday in Vietnam. Most people celebrated it for three days, while those who could afford it took the whole month off. Preparations began as early as two to three months prior to the date. My parents would have new outfits custom-made. We went shopping for new shoes. This was the busiest time of the year for the tailors who worked overtime to complete their customers’ orders. Each customer would have two to three new outfits made and brought in an array of fabrics in all colors, in silk, brocade, or just plain but expensive fabric. Houses were brushed up and sometimes repainted, broken doors and windows were repaired, new curtains made, and chandeliers and silverware polished. This was the time to settle all the debts, as they could bring bad luck for the incoming year.

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There was fervor in the air. People were on the move. They bought everything and merchants had their best time ever. Candles, incenses, and firecrackers were sold along with grapefruits, watermelons, persimmons, oranges and so on. There were rice cakes filled with pork meat called banh chung and banh tet as well as candies, cakes, sweet dried fruit, soft drinks, and beer. The flower market took place on Nguyen Hue Avenue in downtown Saigon. Ablaze with colors and filled with sweet fragrance, it remained open daily until midnight and closed on lunar New Year’s Eve. The spectacle was even more spectacular at night. A rich variety of flowers were found: dahlias, yellow chrysanthemums, red cockscombs, red and white poinsettias, yellow “mai” (Prunus mume tree), orchids and kumquat trees. We went from one vendor to another to try to get the best deal possible. Vendors, on the other hand, hawked their products extolling the beauty and freshness of their flowers and competed for customers’ attention. My parents chose a mai, the flower of Tet, and hoped it would bloom during the length of the Tet festival: This would be a sign of good luck for the incoming year. Vietnamese people lived more with their feelings, predictions, and hopes than on actively seeking or fighting for something concrete. They spent a lot of money on fortunetellers trying to foresee the future — especially during the Tet period. Teenagers dressed in their best outfits accompanied by their boy- or girlfriends used the occasion to stroll around the marketplace to see and be seen. Whole blocks of Nguyen Hue Avenue were blocked off to traffic so pedestrians could stroll at their leisure. Family members traveled long distances in order to get home to celebrate Tet under the same roof, for the festival is a family affair. Vietnamese, despite their rambunctious and divisive spirit, liked to be together at least during the few Tet days. At the strike of midnight, people moved to their front porch to light up firecrackers and watch them blast into the darkness of the sky. Other families would do the same by lighting up the longest and most expensive chain of firecrackers. The explosions of firecrackers dominated the silence of the night and went on for a long time while the smoke and smell generated by the explosions filled up the air. We went to bed eagerly waiting for the next three full days of celebration that commemorated the passing of the old year and the welcoming of the new one. We woke up the next morning, put on our new outfits, and set out

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to greet our parents. We gathered in the main room while our parents sat in chairs to preside over the ceremony. One by one we came around, bowed, greeted them Chuc mung nam moi (Happy New Year), and wished them good luck and excellent health for the incoming year. In return we received our li xi (lucky money) in brand new and good-smelling banknotes placed in tiny red envelopes. They were so new and crispy that we dared not fold them, but held them gingerly in our hands. We then sat down for breakfast. If the mai flowers were blooming yellow gold, if the watermelons were bright red on the inside and tasted juicy and sweet, chances for a good and successful year would be great. Members of the family went to pagodas to burn incense and pray for good fortune and health. Others went to church for the same reason. We visited relatives and received more li xi money that made us temporarily “endowed” with material riches that rapidly disappeared in games or movie tickets. We loved to watch the “dance of the dragon” performed by groups of acrobats and dancers. One acrobat held a huge dragonhead while others carried the dragon’s long and colorful tail. There was also a dia, a mythical creature dressed as fat man with a moonlike face who fanned himself with a paper fan. The acrobats would execute dances to the rhythm and beats of drums and cymbals. The whole procession went from house to house dancing, contorting and jumping to the sound of music. They then formed a human pyramid in order to reach a prize or money tied to a pole and placed at the level of the first floor balcony. More firecrackers were lit up. We used to play bau cua ca cop, a dice game simple enough for everybody to understand and play. A game mat with six printed animals and objects such as a gourd, a crab, a fish, a shrimp, a rooster and a deer was laid on the floor. We placed bets on one or more figures while the dealer shook a container holding three dice. The sides of each die were carved with pictures corresponding to the paintings on the mat. The game went on until a few players lost all their money. The losers were of course disappointed, while the winners grinned from ear to ear. Once we tired of the games, we went to the movie theaters to enjoy the best selections of the years. All stores and offices were closed during this three-day period. Family members spent time rekindling old friendships and enjoying themselves with playing cards and games. It was a special time when we put our worries behind us and simply let it be. We talked and talked in an

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atmosphere of peace and brotherhood. We tried to be nice and to comfort each other as yelling, screaming, and vulgarity were forbidden during this period. Even enemies tried to make amends or avoided harming each other. We really lived in a period of truce and I wondered at times why we could not prolong that truce for a longer period. Once Tet was over, everyone returned to their usual frame of mind and began yelling and screaming again: The truce once again was broken. The other major celebration was the mid-autumn or harvest festival during which we enjoyed moon cakes and walked around the neighborhood carrying candle-lit lanterns joyfully singing: During the mid-autumn festival, I would stroll around with my lit lantern, Stroll around the neighborhood with my lit lantern... Lanterns came in different sizes, shapes, and colors. Some were shaped as fish, elephants, rabbits with furry ears, boats with chimneys, cars with fancy tails, houses, gourds, birds, and so on. We were thrilled by the variety and colors of these lanterns and showed them off to our friends. The ones with the fanciest decorations were the most expensive ones. We returned home and enjoyed our moon cakes while our parents sipped hot tea and watched the full moon. These are the tender memories of my youth days in Saigon. They are forever ingrained in my memory.

Southern Mentality If Saigon is the South Vietnamese’s capital, it also reflects their frame of mind and spirit. The Saigonese in particular and the South Vietnamese in general are small merchants who usually work for themselves or their families. They are highly individualistic and have difficulty working together: They therefore have never been able to form large associations or capital ventures to compete head-to-head with the Chinese. An old saying goes “Two Vietnamese usually work well together. Add a third one and discord and disruption will follow.” The hard lessons of history have taught them not to trust anyone except themselves and they have absorbed the lessons very well. They have fought off the many invasions of the Chinese, the Chams, the Khmers, the French, and the Japanese.3 On many occasions, they lost

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their freedom but had always recovered it through their own will and stubborn resistance to foreigners. Their pride, self-confidence, and inner strength play a major role in this attitude. The Vietnamese have preserved their unique brand of individualism, for conformity involved losing a sense of self-worth. They do not know how to cooperate and then still keep a mentality of warlords, not that of nationhood. Nothing expresses that that attitude better than the following saying: I’m going home to bathe in my pond. Whether it is clean or dirty, I like my pond better. This individualist attitude, however, cut them off from the scientific advances and technological know-how of the modern world. In the 19th century, kings Gia Long (r. 1802–1820) and Minh Mang (r. 1820–1841), when faced with the arrival of the Europeans and their new ideas, instead of modernizing their country reverted to their old Confucian thinking. They shut out modern ideas hoping to rule forever on their land in their own ignorance. Vietnam, isolated and regressive, became powerless when the French set foot on Vietnamese soil. Knives and spears were no match for guns and canons. Fierce patriotism and national pride could not stand tall against modern European military might. Arrows and stakes could not compete against guns. Two thousand soldiers were thus enough to take down a country of 6–10 million people. This was the Vietnamese replica of the Cortez expedition against the Incas. The bounties of the Mekong Delta have also shaped the mind and spirit of the South Vietnamese. In a land where rice and food are plentiful, they tend to mellow down and enjoy life. Anything can give reason to celebrate and to have a good time. They invite friends and neighbors over to eat and drink. These sessions could take a big part of the day or night. And the next day, someone else would throw another party. Not to be outdone, another would give another treat on another occasion. Kamm once mentioned that the South Vietnamese are “unrestrained to the point of indiscipline ... ready to laugh or to cry, quick to flare in anger and almost as quick to forgive and forget, easy of approach and little given to pretense.”4 The Viet Kieu had left Saigon for three decades during which many had not returned home. They still longed to return to Saigon for a visit and sadly sang:

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O Saigon, I promise ye I will return, My love, I will keep my promise... I however will never forget you. This is how I remember Saigon, a city where I was born and grew up, a city of many memories good and bad, one that I lost and did not see again for more than three decades, and one that exemplifies the “easygoing-ness,” resilience, and combativeness of the South Vietnamese. Saigon, Hue, and Hanoi are the three main and characteristic cities of South, Central and North Vietnam. If Saigon is a frantic commercial center that embraces modernism at its core, it also has its romantic side that millions of Viet Kieu still long for. It is not like Hanoi, a colonial city frozen in time with its century-old French buildings and its sedated communist atmosphere or the imperial Hue that still resonates with a sweet and decadent perfume of the last Vietnamese emperors. Saigon’s history is anchored in the future. The day it stops experimenting and modernizing — that day would mark the end of Saigon. Saigon has changed hands on many occasions throughout history: Its masters have been the Khmers, the Nguyen lords, the Tay Son, the late Nguyen emperors once again, the French, the Japanese, the Ngo’s and Thieu, the Americans, and the North Vietnamese. Conquerors have come and gone, but Saigon remains steady, unbowed and undeterred. Although it fell to its knees in 1975, it rebounded economically a decade later. It once more has become noisy, bustling, entrepreneurial, and vibrant and has regained its former image. Like a rebellious child, it writes its own story and charts its own course. Although Saigon is now formally known as Ho Chi Minh City, a lot of southerners still call it Saigon, a rebellious, resilient, and free spirit kind of a town; a Mistress on the Mekong River that thrives on adversity and re-emerges anew and vibrant after each defeat.

3

The Vietnam War: Snapshots Chat V. Dang

EDITOR’S NOTE: The causes of the war loss are discussed in this chapter.

The Mirage of the Media Scholars studying the Vietnam War and American soldiers who fought on the battlefields, in the thick tropical jungles, in the forests of the Central Vietnam Mountains, and in the Mekong Delta’s vast paddies, intricate canals and treacherous swamps, easily agree on one concept: The free world lost the war because the power of the media, which brought all the gore of the fighting to American living rooms every evening. What many did not know was that there was a two-way street in the influence of the media. Dr. Norman Hoover related an almost comical situation in the 1988 AMA project report. Dr. Nguyen Phuoc Dai was the Director and Chief of Surgery at Saigon Hospital, located near the Central Market. The hospital served as a blunt trauma center, receiving victims from traffic accidents. Dr. Dai had a tough appearance and personality, and distinguished himself during the Tet offensive with his Rambo attitude,1 accompanying ambulances evacuating injured civilians from hotly contested neighborhoods around the Phu Tho racetrack. Dr. Dai wanted to visit American surgical training programs. Arrangements were made for him to tour some of the U.S. schools and do a short fellowship. He was looking forward to his trip abroad and had been frequently checking on the progress of the formalities. At the time, U.S. 38

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Armed Forces television was showing the widespread protests and riots on U.S. campuses and in U.S. cities. As his departure approached, Dr. Dai suddenly told Dr. Hoover that he did not want to go anymore. After a lot of prodding, he confessed he felt that the streets of America were not safe for him! A passage from the AMA project report2 will help understand Dr. Dai: “Those (Americans) who were in Saigon were not nearly as concerned about their safety as those who were watching American television screens. Actually, although more than 2000 American support personnel participated in the program, there was not a single case of American death, injury, or capture related to the war in the nine years of the AMA and American Dental Association (ADA) projects. The same was true of the USAID–AMA Volunteer Physicians for Vietnam (VPVN) Program, under which 774 physicians served 1,029 tours of duty from 1965–73.”

Healers as Heroes Dr. Loran B. Morgan, an ophthalmologist and the son of a banker, was one of the VPVN doctors. During his third tour in Vinh Long, he improvised a device for ocular irrigation, which was the precursor of the Morgan lens familiar to U.S. emergency physicians and ophthalmologists.3 The device, now a standard instrument in U.S. emergency rooms, allows for hands-free continuous irrigation of the eye with a sterile solution of balanced salt to get rid of bacteria, debris and chemicals, especially acids or alkalis that can lead to the loss of vision. Dr. Morgan felt so fulfilled and unthreatened by the war that he volunteered a total of four rotations of two months each. When interviewed by a reporter, he said, “There is so much good to be done in 60 days. I don’t know of any other place in the world you could do that much good in that short of a time.... I realized at that time, and I always will that it is a great privilege to have done this.” While in Vietnam, Dr. Morgan met Dr. Patricia Smith who had worked since 1959 in Kontum Province in the Central Highlands,4 caring for the Montagnards,5 whose primitive practices and beliefs were similar to those found in indigenous Austro-Melanesian cultures. Superstitious and independent to the point of being rebellious, the Montagnards distrusted the “lowland” Vietnamese. Dr. Smith earned their

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confidence after she saved the young daughter of a village chief. In profound shock from severe vomiting and diarrhea, the 12-year-old child was dying despite the efforts of sorcerers. Members of her family had started to hollow a log to make a casket. However, the little girl quickly recovered when Dr. Smith stayed up all night to give her intravenous fluids. The reputation of the “Big Grandmother of Medicine,” as she was called, quickly spread and patients started to flock to her small dispensary. Dr. Smith then pressed for the building of Minh Quy Hospital, which grew into an 87-bed facility, and which she helped maintain and staff with funds raised in Seattle, her hometown, and from International Catholic Relief. American units operating in the area frequently donated medical supplies to the hospital. In March 1968, right after the Tet offensive, she barely escaped death when North Vietnamese troops went through the hospital, shooting up most of its facilities, looking for the “Americans.” More than 30 Montagnard staff and patients had the presence of mind to act terrified and lie on top of her, effectively hiding her. Unshaken, she remained to rebuild the hospital and continued to work there until 1972. With the Fiery Red Summer attacks on Kontum, she was ordered to evacuate by American authorities and agreed to do so after Msgr. Paul Seitz, the last French bishop left in Vietnam, told her, “You must go; Kontum is lost. They will kill every American here. I am a French citizen. It will be different for me.” On the grounds of Cho Ray Hospital was a modern plastic and reconstructive surgery center named after Dr. Arthur J. Barsky. He was a Manhattan plastic surgeon who had operated on women disfigured at Hiroshima and wrote Principles and Practice of Plastic Surgery (Williams and Wilkins, 1950). He and lawyer Thomas R. Miller were so moved by the war injuries that they founded Children’s Medical Relief International in 1966, and set up the 54-bed Barsky Unit with USAID assistance. I was a third year medical student when the unit opened in 1969. Mesmerized by its modern construction and total air conditioning, some of my classmates and I used to go there on our free time to try to learn from its surgeons, as a formal rotation had not been established. One plastic surgeon with a thick southern American accent, on finding that we were medical students, was very eager to teach us. He wanted to meet every day in a classroom at 1:00 P.M., a time usually reserved for noon break in tropical countries. However, besides sharing unconventional concepts of surgical knowledge and technique, he was also trying to con-

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vert us to his Christian faith. He preached that believing in God would automatically absolve us of all past, present and future sins. We rapidly concluded that he was not a good surgeon, teacher or preacher, and disappeared from his sight whenever we encountered him. In the end, our education did not benefit much from the Barsky’s international staff of American, Canadian, British and Vietnamese surgeons who cared for children victims of the war as well as of home accidents, congenital malformations or a disfiguring infection called noma. The center treated about 100 children a month up to April, 1975. It was there that Phan Thi Kim Phuc was treated. She was the 9-year-old naked girl captured in a June 8, 1972, photo running in agony after having been burned by napalm bomb dropped from a South Vietnamese plane. She was later “paraded” by the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In 1992, while studying in Cuba, she was able to defect to Canada where she works for UNESCO.6

The End of the Vietnam War In early 1975, Dr. Huynh Van Huon, a family friend and the Minister of Health (Tong Truong Y Te), requested that I be reassigned to his staff, officially based on my status as one of the few Vietnamese physicians holding the ECFMG certificate. Dr. Huon was the Medical Director of Nguyen Van Hoc Medical Center in Gia Dinh, and personally knew me when I was a surgery intern there. My role was to assist with the translation and drafting of English documents or correspondence, and to advise on medical issues that might be presented to the Ministry of Health. Minister Huon jokingly told me that he had heard that I had read Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine from cover to cover. Later, I also participated in the drafting of security plans for the Minister while he traveled to the countryside. This happened when his trusted security detail discovered in casual discussions that I had many valuable tactical suggestions based on my penchant for visualizing and addressing multiple scenarios with redundant solutions. I accompanied Minister Huon on his numerous trips in the final days of the war to help improve conditions in the overcrowded camps for refugees fleeing the war zones. We traveled either by station wagon or by helicopter. My last major trip was when we were flown into Danang by Air Vietnam for a one-day fact-

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finding mission. We were briefed that the military situation was deteriorating without massive air support, and that American-made 155mm howitzers available for the defense of Danang were far inferior in reach to the enemy Soviet-made 122mm recoilless cannons, 15 km versus 23 km. That afternoon, while I was waiting for my return flight at the airport, I was startled by a holler, “Bac Si Chat!” An emaciated middleaged man of small stature was quickly trotting his way toward me. Set in a deeply tanned face, his bloodshot eyes were blinking nervously. Sporting a crew cut, but wearing a civilian white and green plaid shirt and khaki shorts that appeared soiled from lying or rolling on the ground, was my Corporal Nurse from Duy Tan Hospital. He grinned widely, still blinking furiously, looking surprised but glad to see me. I briefly thought to myself that with his shuffling gait, he might not be sober. I wondered, as he did recognize me, when was the last time he had a drink; or a decent meal; or a bath. Did he look disheveled and dirty because he was drunk and left to lie on the street the previous night? What was he up to at the airport looking like a beggar? Had he deserted from his unit? Feeling awkward, we exchanged greetings and banalities. I gave him some money, and it dawned on me to ask him to take a message to my future parents-in-law. I hastily scribbled on a piece of paper that I was in Danang on official business only for the day, and that they should send their youngest two sons to Saigon as soon as possible. I do not know what happened to my former nurse, but the note was never delivered. Three days after we left Danang, the town was cut off from the rest of the country. Panic set in and people were seen desperately clinging to the landing gears of the last few commercial DC-3 planes flying out of Danang, which was lost on March 30, 1975. As South Vietnam was dissolving under the “Red Tide” like a sand castle washed away by powerful waves, civilian doctors, pharmacists, and nurses staffing the Ministry of Health provincial hospitals were abandoning their jobs to run for their lives. One of the most dramatic events occurred when barges jam-packed with refugees from the Hue-Danang area were towed into Nha Trang harbor. Several dozen children onboard were suffering from severe dehydration after many days at sea. They were brought to the provincial hospital and attended to only by the dedicated nursing staff remaining at the facility. Dr. Huon was in Nha Trang surveying the public health capability. After an exhausting all-day-long fact

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finding trip, when informed of the tragic situation, he and his American physician adviser immediately went to the hospital and worked feverishly to save the unfortunate children. Many children perished in front of their eyes. The next day, April 3, Nha Trang was abandoned and Dr. Huon was lucky to find transportation for himself. Back in Saigon, Dr. Huon gathered his staff to thank them and encouraged them to help those children who required oversea medical treatment unavailable in Vietnam. Then at the monthly cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Tran Thien Khiem, Dr. Huon reported on the Nha Trang situation and tended his resignation. From Quang Tri, which had been “liberated” since the Fiery Summer of 1972, town after town, province after province fell to the advancing North Vietnamese Army. How could the ARVN crumble so quickly considering that the population of South Vietnam was seen on television screens worldwide “voting with their feet,” running away from the “liberated areas”? One fundamental explanation might be the difference between the two ideologies. Communism was able to foster, according to James Bruton,7 a “disciplined single-mindedness of purpose ... to ensure that the front organizations and military forces were achieving their stated ends.... Communist victory in the war is a case study of management-by-objective.” North Vietnam was not outfighting the government of South Vietnam so much as “out-administering” it.8 Furthermore, there were two different battlefield realities. Atheist international communism launched offensive armies who fought while soldiers’ families safely remained in North Vietnam (U.S. bombing had ceased), while millennium-old Confucianism with its family-centered cult of ancestors permeated the defensive psychologies of South Vietnamese whether Catholic or Buddhist. The collapse started in the Central Highlands at Ban Me Thuot where under pressure from the enemy, ARVN troops were abandoning their positions and units to go home and evacuate their families, using any means available including Jeeps and helicopters. Thus began on March 15, the retreat toward Tuy Hoa on the Central Coast known as the “Convoy of Tears” with horrendous military and civilian losses. Clinton Granger,9 a staff member at the U.S. National Security Council, wrote that ARVN soldiers were more concerned about the future of their families than the responsibilities to a government which might not be able to protect them. He believed that this one factor, more than any other, explained the rout in MR I and II.10

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A third major reason is what could be labeled as “programmed failure,” stemming from American strategists not trusting their South Vietnamese allies from the beginning of the Vietnam War. Why was it that North Vietnam was supplied with advanced surface-to-air missiles (capable of bringing down highflying B52 strategic bombers) and Mig 21 jet fighters by the Soviet Union while Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky had to do a bombing run over North Vietnam on a propeller-driven Skyraider? Why was it that the U.S. never developed the capacity of South Vietnam to produce its own military spare parts and ammunition, all of which were sorely deficient in the last year of the war? Were President Richard Nixon and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger the final programmers with their Vietnamization and “Peace with honor” rhetoric after they had concluded that China was no longer a strategic threat to the U.S. and that therefore the domino theory11 from President Dwight Eisenhower’s and President John Kennedy’s times had become obsolete? Even General Vo Nguyen Giap knew what Vietnamization meant when he was quoted in a July 1970 Foreign Affairs article by Robert Johnson12: “We do have the warning last December [1969] of General Giap, North Vietnam’s Defense Minister, that Vietnamization will be a ‘tragedy’ for U.S. and South Vietnamese forces and that these forces ‘which have taken severe beatings will get yet harder ones.’” This is not to say that the U.S. did not want South Vietnam to survive and succeed. It was just while the communist bloc kept its unwavering support of North Vietnam,13 the U.S. was “drawing down”14 prematurely to fulfill an election promise to an increasingly tired and pacifist American people. A fourth contributing factor might be the oil crisis of 1973,15 which resulted in drastically reduced interdiction flights over the Ho Chi Minh trail, which was by then functioning as a multiple-lane highway. Troops, equipment, and provisions were easily amassed by the North Vietnamese Army in preparation for the all-out invasion. In a now declassified secret report to President Ford dated April 4, 1975, General Fred Weyand, then Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, assessed: “As of 1 April, the predominantly North Vietnamese communist combat force in South Vietnam outnumbers equivalent GVN16 forces just under 3 to 1 in size.”17 The fifth element might be poor planning or rather poor leadership. Apparently, there were conflicting orders coming from the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff (Tong Tham Muu). Battle-hardened forward units were given orders to resist followed by orders to retreat to

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preserve their forces, to be again reordered to prepare for a glorious final stand. With conflicting orders, an orderly retreat could not be executed. Sixth, there was most likely a very effective psychological war being waged. Rumors were that negotiations at the highest levels had agreed to a parallel further south to separate the two parts of the country instead of the previous division line at the 17th parallel. This compelled people and ARVN units north of that fictitious parallel to try to make it south as soon as possible. Who would want to fight for land that had already been conceded? And obviously, the dividing parallel was shifted every few days further and further south. A seventh possible explanation was a gamble from the South Vietnamese political leaders based on wishful thinking and an erroneous understanding of the U.S. Congress. After the loss of Quang Tri province, President Richard Nixon had promised to commit U.S. forces again if there was a full-scale invasion of South Vietnam. But President Nixon was no longer in charge. He had resigned on August 8, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Wielding little clout, President Gerald Ford was requesting emergency funds and assistance that were ignored by the U.S. Congress. Conceivably, President Nguyen Van Thieu might have allowed territorial loss without a struggle when he decided the so-called “tactical redeployment,” hoping that faced with the flagrant violations of the Paris Peace Accords, U.S. forces would be reordered back into South Vietnam, or at least massive American air support would be again provided. There were rumors in Saigon that B-52 bombings had resumed and were devastating to the communist advancing units. The rumors were false and might have originated from the use of two CBU-55B hyperbaric, oxygen-depriving air-fueled bombs in the last major battle of the Vietnam War, the battle of Xuan Loc, less than 40 miles northeast of Saigon.

4

A Pilgrim Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: The end of the war led to the escape to a foreign land. Recollections about the last few years in the Mekong Delta are recounted.

There I stood on June 25, 1975, in front of the New London, Connecticut, train station pondering the future while waiting for my friend and his large family to gather their belongings. We had just arrived from the Fort Indiantown Gap refugee camp in Pennsylvania where we had stayed for about a month.

New England Town Suddenly transplanted in America, we knew close to nothing about the land and its culture and we barely spoke the language. Although America was involved in the Vietnam War for more than a decade, the American-Vietnamese relationship was about war, fighting communism, killings, wins and losses, but not about culture. As war refugees, we just packed up and left at the end of a bloody and lengthy conflict looking for freedom and survival and for a shelter from retribution from a victorious communist regime without having the time to learn about the host’s culture. The sudden transition from war to peace weighed too heavily on our minds to allow us to realize that finally we were standing on the streets of a peaceful country. A peace that had eluded us for more than 46

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two decades. Strangely enough, we found peace not in our palm-covered country dotted with golden rice fields, but in a foreign land called America. Why America? Why 15,000 miles away from home? We were too confused to formulate any adequate answer. But at least there would be no more gunshots, artillery shelling, airplane bombings, grenade explosions, disfigured bodies, or crying and wailing mothers, daughters and relatives. The tragic loss of our beloved country brought us unexpectedly to this small, but peaceful New England town. Disconnected from our families and friends and still reeling from the biggest loss of all — the loss of our motherland — with a lot of apprehension, we tentatively put our feet on this new land. The arrival marked the end of a two-month-long ordeal that began in our war-torn and shattered South Vietnam. Once the safety issue had been temporarily addressed, our thoughts turned to economic survival: Could modern pilgrims from a small and defunct country (the size of Washington State) forge a future in a foreign land? Issues such as political safety, job training, families, language barrier, future and loss of homeland and personal property popped up in no specific order and clashed wildly in our worried minds. Peace seemed to bring with it a flurry of new issues and unique problems. It caused me to wonder where we would have been had these strangers not opened their arms to welcome us. A cool sea breeze that blew gently past us signaled the close proximity of the seashore. It also brought me back to reality. Although it was almost July, the weather was cool, if not cold for someone arriving straight from the tropics. The town, with its beachfront and shoreline, reminded me a lot of Vung Tau where my grandmother lived and where I spent my childhood’s summer vacations. The only difference was that New London, with its characteristic Cape Cod houses and its busy lifestyle, lay in a temperate region while Vung Tau, with its palm trees and provincial atmosphere, bathed in a sweltering tropical heat. How I ended up in this place was nothing short of a miracle. I had never imagined coming to the U.S. let alone standing on this eastern shore where 355 years earlier and 150 miles further north, the first pilgrims had landed on this continent. History seems to work in cycles and tends to repeat itself.

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Deadly Encounter It all began when I was drafted into the South Vietnamese army to begin my service to the country. We would remain in the army for the duration of the war, not for one year like in the U.S.: The length of service could thus last five or ten years or until we were disabled, died or until the war ended. And the war, like tropical monsoons, never seemed to end. Although it had been going on for almost two decades, it kept going and going. I was sent to the medical support team in the MRIV (Military Region IV) in the Mekong Delta. The area was relatively calm compared to the northern front close to the demilitarized zone. People attended to their private businesses without any disruption and no night curfews were imposed on Can Tho except in 1975. On our arrival at our unit, my friend and I were assigned to do an autopsy on a first lieutenant who had passed away the night before. The macabre assignment was certainly not what we had expected on our first day of duty. From what we had heard, the officer was commanding a fortified camp sixty miles south of town and was checking the perimeters of the camp when he accidentally stepped on one of these naughty mines that blew him apart. I stood silent in front of the victim not knowing what to do. No autopsy was needed in this case. The cause of death was obvious: a shattered right foot and leg along with hundreds of fragments of mine scattered all over his body. He was a young officer whose “baby” face and healthy body did not seem to be touched or ravaged by the war tribulations until then. I signed his death certificate and we left. I could not avoid thinking that a lot of tears would be shed that night over this man. He was young, most likely a few years out of a military academy but he was already a war victim. His young wife and his parents would no doubt be devastated. Yet, they could not do anything either, except weep until their eyes became swollen shut or ran out of tears. And the widow would ask herself why would such a tragedy happen to her? Why her? Why her? Who would take care of their young children now? How would they survive? And she would start blaming herself for not taking good care of him or not spending more time with him. And the parents would ask themselves the same question: Out of the millions of parents, why did this happen to them? For this family, he was a son and a husband, full

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of energy, promises and destined for a bright future. But at that sad moment, he was just a cold and disfigured body wrapped in a yellow flag adorned with three horizontal red stripes. A bright future cut short by the meanness of war. War was definitely brutal, senseless, and unforgiving. The vision of this mutilated body followed me for sometime. Not that I had not seen a dead body before: There were many of them in the hospitals where we received our training. It was the degree of senseless mutilation that this man had suffered and the fact that he was so young and already dead. I could not sleep for many nights haunted by a vision I had a hard time ridding myself of. It was like the odor of decaying organs that persistently stuck to a surgeon’s hands for many days despite repeated hand washes. As for this officer, I knew that at least he was finally at peace and was no longer suffering. It was his family’s turn to go through the agonizing pain of the grieving period. This tragedy, however, was not unique. At that time thousands and thousands of soldiers suffered from the same fate each month all over Vietnam. Each war victory seemed to be built on a mountain of dead brave soldiers. The only victor was death itself. I thought to myself that it could have been me or my friend instead of him. Life and death were just a matter of luck or fate for all of us during that period. This fact, reinforced by the daily escalating number of casualties, rendered many of us philosophical or somewhat cynical. These violent killings and the senseless murder of untold numbers of innocent people scarred our young hearts to the point they were no longer able to handle the suffering and pain. It was not that tears would no longer flow down our bony cheeks: They just flowed more slowly and in lesser amounts rather than in torrents like years before. The tragic end of this officer reminded me about one of my classmates, a sweet and good-hearted student, who died in 1967 when a missile shot by the Viet Cong into Saigon hit his home one night, killing him and his whole family. I realized that we had lost a young and innocent classmate only when the news spread all over the campus a few days later. At that time, missiles landed on various parts of the city a few times each month, forcing its inhabitants to lay sandbags right inside their homes and to take cover when they heard the hissing sounds of flying rockets or siren sounds announcing incoming missiles.

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The Mekong Delta I spent three months in Can Tho working out of a military clinic about ten miles north of town, then rotated to the Chi Lang training camp every fourth month. The four of us coming from the same class were part of the newly-formed rapid-deployment medical unit stationed at the headquarters of the MRIV. The thinking was that we would be available for immediate assignment to any unit, hospital or dispensary in the region should urgent medical need arise. When stationed in Can Tho, however, the 9-to-5 mostly office job at the clinic was simple and straightforward: caring for sick soldiers and their families. We usually finished our work by 3:30 P.M. and spent the rest of the day reading or playing volleyball in the compound court. On one occasion, I was assigned to another unit for one month to substitute for a vacationing physician. Although I had never been to the Mekong Delta before, I knew the region was South Vietnam’s rice basket. Can Tho, a provincial city on the Mekong River, was quiet and bucolic with its laid-back people, its golden rice fields and its multiple arroyos where sampans filled with fruits and local products glided gracefully on the brackish waters of the river on their way to the floating markets. The sampans were powered either by motorized engines or by the strong arms of teenagers, usually girls (boys were drafted by both insurgent and national armies), who worked rhythmically on a pair of wooden oars. They occasionally sang those sixsentence songs characteristic of the delta region that frequently dealt with love and separation. Romance, music, simplicity or rusticity characterized the delta people. This was the image of my South Vietnam that to this day sticks to my mind: a peace-loving people, poor but happy until war came to them and destroyed their livelihood. The waters of the Mekong River, 1 mostly limpid at its source, became an indescribable dark color by the time they reached the city after crossing five other southeast Asian states. They served as a dumping ground for all the people living on its banks. These same waters, however, carried with them the rich silt that gave the delta its unique fertility. Fish and shrimp somehow managed to survive and even thrive in that milieu to the delight of the delta inhabitants. Large catfish up to three hundred pounds had been fished out of the same brackish waters forty miles upstream.

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The Chi Lang camp, located on the southwestern corner of South Vietnam near the Cambodian border, was a training center for new military recruits from the MRIV region. Its clinic and ten-bed hospital were run by a military physician assisted by three male nurses. Around that time, an epidemic of Dengue hemorrhagic fever swept through the area, hitting the recruits of the crowded training camp. Overwhelmed by the sudden influx of sick patients, the Chi Lang physician asked for help and every month one of us was sent there to assist him with the care of the patients. The hamlet surrounding the camp was quiet to the verge of boredom, especially in the evening. The area, which was arid and rocky with minimal vegetation, looked like a lunar landscape rather than a tropical paradise. Despite its lack of entertainment, the hamlet provided an outlet to the rigors of the camp and survived thanks to the presence of military recruits. The lone road leading to the camp was asphalted in some areas before becoming a plain dirt road a few miles from the hamlet. Access to the camp was so difficult that even the military police would not bother patrolling the roads. The local cockfights set up on Sunday afternoons provided the only excitement of the week. There was no movie theater or entertainment show. The rare villagers entertained themselves by sitting in surrounding straw-hut coffee shops, smoking and drinking beer or coffee while listening to endless folk music — the melodious voices of Khanh Ly and Le Thu, well-known singers at the time — coming out of cassette tapes, which blared Trinh Cong Son’s and Pham Duy’s “anti-heroic” and peace-loving songs. I was lodged in a compound previously built for American military advisers in one corner of the training camp. This was 1974, and they had left South Vietnam a few years earlier. The lack of maintenance made its presence felt on the deserted building. The large and empty rooms appeared like cavernous hangars rather than homey sleeping areas. The doors badly needed repairs; its woods, which had warped off under the inclement weather, had separated from its frame at one corner and morning sunrays penetrating through these cracks lit up the windowless room. Sunrays became our morning wake up signal each time we stayed in the camp. The air conditioners and fans had been removed from the rooms a long time before to outfit the local officers’ mess on the other side of the camp and a single light bulb dangled at that time from the ceiling at the end of a foot-long cord. The walls were empty of any painting or

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decorations. In a compound that could accommodate at least eight people, I was the lone guest. The mess with its pool table sat idle at the front entrance. The tennis court, which was once busy, remained empty and silent. The eerie feeling in the deserted compound reflected the overall mood of the nation at that time. Lights were turned off; the Americans were gone. The Vietnamese had to struggle with less. I remember being assigned to talk to a group of recruits one night about Dengue hemorrhagic fever and the mosquitoes and virus that brought on the disease. There had been a few deaths in the camp and the commander thought it was important to advise recruits about the illness. The job fell on me to inform them about the disease. I saw the tired and worried faces of these teenage soldiers who sat on the ground listening or pretending to listen to what I had to say. I could not help thinking I was in their position a few years back when I took four weeks of military training at the Thu Duc camp north of Saigon. Soon they would be dispatched to their regiments to continue the fight and be baptized by encounters with the enemy. They became grown men hardened by conflicts and destined to kill or to be casualties in the long war. I thought the nation owed each of these young men the respect and admiration they deserved. They were plucked out of their families to answer to the call to defend the nation and should be given dignified recognition no matter how the war had turned out.

Phu Quoc Island I was stationed in Can Tho around April 20, 1975, after having completed a month-long rotation at the Chi Lang camp. I was waiting for the necessary papers to return to Saigon to visit my family, whom I had not seen for quite some time. Then the unexpected news came: I was ordered to report to the island of Phu Quoc in place of a colleague who had recently “gotten married” and needed to go on a honeymoon. Although I was irritated, to say the least, nothing I could do would change the order. In retrospect, that last-minute order proved to be a blessing in disguise, which I only realized weeks later. Phu Quoc is an island in the southwestern end of Vietnam about a hundred miles offshore from Rach Gia. The mission was designed to provide medical assistance to the refugees from central Vietnam who

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had been recently relocated to the island. I had never visited Phu Quoc before, although I knew it was famous for its nuoc man (fermented fish sauce). Despite its pungent odor, it added a special flavor to the food and defined Vietnamese cooking. It is the “essence of Vietnamese food.” I took the bus to Rach Gia, the last frontier of South Vietnam. The town was located a few miles from Oc Eo, the famed capital of the Funan Empire (1st to 6th century A.D.).2 The Funanese, it appears, were actively involved in trade and commerce with other Asian nations like Malaysia, India, and China. A Roman coin had even been unearthed in the area during an archeological search. The region was very active politically and economically before being conquered by a neighboring country. In Rach Gia, I was told the next and last boat to the island would depart at 5 P.M. To kill time, I sat in one of these cafés that dotted the banks of the river to sip lemonade and watch workers loading a commercial 90-foot, two-decked boat in preparation for departure. I finally boarded the vessel and opted to remain on the top deck to savor the breathtaking sunset and the calm waters of the gulf of Thailand. The majority of the people chose to remain in the hull where they felt protected from the sun, winds and weather and where commodities were available. A few people had even managed to string their hammocks up in preparation for the long night. I remember that Nguyen Anh, who later became King Gia Long (r. 1802–1820), had made this same trip many times between 1784 and 1788 when he was harassed and hunted down by the Tay Son rebels. Each time he lost a battle to the insurgents, he jumped on a boat and sailed to safety to either Phu Quoc or Siam (Thailand). And each time he came back to put up a new fight. It took him 25 years of hard battles and persistent will to recover his throne.3 Tired, I just lay down on the deck and slept without bedding or cover. That was military life in its most unsophisticated form. I did not know this was the precursor to many more nights I would have to spend aboard a ship. The cool sea breeze woke me up around 5 A.M. the following morning. A new day had begun and the air was calm, the skies clear. The sunrise was as beautiful and serene as the sunset: The cloud-free sky offered its most vivid and brightest colors. The boat anchored a few miles offshore waiting for permission to dock. It was breakfast time when we landed on the local pier. I quickly ate breakfast at one of the “frontier” cafés — small straw

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huts with worn out wooden tables and chairs placed right on an earthen floor — and then inquired about the directions to the camp, which, I was told, was located about two miles north. A local dirt road in which monsoon rains had carved huge and randomly placed potholes led to the camp. Traffic was scarce and cars were nowhere to be seen. I decided to walk to the camp and followed the lead of the locals. At destination, I found a mini-city where close to 40,000 people lived in tents in bare minimum conditions. Members of my team had arrived earlier with their equipment and vehicles and were waiting for my arrival. My bed, a wooden divan covered with a mosquito net, was located in a corner of a cavernous hangar. The storage area had recently been converted into a housing unit. Although the doors were missing I could not complain, since I had at least a nice corrugated roof covering my head. I saw on the average forty patients a day at the clinic, the majority of them suffering from cold, flu, rashes, bruises, and cuts. Two other military physicians from another unit also worked at the clinic. The three of us covered the medical needs of about 40,000 refugees. As for entertainment, there was neither newspaper nor television at this remote camp. However, the beautiful white sandy beaches with their turquoise blue waters still pristine and unspoiled by civilization, provided a magnificent alternative to the lack of amenities. The water temperature was warm and the place ideal for swimming and sunbathing. I wondered why the local government had not thought about opening a resort in this area: It would pump a lot of money into the local economy. We were oblivious to what was happening in Saigon at the time. Since no member of my team carried a radio, we had to hunt for news by hanging around other people. Around noon local time on April 30, General Minh went on the radio to announce the unconditional surrender of the Saigon government. Reactions among the islanders ranged from utter disbelief and resignation, to pain and anger. Tears were seen rolling down everyone’s cheeks. The news, although somewhat expected, was stunning in its impact. No one had dared to predict that such an unconditional and immediate surrender would occur. For us, this was the end of 21 years of bloody fighting. Then silence fell and the mood suddenly turned somber and grave. The Republic of Vietnam had been wiped off the map. The land we and our ancestors had lived on since 1600 was no longer ours. What we had fought so long and so hard for these 21 years

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had been lost forever. More than 250,000 brave men who had dedicated their lives to this cause had thus died in vain. Torrents of tears had been shed during this war, untold numbers of families had been uprooted and displaced, and thousands of towns and villages torn down, shelled or bombed: All that had been wasted. The sacrifice of so many people had ended in smoke. The long, bloody, and arduous fight had been for nothing.

Escape Each of us was devastated by the news. The horror of the loss was staggering as the minutes passed by. There was nothing else to do but ... ESCAPE ... ESCAPE ... away, far away from the communists and look for freedom somewhere else. The two other physicians had already packed their belongings on a Jeep and were ready to take off. I later realized they were well prepared in advance and had just waited for the announcement to leave. I quickly gathered my men and gave them the option of coming with me or staying back. Since all of them had families in the delta, they decided to stay put. I dismissed them, joined the two physicians and their families and headed toward the pier. The navy compound was still guarded by a lone soldier at its gate as we negotiated our entrance into the base. Everything was quiet. We went straight to the dock and saw many patrol boats — 30-foot-long speedboats that used to protect the shoreline — with their engines running. We noticed one that was about to take off. My friend immediately asked the captain whether we could join him. Once he agreed, we all jumped aboard and the boat rapidly took off. A few families stranded on the pier yelled and screamed, begging the captain to take them in. He did not even slow down but just pointed toward the remaining anchored boats. From the boat, I could see the public pier where I had landed a week earlier. The area was now crowded and bustling with activity. The islanders were trying to get onto any kind of boat they could get their hands on in order to escape. On the other end of the island next to the navy compound sat the military airbase. In the sky, all kinds of military airplanes circled over the base. It looked like an air show was about to begin or, from a distance, a swarm of locusts ready to land on a field.

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Pilots from all the South Vietnamese airbases, after hearing the unconditional surrender, had flown their planes to this island carrying with them coworkers or families while others flew directly to Thailand or Malaysia. The majority tried to land on the island’s lone runway. The base must have been full since planes were noted to park awkwardly on the seashore. A few helicopter pilots even tried to land on the beach itself creating a swirl of sand dust around them. This was surreal: I had never seen that many planes trying to land at the same time on such a tiny airport. Twenty-one years had passed since Vietnam had been partitioned into two countries. During all that time, I had lived, grown up, studied, and worked in a war-ravaged country. All I knew was war. Signs of war were everywhere: on the walls, in newspapers, on television, in movies and songs, and especially on all human faces. There was a feeling of sadness, despair and fatigue on each face although it was hidden behind this Asian mask of serene acceptance. Once the surface was scratched off, one would be able to see the pain, disappointments, suffering, and the agony of defeat. Talk to them and one would see tears welling up in their eyes and flowing down their bony cheeks. I did not know where I was going and what my future would be. I did not even know where this boat was heading to. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of the country, out of this sadistically unending fratricidal war and especially out of reach of the communists. I was attached to my country as long as it was free from communism. Now that the land I had called home for almost three decades was taken away from me, I had no more sacred land to fight for. But I knew I would always fight for freedom. My choices at that moment were to accept the communists or to escape. Having known the communists and what they could do, I chose to escape without a second thought. For the first time in our lives, we were without a country. A very strange and indescribable feeling hit us for the first time in our lives. An hour ago, everyone on the patrol boat was connected and linked to a land called South Vietnam. Then suddenly there was no more South Vietnam. What we had called Motherland or Fatherland no longer existed. What we had cherished the most was lost. We were all ORPHANS. We never thought we could be without a country. The suddenness of the disconnection stunned us all. I then realized what Phan Boi Chau, one of the country’s greatest revolutionaries, meant when he wrote in 1907 that there was no greater loss than that of losing one’s country.

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The boat kept powering ahead. The roaring of the engine did not even distract us from our deep thoughts. No one was talking or even paying attention to anything else. There was total silence besides the engine noise and the sounds of waves crashing on the sides of the boat. The island soon became a dot on the horizon. The captain proceeded to disarm us to prevent a potential mutiny. He told us we were heading to Malaysia or Thailand. We did not care because they were foreign lands to most of us who had never set foot outside Vietnam before. We sailed for half-an-hour or an hour when suddenly in the horizon stood a four or five-story high transatlantic ship around which swarmed three or four dozen boats of all sizes and shapes. I only found out later that with the imminent collapse of South Vietnam, the U.S. government had ordered all available ocean liners, including the U.S. Seventh Fleet, to anchor outside Vietnam’s territorial waters in order to pick up potential refugees. That was why the Pioneer Contender was anchored right there in the middle of the ocean. The ship, as a matter of fact, had been lurking within Vietnamese waters since March. It was that ship that brought refugees from central Vietnam to Vung Tau on various occasions. It was the same ship that carried other refugees to Phu Quoc Island. It was her turn again this time to transport many of her previous passengers abroad. We were lucky to bump into her, otherwise we would have to head all the way to Malaysia or Thailand with its unforeseen problems. None of us was prepared for the trip because in our rush to get out of the island, we carried neither food nor water. The boat headed toward the ship and docked against rows of boats. We waited for our turn to climb aboard the big ship. Elderly people and children were allowed to get up first. They slowly moved up the steep and swinging stairs. Scared women had to be led or even carried aboard. The transfer of people from native boats to the ship therefore proceeded at a very slow pace. We were lucky not to be in the middle of a stormy day, otherwise many would not have made it. Refugees then spread around either on the deck or in the cargo hold. At the end of the day, we were offered sandwiches and fell asleep stressed and depressed by the turn of events. What a day it had been! The night before, we had slept in a warm bed in our homeland. That night, we were for the first time “homeless” and sleeping on a hard and cold deck somewhere on the vast ocean. The only thing we could claim was the starry sky as roof: a dark sky dotted

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with scintillating stars contrasted with our deep sorrow and anguish. In spite of the unusual situation, we slept pretty well that first night because we were all tired. We awoke the following morning wondering about our location on the big ocean. Neighbors advised us that the ship had hugged the Vietnamese coastline all night long and headed north. At one time, we passed close to the Con Son Island where political prisoners and captured Viet Cong were held. We could not understand why the ship headed north rather than east. A northward direction meant Saigon while an eastward course signified the Philippines and therefore freedom. The only thing we worried about was being returned to the new Saigon government against our will. That would mean a sure imprisonment. By the end of the second day, we were anchored in front of Vung Tau at the mouth of the Mekong Delta close to half a dozen large U.S. Seventh Fleet ships and a myriad of smaller ones. The area turned out to be the meeting place of all the rescue ships before they headed toward their final destination. The rescue operation continued for a while as flotillas of refugee boats from Vung Tau and its surroundings converged again toward the anchored ships. Boats of all sizes and shapes, some civilian and others military, filled with refugees, young and old, headed toward the ships. They looked like tiny toys among the big ships. There were fishing boats, trawlers, ferries, tugboats, and military vessels: Anything that could float had been rapidly resuscitated and put to use. The Pioneer Contender, after picking up many of these people, sailed again heading east this time with more than ten thousand refugees on board. A heavy weight finally had been lifted off our chests because an eastward course meant freedom. I had never seen that many people crowding a ship before: anxious women holding onto their children, elderly people walking slowly, sadlooking soldiers still in uniform, and people clutching their meager belongings in their arms. They huddled in groups or lay on the deck scattered here and there submerged in their thoughts and barely speaking to each other, their minds hundreds of miles away from that place and focused on the past, future, families and survival. This was the image of extreme despair and anguish: a group of defeated people who had lost everything from jobs, houses, belongings, and country trying to assess the damage and to figure out the future. Who could ever have imagined they left everything behind for a bleak and uncertain future? The 1620 pilgrims were better prepared than them for they knew where they were

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going. They planned ahead and brought provisions with them. The new refugees just ran away with their clothes on them. That night we slept well again, certain we were not going back to Vietnam. The following day, the ship sailed between a series of islands, which we believed to be the Philippines. The view was certainly beautiful with tropical islands on both sides of the ship. A few fishing boats were seen close to the islands while dolphins frolicked in the sparkling blue waters. Here and there another ocean liner passed us by. We soon settled into a boring routine broken only by mealtimes. Days were hot as the bright and shining tropical sun cooked us like meat in an oven. There was no place to hide from it. Luckily, the cool ocean breeze helped somewhat. Those who could not stand the heat hid in the cargo bay that was almost packed during noontime. Others migrated back to the deck as the temperature cooled down in the evening. Nights were tolerable and beautiful under the starry sky. The weather was gorgeous during the trip: The absence of storms prevented many of us from falling sick under the combined effect of heat and dampness. Toward the end of the trip, due to the closeness of the quarters, an epidemic of conjunctivitis rapidly spread among the refugees, who woke up with swollen, teary, red eyes. Luckily, it was short-lived because the crowd was rapidly dispersed following their arrival.

Guam, the Gate to Freedom Around midnight on the seventh day of the trip while the skies were still dark, part of the horizon suddenly lit up. A few people woke up surprised by the brightness of the sky. Their excitement in turn woke up the remaining people. A feeling of joy lifted our hearts up. We knew land was there on the horizon, although we could not put a name on the place. The seven-day-long trip was about to conclude. The same excitement probably ran through Columbus’s crew when they first saw land after a seemingly unending voyage. Although it was past midnight, no one could go back to sleep and we were all standing there, chests leaning against the ship rails, looking at the bright lights that were coming closer with every single minute. The magic place turned out to be the island of Guam (32 miles long by four to twelve miles wide and home to 80,000 inhabitants) some-

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where in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was the place of origin of the B-52 bombers that had seen action in Vietnam a few years earlier. The ship finally docked at the pier. Exhausted, we did not pay attention to the size of the island or the neatness of the place. We slowly dragged our feet down the stairs and were bused to huge hangars for identification. The process was long due to the sheer number of refugees and to fatigue and lack of sleep. We were then transported to a nearby campsite on the island and arrived at our destination around 4 or 5 A.M. We were each assigned to a military cot, with four to five placed under a large tent. This was the first time in a week that we were able to rest above ground and in something private that closely resembled a bed. Worn out, we immediately fell asleep. In the morning, noises and voices around the tents woke us up. We peeked out and saw a long line of refugees snaking around a huge tent. One of the refugees advised us to get up and fetch food — otherwise we would go hungry. Sleepiness had completely overridden our hunger. After taking a quick wash, I scrambled to get in line and was deeply surprised to see all the refugees standing neatly in lines, one behind the other, a fact that was rarely observed within the Vietnamese community. They sure did learn things fast. Construction was going full speed in the camp. Bulldozers were parked close by and uprooted tree roots still lay on the sides of the roads. The ground was unearthed and uneven. Other construction materials and machinery were scattered here and there. On the far end of the camp, new tents were erected every day. Eventually, the camp was filled with tents housing tens of thousands of refugees, causing officials to call it the Tent City at Orote Point, Guam. The fast food was hot, delicious, and much better than what had been provided on the ship. We ate hamburgers, chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans — the staple of American food — for the first time in our lives. This was also our official introduction to American society and way of life. Fruit cocktail, which was rarely seen in Vietnam, was provided abundantly in the camp along with apples and yellow-skinned oranges. In our tropical Vietnam, oranges tend to come with green skins; these were small differences that piqued our curiosity and reminded us we were in a different country. After lunch, we went back to our tents for a quick nap to recover from the ordeal of the night before. Then it was again time to line up for supper. The idleness on the island gave us a lot of time to think about our

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lives, families, and country. No information came out of the hermetically closed Vietnam as all news was blacked out. We did not know what had happened to our families who were trapped there. We remained in total darkness communication-wise in the bright and sunny tropical island. The loss of our country still stunned us. We did not know what to think about the sudden collapse of Vietnam. Like drunkards, we all seemed to be in a mood of denial. What were we doing on this island? How could we have lost the whole country? This must have been a bad dream. How could a country of 20 million people surrender to the enemy and collapse almost overnight? Why did the U.S. not help us during this tragic moment? Were our leaders inept to the point of losing the war? Had we done our share in this fight? Should we have done more? Days and nights went by without any answer. After spending sleepless nights tossing, turning, and torturing ourselves with these unsolvable questions, we just gave up. This maddening intellectual exercise led to nowhere except more self-recriminations, anguish and pain. By that time, we had lost track of time and dates. We also lost our freedom temporarily. Our schedule revolved around meals, without which we would go hungry; times for breakfast, lunch and supper were dictated by the mess and deviation from the rules meant a hungry stomach later on. We lived among ourselves confined in camps and separated from our benefactors by camp walls and language barriers. We realized we did not even speak the language of our new country. The future seemed to be daunting for had we been thrown outside among the islanders, we would not be able to survive or be self-sufficient economically. Approximately two weeks later, we were told to pack up and get ready for departure. We were driven to another camp where we stayed for another two weeks in sturdy barracks. Amenities were much better than in the tent city. There was even a beach on site, although no one was in the mood to take a dip in the ocean. Too many things weighed heavily on our minds at that time. We were driven to the airport one early morning and advised to rest and wait in barracks within the confines of the airport. The area was comfortable with mattresses on bunk beds and air conditioning. At the end of the day, we were transported to the airfield and boarded a 747 Boeing jet large enough to accommodate more than 200 people. The plane landed in Honolulu, Hawaii, at night and we were allowed to

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stretch out in the empty gate-reception area. The plane took off and made another stop in Portland, Oregon, before landing at Harrisburg International Airport. We boarded buses that took us to another military camp. Along the road local people waived at us as our buses passed by. They seemed to be very friendly and must have been aware of our arrival. It was late when we arrived at the Fort Indiantown Gap camp in Pennsylvania. We were directed to a large hall where other refugees who had arrived earlier were gathered. After a short introduction, we were assigned to different barracks. When we came out of the meeting hall, volunteers from the Salvation Army greeted us and provided us with food. That was the greatest moment of the day. The warm smiles and lovely voices of these middle-aged ladies rapidly soothed our dispirited hearts and washed away fatigue and loneliness. We felt invigorated and rapidly headed towards the barracks and the assigned beds. A few weeks later, my friend and I were sponsored by a small hospital in Connecticut. We took the train from Harrisburg to New London and landed on this northeastern shoreline on June 25, 1975. There I stood on a foreign land like the pilgrims from four centuries ago with an uncertain future but with a lot of hope in my heart. I did not know what the future had in store for me; all I knew was that I had to forge ahead no matter what happened. There was no way to back out. The dice had been rolled. I needed to pick them up and keep them rolling. Although saddened by the loss of my country and the lack of news from my family, I decided to forge ahead and to become a new pilgrim like many others who came centuries before me. This is what makes America a great country: A land that gave pilgrims the chance to re-make their lives.

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5

My Life as a Zombie Thien M. Ngo

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this chapter, the author reveals his intimate feelings toward the communist regime that imprisoned him after the war and forced him to escape aboard a boat.

After graduating from medical school, I was assigned to the medical liaison team of the II Corps, which was located in Pleiku in the central highlands. The central highlands were one of the gateways through which northern communists coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail infiltrated South Vietnam. I worked at the II Corps headquarters for about 15 months during which I rotated between Pleiku and various medical field units. In late March 1975, ARVN units were ordered to retreat from the highlands and to move to the coastal city of Tuy Hoa. Since the evacuation was not well planned ahead, it turned out to be disorganized and chaotic right from the beginning. Being assigned to the headquarters of the II Corps meant I had the chance to get out with General Tat by helicopter. As we flew over the military convoy, we were called in to evacuate an officer who was injured during the evacuation. While I was talking to people in the convoy, the helicopter took off without warning and left me behind. I therefore had to follow the convoy on Route 7B on foot for a day before being picked up by another helicopter. From above I could see a long and sad military convoy, which curved like a snake through the densely forested hills stretching over miles and miles. Civilians followed the convoy in a disorderly manner in cars and 65

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carts, and on motorcycles and even on foot. Many of these vehicles were soon abandoned because of their inconvenience and lack of fuel. I was lucky to get out on a plane because the convoy was soon attacked by communist forces, which indiscriminately shelled it and gunned down military personnel as well as civilians. No one was spared, not even children or women. By the time the convoy arrived in Tuy Hoa, only a third of the civilians and soldiers had survived the ghastly trip.1

Reeducation From Tuy Hoa, I flew back to Saigon. After Saigon fell, I reported to the local revolutionary committee that had set up an office at a local school. A few weeks later, I was sent to the Trang Lon reeducation camp after being told to bring enough food for three days. In my mind, I kept repeating the words three days and I asked myself if I had heard them correctly. I was thrilled to death for having to do only three days of reeducation. I made big plans for returning from the camp and opening a private office for I envisioned a bright new future now that the war was finally over. Alas, when the three days ended, I found myself still confined in the camp. Three days became three weeks. I had not lost any hope yet, although I became suspicious of the communist propaganda. I asked myself why repair the barracks, weed the periphery of the camps and do manual labor unless we had to stay in there for a longer time. Time passed by and three weeks became three months. By that time, I had lost all my confidence in the new government. I knew they had lied to us. I even lost hope of ever getting out of the camp alive. Three months became three years before they finally released me. The longer I thought about it, the more furious I became. The bo doi 2 tricked us — gullible people — into believing in a threeday course and once we stepped inside the camps, they whipped us with the full force of a ruthless organization designed to crush us. We were no longer considered to be humans, only trash. They belittled, threatened, coerced, beat, shackled, starved, and forced us to do manual labor and even killed many of us. There was no compassion, no leniency from them, only pure hate accumulated over years of hardship in the jungles and ruthless political indoctrination. A real nightmare. To this day, I am still shaken at the simple thought of these dark years.

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After a few months at Trang Lon, they shipped us to another camp in the middle of the night. They told us in grandiose terms that since we had done such good work, we would be transferred to a much nicer camp — an improvement over the last camp. This turned out to be another big lie. The new camp was simply a hard labor camp designed to make us work and sweat. The bo doi then told us that the harder we worked, the sooner we would be released. This was another of their lies. Although we worked harder and harder, we never saw the release order coming. These three years were a nightmare for me. I therefore blocked them out as much as I could. From the time I entered into the Trang Lon camp until I got out of Vietnam, I lived the life of a zombie trying to survive its horrors. I made myself small, trying to remain under the radar of the bo doi. I thought that the less I resisted them, the less punishment I would receive.

Post-Reeducation Ordeal After my release from the camp, I reported to the chief of the local ward every day for more than a month. He told me all “reeducated” people had to perform civic duty that consisted of sweeping the streets around my neighborhood from 8 A.M. until noon every day five days a week. And there I was with a broom trying to keep the streets clean every morning for three months. I could not believe that a medical doctor would be sent out to sweep the streets while patients were dying in the hospitals because no one cared for them. Only such a thing could happen in communist Vietnam — political creed prevailing over people’s lives and health. To think about it, the victorious northerners just wanted to crush us until we no longer could fight or resist them. They were deceitful instead of being magnanimous in victory. I knew I could offer a lot to my country but banishing me to sweep the streets could only do a great disservice to society. I thought they would be lenient after I had completed my jail time, but I was wrong. They forgot nothing and they had systematically planned to dehumanize us. Although feeling deeply depressed, I took it in stride for I had no other choice. Arguing against a dictatorial government could only lead me into hotter waters as I was still in a probationary period. I could have been banned to a new eco-

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nomic zone (NEZ) or sent back to the camp, which in fact were worse options than sweeping the streets and remaining in Saigon with my family. During the same period, I also applied for a medical position in various hospitals but was turned down because of my anti-revolutionary past. I was at turns upset and depressed. Upset at one moment, depressed at the other. Eight years of medical and college training just led me to a dead end street in a communist regime. In fact, I felt better than some of my colleagues who had been released before me. They had to leave Saigon and move to one of the NEZ that were set up in the middle of nowhere. They had to build their own lodgings — basic straw huts without electricity and running water — since there was nothing else for miles away except forests. They had to carve out the lands by taking down bushes and trees before planting vegetables and rice to support their basic needs. The work was not only hard but difficult because they did not have access to appropriate tools or heavy equipment. There was no hospital or grocery store in the area. They even had to haul in their own water one ten-gallon container at a time. They received rice and food for a few months before being left on their own. The miserable life in the NEZ led people to run away and to return to their original homes. I, however, felt worse than those who were released after me because they were allowed to remain in Saigon and apply for work in the hospitals. Realizing that the country was short of qualified doctors, government officials had a change of heart and decided to use a few physicians from the old regime. I realized that although my future was worse than those who were released after me, it was certainly better than those who were sent to the NEZ. I felt that no one could escape his fate and we would just have to accept it. Then one day I was called to the local district and told of my assignment to the Hoc Mon dispensary. Hoc Mon was a suburb — about twenty miles south of Saigon — that blended into the countryside. I was surprised and overjoyed on hearing the news. I thought to myself that finally I would be able to practice medicine after spending four years doing manual labor. I woke up from my zombie life and for the first time felt warm blood rushing throughout my body. I then realized I had to commute every morning and return home at night. Twenty miles does not seem a big deal in today’s world, but it was a long way for a society that had decided to turn the clock back-

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ward four or five decades. In Ho’s world, gas was expensive and cars were reserved for officials only. In a city that once was flooded with honking cars and speeding scooters, the spectacle was certainly a sad one. The streets were almost deserted or barely filled with slow moving bicycles. One could feel a thick shroud of despair and desolation had descended on the former Pearl of the Orient.3 I decided to ride the three-wheeled xe ba banh to work — a motorcycle attached to a four-by-six foot seating area — where six or seven small Vietnamese could squeeze in. As the main and cheapest means of public transportation, it hauled everything from passengers to merchandise destined for the market. Laborers, housewives, merchants, soldiers, and people from all walks of life used them. The xe ba banh stopped every three minutes to pick up or drop off passengers making any short ride a lengthy one. Between the stop-and-go movements, the overcrowding, the jumps over potholes, the ride was less than thrilling — especially during rainy days or in sweltering summer heat. I felt exhausted at the end of each ride, which could last more than an hour. The other option was to ride a bike to work, which was not an interesting choice either. In Ho’s world, the four physicians at the Hoc Mon dispensary worked under the direction and guidance of a communist nurse: the less educated people leading the better educated ones. This only made sense in a communist country. I treated patients as best as I could in view of the shortage of supplies, medications, and tools available. A lot of poor people somehow showed up and required my attention and care: That realization broke my heart. I had never seen that many poor people in my life. They did not have anything and could not even afford to buy medication or medical supplies. Heartbroken one day, I just gave one of them my meager monthly salary so that he could buy the medications he really needed. It was not because I was rich — everyone was poor at that time except for the bo doi— but because he was more needy than I. I thus did my civic duty for over nine months without complaint but with a lot of bitterness in my heart. I finally realized I had to escape. Even though I had completed my jail time for being associated with the Saigon government, I was still subjected to the whimsical assessments and judgments of any policeman or official of the Hanoi-led government. Anyone of them could have sent me back to jail at any time by simply accusing me of any real or imagined deed. Any accusation carried the strength of words carved in stone. In Ho’s country, anyone was guilty

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because he was accused of something and not because he had done anything wrong. There was no way I could defend myself because the government dogmatically believed it was right all the times. There could be no justice because it had abolished the system of lawyer representation. I did not really live, in the loose sense of the term, under this oppressive regime. What I did was to try to stay out of trouble and to survive. I was simply a prisoner within the system. I felt I could not live like an animal forever, without dreams, hope, only servitude. Although I was physically in Saigon, my mind was somewhere else. There was no future for my family and me in Vietnam. I just shook my head and thought to myself: “Oh Ho, what have you done to your country?”

Sea Escape My wife took care of all the escape arrangements. We had decided to use the semi-official pathway. Semi-official meant that we officially paid the corrupt government to get out of the country. Only the Chinese were allowed to leave at that time. The main problem for everyone was to look for a decent dealer. There were many of them around, some real and others fake. There was no way of distinguishing between the two: They all promised to get us out. But whom could you trust? The dealer had to apply on our behalf to the police department for emigration and to provide for the boat and the captain. This was an expensive proposition because we not only had to pay the dealer, but also the secret police through the dealer. However, that approach was safer than trying to get out by ourselves. The price was twelve taels4 of gold each for the trip and the false Chinese documents although I did not speak any Chinese at all. Not only was I a Chinese on paper, but also the husband of a real Chinese lady. At the appropriate time, I took one day off from work and went all the way to Rach Gia, the southernmost town in Vietnam some two hundred miles away to catch the boat. Prior to departure my wife, a superstitious and puzzling lady, went to see a fortune teller who unfortunately told her we were in fact three people instead of two. I did not understand what he meant until I realized that my wife was pregnant. After agonizing debates, she decided not to come with me although all the paperwork had been cleared. She believed that a pregnant woman could only harm or bring bad luck to

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her husband in any trip. Since nothing I did could change her beliefs, I forged ahead and took the trip by myself. In the Rach Gia port, we — one hundred people — crammed into what was a 30-foot boat as far as I could tell. There was no room to lie down or stretch out. We were forced to sit close to one another for hours and hours like proverbial sardines in a can. I only carried with me a small bag containing clothes and a few other things. Many Chinese brought with them gold bracelets, rings, money that they tried to hide behind any recess of the boat right in view of everyone. It was really funny to watch how people managed to hide away their jewelry. I heaved a sigh of relief when the boat slowly moved away from the pier. I felt since the beginning there was something wrong with the boat. The engine was not running smoothly. I might have been superstitious, but this appeared to be a bad omen. Half an hour into the trip, my boat somehow bumped into another one causing it to shake violently. Stuffed in the hold of the boat, we did not see it coming and wondered what had happened. We asked ourselves how a collision could occur in the wide open sea. Was the captain drunk? Was he sleeping on the job? The stalling of the engine made us nervous and jittery. The captain soon told us that as a result of the accident, he needed to return to Rach Gia to have the boat fixed before taking off again in a few days. Each of us got upset because we worried about not being allowed to get out of the country again. The boat finally docked in Rach Gia and I returned to Saigon. My wife was surprised to see me returning home and wondered what had happened. I told her an accident had delayed our departure and we would take off again in a few days. Five days later, the boat sailed again. On the second day of the trip, we were attacked by pirates, mostly Thai fishermen who preyed on innocent seafarers instead of fish. They boarded our boat and ordered all males to move to their boat. They took my wedding ring and other valuables from the other men. What they did to the women on our boat, I did not know, but I noticed many of them crying afterwards. Traveling by myself, I was not privy to all the information. I, however, noticed on my return to the boat that they had ransacked it pretty well: It looked as if a big tornado had driven through it. Holes — made with a sharp object or hammer — were seen everywhere and clothing and bags were strewn all over the floor. The pirates apparently created holes to look for hidden jewelries or valuables. They also took everything they wanted,

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including my personal belongings. I was therefore left with the clothes I had on me. The planks that covered the engine area had been smashed revealing what I had suspected all along: an old engine. It was no wonder the boat had stalled that often during the trip. I wondered whether we would ever arrive at destination with such a rusty and worn out engine. I could only pray. The boat, like an old man, slowly departed again, limping along the way. It, however, held its own despite being attacked twice more by pirates. Three attacks in three days. There was nothing else to steal because the first pirates had stripped us of almost everything.

Pulau Bidong To my greatest surprise, the boat finally pulled into Pulau Bidong, an island twenty miles east of the Malaysian coastline. Bidong was a deserted island until the refugees arriving to Malaysia were sent there to live in 1978. At the time of my arrival, it was refuge to about 40,000 people who survived in shoddy huts built with their own hands — an unsightly wooden frame to which were tied pieces of cardboard, wood or scrap metal, plastic lining, and leaves. If there was a prize for ingenuity, we would have won it outright. Five to six people shared a tenby-ten-foot space, but as long as the shacks kept the rain and sun out, they served their purposes as far as we were concerned. I was assigned to live with a family in a small hut and used an empty rice bag to cover myself at night. My worst encounter was with the bedbugs — as big as the tip of the little finger — that seemed to be everywhere and could sting badly. I worked at the local dispensary as a physician although most of the work was done by a technician. Since I had lost everything including my bag and ring, I had nothing left except the shorts I had on me. I went to the beach every day to dip into its warm water and to wash my shorts. I went home with wet shorts, which luckily dried up a few hours later under the tropical heat. For a year on this island, my only belonging was these shorts. I had thrown away my shirt a long time ago because it could not withstand the daily use and the heat. I listened with sadness to the daily news, which was broadcast over the loudspeakers. Every day, I heard something like “Boat KG2016 arriving at Bidong Island with

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121 refugees aboard and 40 lost at sea.” It struck me that a lot of people had perished at sea at the hands of pirates or during storms. Many boats were never heard from again and were presumed to have sunk into the depth of the sea. Without a family on this island, I shared the sadness and misery that clung to all those who arrived without money. Groups of young entrepreneurial males went into the forest to look for good tree trunks, which they cut down and took back to the camp. They then built solid huts, which they sold to the highest bidders. There were always lucky people who somehow managed to bring out a lot of money that allowed them to lead a “luxurious” life anywhere, even in the most sordid camp. They could buy the best that was available on the island: fish freshly caught from the ocean, fresh products brought in as contraband and so on. Life was certainly good to a few people. I lived on the island for over a year before being sponsored by my younger brother who was living in the United States at that time. One day, I was taken to the airport and flown to the Washington, D.C., area where I have lived until now. My wife rejoined me a few years later. Life in the U.S. was humbling in the beginning, to say the least. I did not know anything about social and professional lives in this country and did not have any mentor to guide me through the various steps and regulations I needed to take in order to get back into my profession. I applied to 60 or 70 positions before being accepted in a rotating internship in surgery. Later I switched to a three-year training program in medicine at Howard University before going into private practice in the area. The road has been long and difficult but gratifying in the end. I would like to thank all the people who have helped me along the way.

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Anatomy of an Escape Theresa C. Trask

EDITOR’S NOTE: A former midwife retold her childhood and life under the Republican government and the communist regime. Her planned escape is described in detail.

I was born in Rach Gia in the southwestern part of Vietnam close to the Cambodian border. My father was a school headmaster in a nearby village. As a man who loved his country, he once joined the Viet Minh,1 a precursor of the Viet Cong, to fight against the French. In the 1940s, many local patriots joined that revolutionary group for lack of alternatives and because the Viet Minh had carefully hidden their communist agenda. It was only after 1954 that the communists got rid of the noncommunist patriots from their organization and took the name of Viet Cong.

Country Life My life as a country girl was fairly unremarkable except for a certain night during my youth when we heard hissing sounds coming out from under our bed. That sound was quite unusual and rare in our area. We lived in a hut adjacent to the school building and the ground was a plain dirt floor. Scared, we lit up a few oil lamps since there was no electricity in the countryside. We looked around and found a large cobra standing under the bed with its head pointing toward us. Having never seen a snake that close, I shrieked out of fear. How this snake came to 74

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stay under our bed was unknown. It must have sneaked into the house from under the sidewalls that didn’t completely touch the ground. This common practice not only allowed fresh air to circulate into the house, but also allowed unwelcome visitors to sneak in. Villagers ran over to our dwelling as they heard our cries for help. They looked for the cobra and finally killed it. We hung the snake by its head from the ceiling and the following morning my mother dutifully skinned it, cut it into pieces, and cooked it. I was amazed by the way she did it and watched with a mixture of horror and surprise at the ease with which she completed the task. The snake obviously did not mean anything to her while I still had not completely recovered from the event of the night before. To thank the villagers for their help, we invited them to eat rice soup with snake meat. They eagerly came for this rare and very special treat. They also brought wine to the party. This was the first and only time I ate snake in my life. I looked at the meat with horror and ventured to take a small bite. A chill went through my whole body when I swallowed it. It was not bad and tasted like chicken. It is fair to say that I did finish the soup but not the meat. I also heard that villagers would eat no snake other than cobras. One day, one of the Viet Minh accused my father of some misdeed he did not commit. My father was angry and thought he could not prove or vindicate himself in front of the group committee; he therefore decided to move to town and to put himself under police protection. There was no way he could physically resist a group of five or ten people jumping on him. He knew how the Viet Minh treated their prisoners and did not want to go through such a treatment. After taking whatever belongings we had, we jumped into our sampan and paddled rapidly on the small river that directly led to town. We did not care about the house for it belonged to the school. The French, who also had my father under surveillance, caught and jailed him on arrival. This was the problem that faced many patriots at the time: Hiding from one group landed them in the claws of another. He was, however, not badly treated in jail because he was educated and spoke French fluently. He was only given minor jail duties to fulfill while other prisoners had to do hard labor. His jailers soon released him because they were unable to substantiate any charge against him. Following his release, he was given a job at one of the town schools but the Viet Minh soon caught up with him. They beat and accused him of embezzling funds from the revolutionary army. Brought

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before the committee, he gave its members his side of the story. He told them he did not do anything wrong: An envious comrade had made false accusations about him in order to discredit him. Luckily, one the men on the jury stood up for him and the Viet Minh cleared him and never bothered him again. Following this incident, he vowed never to get involved in politics again. My father raised me according to thousand-year-old Confucian traditions that dictated that women should be subservient to men in a maledominated society. A woman had to obey her father when single, her husband when married, and her eldest son if widowed. These were the tam tong rules (three rules) a woman should follow in a Confucian society. And the sooner she learned her role, the better it would be for her. During my teen years, he sat me down every morning and taught me about the tu duc or four basic Confucian virtues: cong, dung, ngon, hanh. A woman should know how to cook and sew (cong) and be presentable (dung); she should converse nicely (ngon) and be virtuous (hanh). He told me that higher education was not necessary for a girl as long as she was ready for marriage when she turned eighteen. I therefore paid more attention to cooking and sewing than to sciences and excelled in these subjects in my senior year. I also won the first prize for sewing the best ao dai during a school contest. The ao dai was auctioned off and the money was used to fund other school activities. There was no need to mention I was proud of myself. I also spent a lot of time with my mother in the kitchen where I learned the basics of Vietnamese cooking.

Life Under the Southern Republic After graduating from school and since no one had asked me for marriage, my uncle advised me to go to Saigon to further my studies. This sounded like a great idea because unlike other girls who just stayed around home waiting to get married, I liked to expand my knowledge. I was also glad my father was liberal enough to allow me to go to Saigon, for country girls usually did not leave home for any reason except marriage. I applied and was accepted as a midwife student at Tu Du’s women’s hospital in Saigon. It was with joy that I packed my belongings and moved to the city where I resided at my uncle’s house. I really enjoyed the education as well as Saigon’s lifestyle. The experience was an eye

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opener for any country girl. A few months later, I received an order to return home the following summer because a businessman and his parents from the nearby town of Soc Trang would like to meet with me. It was a pre-arranged session that allowed the other family to take the first and last look at the future bride before agreeing to a marriage. The ceremony was also the first face-to-face meeting between the two families, although negotiations had been going on for some time through an intermediary. Since I did not know the suitor and his family and did not like the idea of getting married at that time, I felt trapped in an event I could not get out of. Backing out would be seen not only as insensitive, but also ungrateful to my parents who had planned a long time for this ceremony and beamed at the prospect of becoming the future in-laws of a well-to-do family. Although unhappy, I decided to go ahead with the challenge. I returned home before the meeting date and helped my mother to get the house in order, for the main thing the groom’s side would look at was the kitchen. A clean kitchen would help me pass the test even though it was not even my kitchen and I had not spent much time there. As per customs, I dressed up in a beautiful pink ao dai I had recently custom-made and peeked at the visitors from behind the curtain. The two sides were happily conversing in the living room. At the opportune time, I brought tea and dessert for the guests. I was so shaken up by the event that I spilled tea all over the tray. I uttered a few awkward excuses while fielding other questions that were thrown at me. I tried to answer them in a polite manner while I was sized up from head to toe. The whole face-to-face meeting lasted no more than ten minutes although the two families talked for a long time. Despite the incident, the groom’s side wanted to proceed with the marriage: That was a foregone conclusion, for it was based more on the matching of horoscope signs than on my overall demeanor. Despite seeing my suitor for just a few minutes, I was not interested in him; he had the look of a country boy rather than that of a well-rounded businessman. Besides, I did not feel ready to commit myself to someone I did not even know. I returned to Saigon and took time to give an answer to my father. With time passing by and sensing reluctance on my part, my parents, who were very understanding, canceled the marriage negotiations. I was rather happy to hear the news for I had no inclination to get bogged down in a marriage at this time. I continued my studies, graduated from school and returned to

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Rach Gia to practice midwifery. During that period I delivered a lot of babies whose mothers were happy with my care. Each time they were ready for another delivery, they called on me to help. They gave my name to their neighbors who also asked for me. They came to the hospital and told the nurses they were my “relatives” and requested me. When I came down to see them, many turned out to be complete strangers. After having confirmed they were referred to me by a former friend or relative, I usually accepted them as my patients. The guards at the hospital gate always chided me about all the relatives I had in town. I lived a happy life there. I had long dark hair that came down to my waist, which I was very proud of. When I returned home from work and passed by a high school, a few men used to follow me although I paid attention to no one. By that time, my father had moved to Chuong Thien to start his private business: He had bought some land and a rice mill to sort out rice. His business was growing rapidly. By 1970, I decided to go back to Saigon to become a nurse instructor. Following graduation, I stayed at Tu Du’s hospital as an instructor. Although I had a few friends, I was not interested in men at that time. My eldest sister had warned me that men were not trustworthy: She had to constantly watch her husband who, despite being married, still had many girlfriends on the side. The sight of her chasing after him and fighting with him made me squeamish and reluctant to engage in any relationship. One day, a doctor I knew back in Rach Gia called me to his office in Saigon. He was a very handsome man and a womanizer. He had many girlfriends among the highclass society in Rach Gia. He somehow had made someone upset at him and acid was thrown in his face. The perpetrator was never caught and the doctor required treatment and reconstruction of his left ear in Saigon. He was still a handsome man although the left side of his face was scarred. He told me he heard about me working at the hospital and decided to talk to me. He wanted me to work for him and I told him I needed to think it over. I went back to my hospital and never called him back.

Surviving Under the Communist Regime On April 30, 1975, while everyone looked for ways to get out of Saigon, I missed the chance to get on the boat that would have taken

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me abroad. I was supposed to get out with my sister and her family, but due to last minute mishaps, we had to stay back. My parents went out easily with my other sister who had worked for USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). Those who worked for American companies were safely flown out before the fall of Saigon. Depressed, I went back to work as usual at the hospital. Reality was grim as the communists took over control of the government. Food and basic necessities became rationed and could only be purchased at government offices or stores. Being single, I did not have to hunt for food as much as other people with a large family in tow. However, life was still stressful. A new hospital director came straight from Hanoi to take over the hospital along with a few northern physicians. One female housekeeper, an underground Viet Cong, was promoted to the position of doctor in charge of delivery. How a housekeeper without any training could become a doctor seemed unreal to me: That decision could only happen in a communist world. As a midwife, I even had to go through years of training before being allowed to practice. Being uneducated, she was very rude to patients and talked to them in vulgar terms. Although she shouted and yelled at all the southern nurses and midwives, no one dared to oppose her because she was on the side of the “administration.” Southern physicians were either downgraded or sent to reeducation camps. Characteristic of the steely communist approach, the Tu Du’s hospital became the “Birthing Factory.” To equate a hospital, the role of which should be to deliver care and empathy, to a factory, was insulting to all the women who went through great pain, sacrifice, and suffering to carry and eventually deliver babies. As food was provided only by government agencies, hospital employees were called at scheduled dates to the main office to receive their monthly allocations. Each family was given a pound of sugar and a pound of animal fat to be used as cooking oil. I also received a small amount of rice and fish, which we immediately took to the back room of the hospital to remove the scales. The fish were small in size and of poor quality. They had to be cooked right away to prevent them from spoiling in the hot weather. All the top quality fish, shrimp, and rice had to be shipped north, then exported to China as payment for debts incurred during the war. At the end of the day, although we had not done much except scale and prepare fish, we pompously reported to our superiors that we had spent a hectic day and executed a great deal of work.

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We made up all the work we had not done such as cleaning the rooms, the instruments, providing counseling to the patients, and so on. People’s economic status deteriorated. With men in concentration camps and with all the factories closed, women received no income. Without money to spend and without the availability of new fabric, they resorted to converting their ao dai into long-sleeve shirts in order to solve their clothing needs. It was a painful sacrifice for many of them for their ao dai were expensive to tailor. On the other hand, there was no occasion to show off their lovely ao dai again, for all entertainments, meetings, and reunions had been canceled. With my tailoring skills, I showed the other nurses how to cut off the lower ends of the ao dai and transform the upper end into a shirt. I also did some tailoring business on the side to earn extra cash. I spent time speaking in secrecy with a few southern physicians and friends about ways to get out of the country. I followed as many leads as I could and gradually disposed of my jewelry and belongings to put down payments on various escape attempts. I was so eager to get out that I did not pay enough attention to the handlers. Each transaction sadly turned out to be as bogus as the other. At one time I was referred to a Muslim handler who told my sister and me about his deal. He took us to his mosque and prayed there for a long time for the success of his venture. We thought he was a religious man and trusted him with our money. He simply disappeared with it and we found out later on that he performed similar scams on other people. He ended up in jail months later. Deep down inside I cringed as I watched my small savings evaporate into thin air. Had I reported the scams to the police, I would have been jailed for having attempted to escape. Down to my last ounce of gold, I became desperate and decided to trade away my scooter, but the lady I dealt with had closed a deal the day before and did not want to buy from me. I cried, for I was confused and did not know what to do next. The world seemed to crash under me. I thought I never would be able to get out of the country to rejoin my parents. A friend of mine who saw my despair referred me to a priest. Although I was a Buddhist, I decided to explore this new religion out of despair. The priest counseled me and after a while converted me to Catholicism. As times were unstable and uncertain, the number of desperate people like me who turned to religion for help grew rapidly. During that period, I saw a lot of women and men praying in churches and pagodas. As my religion gave

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me comfort and peace, I returned to work with zeal. It was at that time my parents, who had migrated to the States, sent me $U.S. 2,000. I thought it was a blessing from God for it came at the right time. Overjoyed, I gave most of it to my brother to outfit a boat for an escape.

Escape Planning Brother Five 2 had also decided to escape and asked me to come and live with his family to speed up the preparation. He got acquainted with a few Viet Cong who gave him road passes to go to Rach Gia. Movement from one region to another was strictly regulated for the purpose of controlling the whereabouts of citizens. If road passes made the government feel in control, they also corrupted the system. Those who had money or connections could bribe the officials and easily obtain the passes, thereby bypassing the control system. Using his scooter and the passes, brother Five drove first to Bac Lieu about 90 miles southwest of Saigon. Driving by himself gave him the freedom he could not enjoy had he used public transportation, which was crowded, noisy, and rarely on time. Besides, the mobility of his scooter allowed him to sneak around without being detected or followed. He could go anywhere whenever he wanted. He could avoid delays at the various police stations strewn along the highways to control passengers. Once in Bac Lieu, he got in touch with a friend who had previously owned a boat. The boat was used for fishing trips in the past but once the engine failed it was left idle and useless on the water like an amputee without a prosthetic leg. As he was good with deals, he made a proposition the boat owner could not refuse. Who would refuse if someone offered him the chance to get out of the country at that time? He then drove to Rach Gia to look for a boat engine. Since the boating industry was heavily regulated and controlled by the police, brother Five cautiously went around the boating stores to look for a good engine. He finally found what he liked: a used Japanese engine that was in fairly good condition. He filled out the forms, paid for the engine, and had it shipped to his address in Saigon. He returned to Saigon and went about his daily business as a pharmacist at the state hospital. Once in possession of the engine, he brought it to a well-known repair shop in town and asked the owner to fix it according to his specifications. He later real-

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ized through friends that the shop was a storefront for the local police. Too late to cancel the order, he decided to sell the engine to another friend to avoid attracting police’s attention. Through a complex deal he got his engine back from another person. He decided to work on the engine by himself as he was very gifted with his hands: Had he not been a pharmacist, he would have become an engineer. He used all his spare time to tinker with the engine after building a shed behind his house to work at his leisure. Local policemen came by a couple of times to enquire about his work. He told them he was building an engine to make sugar out of sugarcane. The police left him alone although he was sure they kept a close eye on him. Although it took him a long time, he was able to double the power of the engine and connect it to a propeller. The next step was to test it and make sure it worked properly. Cranking it up in the shed would surely attract the attraction of the police, which he did not want to do. He thought about trying the machine indoors as this would definitely cut down on the noise. He brought the machine indoors and realized that the smoke generated during the testing might also attract the attention of the police. He decided to connect the exhaust pipe to a plastic tubing, which he plugged into the sewer system. He thought the smoke would follow the sewer system and be carried away somewhere else and no one would figure out where it was coming from. He cranked up the engine, which sputtered in the beginning. After a few tries, it began to work and to generate a small amount of smoke inside the house. The rest had been dissipated through the sewer as expected. He was happy with the way the engine worked, although he thought it needed some refinement. We both beamed for joy at the thought of finally being able to escape. Suddenly, rapid knocks at the front door caused us to freeze with fear. The police, we thought, even if contacted ten minutes earlier could not arrive that fast. I ran to the door, looked through the keyhole and saw my next door neighbor. I rapidly opened the door and greeted her as if nothing had happened. She was my boss at Tu Du hospital: a northern obstetrician who came from Hanoi to assume direction of the biggest women’s hospital in town. Having no place to live, the government had assigned to her the house next door. Its previous owner was a general who had left the country in the last days of April 1975. She started enquiring about the noisy engine brother Five was working on and about the smoke that had seeped into her house. Her question sent an electric

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shock into my spine: We would be in dire trouble had she reported us to the police. I quickly expressed my regrets about sending smoke into her house and assured her we would stop working on an engine that was designed to produce sugar out of sugar cane. Again I profusely apologized to her. As she knew me, she accepted the apology and went back into her house. I was still shaking when I closed my door. My brother nervous and uptight from the incident had turned off the engine. For all his fancy plans, he failed to realize that the smoke, after going into the sewer, would back up into each connecting house. We lived in a row of townhouses that were connected to each other, a relic of French architecture. I was glad no other neighbor had complained about the smoke. He wiped the sweat off his face, took the engine into his shed and did not work on it for about a week. During that period, he made frequent trips to Bac Lieu to work on refurbishing the riverboat. He asked his friend to gut out the whole boat, to make it more aerodynamic and suitable for seafaring, to put a new coat of tar on the keel and to rebuild the inside of the boat. Two separate holding areas were fashioned with two new entrances doors. Although designed to serve as hiding areas, they could be used for storing fish or shrimp. The work took some time, for the boat owner had to be careful not to attract the attention of the police. Besides time, money and luck were also important. Boat building was one of the businesses that were closely watched by the government and the owner had been wise to register his vessel as a fishing boat. Brother Five shipped the engine to Bac Lieu sometime later. Once the refurbishing was completed and the engine installed, the owner took it for a maiden voyage up and down the river. For many months, he and brother Five went fishing on many occasions and had dutifully returned home after each trip. They also made sure the police knew about each of their trips and would not become suspicious of their whereabouts. Eighteen months had passed since the planning stages of the project: 18 months during which I daily enquired about its progress. Everyone had anxiously waited for D-day, which had been pushed back many times. I too was tired of waiting; 18 months represented almost an eternity for those who yearned to get out of the country. I thought I would never see the day when I could enjoy freedom. But after living five years under the communist system, I was somewhat used to it. As a woman, I did not feel as politically and socially threatened as a man. With my

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new faith, I felt at peace with myself and did not doubt I could easily survive under the regime for a long time. My brother had been working hard on the project all along: He had dedicated all his energy and strength to it and when he announced the date of departure, I was happy the pressure on him was lightened. We went to the rendezvous through various routes. I put in a request for a week of vacation with the purpose of visiting my relatives in the countryside. I took only the necessary things in order not to attract undue attention. I went to Bac Lieu about 90 miles southwest of Saigon where I boarded the boat. A total of 46 people took part in the trip. They were picked up in groups at various places. We stayed in the two holding areas and the doors were closed on us. Blocks of ice were laid on top of the doors to make the whole area look like a large icebox from the outside. It was dark on the inside although we had flashlights we could use if need arose. The area was cramped and we tried to minimize all noises. Children were given sleeping medicines. Although it became stuffy after a while, we told ourselves that it would not be too long before we could get back on the deck. As the boat sailed down the river, we could feel it moving and could hear the engine rumbling. We were thrilled that at least we had departed from a land of oppression, although we knew it was just the beginning. The trip appeared to be smooth until we arrived at the last police station before hitting the high seas. A policeman came on board and began inspecting everything. We heard his footsteps above us. Despite seeing the blocks of ice, he curiously enquired about what was behind the ice. I heard my brother telling him in a straightforward voice it was an icebox. We shook like leaves at the thought of the policeman wanting to take a look at the area. Had he asked, he would have discovered us and we would have all ended up in jail. Those few minutes weighed heavily on us. Luckily, he turned around and looked elsewhere. We all let out a big sigh of relief. Before getting off the boat, he requested a block of ice for the men at the station: My brother, glad to get rid of him, gave him half a block, arguing we needed all the ice to freeze the catch. We realized we once more lucked out. The boat reached the sea shortly thereafter and we were let out of the ice box. The trip turned out to be uneventful and we reached a Malaysian oil rig three days later. There were no storm or pirates to fight against and we were all happy the trip did not take that long. My brother bored a few holes at the bot-

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tom of the boat in order to sink it. The rig manager would not let us get on the rig if the boat was not sunk. Once the boat took on water, we were rescued and transported to Pulau Bidong camp the following day. My parents later sponsored me to the U.S.

7

The Guava Tree Anh Hai

EDITOR’S NOTE: Living conditions were oppressive for the southern inmates. The communists used food as a tool to control, to punish them, and to wear them down physically and mentally. Hunger was so pervasive inmates only thought about food. Depressed, dispirited and malnourished, a colonel who had been imprisoned in a northern camp for more than six years was ready to give up and to kill himself. On his way to work one morning, he fell on the ground exhausted. When he woke up he heard birds singing and saw a guava tree full of ripe fruit overshadowing him. He thought he was dreaming... This is the story of how an encounter with a fruit tree saved his life.

I was an ARVN colonel who had the chance to get out of Vietnam on April 29, 1975. Delayed by the funeral of a general who had committed suicide on the last day of the war, I missed the plane that would have taken my family and me out of the country. I therefore remained in Saigon when the city fell. I did not know what to do as I became imprisoned in my own country. I followed the news on the radio and reported to the new government two weeks later for what was termed “one month of reeducation” for officers of my rank. The “one month” reeducation turned out to be fourteen long years of incarceration, six in the south and eight more in various camps in the north. When I look back at these years, the famous phrase President Thieu once uttered immediately jumps to my mind: “Don’t listen to what the communists say, but just watch what they do.” Had everyone listened to him, South Vietnam would probably not have been lost. 86

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Life in the Northern Camps I was incarcerated at the Long Giao camp for about one year, during which I had to write my biography over and over again and to learn about socialism and uncle Ho. I no longer remember how many biographies I wrote during that period and how many hours of political lectures and discussions I endured, listening while sitting on the hard and cold dirt floor. And that was just the brainwashing part, the breakfast before the big meal. Some of us blocked out these messages outright while others just ignored them. I decided to let the words fly by me without registering them. The Buddha once said something like “rain drops will not harm anyone if we let them run down our skin.” We were sent to the Suoi Mau camp where we languished for about a month while waiting for the “big treatment.” We knew the communists would not let us off the hook that easily. We were then told we would be going to “nicer” places than the one we were in: This was a euphemism for “hell.” Somehow the communists always said the reverse of what they were thinking. One night in 1976, around midnight, we were shoved into the backs of trucks darkened for having their tarpaulins rolled down and driven to an unknown destination. Communist drivers always drove slowly, making the trip longer than expected. The destination was Tan Son Nhut airport where we were confined to a securely guarded hangar. We were taken to an American-made C130 cargo airplane, our hands and feet shackled, and flown to Yen Bai airport in the north. We were then transported to the Lao Kai camp close to the Chinese border. Never had we imagined that we, high-level officers, would be shackled like common thieves. Along the way, people lined up along the streets, cursed and threw rocks at us. Whether this was a spontaneous or incited manifestation of anger was never known, although we suspected that everything in the communist state was planned ahead of time. There was no way for common people to know who was riding in the trucks unless someone had tipped them off. A general greeted us and told us point blank that we would be doing hard labor: The camp was neither a rest or recreation area. From then on, we worked six days a week and were placed on a starvation diet: two bowls of rice a day — one at lunch and the other at supper. We barely survived under that harsh treatment.

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In 1977, because of the impending war with China, we were moved to the Ha Tay camp where we were given axes to take down lo o trees. These giant trees were then chopped into pieces, the good ones set aside for making furniture and the rest sold to villagers as firewood for cash. All this work was done with backbreaking effort using regular axes as there were no electric saws. One just has to figure how long it would take to chop a large tree into chunks of wood. Lifting and transporting these heavy pieces of wood was also done by hand as no forklift was available. The fruit of our work of course was kept by our jailers. During the process, a few prisoners became so hungry they ate the roots of the trees: They died as a consequence because the roots turned out to be very toxic. Light-duty labor reserved for recovering inmates consisted of planting vegetables in the garden plot; more than half of the harvest was set aside for sale and the rest used for local consumption.

Civilian Life The communist system introduced in South Vietnam after 1975 completely overhauled the whole society. Men associated with the former regime lost their jobs and therefore their incomes. The fact they were confined in concentration camps forced their wives to work to put food on the table. Housewives were thus thrown into society to become wage earners. Having no previous skills, they were forced to become peddlers: They sold their furniture, television and radio sets, motorcycles, bikes, and basically whatever they could put their hands on. Others sold food products, fruits, vegetables, rice, and so on. If they could not sell they traded products among themselves. Southern money had been confiscated and each family was allowed to keep 500 dong at most: This was a onetime deal. The southern capitalist economy stalled for lack of money and products. A new primitive economy slowly emerged of trading and bartering. My wife, in the meantime, had to look for means to feed our nine children. She put the eldest, a ten-year-old boy, in charge of a coffee stand she set up in front of the house. A small table, a few chairs, powdered coffee, hot water and cups were all that was needed. Assisted by his brothers, he sold coffee to passersby and collected whatever money he could earn. My wife set up another stand at the black market to sell

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diamonds and bracelets. Since she was knowledgeable about gold and jewelry prior to the end of the war, she continued along that line of work and served as an intermediary between sellers and buyers. While southern women tried to dispose of their jewelries and diamonds, northern women who then had the money bought all these fancy objects they had never owned. There was thus a transfer of southern goods to northerners. The police watched my house and its inhabitants closely at all times. They harassed my family by planting false stories with neighbors. On many occasions they told neighbors but not my family that my house, the puppet’s house, would be taken over by the government. The neighbors in turn notified my family of the bad news. This caused my wife to become very upset and she made arrangements to get out of the house in case there was a need. She became more aggressive in her dealings in order to have enough money to move out. On another occasion, the police came by to search the house for money, gold, or contraband items. They went through all the drawers, racks, and rooms only to find in one of the boys’ rooms a copy of Playboy magazine. The magazine was considered to be a “decadent” and therefore illegal item, and its owner was subject to arrest. To prevent my son being jailed, my sister-in-law stepped in and claimed to have bought the magazine to use as wrapping paper. The young policemen looked through the magazine with delight, confiscated it and took it home with them.

The Guava Tree Despite working in the fields as usual for eight to ten hours a day, our jailers placed us on starvation rations. They gave us two meals a day: one bowl of gruel at lunch and two bowls of rice with some lettuce at supper. A few morsels of fish or meat would be a luxury in our camp. Under this regimen, we all felt weaker and weaker as time went by. We wobbled and our gaits became unsteady. Some of us developed leg and ankle edema from lack of nutrition — a sign of lack of thiamine or vitamin B1. Jailers did not have to beat us: They just underfed us and like autumn leaves we just withered away. Many, as a matter of fact, just dropped dead because of inanition. On many occasions, we were assigned to work in a field planted

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with manioc. We seeded all these plants, which could grow as tall as five or six feet. We dug out the roots when they matured and stored and consumed them after boiling these roots. The latter could measure up to one foot in length and two to three inches in thickness. They were soft when consumed soon after harvest. But once they were stored for some time, they would become as hard as any other root. Chewing on them became a problem because malnutrition had caused our teeth to be in poor condition. After returning to the camp following a full day’s work in the manioc field one day, we realized that three of us were missing from the daily roll call. We simply thought they had tried to escape. The jailers sent some of us to look for them — under supervision of course. When we returned to the field, we noticed all three of them lying dead on the ground. Close by were remnants of manioc roots. They apparently were so hungry they ate the roots raw without even peeling the skin and cooking them. Manioc skin was noted to be very toxic; it could cause instant death on swallowing. A few inmates had on another occasion gorged themselves to death by eating berries. Whether the wild berries were toxic or whether their stomachs could not tolerate the rapid ingestion of berries was not known. It was possible that the infriable, unused stomachs could have burst open like any over-distended organ. The state of starvation induced by our jailers in the camps made us so hungry that we ate whatever we could put our hands on: lizards, crickets, frogs, rats, and snakes. These indiscriminate eating habits had something to do with our high death rate. On my way to work one day, I felt so weak that I dragged behind the rest of the group. I fell to the ground although I had almost reached the worksite. No one heard the noise and no one paid attention to me because they were just as weak as I was. As I could barely move, I became desperate and just wanted to die. I felt the ground with my fingers looking for a sharp object with which I could kill myself. I grabbed a sharp branch and pulled it close to me. But I was too weak to even kill myself. Then I lost consciousness. I do not know how long I stayed on the ground but for me it was an eternity. I was suddenly awakened by the chirping of birds. They were so happy that they sang and sang. Everything was so peaceful that I thought I was in heaven. There was no guard around me and no one was yelling or screaming at me. I felt relaxed and much stronger than before. I slowly opened my eyes to make sure I was still

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alive and not dreaming. The sun was shining on me. I blinked my eyes and reopened them slowly. What I saw was unbelievable. I must be dreaming, I mumbled to myself. Above me was a guava tree full of ripe guavas, some green and others yellow. Of all the trees, it had to be a guava tree. And I could even smell the aroma of ripe guavas from the ground. I have had a weakness for bitter fruits like guavas or star fruits since I was young. When I was in the army, I used to come home during lunchtime and eat a few guavas with mam ruoc (fermented shrimp sauce) before returning to work. And there it was: I just fell asleep underneath my favorite tree. I was so weak I did not even recognize it before I fell down. I slowly got up, still dizzy from the overall weakness. I reached up, picked the ripest fruit, and started munching on it. This was the most delicious guava I had ever tasted. Since I had not eaten any guava for at least six years, I finished it in no time although it was slow according to my normal standard. I then grabbed another one and another one and ate them all. I felt full and charged with a new joy of living. I then rejoined my fellow inmates who wondered where I had been hiding. From that time onward, I no longer wanted to die: Life suddenly took on a special meaning for me. I did not know what had happened but I felt like someone had placed a guava tree and singing birds on my road to tell me life was worth living. We were not allowed any visitation during the first two years in the north. Slowly rules were relaxed. My wife came and visited with me on five occasions during my eight years in the north. She came more often when I was moved south for the remaining six years. She brought food — usually dry products like rice that would last longer than fresh ones — medicines, candies, sugar, salt, and so on. These items were delicious for any inmate who subsisted on gruel and rice year in year out. Gnawing on pieces of shredded pork, beef jerky, or dry squid made me feel good and euphoric. The medicines and vitamins gave me extra strength. She also slipped money to me which I used to bribe my guards or buy a few needed items. I anxiously waited for each of her visits for it was like light in the middle of darkness. I was indebted to her for remaining faithful to me all these years. She had the chance to stray, though she did not. From my roommates, I knew of a few women who left their husbands during this difficult time, although I did not blame them. If life was tough for us in the concentration camps, it was even tougher for young wives who were left home alone without any support.

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Years passed by slowly and one day I was called to the office and told I would be transferred to the south. Although the south meant closer to home, I was not free yet. But this was a beginning. I did not know I would be incarcerated for another five years. Eight years in a northern camp were enough to wear out the strongest man. The incarceration time in the south was much better for me because my wife was able to see me more often and provide me with food and all the necessary items. I no longer had to worry about starvation. One day, I was told about my release. Returning home after a fourteen-year incarceration was a difficult adaptation process. Nothing was the same any longer. My wife and children who had grown up and lived apart from me for a decade and a half had changed. Without realizing it, my personality also had changed. My wife told me I became a demanding person while I used to be a nice person to live with before. Anything would irritate me: things that were out of place, the shoes I could not find, and the food that did not taste good. I probably had lost my taste because anything she prepared for me was inedible. While I could not complain about the rice and gruel I received in the camp, at home I would complain about the food she took time to prepare for me. Everything was grounds for complaint or I would argue with everything she said. At night, I suffered from recurrent nightmares that woke up the whole family. Fights and arguments became frequent between us at the time. I was a totally different man. My wife told me that the first two years after I came home were hell for her. She had wanted to divorce me many times although she stuck with me. I am thankful to her for this. Even today I cannot explain what was going on with me at the time. It could be related to a combination of stress and anger from the years of incarceration and the realization she was an independent and somewhat successful housewife. We applied for the Organized Departure Program which was designed to help former Saigon government officials and soldiers who had spent more than three years in concentration camps immigrate to the U.S. As I had spent more than fourteen years in various concentration camps, I was eligible for the program. We finally immigrated to the U.S. a few years later and are still married despite our differences. Like older Vietnamese, we live in separate rooms despite sharing the same house. She cooks for me and I do small things in the house for her. Instead of having a divorce, we have physical separation. We are still

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friends and care for each other. This is the Vietnamese way: After passion or physical attraction has dissipated, the attachment between the two individuals still persists through nghia or duty. We feel like we have a duty to stick together for good or bad.

8

The So-Called Reeducation Camp Trong T. Ngo

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author recounts his experience with southern reeducation camps — a total of five. After his release, he was sent to a NEZ before he finally decided to escape from the country.

First of all, I have to note that the communists are good handlers of words. We should be very careful with and meticulous about the way they use words and especially any dealings with them that involve written agreements. Here is an example: Their decree ordered, “All puppet officers (i.e., officers of the ThiÆu regime) should present themselves for reeducation courses bringing along with them ten days of food along with mosquito nets, blankets, etc....” The decree implied that this so-called “reeducation course” would last for ten days or a little longer but not indefinitely nor even one or two years. Unfortunately, however, it did mean indefinitely! After the cataclysm of April 1975, the Viet Cong takeover of South Vietnam, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) went into chaos. Most of the military personnel were disheartened and depressed and could only wait to see what would happen to them.

Hoc Mon Reeducation Camp On June 1, 1975, the first decree ordered all enlisted men and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) to attend three-day reeducation courses 94

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at various locations both in the cities and in towns and villages. After three days of the so-called reeducation courses, each enlisted man and NCO was given a reeducation certificate. On June 10, 1975, the second decree ordered that all civil servants and field rank officers (major and above) assemble for reeducation courses. I myself was targeted in the third decree that called for a 10-day reeducation course. Nevertheless, I was suspicious. I prepared everything for a minimum stay of three months. I presented myself on June 25, 1975, at the Faculty of Architecture at the corner of Pasteur and Phan –ình Phùng streets in Saigon. On arrival, we were placed under the control of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) personnel, the “Bμ –μi”; they were, of course, armed. Then we had to fill out all kinds of paper work and hand over our personal documents. We could no longer leave the compound. It seemed as if military life began for us again after our long and desperate experience, which ended in April 1975. We remained in this location for two and a half days living on a regimen of boiled convolvulus, canned fish and rice. I would like to emphasize here that every day a van bearing the sign of a very famous restaurant in Saigon — for example, the famous “Á –ông” Chinese restaurant — brought us these foods. Citizens outside the compound, seeing that we were catered by restaurants, thought that we were very well treated; in fact, it was quite the contrary. On June 28, 1975, at 11 P.M., we were ordered to move to the reeducation camp. At 00:30 A.M., we all climbed onto covered “Molotova” trucks (40 per truck) with two Viet Cong “bμ d-μi” guards armed with AK rifles. The convoy, consisting of about 20 covered Molotova trucks, departed at 1 A.M. for an unknown destination. The canvas-covered trucks, loaded with 40 people and their luggage, were crowded and the air was suffocating. After an hour of travel, some of us began shouting and yelling, but the bμ d-μi put an end to these complaints by threatening to shoot anyone who continued to create disorder in the packed truck. The guards who sat at the rear of the truck could in no way envision the terrible situation we had been enduring inside. Even if they realized it, they didn’t care! Suddenly, one of us fell unconscious. We decided to make holes into the cover of the truck to let air flow in — not only to help the unconscious fellow, but also to allow us to see where we were going. All of us realized the hardships that were waiting for us. At 3:00 A.M., we arrived at Don Ong Nam, Hóc Môn District, Gia d-i.nh Province, a former Engi-

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neering Corps base. We had to wait in the suffocating truck for at least half an hour more for the bμ d-μi of this camp to wake up. The situation became worse as air could not get into the parked truck. Whispers and laments began. Everyone fell into deep thought. Finally, unloading took place. We felt as if we had been released from a long and hard imprisonment, but that was just the beginning. After a long head-count and roll call, we were taken to the warehouses and huts of the former military compound, which would house about 800 people (75 persons in each hut). We were very tired and quickly fell asleep, even though the ward was filthy! After two hours of sleep, the breaking of the dawn allowed us to see our surroundings. Some of us were able to locate the camp. We were encircled by barbed wire and watched closely by the bμ d-μi. There was no way to get out! The census began. We were organized into squads, platoons, and companies. The first thing we had to do was to cook our own food of rice, convolvulus as vegetables, and soybean. Each platoon, which consisted of four squads, organized its own cooking under the supervision of one communist second lieutenant, one sergeant and two corporals. We had to dig wells, latrines, refuse pits, etc. With such long-range goals of setting up utilities and facilities, our hope for a ten-day reeducation evaporated like a cloud of steam. I told myself my foresight was not bad. The most ironic thing was that we had to reinforce the perimeter with barbed wire to keep ourselves from escaping. It was the first lesson of the reeducation. Furthermore, on top of the two storage buildings, in front of our camp, we were able to see through the barbed wire the famous communist slogan in big letters: “There is nothing more precious than Independence and Liberty.” Besides these duties, we spent time studying the regulations of the camp; they prohibited us from contacting our friends in other reeducation battalions who lived in the same compound not far from the barbed wire. Statement after statement had to be made detailing our life from childhood to the cataclysm of 1975; all relatives had to be included from brothers to sisters to parents and grandparents on both sides. Needless to say, self-criticism was also included and unavoidable. Not only did we have to criticize ourselves, but we were also judged and criticized by our friends in the same squad and platoon. Everyone must find a reason to criticize one another. This matter turned out to be very troublesome or even ugly at times. Three months of unrelenting criti-

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cism went by slowly. Beriberi, malaria, anemia, and pellagra, which afflicted nearly 75 percent of the camp inmates, were mainly caused by lack of vitamin B1 and nicotinic acid in the diet. I myself was very depressed, although I was resistant to all these diseases. My estimate for a maximum incarceration time of three months in the so-called communist reeducation system was no longer correct, but I still hoped that it wouldn’t last too long anyway. A human being could not live too long without hope. Then the big day arrived. The real reeducation lectures took place. The auditorium was the former garage of the base. We had to attend lectures for one or two days consecutively; the subjects were “American imperialism,” its cruelties, its exploitation of the workers in the former South Vietnam and in the under-developed countries, its false, harsh system; imperialism’s international world strategy; the sale by the puppet regime of Thieu-Ky-Khiem of the Vietnamese people to American imperialism; the revolution; the inevitable defeat of American imperialism and the inevitable overthrow of the puppet regime of Thieu-Ky-Khiem; the complete and successful campaign of our Army and people guided cleverly by the Communist Party and Uncle Ho; and our beautiful and rich country, the example for the world and the guiding light of the present times. Each lesson lasted at least one week or ten days. After one or two days of lectures, we had to discuss and give our opinions over a period of five days or one week: four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon, and under the close supervision of the political cadres. It was very boring, tiring, and troublesome. Besides, we had to make a resume of each lesson. More than three months passed with this brain-washing and we thought the reeducation would be over soon. But it was not. I ended up in this camp for seven months.

Other Reeducation Camps On January 21, 1976, I was told along with 150 other men in the camp to get ready in ten minutes for a new trip — at midnight. We were assembled at the gate of the base with other men from different reeducation battalions. At 00:30 A.M., fifty covered trucks took us to Saigon New Port on Highway No 1 to embark for the new destination.

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At 2:00 A.M. we were on the former ARVN naval ship 401. It was very crowded. Could you imagine how many people were on this 401 naval ship? About 2,000 people. Fortunately, we were in the open air, for there was no canvas cover. Therefore, we could avoid a repeat of our earlier suffocation episode. After two days and two nights we arrived at Phú QuØc Island. We had to wait until 8:30 P.M. to be taken in former ARVN GMC trucks to the new reeducation camp. Tired and exhausted, we were driven to the prison formerly used during the war for POWs. We called it a concentration camp because the communists hated and feared a comparison with the Nazis. Seventy-five of us had to sleep together in one room; each man had only 14 inches to lie on. The same procedure and the same formalities were repeated again. But in this camp we had to use our hands more than our brains. The political lectures were few, but from time to time we had to review the crazy lessons we had learned in the first camp in Hóc Môn. We also had to march into the jungle and carry at least 35 kilos of wood back to the camp — a 10–15 kilometer distance. We were closely guarded, of course, by the bμ d-μi, who were armed with AK-47s. Besides this duty, we had to clear the jungle, to dig a large pond about 50 meters long by 25 meters wide and three meters deep to raise fish. We worked very hard, we dug and hoed the earth to plant vegetables — convolvulus, maize, and manioc which would have been enough for us, but the plants needed time to grow. In the meantime, we lived in misery and starvation! Once we got a sufficient amount of vegetables, our full ration of rice, although insufficient, was cut back. I spent six months in this camp. On June 16, we were moved back to Tr‰ng Læn, my third camp, near Tây Ninh. I did not have to endure the hardships of the previous boat ride. That time we were on the former ARVN Naval ship 501 instead of the 401. In this new camp there were more lectures than hard work. The same above-mentioned subjects had to be gone through again. Our rice ration was cut down. Everyone had lost a lot of weight. Beriberi, pellagra, anemia, and malaria were the most common diseases, but there was no medicine at all! Three months later, we got permission to send letters to our families. Family visits and food parcels began. After 18 long months, we were allowed to meet our beloved ones, but only two people. We couldn’t talk much, since we were watched closely by the bμ d-μi. On December 9, 1976, I was transferred again to a fourth camp far-

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ther into the jungle at Dong Bang. But this time we traveled in an open Molotova, which had been made in China. On this journey I saw that the people were still sympathetic to us: Along the road they threw us bread, cigarettes, cookies, etc., in front of the bμ d-μi, even though the latter were very angry with the fact that we still had the understanding and compassion of the population. At this new camp, our main job was to clear the jungle trees. We each had to cut down an area of 60 meters long by 10 meters wide daily. We worked only with knives, which we had to forge ourselves. We had become blacksmiths in spite of ourselves because the communists only gave us five knives for every twelve people. The process of self-criticism and squad and platoon criticism was repeated again and again indefinitely. They made us eat maize fit only for animals and manioc instead of a full ration of rice. Maize was very, very hard for our brittle teeth. Finally, they gave us some flour. We made little flour balls in our hands with some water, boiled and ate them with salt. Later, they let us bake bread. We had to organize the making of this bread by ourselves, but some men, whose family had a bakery before, knew how to make and bake bread. I was told that the flour came from the USA. You never knew how much longer you had to stay in the camp. They had told us ten days at first and they had never mentioned anything different. If you asked, they always responded: “If you study well, you will go back home.” When we asked: “How well?” they always answered: “If you study well, you need not ask. If you ask, you have not studied well.” In the face of this bizarre dialectic, escape was an unavoidable path since we had been confined in the concentration camps for more than two years now. The first escape occurred on July 5, 1977, from my platoon. It involved ten men whose organizers were the chief and deputy chief of my platoon. We had to criticize and criticize ourselves again and again. The communist political cadre reprimanded us and gave us long lectures about patriotism, about the generous and magnanimous policy of the communist party and of uncle Ho. He told us: “More than two years have passed and you still have in your head the idea of escaping. You then deserve the death penalty!” And so on... The next day, 40 more escaped, but I couldn’t find out what had happened to them. I thought they had very little chance of survival, for there was only dense jungle and more jungle all around us. Moreover, there was fighting near the Cambodian-Vietnamese border.

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On July 25, 1977, the camp was split up among other camps. I was transferred to Bùi Gia Phúc camp, 17 kilometers farther into the jungle of Phu.æc Long Province. The same job and the lecture-criticism happened again. There were still some escapes. Some escapees were caught and detained in a “conex”1 under the hot sun and drenching rain. They were fed a below-subsistence ration (one bowl of rice daily) and had both hands and feet manacled to a wooden pole. The communist cadres formed a kind of tribunal. We had to gather, criticize, and give judgment on the escapees’ acts; of course, we had to pronounce them guilty of treason to the people, harm to the revolution, the fatherland, and particularly treason to the famous, generous and magnanimous policy of the communist party and Uncle Ho!.... Everyone had to shout : “Death penalty!” Finally, in November 1977, the first temporary releases began and were followed by a second in February–March 1978. On May 27, 1978, I was released for a third vacation and then my time in reeducation camp was completed. Unwillingly, with no option, I had to sign papers promising to work with my hands in the so-called “New Economic Zones” (NEZ) as compensation for “harm to the people and the revolution under the rebellious ThiÆu regime.” I came back to Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and lived under the communists’ strict control and close supervision. On October 1, they sent me to the SuØi Giây 2 NEZ, near the Cambodian border. I thought I might have a chance to get across the border. But after one and half months, I could see that it was hopeless. There was no way to get out. It was too dangerous. The Vietnamese were also attacking Cambodia, so even if I made it into Cambodia, I could see that the Cambodians could kill me. Also, it would have been impossible to live in that jungle. On November 15, 1978, I broke the rules and never went back. That was my escape! Adieu, my so-called reeducation camp! Adieu, the New Economic Zones!

9

The Lady in Black Dieu Hien

EDITOR’S NOTE: A family’s life fell apart when the head of the household failed to escape from Saigon at the end of the war. Arrest, death, report to a reeducation camp, and the confiscation of property led to family dissolution. Post-war events forever changed people’s lives.

My father had at least two chances to get out of Saigon during the last days of April 1975. The company he worked for had two boats that were used to ferry foreign merchandise back to Vietnam. He declined to use one of the boats, preferring instead to get out by plane. Unfortunately, the April 27 shelling of the airport forced its closure and doomed his flight departure. On April 29, when he went to the Bach Dang pier to get on another boat, the crowded area became unsafe because of random shooting. Once he decided to return home, his fate was sealed.

The Arrest A couple of months later, the Cong An (security police) came to our house well armed. They were youngsters armed with AK machine guns. They banged at the door and rushed in. They asked for my father then went around searching the house from front to back. I got scared and did not know what they were looking for. This was the first time I had seen the dreaded Cong An up close. We were stunned and did not know how to react. What had we done wrong? After completing their search, they took father with them. They told 101

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us that since he had dealt with Americans while he was in the hotel business, he was a spy and therefore deserved to go to jail. There was no official charge, no warrant. Father just threw at me one of these long and sad looks. He shook his head, did not say anything and then thrust his chin in my direction. Then they whisked him away. Father did not offer any resistance. I could not believe it. Because he had dealt with Americans in the past, he was branded as a spy. The day before, he was a wealthy and respected citizen, and that day, he was led away like a common criminal. He had only the clothes he wore that day. They did not let him take anything — not even his toothbrush. By thrusting his chin in my direction, he made me responsible for the household in his absence. I knew it. He had always wanted me to study business so I could later work for him. As a matter of fact, he wanted my sister and me to follow his path. I was, however, closer to him than my sister was. He thought that Japan was a good place to learn business and made up his mind to send me there to study. He made me learn Japanese, which was a tricky language to study. It did cost him some money to put me through a language school because there were not too many Japanese teachers in Saigon at that time. He enrolled me in a Japanese business school and I received the visa and paperwork for the trip. He even exchanged money to be used for traveling expenses. Due to a last minute problem, I decided to cancel the trip. When I told him I did not want to go but wanted to get married instead, he got very upset. He did not yell at me at all. He just shook his head and walked away. Mother told me I was still young and could go to school for a couple of years before being engaged. Somehow, I refused to listen to them. I was not really sure why I changed my mind. Maybe I cared too much about another person’s suffering. That was my problem. I met this fellow Thang when I was sixteen. He was a friend of my sister’s friend. One day, he asked me through my sister whether he could stop by and see me. I told him he was welcome. He came by with three of his friends and we chatted. The relationship carried on and off for two years. I was still young at the time and did not know what love meant. I was ready to go abroad to study when my physician detected a small growth on my neck. My parents opted for surgery while I was still in Saigon. The operation went all right; it was just a benign growth. My friend somehow heard about my operation and my trip abroad. I did

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not know how he did it. He visited me at the hospital and a week later came to my home. He took me to the side of a road and asked me why I did not tell him about the trip. He told me he was very upset with me for hiding important things from him. He asked me whether I was fooling around with him. I told him I was going to school and I would be back. He did not want to hear about it. Four years is a long time, especially in Vietnam where he could be drafted at any time. He told me he was one of the oldest students in the class and that if he failed at the exam, he would be drafted with all its dreaded consequences. Although I reassured him that I would be back, he did not want to listen to me. I got scared but also felt that he was right. If he got drafted, I would bear a heavy burden in my soul. I told him to talk to my parents and I would go from there. He talked to my parents who thought it over. He brought me to his parents who told me he was the first son in the family and had to carry the burden of the tradition. They asked me to love him and to consider his offer seriously. I was in a quandary. I did not know what to think. I was not in love with him, although I did not want to cause him problems. Since I was naturally endowed, I had a few admirers, although I did not like anyone especially. I found another very interesting fellow — one that I felt I could fall in love with. The problem was that socially he ranked lower than Thang. After a lot of internal debate — how much could I debate at that age?— I decided to marry Thang and we proceeded forward. I thus got married — a marriage of reason, more than of heart. Looking back, I still do not know why I agreed. What did I know about love? About married life? In the Vietnam of the late 1960s, sexual education was never mentioned at school or at home. The topic was carefully tossed aside like a thorny rose: We admired it but never touched it. We were supposed to know it only by practicing it. My husband did his military service and did not come back until the end of March 1975. In the meantime, Saigon was boiling. We did not know what to do. Father, who had a large business venture, was looking at all the options. When April 30 came, we were still stuck in Saigon. Then Father got arrested. We went to the police department to try to locate him. They told us they did not know where he was. A few weeks later, my husband and my two brothers reported for reeducation.

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By the end of June, there were no more men in my family. My mother did the best she could to run the business or, rather, to turn the businesses to the new regime. All the work and struggle my father put into the business went up in smoke. We received not a single dime for compensation. No one had any energy left to do or to plan anything, especially when all their private property had been confiscated from them. We were all distraught.

Disarray I looked out from my window and saw my younger brother — he was twelve at the time — standing at the corner of the street, smoking cigarettes, and looking at cars, bicycles, and people going by. He did it day in and day out. Stung by father’s arrest, he too did not know what to do and had picked up that bad habit. Had father been there, he would have been heavily spanked. Mother had too much on her mind to run a family. I too was distraught and deeply depressed. Nothing seemed to be right, nothing was working. Why work if everything could be taken away from you in the blink of an eye? Everything appeared gloomy and shrouded in a dark veil. There was no future for us as far as I could tell. My father was jailed; I did not even know where. The police advised us a year later that Father had died in a northern camp. We did not even know his burial place and had never received any of his belongings. My husband and two brothers were also interned in reeducation camps. I was depressed and emotionally lost. During one of these depressive moods, I took an overdose of medications and lay asleep in my house. My eldest brother, who did not see me, came looking for me. Since no one was answering the bell, he knocked the door down and found me unconscious in my bed. He took me to Nguyen Van Hoc Hospital Emergency Room where they drained my stomach. I was lucky to recover rapidly. Everything changed in me after this incident. I realized I had been selfish by trying to take my own life. I still had my brothers, sisters and my mom to care for. I still had work to do before I could rest, as someone once said. That idea struck with force. I felt empowered and decided to dedicate my life to members of my family. I took my younger brother

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under my wing. I put him through high school after which he led a more regular life. He told me on many occasions I was like his second mom. Without me, he would not have graduated from high school let alone college. I, however, could not help him get rid of his smoking habit. I told him to do it but to no avail. Thirty-two years later, I could sadly see the result of this chronic smoking. It caused him to develop two spots — one on each lung — that looked bad. I went back to school; the law school was converted into a business school. The communists simply did not need lawyers or want anyone to study law. Since I had two years of economics at the law school, all I needed was to complete two more years of business before getting a degree. I therefore enrolled in the accounting and statistics department. During all this time, I managed my family’s business or whatever was left to the best of my ability. I wore a ba ba, a long sleeved shirt — dark in color — instead of the flowing and colorful ao dai. I rode my bicycle to school although I still had my Honda motorbike because I did not want to attract undue attention from the Cong An. I moved all our expensive furniture and our piano here and there, mostly to our relatives’ houses, so that my parents’ home no longer appeared to be richly furnished. I changed paper money into gold as much as I could because I suspected the communists would change the monetary system. They did change it but I lost less money than I would have, had I traded later on. As they organized the community into districts and sections to better control the population, I volunteered to work and to attend the meetings. I talked about working with zeal for the better good of the government and the country. The locally imbedded Viet Cong was won over and named me section chief. I then organized all the meetings and told people to do this and that. Those who did not have a job in the city or did not participate in the section meetings were simply sent to the new economic zones (NEZ). The Viet Cong told me to volunteer to do dike work if I wanted my husband to come home early from the reeducation camp. Like other housewives, I dutifully listened to them. I did not know it was a lie until I found out about it later on. Although I volunteered a lot, my husband did not come home any earlier. We had to get up early every morning, take our own broom and sweep the streets around our neighborhood. And almost every weekend for many months in a row, I had to work on building dikes. We would gather at the local school around 4 A.M. A truck

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picked us up and drove us for about three hours to the countryside. We were then given small tools to dig up dirt along a small riverbed to reinforce the dikes. Since we stood in water up to our waists, our clothes got wet all the time and stuck to our bodies exposing our natural curves. The Viet Cong sat on the riverbank and ogled us with dark and satisfied smiles. They tried to talk to us, to befriend us or to get a date. We were ashamed of having to expose ourselves but could not do anything else. We felt the humiliation as well as the pain of the hard labor. After a long and tiring field day, I got home, took a quick shower and ran to my in-laws’ house to cook for them. As a daughter-in-law, I was expected to cook, to prepare meals for them every day although they had their own daughters to help them with their daily needs. Only after they had finished eating and the dishes were washed could I return home to cook for myself. Most of the time I was so tired that I ate leftovers and went straight to bed. On one occasion, I was so tired that I went straight to bed after returning from the trip. I could not even move let alone do anything. I was sound asleep and did not even realize my sister-in-law came by to look for a quiet place to study — it was noisy at her house that evening. Although she rang the bell many times, I did not hear anything. After I woke up, I realized I had overslept and ran to my in-laws. My father-in-law greeted me at the door: He was upset that I did not even open the door to his daughter. He told me to go home although I had explained to him I was exhausted and did not hear the bell ring. I cried on my way home but did not even complain to my own mother because that would unnecessarily create animosity between the two parties. For many weeks in a row my in-laws did not even talk to me although I kept preparing their meals as usual. I felt depressed, abused, and mistreated, though not in this order, but I just went ahead and dutifully did my role as a daughter-in-law. I guessed all daughters-in-law faced the same problem I was having. I became keenly aware of the folk song: My body toils at a hundred different tasks In the morning, I’m out in the rice fields, In the evening, I’m working the daughter-in-law patch. During all these years, I held myself up and played my role as best as I could, although at times I felt life was not fair at all. These people were perpetuating a tradition that was not healthy: They had paid their

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dues by serving their parents-in-law, now they wanted their daughtersin-law to pay them back. This was a vicious cycle, I thought, although I took it in stride and went on with my life. Although resentment did accumulate over the years, I was too proud to feel sorry for myself. I felt I had to do my work and that was all. I also cared for people to the point of thinking my own pains and tribulations were nothing compared to theirs. I gave my in-laws the best service I could offer and did not expect anything in return. I did talk to my husband later but it did not help. He never stood up for me and therefore, after a few times, I never mentioned it to him again. I did not even dare to mention it to my own mother because I knew her too well. The worries I would cause could in turn aggravate her medical conditions. All I did was cry and cry. After I unloaded myself in this way, I went back to work. My husband came back after two years of reeducation. He was almost sent to the NEZ as part of the new government’s effort to get rid of people from the old regime. But, because I had established myself as a “worker” in the eyes of the new regime, he was spared. He finally found himself a job in the outskirts of Saigon, which qualified him to stay in the city. By that time, I had graduated from college and through the help of a relative, I got a job from the government. When the interviewer asked me why I wanted to work for the state, I told him in an emphatic voice that I loved to work to help the people and the country. I had learned all this dialectic while working as the section chief. I did it so well that he thought I should be an actress instead of a government official. I told him that I did not know anything about acting, but I knew how to work. I was assigned to the accounting section of the Commerce Department. My job was to supervise the take-over of hotels and restaurants. Since all these industries had to be nationalized, I had to account for the buildings, properties and equipment. I tried to help the owners as much as I could to decrease their losses by either giving them extra days before turning their businesses over or by allowing them to keep certain things. After the take-over, the properties were turned over to government agents to administer. Each time we came by for an inspection, the new managers would prepare splendid dishes to fete us so that we would write them good reports. In this business, I worked with many high-level officials from various departments. They liked me a lot and I played the inter-office rivalry to keep my job. One boss thought I was the protégée of another boss and therefore did not want to cause me problems and

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vice versa. I managed not to go too far out of town to inspect restaurants and hotels. I left these assignments for my assistants. I was still looking for ways for both of us to get out of the country. Although I had many contacts, the best approach would be to buy false Chinese papers and escape as Chinese citizens. I contacted one group and gave them a down payment until I found out I was three months pregnant. Since a pregnant woman could bring harm to her husband during any trip, I decided to stay back and let my husband go first. This was a tough decision because I might lose him by letting him go alone. On the other hand, I could not hold him back: He could be sent to the NEZ or back to the reeducation camp anytime. The justice system — if there was such a thing in a communist country — was arbitrary and people could easily get arrested for trumped up reasons. I worked out his papers and let him go. He did not succeed the first time but finally arrived to Malaysia. I felt relieved because I knew he was free. I also helped one of my brothers to escape by boat. I brought him a compass he needed to reach his target. By law, the sensitive device should not get into public hands. Anyone found in possession of one would be jailed. No one therefore dared to keep one, except me. I carried it in my bag during one of the trips I took with the Cong An official. When he asked me what I was carrying, I told him “ladies’ accessories.” His car was waved through all the checkpoints without being stopped and no one looked at my bag. However, my brother was not successful in his attempt for I never heard from him again. I finally accepted the idea he was lost at sea. That was a big shock for me. First my father was found dead in one reeducation camp then one of my brothers also died in another camp. The third one perished at sea, I don’t know where. These losses were staggering: three in two years. They were all gone without bidding farewell or saying a word. I did not know how to deal with all these losses. I cried and wrote these verses for myself to remember them: three men dying in the aftermath of the war. Life appeared to me like a dark and impenetrable forest that never let go of its grasp. It seems to me that peace had brought more sorrows than war itself. My My My My

dad lost his life in a reeducation camp mom struggled hard despite her fading health brother lay in the cold lands of the North younger brother perished during a sea escape.

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In my dreams, I often relived a new and bright life with my father and two brothers. But these were only dreams. The reality was much different. I was without a father and two siblings — without direction and goals. And I had to assume a role model for the remaining ones. One month after delivery, I brought my baby to show it to my inlaws as part of a millennium-old custom that required daughters to show their newborns to their in-laws. They did not even acknowledge him or me because I — a single mother — was felt to be a burden to the family. The fact that they rejected me hurt me deeply. Luckily, an aunt who came from the North greeted us with warm embraces. I felt so good and I thanked her a lot. From that time onward, my child became the center of my life. People from the outside thought I was a tough individual. They did not know that deep inside, I did not know what to do nor where to go. I was a single mother who had to handle everything. I did not know where my husband was or what he was doing in the U.S. I felt that deep despair many feel when they have to do everything themselves. As I climbed the stairs to my room with my baby in tow, I just stopped right there. It was not because the baby was too heavy but because I felt no strength to continue alone any longer. All my strength had somehow disappeared. I stayed there for a while before I could drag myself up to my bed. The world just collapsed around me...

10

A Second Chance Chau Dinh An

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fascinating account of an ARVN soldier who was sent to reeducation camps after the war for having incited highlanders to revolt against the Hanoi government. He describes his perilous escape from an internment camp and finally from Vietnam. He also details his tumultuous experience in America.

I was born in central Vietnam, a beautiful but arid part of the country. This was formerly the land of the Chams — a civilization that bore strong Indian (Hindu) influence and peaked between the 7th and 15th centuries A.D. The Chams were fishermen, seafarers and aggressive warriors who at various times attacked their Vietnamese neighbors in the North and pillaged their capital, Thang Long (Hanoi). If they were brave sea merchants who sailed as far as present-day Malaysia and Indonesia, they were also known to be ruthless pirates who plied their trade on the South China Sea coastline. With time, they were progressively displaced by the advancing Vietnamese who in their southern expansion took over Cham land and called it central Vietnam. Ruins of Cham temples are still present in this region today. The Nguyen lords settled in this rugged land as early as 1600. They founded Phu Xuan on the Huong River (Perfume River), which was named after the fragrant scent of blooming lotuses. That city was renamed Hue, the capital of the Nguyen dynasty that lasted until 1945. The majestic mountain range on the west side that formed Vietnam’s spine almost vertically dropped down to the ground, leaving only a small area of arable land sandwiched between the sea and the mountains. Monsoon rains 110

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that rushed down the slopes created flash floods that destroyed everything in their path and inundated valleys as well as villages. The rocky terrain, raging monsoon storms, and flash floods created a group of resilient, hard-working, but generally poor, people.

Street Education I came from a long line of government officials and politicians. My great grandfather was once a minister at the Hue court. My father, a local politician, was assassinated by an opposing party member when I was nine. My widowed mother, on whom the burden fell to care for her five children, passed away four years later leaving all of us orphans. Despite having nine children and their two parents to care for, my uncle and his wife opened their heart and welcomed the five new orphans to their family, which grew to eighteen people. Food was therefore strictly rationed and despite my uncle’s good heart, he could only give each of us for dessert a thin slice of banana instead of a whole one. I had never had the chance to fully enjoy a whole banana during that period. The children pitched in, helped him farm his land, and did other chores to help the large family live. Life, however, was tough. I left the house at the age of fourteen to lessen the financial burden on my uncle. From then on, I led a bohemian life and hoped to find better days at the beach resort of Nha Trang. I hooked up with other street children and sold newspapers, brushed shoes and did odd jobs for a living. A friend of my father happened to notice me wandering in the streets and took pity on me; he took me in and sent me to the local school to continue my education. Without that schooling, I would have been a homeless person like thousands of others who were left behind by society. A few years later, he was kind enough to send me to a Dalat boarding school in the highlands, which was a luxurious investment at the time. Why would a stranger care that much about me? Why would he waste time and money on an orphan he had collected on the street? Was there anything unusual he had noticed in me? I could not tell, but I was forever indebted to him. He essentially changed my life and gave me a second chance. The year in Dalat was an idyllic one: I not only learned basic school curriculum but also music. That year gave me the foundation on which to build my future. It also deeply influenced my music for I found the misty and hilly countryside lovely and romantic.

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My artistic instinct and disregard for conformity, however, nudged me toward the wild and the unknown. I found it difficult to be restricted by rules and regulations no matter how mild or educational they were. For that reason, I dropped out of school at the end of the junior year, enrolled in a South Vietnamese Army school and became a paratrooper. I participated in a few skirmishes during the war, got wounded and ended up in a military hospital. Following discharge, I decided to use the two-week pass to return home and visit my brothers whom I had not seen for many years. During my stay in the village, I fell deeply in love with a local girl and decided to take an extra week off to be close to her. The years of hardship in the streets and the rigors of military life caused me to simply melt away in front of a sweet and sensitive human being. I lost my reason and failed to return to my unit in time. The military police arrested me during a regular roundup, charged me for desertion and the court sentenced me to two years in jail. There I met all the gang leaders and “cowboys”1 who were sent to jail for “reformation.” They found me likable not only because I was an orphan, but also because I entertained them by telling jokes and playing guitar. I was close to being sent to the front to clean up battlefields as part of the sentence when Danang fell under the advance of communist troops. All the prisoners escaped during this transitional period.

Song Cai Reeducation Camp I attempted to go to Nha Trang but was caught between the advancing communists and the South Vietnamese soldiers who shelled the communist troops and their tanks. Unable to go north or south, I decided to return to my hometown to be with my family only to find it deserted. Villagers had fled the area at the news of the incoming communists. Desperate and hungry, I looked for food in my uncle’s house but only found a few yams, which I cooked and ate to fill up my gnawing stomach. As I wandered around the deserted streets looking for friends and neighbors to talk to, I caught the attention of communist troops who had taken over the village. They brought me to the new village chief who happened to be a former villager. He had worked as an underground communist agent during the war and immediately recognized me. He told me people knew I was sent to the front and thought I had died

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there. Since he saw me as a victim instead of a participant in the old regime, he enrolled me as a member of the village administration to help him re-organize the village under communist control. The villagers who had not been able to escape abroad strolled back to the village. They became surprised to see me wearing a pith helmet and working for the Viet Cong: They thought I must have been an underground Viet Cong agent for some time. One of them, however, told me that helping the Viet Cong was not a good idea for soon or later they would send me, a former ARVN soldier, to jail once my assignment had been completed. After reflecting on his words, I realized he was correct and one day decided to run away from the village and the communists. I ran from village to village in an attempt to get out of this area that turned out to be too “hot” for me. I finally ended up in the highlands where local tribes were mounting an insurrection against the communist government. These minorities who had always wanted to live free and apart from the Vietnamese society did not like the new communist rules. I was caught along with these freedom fighters when the village finally surrendered to stronger communist forces. I was sent to a northern reeducation camp because the Viet Cong thought I had incited these tribes to revolt against the government. This was a severe sentence for someone who was just caught in the middle of a brewing conflict. But the communists did not want to hear anything and shipped me right away to the Song Cai camp in the North. The punishment under the communist system was far worse than that under the Saigon government. While I had fun in the Saigon-controlled jail where I entertained gangsters and “cowboys,” I had to work hard in the northern camp just to keep my head above water. I was assigned to clean up the latrines, the worst possible punishment for my “crimes.” North Vietnamese latrines at the camp dated from the French occupation era. Like most of the commodities in a socialist country, they were as ancient as history itself and consisted of elevated stalls with small openings on the floor and wooden buckets down below serving as receptacles. My job was to remove daily the buckets filled with waste materials and to use them as fertilizers for our vegetable patch. Working conditions were terrible because of the stench, the creepy moving worms, and the huge blue flies that swarmed around the unsanitary area. To this day, I still harbor nightmares about the buzzing flies that starred insolently at me with their large round eyes, refusing to leave the buckets. They also buzzed

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around me emitting strident noises as if to scare me away. The horrible stench made me nauseous all the time. It stuck to my worn out clothes, which I also wore to bed since most of us did not have a spare outfit. The smell followed me everywhere to the point I became used to it. It seemed like I had completely lost my sense of smell at that time. Besides the punishment, the scarce food our jailers fed us caused us to become malnourished and to lose weight rapidly. We were hungry all the time and became weak as a result. Over a period of time, inmates rolled over dead right and left. Some caught malarial fever, stayed bedridden, threw up blood, and were taken to the dispensary where they died the next day. Others developed swollen feet and died a week later. The fact that I remained healthy during that period caused me to turn to praying to Jesus with the hope of remaining sane and alive. Although my parents were Catholic, I was far from being a fervent practitioner. But having witnessed life and death daily in the camp made me think about these issues more than at any other period of my life. I thought about how transient life could be and even wrote a song about that topic. While others put their experiences in writing, I expressed my feelings through songs, which I composed in my spare time. I also realized how transient human love could be. Lovers came together until their feelings waned and caused them to split apart. This characteristic is consistent with nature itself and I felt that lovers should also take time off from one another once in a while to recharge their emotions. I presently wish my wife would leave me alone once in a while so that I too could reorient myself.

Escape I decided to get out of that creepy camp on the first occasion to avoid becoming its next victim. I knew that sooner or later, my luck would run out and like many other inmates I too would succumb to diseases or hunger. To think about it, it was a crazy decision on my part to try to escape from a northern communist camp for it was far from being easy. The choices were, however, limited: Either stay in the camp and die slowly or try to escape with the possibility of earning freedom. I crossed out of my mind the word “impossible” for I had been through a lot since I was fourteen. So far I had been successful each time I fol-

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lowed my instinct. And my instinct at that time told me to escape. Because I sang and played a few musical instruments, I was allowed to join the camp’s entertainment group. During a rare concert given at the camp in celebration of the northern Military Day and while the band played loudly and attracted everyone’s attention, including the guards’, I and another friend escaped through a small tunnel we had managed to dig out under the barbed wire a few days earlier. It was not a real tunnel — just a hole large enough to allow a hundred-pound person to crawl through. We were all reduced to about that size after a few months in the camp. I later thought the camp was an ideal place for overweight people who wanted to shed a few hundred pounds. A search team was sent after us but I managed to evade my pursuers by hiding atop a tree. Had I stayed on the ground, I would have been immediately caught. And that would have meant facing the firing squad after being savagely beaten by the jailors. I knew the routine for I had witnessed that severe treatment in the camp. I stayed in the area overnight and crossed the two branches of the Song Cai River in the morning before arriving to Ninh Binh province. I had decided against returning to my hometown where the police already knew me and chose Saigon as my next destination. The safest way to get back to Saigon was to take the reunification train that linked Hanoi to Saigon and ended at the Pham Ngu Lao train station. Trains were not as thoroughly and frequently checked as buses. Trains with their hundreds of passengers and bulky loads lent themselves more easily to hiding than buses. I climbed into one of the cars as the train slowed down close to a village and hid there. I had to play hide and seek with the soldiers who patrolled the train by climbing on the roof when they searched inside the car and by staying in the car when they shone their flashlights on the roof. This was a thrilling and dangerous game for they would shoot at any presumed escapee or draft dodger without warning. I survived the trip by eating raw yams stored in the last car. When I arrived in Saigon, I made my way to the Mekong Delta where I once had a friend. He was instrumental in helping me obtain a false identification card with which I again was able to freely roam around. I had become sort of a Vietnamese “Papillon.” That name that meant butterfly was coined to refer to a Frenchman who was able to escape from the infamous French penitentiary (equivalent to the American Sing Sing) located at the Guyana Island in the Atlantic Ocean miles away from the Brazil-

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ian coastline. No one had ever escaped from the island for the waters were infested by hungry sharks. I returned to Phan Rang, a city on the central coastal area and the former capital of the Chams and the 19th century Tay Son. The city boasted a beautiful fort that protected its bay area. The region was the site of historic sea and land battles between the southern Nguyen and the Tay Son lords. Its large fishing fleet, coupled with my knowledge of the people and the area, without doubt helped me plan my escape easier than at any other place in Vietnam. I worked there as fisherman then slowly gained the confidence of key people who asked me to assist them in planning their escape. The critical and most dangerous job was to store adequate amounts of gasoline without which no escape could be possible. Left over gasoline carefully saved from any trip and additional fuel bought on the black market were gathered from various places. My job was to transport and to bury these gasoline cans on a deserted sandy beach in preparation for the trip. When the time came, they were unearthed and brought aboard the boat: Storing gasoline at home was not only dangerous because of frequent police searches, but also presented logistical problems when the time came to move it aboard the boat. Transporting five or ten gasoline cans during day or nighttime would immediately catch the attention of the police. Burying gasoline cans on the beach was also nerve-breaking nighttime work: People caught doing the work were presumed to be escapees and were therefore severely punished and often shot at without warning. That thrilling job fell on me for it was the only way I could pay off my ticket to freedom. This led me to write a song to highlight this challenging work at the time. My first attempted escape ended in failure because the boat left early due to changing weather conditions. Feeling frustrated and cheated, I returned to my hiding place and survived day by day until another group planned another escape attempt. A few more attempts similarly failed for one reason or another. It was during one of the failed attempts in Phan Rang that I met and fell in love with one of the escapees. She was a lovely young woman from Nha Trang who was then accompanied by her parents and her brother. She returned to her hometown disappointed but was already planning for another escape. She promised she would send me a telegram advising me that “marriage was ready and I should come home right away” when escape was imminent. In the meantime, I continued my

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nighttime work. When I received the signal, I could not believe it and jumped for joy. I left everything and immediately took a bus to Nha Trang. When the day arrived, however, for some unknown reason she and her parents arrived late to the rendezvous and again missed the boat. I, her brother and the other passengers left the area in a hurry to avoid the police. I was so upset that I yelled at the boat captain for his unwillingness to wait half an hour longer for her. This time, however, the trip ran smoothly and we did not have to sail very far. About a hundred miles from shore, we were fortunately picked up by a German ship that dropped us to a Hong Kong refugee camp where I stayed for six months before immigrating to the U.S.

Bohemian Life Years later, I returned to Vietnam to the same beach where I launched my escape to the unknown. I hired a boat similar to the one I had escaped on and went up and down the area to retrace the various steps of the trip and reconnect with the past. To this day I still cannot believe that I escaped on a small boat and ended up thousands of miles away on another shore. At the time, like Christopher Columbus centuries before, I didn’t have the faintest idea about the length or destination of the trip. I only cared about getting out of the country. It was only when I looked back that I realized I had performed an almost impossible feat. Impossible only meant something in the eyes of the beholder. Had I told myself that the trip was an impossible feat, I would not have tried anything and would have stayed back and vegetated in the old country. As always I had tried to push back the limits of what I considered impossible to achieve. It was during that return trip that I wrote a song about missing and leaving my lover on this beach. Despite looking for her for some time, I was never able to find her anywhere. She could have perished during one of the escapes. My goal was to commit to my memory the woman, the stranger who opened her heart and helped me get out of the country. Without her, I would have been stuck in Vietnam. This woman in the song also referred to my country, Vietnam, which I was forced to leave behind in order to look for freedom elsewhere. By leaving Vietnam, in my heart I felt I had lost the two most precious women on earth.

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I was sponsored to Wisconsin where for the next seven years I hopped from job to job and spent a rather erratic life. Similar to my bohemian life in Vietnam, I traveled a lot in the U.S. trying to search for a direction in life. It seemed like something was missing in my life: I continued to run around without purpose or goal. I, however, continued to study and learn about music: I composed many songs and gave many recitals. I then met my future wife who was an established businesswoman in Orange County, California. She became my anchor and gave my life a clear and unequivocal direction. I settled down and became a musician and publisher of a news magazine that also dealt with music. Although we were successful in California, we felt the state was too restless a place for us to grow and expand. We moved to Florida where we pursued our publishing business and musical life. We gave entertainment shows year round in Florida and presently have a hundred people working for us in our publishing business. My financial situation has much improved compared to the past. I am particularly happy to be given a second chance to restart my life in the U.S. and to do whatever I love the most: music publishing, singing and entertaining. I set aside some money to send back to orphans in Vietnam for I need to help these underprivileged youngsters achieve their goals in life like someone helped me in the past.2

11

The Wish Thanh Cuc

EDITOR’S NOTE: “The Wish” is the story of a housewife’s fulfilled childhood dream of visiting or living in a western country. Her ordeals were as varied as those of Kieu,1 the heroine of a Vietnamese masterpiece who went through countless painful and tragic misadventures before settling down. After spending many years under the communist regime, she was able to immigrate to California where she enjoyed a second life in her dream country.

I was the eldest of seven siblings. My parents, who moved to Vung Tau, saw a large family as a heavenly blessing. They were also aware of the high infant mortality in the tropics: Two of their children had died at an early age. My father passed away in his early fifties and my mother was supposed to pick up where he had left off, but her limited education prevented her from fulfilling her role. I was suddenly thrust into the limelight and had to play the role of chi ca (big sister). This meant helping to raise my siblings in addition to assisting my mother with household chores. As a teenager, I became confused at that time and did not realize the full implications of this new role. Although my dream was to grow up and to finish high school like any other country girl, a different fate was in store for me. I put my own dream aside, choked off my aspirations, and accepted the new role in stride.

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Family Life After marrying a military man who was stationed in Vung Tau, I moved with him to Saigon where I had two children within a three-year span. As I was the first in the family to go from the countryside to the city, my siblings congratulated me on the move. Materially, I had everything a country girl could have dreamed about: a house and children in Vietnam’s largest city. My younger brother, the only boy in the family, was my mother’s spoiled favorite. He called me one day and asked if he could stay with me and finish his schooling in Saigon. He told me that if he graduated from the village high school, he would remain a lowlevel official for the rest of his life. I advised him that I could place him in tuition-free public schools if he was interested in them. He, however, insisted on going to private schools where French curriculum was taught. The problem was these schools were expensive and with two children in tow, I would not be able to support him. I told him I needed to think it over and would let him know later on. I was torn between the desire to help him out and the reality of getting my life and finances in order. As the cost of living in the city was not small, I needed to think about the future and save money for rainy days. Besides, I had to spend time caring for my husband and my children. These were difficult decisions for a twenty-five-year-old young woman. But in the end, duty and big heart prevailed and I opened my door to my brother and sister as well. Duty was the word I often used: I learned it from my father who was a high-level government official. I enrolled him at Tabert, a private Catholic school in Saigon where he graduated with a high school diploma. He was beaming with joy when he earned it for he was the first in the family to get it. He enrolled himself at the Dalat cadet school where he earned a college degree. Two other sisters stayed with me for a few years before returning to Vung Tau, each with a high school degree. My job done, I delved into my children’s education. I did not know why I had always dreamed about going abroad. This was one of these wild dreams youngsters carry with them in the depth of their hearts. Some aspire to be rich and well-known, others dream of having a nice family: I dreamed of traveling to other countries in the world. I dreamed about seeing other people’s lifestyles, landscapes and historical monuments. My father had instilled that dream in me. He told

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me about what lay beyond our shoreline and advised me about keeping my mind open. If I did not fulfill that wish, an inner voice would always tug me on the side and whisper: “What if?” I had a chance in 1954 when the French, who were withdrawing from Vietnam, allowed their citizens to return to France. My husband’s grandfather, who was a high-level official, was a naturalized French citizen and left this legacy to his grandson. But by switching his nationality from French to Vietnamese, my husband choked off my aspiration. Gone was the chance to go abroad. I went back to my routine and prayed for another chance. I worked hard to take care of my five children: My duty consisted of cooking, sewing, cleaning, feeding and caring for their health. Like any Vietnamese woman, I was the in-house general who dealt with all the household work while my husband’s duty was to bring money home. Putting children through private schools required a lot of sacrifice. These were difficult times financially because I had to budget everything otherwise we would come up short toward the end of the month. Cutting expenses became an art and a headache for us women who later became good in wheeling and dealing. I believed Vietnam’s economy would have gone south a long time ago had we not been able to negotiate and deal. Without money, we bartered and traded one thing for another. If we had nothing to trade, we worked in exchange for food or money. Two decades of war were enough to send all families to bankruptcy court, except there was no such a thing as bankruptcy law in Vietnam. We had to move on although we were bankrupt and did not own much. The effect of women on their families’ finances was obvious after the war. With the communists controlling and rationing everything and freezing all bank accounts and assets, with most men gone to reeducation camps, women by default became income earners and kept their families afloat financially. Without women working around the system, many South Vietnamese families would have died of hunger under the communist system. These were the most difficult but also the most thrilling times for us, women who proved we could survive on our own. Tired of juggling around with the budget, I put myself through school and became a nurse who brought additional income to the family. By the early 1970s, I had my own business: I opened a small momand-pop store in the front end of my house and sold basic goods such as rice, oil, and non-perishable food. My neighbors supported me by becoming my clients while I provided them with their basic needs.

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Socialist Life When the communists took over Saigon, I lay low for a while not knowing what the invaders had in mind. They told everyone that merchants were bloodsuckers who stole from poor people. Merchants were deemed useless and deserved to be sent to the NEZ. I asked myself what did city dwellers know about clearing and cultivating lands. They were not even good at taking care of their own flower gardens. The NEZ warning sent chills up my spine for weeks and months because I had witnessed the deaths of many civilians who had been sent there. They were simply not used to do any backbreaking type of labor. I then realized Viet Cong officials too were humans who craved basic comfort and riches. Having lived in the jungles for quite some time or having worked in low-paying jobs in the cities, they just wanted to catch up with the capitalists they just knocked down. They sent people to the NEZ so that they could inherit their houses and belongings. This was how the communists slowly became capitalists: They just craved money, property and power like any other individuals. I befriended them and flooded them with gifts and rice. Over a period of time, they responded in kind and allowed me to continue my small business as usual. In the late 1970s, communist Vietnam controlled Cambodia and needed troops to shore up the government they had installed in Phnom Penh and to keep the country secure from the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. I still had three youngsters within draft age and was worried they would be called to duty one of these days. Southerners did not want to serve in the Northern (invading) army, especially in a war of aggression against Cambodia. The country was essentially broke after two decades of war with thousands of invalids roaming the streets and we found it strange that the communists wanted to wage another war in a foreign country. As a housewife, I then believed that we had to put our house in order first before wasting blood and money in another country. Many other parents shared my conviction although it was impossible to influence the self-centered and autocratic communist government. As youths were required to attend bi-monthly meetings to listen to and discuss party directives, I told local officials they were busy studying and working on government projects during their after-hours. I, however, would attend these meetings for them. When youths were required to

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watch the neighborhoods at night, I volunteered to perform that duty for them. The less officials paid attention to them, the better it would be for them. I also thought to myself, “Why would the neighborhood need to be watched?” There was enough police force to cordon off the whole city if needed. As far as youngsters, they were so scared of house searches and midnight round-ups that they would rather hide than disturb the neighborhood. However, since orders needed to be carried out, I pulled my chair to the front porch at night, and sat and watched the neighborhood in place of my youngsters. I patiently worked on obtaining exit visas for the whole family. Although the task was lengthy and difficult because my children were within draft age, I forged ahead. I felt that if we did not leave the country at that time, we would never have another chance again. I contacted my eldest son, who then lived in California, and he agreed to sponsor me. I patiently waited for the green light. It came all of a sudden: I was given two weeks to pack up and get out of the country otherwise the permit would be invalidated. I had to buy plane tickets, pay all the taxes, and deed my house and belongings to the government. I basically had to “give” them away, although it caused me deep sorrow to get rid of them because I had worked so hard to build them up. I decided freedom was worth more than any worldly belongings. A neighbor who was envious of my luck brought up flimsy charges against me to prevent me from leaving. Luckily the local official, who was a friend of mine, tossed the charge out and allowed me to proceed with my departure. My husband did not want to go abroad, arguing he was happy to remain in Vietnam. I talked to him lengthily into coming with me and in the end he agreed to accompany us. I had never encountered that many vexing problems in my life. I did not know to whom to turn, and therefore I prayed and prayed. Although I shared my parents’ Buddhist faith I was married to a Catholic but had never converted to that faith. During the difficult communist years, I had slowly turned to praying to the Virgin Mary. She was the one who gave me courage during all this time.

Life in America We finally flew to Thailand and then to the U.S. I breathed with relief when I landed on U.S. soil. This was the first time I went abroad.

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It was the same feeling I had experienced when I first moved from Baria to Saigon: a feeling of euphoria and freedom. I felt new vigor and energy surging in me. The world suddenly appeared brighter than ever. I finally realized my childhood dream: moving from Saigon to America and from a communist to a capitalist country. I took me almost four decades to make that leap, but it was well worth it. I knew all along that I would live in a western country, not that I did not like Vietnam. On the contrary, I remained in spirit a Vietnamese who just happened to love freedom and the chance of traveling here and there without being restricted or controlled at every single minute. We settled down in California and went through difficult adjustment periods. Everything was new and different in this country, from paperwork to shopping and behaving in public. To go from a repressive society to a free country within a few-day span was like moving from darkness to daylight. I no longer had to worry about midnight roundups, curfews, military draft for my children, graft, and shifting government policies. I had to forge ahead and reminded my youngsters about the need to study in order to become self-sufficient. I took English classes with other foreigners and enjoyed the chance to meet new friends and learn from different cultures. There were Spanish-speaking people, Asians, and Eastern Europeans. We were under no pressure to perform. Those who enjoyed the classes could stay on forever. A birthday was a time for celebration rather than for studying. We brought in food and cakes for everyone to enjoy. It was a meeting as well as a learning place. One Buddhist monk once enrolled in the class. He told the teacher from the beginning his religion would not allow him to mix with members of the opposite sex. The teacher let him sit by himself on one of the benches. The monk gradually “opened” up. He joined in all the discussions, sat around with other male students and by the end of the year even sat close to female classmates. I separated from my husband to give him freedom of choice for I believed it was the best choice for both of us. We remained friends and he joined us for any big family reunion. After moving out, he shared a room with a friend in order to save money, with which he financed his trip to Vietnam to visit his relatives. I later befriended a European man, a widower who took English classes with me. I enjoyed talking to him and he took me out to dinner a couple of times. Although we remained friends, I told him we would not move beyond friendship. One day, he

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gave me a stack of cash and told me he did not need it at his age and that I could use it to buy whatever I liked. Since I wanted to be self-sufficient, I took up driving. I felt I could not forever depend on my son to take me to the store or the mall. After failing the driving test a few times, I took lessons to have a better chance of passing. I finally passed the test after amassing close to fifty hours of driving lessons, which I paid for with my own money. The examiners, who probably tired of seeing me coming back all the time, gave me a passing grade. That was my biggest most recent accomplishment. I, however, drove only a few times before quitting because the traffic made me dizzy. All these young and impatient drivers tailgating me constantly made me really nervous. One of my sons took me on pilgrimage tours to Spain, France, and Italy. Now that my wish has been fulfilled, I wanted to pay homage and express thanks to God for having helped me in my hours of despair. I went not once but twice and really enjoyed these trips, which have opened my eyes. I took a lot of pictures so I could remember all these places. I also prayed so that my son could find himself a mate. One day he almost found a perfect mate and the relationship was blossoming. She also got along well with me and there was talk about marriage. One evening my son received a phone call advising him that the caller — a boyfriend — intended to marry the lady he was dating. My son told him he would straighten out the problem soon. He was disappointed she not only did not tell him about her past relationship, but also gave out his phone number. A few days later, the lady called and I picked up the phone since I was home. She told me she was sorry about her former boyfriend’s actions. They had broken up a long time ago and he had moved to another state only to reappear recently. He asked her to marry him but she refused. He became angry and pulled on her purse, which fell on the floor exposing the card and phone number. My son, however, felt burned and did not want to contact her any longer. He later found another lady who cared for him and married her. By November 1998, I developed a chronic cough doctors took for flu symptoms. I then developed abdominal pain and experienced gaseousness and distension. They put me in the hospital and found I was jaundiced. They ran more tests on me. I was tired, worried about my overall condition, and did not want further testing done. They found I had a tumor on my pancreas. What that meant was unknown to me.

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They put a tube into my stomach and sent me home. I slowly went downhill. I have enjoyed a good life, although it was far from being perfect. I have a big family and my children are successful in their fields. I have been able to fulfill my dream and am thankful to God for it. There is nothing else I wish for.

12

My April Thach N. Truong

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author revisits the last months of the war during which he traveled from Danang back to Saigon in the midst of disorder, gunshots, and mortar shelling.

One day, End of March 1975, I was working at Duy Tan General Hospital When waves of communist attacks roared into Danang. Our front commanders had flown straight to their escape ships. With the tumultuous crowd My friend and I we rushed our way. The dauntless naval vessel HQ504 was still waiting, With hundreds of people on its deck. Clinging to my rope ladder, I climbed up in. A few hours later, not a tiny space was left, Thousands of people standing and moving like waves. Weigh anchor, Still, going around in the bay Waiting for order to leave. Soldiers with red hats, blue hats, Sick people, healthy people, Young women, old people, 127

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Fighting for their space on this strange boat. Children crying, People cursing, Apprehensive faces, Complaining and sighing About their lost houses, Their jobs and salaries gone, Their children going astray Their future unknown. My boat landed in Cam Ranh Bay I boarded a bus and quickly went to Phan Thiet. For once a fishing boat I would try, With thug-faced people I barely got by, They yelled, asking for their tolls Then jumped over to another boat. The fishing boat was bobbing, shaking, Hundreds of people nodding, swaying, The tropical sun parched our skin and dried our mouths. Exhausted children silently cried, Old people mumbled their prayers, A young guy quietly pondering. We went straight to Vung Tau. Right away, I went to a friend’s house; His wife ran out to greet me, Overjoyed, she shouted: “You’ve just escaped the war, How happy my husband will be! He talks about you every day, I will call your wife to tell her you’re safe.” End of April, my friend died, Cruel enemy mortar ended his life. In Saigon, I hugged wife and children, My eyes brimming with tears of joy. The next day, reporting to the Medical Corps,

12. My April (Truong)

To Cong Hoa Military Hospital I was deployed. The year before I trained there, Now patients were everywhere, Few came out; the newly wounded kept coming in. The tumult got worse every day Evacuation ships were covered with people, Desperately, they clung to the helicopters’ landing gears Mothers carrying their children filled the streets, Mortars falling relentlessly, People died on the roadside, on rice field dikes. Ignoring others in search for their loved ones, Everyone was on his own. Refugees were filling up the cities. News of: disastrous tragic losses From the front came back in droves. The first military region was abandoned To reinforce the second one. They left the third one, and pulled back For a last ditch defense of the capital zone. Every day, there came more bad news Of communist closing on the capital. They had cannons, AK’s, With tanks from China and Russia Rockets rained over the city day and night, Their shrieking sounds tore your eardrums. Many innocent lives were destroyed. Then small firearm sounds got closer to home. In the hospital, groups huddled to discuss: “Should we go or should we stay?” Every few days, a few of them got away, I treated my patients but my mind was elsewhere. Looking at my patients, I worried so much, Looking for my friends, so few were still there. They played “White Christmas” In the mid of summer.

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Jets screaming high above, Helicopters scuttled down under. The last Americans packed up to leave, The Republic’s days were soon over. 10 A.M., April 30th As Commander in Chief, The President in his last minute power With his dignified voice on the radio ordered: “Armed forces at every level put down your arms. To the other side, to our brothers Please come for a government transfer.” Many soldiers, still in arms, Took off their uniforms, quickly They threw up their hats, their boots. Knapsacks, rifles covered the streets. In panic and without even their shirts, They forged ahead aimlessly. I looked over the street, A car with a Liberation Front’s flag passed by, I recognized immediately, sitting there, One of my seniors, a field officer. I hoped my eyes were fooled by the sun glare.

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13

Shadow of the Past Mai Lien

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not everyone was able to escape from communist Vietnam: As a matter of fact, only five per cent did. What happened to the rest of them, especially ARVN soldiers? They often became the “shadows of the past,” forgotten ghosts of a tragic war which they lost. In this essay, a Viet Kieu recounts her journey to look for her father, an ARVN captain who was ordered to stay at his post in 1975 because of duty.

I was born in the capital city of Saigon although my grandparents came from the town of Bien Hoa, twenty miles away. Bien Hoa served as a weekend getaway for the Saigonese who were tired of the hustling and bustling life of a modern city. A quaint and bucolic town in a sea of changes, Bien Hoa was also known for its mouthwatering and sweet grapefruits as well as its rustic but fine diners.

Family Life When I turned five, my father, who was an Air Force officer, moved his family to Nha Trang where he was stationed until April 1975. Located about one hundred and forty miles northeast of Saigon, Nha Trang hosted the National Air Force, Army, and Navy academies where young men were trained into seasoned officers. Each weekend, the face of this seaside town was transformed by the presence of multi-rank cadets in their crisp, sharp uniforms going out on dates with their girlfriends. For one night, almost all young women dressed themselves in beautiful white 133

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ao dai looking like fairies out of the old Cham Empire. Suddenly the sleepy resort town was revitalized like desert cacti after the first rains of the year. The pageantry and enchantment of the party imprinted an indelible memory on visitors and participants alike. The city was also an exotic seaside resort known for its beautiful, sandy, and palm-treelined beaches as well as its various sea products. One can find the best and biggest lobsters around the Pacific Ocean. I enjoyed the beach a lot and loved to jump in its waves and to swim in its warm waters every morning before school. I stayed in the sun so much that my skin turned dark. This led my father to lovingly nickname me, the first-born and dearest daughter, Mai Lien — the “Cambodian princess.” Mai Lien in Vietnamese euphonized with Mien Lai (dark like a Cambodian). Actually, Nha Trang was once the capital of the Chams, a proud Hinduized civilization that thrived in the region from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries. The ruined but once magnificent Cham temples that have lasted for more than ten centuries still dot the landscape. They emerge out of nowhere like sandstone castles amidst the arid countryside under the hot, shining sun. They now seem to be out of place among the completely Vietnamese population. Life in Nha Trang thus appeared to be a fairy tale for me with its Cham monuments of yesteryears, the Saturday night pageantry, and the beautiful beaches. Alas, that fairy tale did not last long. By early April 1975, the communists began moving southwards along National Route 1, which linked Hanoi to Saigon. All kinds of rumors flew all over town forcing people to migrate further south. Father could not leave his post because the city was still in the hands of the Saigon government. He, however, thought we needed to be evacuated for safety reasons. He put Mother and all of us on a military plane to Saigon. The plan for us was to temporarily stay with Auntie Seven1 and her family in Saigon until matters settled down. On April 28, he sent us off again on another military airplane to Phu Quoc to be with thousands of other refugees who were evacuated aboard an American ship, the Pioneer Contender. On that island, we were quartered in a camp that soon housed 40,000 people. We lost contact with Father from that time onward. On the night of April 29, we were ordered to proceed to the island beach and to get back on the Pioneer Contender, which still lurked around the waters of Vietnam. The ship picked up the remaining refugees the following day before heading toward the island of Guam, an American territory in the Pacific Ocean.

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After an uneventful seven-day journey across a calm ocean — we were lucky it neither rained nor stormed during the trip — the boat docked at the Guam Island pier. We were transferred to the Tent City, a nickname that stuck to a sea of tents that grew overnight out of nowhere and where refugees found comfort in row after row of tents. This was paradise after the week-long sunbathing on the hard floor of the ship deck. Despite looking everywhere and listening closely to all the news, we found no trace of Father. As time passed by, we became more and more desperate. Our household lost a breadwinner and a guide. We became directionless and did not know what to do. We delayed our departure as much as we could and became one of the last groups of people to leave the Tent City. From there, we flew on Northwest Airlines to the refugee camp in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. I could not contain my tears as we left the island. We spent three months in the camp hoping and praying that we would be reunited with our father. On my youngest sister’s birthday, our family was sponsored by a Lutheran church in Trenton, New Jersey, where we stayed for many years. In 1978, I moved to Houston, where I remained for the next twenty years.

Reunion By 1990 after a lot of searching and contacting, we heard that Father was still alive and living with a cousin in Vietnam. For safety reasons, Mother and I flew to Saigon on the same flight but as different parties to visit him. Vietnam had just opened up diplomatically and economically to the rest of the world and relations between the U.S. and this country were lukewarm at best. We went with fear in our hearts and did not know how well we would be received. After an arduous twenty-hour flight and five hours on the ground, we finally landed at the old Tan Son Nhut airport, which had not changed much after a decade and a half under the new regime. The whole trip seemed to be an eternity as I eagerly and anxiously anticipated my first meeting with Father in 15 years. We went through customs patiently and cautiously. When we walked out of the airport, we were struck by an oppressive mid-summer heat wave. A large crowd of people waited for their relatives or friends who were still being processed by customs. Taxi, cyclo, and bus drivers

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eagerly asked for our patronage. Street vendors hawked their chilled water bottles and traditional snacks. The mixture of heat, motorcycle and car noise, exhaust fumes, and wafting smells of oriental food from nearby restaurants brought up a deep feeling of nostalgia that made us homesick on the spot. A taxi driver approached us with his gentle voice and offered his service. I chose him over the rest because of his resemblance to Father. After 45 minutes trying to breeze through Saigon’s congested traffic, he finally headed toward the newly constructed freeway to Bien Hoa, my father’s hometown. The car felt like an oven under the tropical sun as its air-conditioner took a long time to work. Father was much smaller and in worse shape than years ago. All his muscles had atrophied due to disuse and he looked older than his actual age. He was able to walk around, though with some difficulty. Gone were the bravado and gusto of yesteryears. The fit Air Force officer who trained thousands of cadets in the academy was just a shadow of the past. Tears overflowed my eyes when I first saw him after a decade-anda-half-long absence. His short curly hair was thinner on his forehead. A pale complexion had replaced his attractive dark skin. As a result of a stroke, his face was slightly deformed when he tried to speak. I kept staring at him to make sure I was not dreaming and that he would not disappear again. He explained to us he was jailed for a total of six years in northern camps. No one came to visit or bring food to him because we were all abroad and no one took care of him when he got out. As he tried to pull himself out of this dreaded nightmare, he became more depressed because he could not find any work. All government positions were reserved for northerners and communist-leaning people. ARVN (southern) soldiers were excluded from any government position. He did odd jobs to pull himself through. To ease his loneliness and despair, he took refuge in drinking. Depression and destitution drove him to consume one of these cheap rice wine products that people brew in their backyards and to smoke homemade tobacco. Later a stroke paralyzed the left side of his body. We comforted him as much as we could although love alone could not erase years of mistreatment, forlornness, and hopelessness in the concentration camps. In order to sponsor him, we began applying for all the necessary paperwork once we returned to the United States. The process was slow.

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He was considered for immigration and went for his physical examination. It was then that he was diagnosed with a serious case of hepatitis B and tuberculosis, diseases that a battered immune system and severe malnutrition had unmasked in him. These health conditions held him back. To make matters worse, his identification papers kept getting stolen, allowing thieves and city officials to earn money at his expense as they issued one duplicate after another. This problem further depressed him and caused him to drink more. I flew to Bien Hoa in 1992 to see him again. As his medical condition worsened, he felt weaker and weaker. I felt there was no chance for him to get out of the country. I returned to the U.S. with a deep sense of hopelessness. I wonder whether I should have done more for him earlier. On January 30, 1993, as I returned from a visit to my sister in Seattle, Washington, I found on my fax machine a three-day-old notice of his death. Although I sort of expected it, the news caught me by surprise and caused me to become numb for days. Father had been a good and responsible man. Without his interventions twice in April 1975, who knows what would have happened to all of us? We would have vegetated under a communist regime or been sent to the new economic zone where some of us would have died. We would not have had the chance to be educated like we were on U.S. soil. He stayed back to serve his country. And for having faithfully executed his part of the deal with the Southern government, he was caught and sent to the reeducation camps. At no time, however, had I heard him utter anything negative against the old or new government. He felt like a tool being crushed by big machinery. It crushed me to realize he had been incarcerated during all those years without having anyone to take care of him. This was part of the war’s tragedy. It split up whole families and some people had to fend for themselves and by themselves. I lost interest in traveling but often took guilt trips every time I thought of him. My mother said she forgave him but never forgot that he left her to raise six children by herself. All my younger brothers and sisters missed him although they only had a vague memory of him. His absence also created a big void and an emotional imbalance in my life. With or without tears rolling down my cheeks, I cried silently during countless nights for him. I wonder if I had ever let my past love for him overshadow my present life. He is the shadow of the past that will never fade away in the hearts of his loved ones.

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A Refugee’s Life Hien V. Ho

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author describes in vivid detail his life from the fall of Saigon to his departure to the United States, via a few camps in Malaysia and the Philippines. He also describes his life as a socialist doctor and his boat escape to Malaysia.

Life After April 30, 1975 After the communists took over Vietnam, I had to spend almost two years in their concentration camps, and after that I had to go to a New Economic Zone for a year. I probably would have spent my whole life in that remote, primitive area working manually in the rice field if it were not for the exodus of people trying by all means to escape from the communists. Waves of people were deserting the country on boats of all sizes to reach freedom in neighboring countries, or to die in the South China Sea when their fragile boats wrecked in the mighty ocean waves. They left empty almost all the essential professional and technical jobs in the cities, particularly in the former capital of Saigon. Even when the new regime did not care much about the deaths of a few thousand, or even tens of thousands of people, an appearance of decency required that the government pull out the doctors, dentists, and nurses who were rotting in the concentration camps or languishing in the new economic zones. They brought them home and gave them back their jobs at the hospitals and clinics in the city.

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My Life as a Socialist Doctor At the end of 1977, I was allowed back to the city to work as a pediatrician in one of the new hospitals. It had been a seminary formerly owned by Catholic friars. Those poor men had been accused of illegal possession of arms, their institution confiscated by the “people,” and their place was converted to a makeshift hospital. I was responsible for creating the new department of pediatrics at the hospital now called Hospital of Thu Duc. To tell the truth, it was a very challenging but very satisfying experience. Any doctor would be more than happy to practice medicine again after so many years in confinement or doing manual labor, regardless of the size of the salary or perks that might come with the job. It was really moving to be useful treating the unfortunate kids who were born at the wrong place and at the wrong moment in history. Diagnostic and therapeutic facilities were very limited due to the national policy of the new government that treated the South of Vietnam as conquered territory and therefore commandeered most valuable equipment to serve and strengthen the North. Also, the country was under an embargo imposed by the United States and its allies and penury was the rule. Another cause for frustration was the political climate in which we had to work. Even if we had to risk our own lives, we had to leave the country.

Our Preparation for Escape By my wife’s account, we paid money or gold about twenty times before we boarded our boat trying to get out of the country. Each time we lost from ten to thirty taels of gold to con artists who had turned the process of taking people out of the country into a cottage industry. This time, it was our last hope. We had already run out of money or gold; if I failed again and got caught, I would have to stay in prison forever. However, to use the term by Rudyard Kipling, we had to risk everything in a single “pitch and toss,” without the chance “to lose and start again with worn tools.” That would be it, the end, if it failed. However, there was one consolation. There was a very good fortuneteller. My wife, like a lot of people trying to leave the country, came to see him regularly since the time I was put in the concentration camp.

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To be fair to him, most of his predictions about the fate of the people who consulted him turned out to be correct. A relative of my wife wanted to join a group that was planning to escape in a boat. The astrologer predicted that there would be three different outcomes for the group: One group would die drowning in the sea, a second group would be captured by the communists, a third group would make it to the high seas and reach the free shores. That prediction did materialize and unfortunately my wife’s relative and his son belonged to the first group. Things like that amazed me and challenged my inherent skepticism. The astrologer used to reassure me: “Doctor, you will get out of the country, but it will take time. You will go further in your studies and in your profession, you will have to deal with women.” (This last part is interesting in that, instead of becoming a gynecologist as I simplistically interpreted, I later trained in pediatrics and now have to talk to kids’ mothers all day long.) So, on that December night when I had to be on call at the hospital, that fortuneteller told my wife that a good opportunity was coming by and referred the owner of the boat to us. There was a tough decision to be made: We had to pay 10 taels of gold per adult; we were five, two adults and three children, so it took about 35 taels of gold, about 30,000 dollars now. The worst thing was that, if the plan failed from the beginning, there was no refunding possible and our last resources would be annihilated. The astrologer predicted that it would be a very fortuitous trip however; the boat would not meet any pirates, and by the fourth day at sea, it would be rescued by Americans and brought to safety. We did not dare to take the gamble and the prediction turned out to be totally correct. I learned my lesson. Remember Einstein who allegedly hung a horseshoe on his door and replied when asked about his being superstitious: “It works even when you don’t believe in it.” A few days later, the same boat owner organized the next trip; this time she would take her own family with her on that boat, with the blessing of the same fortuneteller. He even trusted his stepdaughter to the woman. It was predicted that this trip would be a little more strenuous than the previous one, but hopefully we would escape the pirates if we prayed fervently enough to Quan The Am Bo Tac (Kwan Yin, our Asian Lady of Mercy) or, for Catholics among us, to the Virgin Mary. Also, by now my mother-in-law had already been on another boat on

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her way out of the country, and we thought she had already made it to Thailand. (In fact, she was captured and held in a concentration camp in Cambodia, but we did not know that until all decisions about our own plan were already made.)

The Day We Left Vietnam On December 16, 1980, my wife, my children and I left my motherin-law’s home in Gia Dinh (a Saigon suburb). We were nicely dressed because we were supposed to be part of a wedding procession from Cho Lon (“Grand Market,” a kind of gigantic Vietnamese Chinatown) to Cai Lay, a river port. There, we would get to small sampans that would take us to a large boat waiting for us in Vinh Long, a larger port nearer to the sea. I was 33, my wife was 26, my oldest son Hoa, 7, Hieu, 6 and Hiep, the youngest one, only 5. My wife was wearing a nice Vietnamese ao dai. I had my jacket on — it was the only one that I had ever gotten until then. It was the remaining part of a suit, custom-made for the ceremony of graduation from medical school, and I had worn it at my wedding. I had already given the slacks to my younger brother in 1975 when he was running away from the incoming communist wave, having lost everything he had. We rode our Honda motorbike to a place near Cau Bong (the Bridge of Flowers linking Saigon and Gia Dinh). We left our motorbike for our aunt to take home, then boarded a very old bus — a converted truck that was a very common, cheap but noisy means of public transportation in Vietnam at that time. It took us to a restaurant in Cholon where we were supposed to join the wedding procession. Small groups of a dozen people each, from different areas, would descend in small boats and converge to a meeting point. There, a total of about 120–130 people would get into a larger fishing boat, about 30 miles away. Because it was a fake wedding, we had with us some nice food that we ate during our short trip in those small riverboats. I still remember the choux creme, a kind of French pastry very popular in Vietnam, which had become a little stale because of the hot weather. I really held my breath when we passed the checking stations on the river. Somehow we did look innocent enough to them.

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By the day’s end, we arrived at our meeting point in Cai Lay where we boarded our main boat. I do not remember much about the place. I only remember my wife and my children rushing with me to the boat, barefooted. My wife was carrying our youngest son under her arm, Hieu was with me and Hoa was on his own, carrying a black nylon bag of clothing and everyone else’s shoes and sandals, trying hard not to drop them when jumping down the boat’s deck. The boat’s number of registration was MH 3273, with MH standing for Minh Hai, the province at the southmost part of Vietnam, where the coastline takes the shape of a parrot’s beak. It was a fishing boat, intended only for shallow waters along the coastline and its normal load should have been a family of 5 or 6. So there were people everywhere over the boat, more than a hundred of them. There were paying passengers and certainly last minute non-paying members also. The latter were forced on us by local authorities who wanted to send their own people overseas too. It turned out to be about 130 people on that small boat. As we left the port, most of us had to go into hiding under the deck in a fish storage area of less than 40 square feet. There was a small wood cover that had to be tightly closed to prevent any noise from coming outside. A small light bulb was eventually turned off. It was suffocation plus total darkness. Hieu started to complain that he could not breathe anymore and was going to die. His mother was so desperate that she tried to pry open the heavy wooden cover with her fingers and left them there almost crushed under its weight to let some air in. Hiep started to scream too. People were so scared of being detected by the river patrol boats. Someone tried to silence him by threatening to throw him overboard into the sea. That was the worst thing one could ever say to someone else in such a situation. Everybody who went to sea avoided saying anything related to drowning or pirates because those were things we feared the most. I myself was in even worse shape. I had severe seasickness and felt as if I was going to die. Someone called me for help because they knew that I was one of the two doctors on board. Of course, there was nothing I could do to help, except wait until the boat reached the international sea boundaries. The next morning we got out of the cramped space below deck and were able to breathe fresh air. Most women and children preferred to stay under the deck however. Down there it was warmer, drier

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and they were out of view of the pirates who were looking for women, among other things. I was lying or sitting on the deck, having a very small space for myself at mid-ship, next to the opening of the fish storage haul. One of my duties was transferring food (rice and coffee) that the organizers sent down from their cabin. Another job was to empty into the sea containers of urine and other detritus passed up to me by people staying below.

Pirates We spent three days and four nights at sea. It was only after boarding the main boat that we knew our captain could not come. Fortunately, the owner of the boat was well prepared for the worst and had acquired some cursory but vital knowledge about seafaring. We headed west in the good direction toward Malaysia, because it was the shortest way to reach land. The weather was propitious and the only potential threat was the pirates from Thailand and Malaysia. Most of them were regular fishermen moonlighting as pirates so their respective governments were unable to detect and stop them completely. Also, most of their victims did not survive, and even if they did, there was very little effort to prosecute their persecutors. Once we were chased by another boat during most of the night. Luckily, our engine did not break down and we outsped our pursuers. We saw only a bright light that chased us through the night and everyone on board was praying to the Virgin or Kwan Yin for protection. I stayed on the deck. It was very cold at night after the burning sun during daytime and my legs felt like they were frozen. I found out that by keeping my bare, sun-burned legs together with their skins touching each other, I got a warm sensation going along them and did not feel the cold anymore. We spotted many ships that passed by, but nobody tried to slow down or even waved back to us. Large fish followed our boat. Some of us thought that they were whales, sacred to Vietnamese seafarers. I thought they were smart seals that we now see so often on television.

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Mersing, Malaysia At last, we saw land the morning of December 20, 1980. It was an island of Malaysia called Tioman. That evening, we arrived to the island of Pulau Tengah, off the eastern shore of the Malay Peninsula. We were not allowed on the island, which was the site of a small refugee camp with about 200 people from Vietnam. We were instead directed to Mersing, a small Malaysian town across the straight between Pulau Tengah and the coastline. It was late in the evening of December 20, and from the dark sea where we were, we saw the lights of the city beckoning from afar. Regular green and red traffic lights appeared to us like twinkling stars from the Promised Land. But as we came closer to the shore, waves became taller and taller, stronger and stronger, probably due to shallower waters and stronger tides. Our boat was terribly shaken, and for the first time during that trip, I had the feeling that all of us were going to die right at the moment when we reached our port of destination. I started to feel the irony of the situation. All lifesavers were taken. My oldest son could find only a wooden plank that he held on to. I did not have anything to cling to. In my arms, I was squeezing my other two boys. If the boat sank, we would be going down together. I did not know what my wife was doing at that moment; she had not come out of that fish storage space since we left Vietnam. After a while, the crew succeeded in stabilizing the boat. We decided to wait until morning to try to approach Mersing again. We successfully reached the pier without incident. Members of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society (the Red Cross equivalent in Islamic countries) came forward to receive us. They were very happy to find out that there were two doctors among the refugees. Dr. Lê Phu.æc Quân and I were classmates at the Saigon Medical School. We also used to work together at the military Cam Ranh Rehabilitation Center, before we moved to Saigon upon the arrival of the communists. In Mersing, we lived in makeshift tents in a park by the sea. My children got their first bath at a stream nearby. They played and fought happily on the sandy bank when Hiep suddenly fell with a splash into the water. Fortunately, I reacted quickly enough and saved him. Remember that someone threatened to throw him into the sea at the beginning of the trip.

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After three days, we were moved by boat to the island of Pulau Tengah, about an hour from Mersing.

My Two Months in Pulau Tengah On Christmas Eve, 1980, all of us, about 130 people, were transferred from Mersing on the East coast of Malaysia (population about 20,000) to the island of Pulau Tengah, 16 miles away, now an uninhabited marine park where tourists can watch leatherback turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. It was a short trip by boat. The island was about two miles long north–south and much narrower east–west. There were two refugee camps, North Island (B°c –‰o) and South Island (Nam –‰o). The reception buildings were in the center of the island, facing the pier, across the dirt road that joined the two camps together. All new arrivals were registered and photographed. Each of us had an ID picture taken, with the number of our boat and our name written in white chalk on a small blackboard on our chest. We were issued ID cards from the International Commission for Migration (ICM). The staff interviewed us in Vietnamese. Refugee volunteers were organized into a committee that worked quite effectively in cooperation with Malaysian authorities and charity organizations. Even between people from the same country, there were a lot of language barriers among refugees who spoke different Vietnamese minority dialects, in particular Chinese Vietnamese. Each refugee had to declare his or her past history, the members of his nuclear and extended family still in Vietnam and their current locations or activities. Malaysia was a country on the “free world” side and certainly needed to screen out unwanted elements that communist Vietnam might want to insert into the boatpeople community. After all that paperwork, we became “illegal residents under detention” in Malaysia, waiting for resettlement in a “third country,” hopefully the United States. It was Christmas and Catholics were getting ready for a special mass at the community hall that night. The priest was French and because, like most Vietnamese doctors, I was fluent in French, someone asked me to serve as an interpreter for him during the mass. It was an honor, though I was really exhausted and needed time to find some place for the children to spend the night. Also, my knowledge of French terms used in a mass was rudimentary at best. I had never attended a mass in full length, in Viet-

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namese or in French, so I felt relieved when someone took over the job. Then, my surgeon friend Lê Phu.æc Quân and I were immediately offered the honor of running the small hospital of the island, the only structure with air conditioning and that looked like a real building. We would operate an outpatient clinic, admit to our small ward the more severe cases and send the worst cases to a hospital in Mersing or Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We would also review the chest X-rays of all refugees, taken by a cursorily trained refugee technician. We would clear the normal X-rays, and send the suspicious ones for reading by radiologists in Kuala Lumpur. We were led to the North Island camp where we found a few wooden cot beds in makeshift huts with thatch roofs. Some from our boat also stayed there for the night. We had some food, settled down a little with our few possessions and put the children to bed. Then, my wife and I went to the church at the center of the island to attend midnight mass. As we walked down the small dirt path along the seashore, waves came almost to our feet and moisture from afar, maybe from our native land, came to wet our faces and awoke us to reality. At the mass, the choir was singing, accompanied by a guitar. Tears came to my eyes and I could not help sobbing forcefully. It was the end of our life as we had ever known it. This was the painful birth of a new life in a new language, a new society, and a very uncertain future. After a while we moved into a communal building. It was a large and hollow hall built with light material and a corrugated steel roof. Large cots made of wood planks were used as living and sleeping quarters for a dozen families. Our family of five was allowed the space of about a king-sized bed. It was next to Dr. Quân and his family. I remember this detail because I still can visualize him sitting on his mat reading medical textbooks available from the hospital. Both of us tried to catch up on our English and our medical knowledge. We knew that we had a lot to learn, as we wanted to go back to our medical careers eventually after our resettlement in a third country. Good things and bad things happened here. It was an idyllic place, with perfect beaches, coconut palm trees and a blue sea that would fit perfectly in any Caribbean Sea travel catalogue, except for a few oddities that would remind a visitor that this was not a paradise island. There were no latrines but large outhouses built over the ocean where human waste was recycled by the sea’s fauna. Our clothing was colorful and

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diverse: Donated items from different places of the world reflected a variety of fashions and tastes. From jeans to blue Filipino traditional shirts, we valued everything we got and happily wore it. There were times when they sorted out big bags containing everything from pants to underwear, and the best-connected people had the privilege to pick up the most sought-after items. My second son Hieu was missing his aunt Thuy very much because she had been very close to him when we were still in Vietnam. Once, looking at all those jeans, he told us: “Let’s keep some of those blue jeans for Di Thuy.” That remark from our six-year-old child reminded us how despondent we had become. My children had no school to go to except some youth activities at the camp’s library at the seaside. There, for a few hours a day, a refugee would volunteer to play with or read to the kids. My five-year-old Hiep was very reluctant to go there. He agreed to stay with the other children only after Mr. HÊu, one of our escape boat’s owners who used to pamper him a lot, bribed him with a little bowl of hu. ti™u (Southern Vietnam’s rice noodle soup), a very precious fare at the time bought from one of the makeshift cafés operated by refugees; even then I had to promise to stay within his sight all the time. The brightest moment for me was when I was able to contact the American Medical Association (AMA) in Illinois. I could not bring any official documents with me during our escape and my name and ECFMG (Educational Council For Foreign Graduates) ID number (which I had taken care to memorize when we left) were my only proofs of identity. I wrote a letter to the ECFMG office in Illinois that Ms. Chen, a Chinese nurse, volunteered to mail from the Mersing (inland) post office. Only a few weeks later, to my great surprise, I received a very nice letter from the AMA welcoming me to the Free World and explaining that it still had all my documents submitted to them ten years before when I applied for the exam in 1971, and that they were sending the originals back to me after having made a copy of everything. I had passed the ECFMG exam in 1972. In fact, when I took the exam, I never thought of any possibility of ever getting my training in the U.S. I just did it from curiosity and for fun, as a few of my friends did at that time. A few of us just tried to see how we, from a local, “third world” medical school, would fare on an international exam. We didn’t even have to pay exam fees beforehand; if we passed, they were waived until the day we reached the U.S. and actually made use of the certificate. Now, I felt really

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grateful to the friends who made me do something of no apparent importance then, but that turned out to be of monumental consequence to my family and myself ten years later. The ECFMG gave us back our identity, and even earned me some respect from the Filipino nurses who were also looking for an opportunity to work in the U.S. Later, in America, the fact that I was already qualified for an intern position spared me years of intensive preparation without a salary. As I said before, bad things happened too. Within the first few days after our arrival, people from the North Island camp were rushing toward the hospital, carrying a livid and flaccid boy of one or two years of age. He had somehow fallen into one of the wells there. Somebody inadvertently had left the cover open or maybe the boy had somehow managed to open it by himself. “Ghosts led his way, the devil showed it to him,” as we like to say in Vietnamese (Ma dÁn lØi, qu÷ d-u.a d-u.∂ng). I tried to resuscitate him, mouth-to-mouth and everything, to no avail. His family owned the boat that had brought us to the island. A few among us thought of the accident as a sinister fee of passage. Soon afterwards, a very athletic and well-built man from the same family suddenly developed abdominal cramps and became comatose. He had drunk some mixture of coconut milk and a certain solvent found in an abandoned can. It was a very toxic compound. After a few days at our hospital, he died a very painful death. There was very little Dr. L. P. Quân and I could do for him at the little hospital. In fact, coming from a country where medical care had regressed to the most rudimentary level under years of communist regime and American embargo, our expectations had gone very low. We did not even have any idea of what could be done elsewhere (in Kuala Lumpur for example) for such a case, and how to proceed to refer and transfer our patient to some other place where he could have a better chance for survival. This tragic case heightened our awareness about poisoning and alcohol abuse that were very prevalent among the refugees. Another memorable case involved a teenager who tried to do some fishing to improve his family’s meals. In its flight the hook accidentally perforated his eyeball. He never reported to the hospital and when we found out about the accident it was too late. Idleness coupled with extremely crowded living conditions created an environment favorable to many sins that would not have thrived otherwise, like drunkenness, gambling, violence and recklessness. Anyway, nobody cared much about anything besides their own survival. Occasionally, right before our

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eyes, whole boatfuls of people who were refused permission to land by local authorities were chased away and disappeared into the horizon.

Looking for an Adoptive Country In Pulau Tengah, we had the first chance to contact delegations from the third countries. We were refugees from Vietnam, so Vietnam was our first country. The second country was Malaysia, where we were illegal immigrants, and were tolerated temporarily until another country would voluntarily accept us for political asylum. That last country where we would eventually go to live was called the third country. Because of past political and military ties with South Vietnam, the United States had been the most willing to accept us. In fact, in the previous years, most Vietnamese who made it to refugee camps had been readily accepted for resettlement in the United States. Exceptions were people who were rescued at sea by another country’s ships. By international convention, they were automatically accepted for resettlement in that respective country, like Germany, Sweden, even Israel. By 1981, so many Vietnamese had settled in the United States that there were signs of “fatigue” in their open-arm policy. Also, there was economic hardship in the U.S., something that I was not aware of then. The Americans changed their immigration policy and did not automatically accept even former military officers of South Vietnam who had fought on their side during the war. My credentials, like having a professional degree recognized in America (my ECFMG certificate would allow me to find a paying position in a hospital in the U.S.) and having spent time in a communist concentration camp, did not help either. The Americans required us to apply to two other countries and to be rejected by them before they would even open a file for us and consider our applications. Therefore, I had to apply with the Australian delegation first. Australia wanted only very young, single applicants at the time; I guessed that they wanted a mostly young, cheap labor force that didn’t have the burden of a large family. Many uneducated, non–English-speaking men in their twenties were accepted to Australia without significant delay. We felt a lot of bitterness then, but in retrospect and in a philosophical sense, I think that it was probably fair. Someone else sometimes needs his own dose of good luck, and we cannot expect to keep our own socioeconomic advantage all the time.

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We had the same misfortune with the Canadian delegation. I still remember the Asian Canadian who courteously told me that doctors were not encouraged to come to Canada. Again, it became a pattern here. The communists hated us because we were educated and therefore belonged to the privileged, exploiting class on the side of capitalists. Now that we were begging the capitalists for help, they were rejecting us because we were too educated for their use. Laughing at this catch-22 situation was probably a good coping strategy for us. Later, I thought of it as another example of the Law of the Frontier Man who lost his horse. The story of the frontier man (tái ông thÁt mã) is a cliché in Chinese popular philosophy. That man lost his beautiful horse and his friends felt sorry for him. He said, “I am not sure it is not a good thing.” One month later the horse returned home and his friends congratulated him for his luck. He said, “I am not sure it is not a bad thing.” His son rode the horse and broke his leg. Bad luck? Maybe not. There came the war, and every fit person was drafted into the military. People died in the war, the son survived. You have got the pattern now. So, later, when I became well established and comfortable in the United States, and looked across the Canadian borders at my friends who fought the freezing climate for most of the year, tái ông thÁ t mã came back to my mind. But, I know, as part of the rule still, who knows?

Sungei Besi in Kuala Lumpur Two months after our arrival in Pulau Tengah, they decided to close the camp because it was too small and planned to evacuate all refugees to the island of Pulau Bidong, more to the north. Pulau Bidong was the largest, most crowded refugee community in Malaysia with a population of more than 30,000 refugees at a time. It was not as peaceful as our place, and had a reputation for unruliness and unsanitary health conditions. They offered me an exception however. On March 3, 1981, the two of us physicians were allowed to go with our families to Kuala Lumpur. We were assigned to work at a small sickbay (hospital), helping two American doctors there. One was a young, single internist who took a year off his fellowship to volunteer to work for a charity organization there with the refugees. “Who do you think you are?” his friends asked

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him when he made the decision to go to Malaysia. The other doctor, Dr. Laura Brandt, was a pediatrician of my age, from Indiana. I enjoyed working with her very much. Later she wrote many letters of recommendation on my behalf when I applied for a residency position. Because of my transfer to Sungei Besi in Kuala Lumpur, I had to stay another year in the refugee camps. Sungei Besi was supposed to be a transit camp, where refugees spent only a few weeks before boarding an airplane to the States. They did not open new files for refugees there, or did so rarely, because there was no pressure to make places for newcomers as at crowded Pulau Bidong. Also, they probably were not very eager to lose a good doctor working day and night, always available for emergencies, baby deliveries, and transfer to the hospital emergency room in Kuala Lumpur downtown. Sungei Besi, despite its location next to a capital city and its security, was one of the worst experiences of my life. Extreme confinement in a very small place, uncertainty about my future, lack of any educational experience for the children, its perpetual noise, daily farewell parties, melancholic songs reminding us about our old country on the public address system, nonstop day and night. It was hell for me, at moments even worse than the communist concentration camps, from a psychological point of view. Then at last, after many recriminations and protests sent to the American delegation, we were considered at last for resettlement in the United States. Our sponsor would be my wife’s cousin who was living in Newport News, Virginia. Her husband had a painting job at a bus company and was moonlighting fixing old cars at night and reselling them. They had two girls and one boy, and lived in a rather modest house across the street from a Catholic church. When we were in Vietnam, we saw them in a picture in front of their house and it appeared to us like a dream of peace and happiness, very difficult to reach. When we were in the refugee camp, they sent us some money and a few letters. Probably much of that mail was lost before it reached our makeshift local post office. Required paper work from our sponsor in America was slow to come by. Another problem was that neither of us on each side of the Pacific really understood what kind of situation the other side had to deal with. There were a lot of unmet expectations, frustrations. At one point, I was lucky enough to have Dr. Brandt make a very long distance phone call for me. She made a fifty dollar call to our relatives in America to remind them to send us very important documents called “reassurance letters” written by our sponsors. In retro-

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spect, I guess these were affidavits whereby our sponsors promised to take care of us once we were admitted to the U.S. so that we would not be a burden on the welfare system. The costly phone call did not help much however, because in America, they did not know what we were referring to. After more than six months in the camp, most of the paperwork was done. We went to the American embassy in Kuala Lumpur for our final interview. Our airline tickets to America were ready. When we thought that our ordeal was over, there was a sudden major change in the policy towards the refugees coming to America. The Reagan administration made the new requirement that every refugee should have had a half a year course in orientation and English as a second language in the Philippines before coming to the U.S. My wife was shocked at the news; she developed acute stomach pain and threw up blood because of gastric bleeding. She had been preparing for months for our departure to America. She had spent long nights sitting outside under a street light to knit sweaters for her children to get them ready for the cold climate. She donated them to a few teenage children who traveled alone or whose parents had died during their escape and even earned some money with orders from leaving refugees. With that money she was able to buy some extra food for our children. All her dreams collapsed all of a sudden. I still remember the help of Ms. Lorna Lutley, a British nurse volunteer who came to our living quarters, talked to my wife about the biblical story of Job, tried to comfort her and hugged her emotionally. She later “lent” us some money and gave me her only stethoscope just in case I might need it to take care of my family. Dr. Brandt had a farewell party for me. She asked me what I wanted as a gift. She gave me the heavy Nelson’s Textbook of Pediatrics that I wanted, the only one that she brought along for consultation. I still treasure it and keep it in my library. So it was with a heavy heart and a lot of uncertainty about our own future and the future of our children that we left Kuala Lumpur.

Our Move to Bataan in the Philippines On November 3, 1981, we had to leave the camp furtively by night in large trucks to enter the airport by its rear entrance. We were allowed

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to use the airport lobby only when everybody had left at midnight, and only then did we board the plane for another destination. We arrived in Manila in the Philippines at night. A long caravan of buses took us to Bataan, a remote area, on the west coastline of the country. When we went through the streets of a Manila suburb, I was unable to see anything besides the lighted stores and the streetlights that reminded me of downtown Cholon, the giant Chinatown next to Saigon. After we left the city, the road wound uphill, through the mountainous landscape. It was the first time in many years that I saw such a long line of lights on the road. Since 1975 most traffic that we had in Vietnam consisted of bicycles and military trucks, so any indication of modern life, like the colors of traffic lights in Mersing, a taxi in Kuala Lumpur, a drinking water fountain at the airport, a neon store sign in Manila, were encouraging signs meaning to me that we were making small steps toward civilization. My dream of coming back to the urban life ended when we arrived at the Bataan Philippines Refugee Processing Center (PRPC). It was really late and we were sent to a small house with the family of a friend. She was a former teacher whose husband, a lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese Parachutist Force, was still spending time in a communist concentration camp in North Vietnam. She traveled with two sons and two daughters.

Life at the Philippines Refugees Processing Center in Bataan The morning after, we were taken to our permanent living quarters. The PRPC was a village built from scratch with American money, just for the purpose of processing and preparing refugees who were heading for the United States. It had schools for children and adults, a community center where movies were shown on weekends and facilities for its staff. Adult education consisted mostly of basic English at slightly different levels and orientation to the American lifestyle. The faculty was mostly Filipino, not surprising as the country was a former colony of the United States. People spoke English very fluently, with a slight peculiar accent. A Catholic Sister, Sister Eugenia, was in charge of the orientation part. Refugees who had spent some time in the U.S. were recruited

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to the faculty and underwent 100 hours of training in the techniques of teaching. Before my escape I myself never went outside Vietnam but, because I was a doctor and spoke rather decent English, I was drafted to be part of the faculty. I taught the other teachers about basic medical knowledge, the health care delivery system and preventive medicine. It was done in English and it seemed to me that the Sister appreciated it a lot. I never attended the orientation classes themselves, which were conducted in Vietnamese for the majority of the refugee students. They learned how to use an American bathroom, run a vacuum cleaner, and cook on a gas or electric range. There was even a small model house (a tiny one by our current standards) with everything from an American bed to a carpeted floor. From our point of view at that time, it was like a dream house. After the initial paper work we moved into a small apartment about 3 meters by 4 meters in size, with a total surface area of around 120–130 square feet. An attic added some extra living space for our two families, 10 people in all, three adults and 7 children. My wife and I shared the large cot bed with our three children at night. Hoa, though only 9 years old, helped with some of the housekeeping and babysitting for his mother. The first disheartening sight we had was the apartment itself. The building was made of light material; walls were of thin concrete and the roof of corrugated steel. There was a yard without trees in front. In the back there was a shallow moat full of black foul-smelling water that probably was draining from some sewage nearby. As we entered the apartment we were overwhelmed by a strong smell of human feces. The cement floor was littered with trash from the previous tenants and under the cot bed there were many remnants of the products of bodily functions. We spent the whole day cleaning that mess. The condition of the communal outhouses, about ten yards away, later gave us an explanation as to why some people had elected not to use them. They were small buildings made of concrete, divided into narrow booths. Instead of toilet seats there were small gutters where people were supposed to relieve themselves without any sense of privacy. Above the gutters ran a water pipe with occasional copper faucets. Only a small stream of dripping water came out and it failed the purpose of flushing the gutters. Besides, those faucets also provided us with the only source of running water that we had. Every member of our family group had to take turns, spending

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15 minutes to half an hour waiting for that water to trickle down and fill up a small bucket. Add to that the impatience in the waiting line and the strong stench from the gutters. That was how we got our washing, cooking and drinking water. Fortunately, there were streams about half a mile from the camp. We followed a narrow, tortuous path leading to the valley and took baths there. The scenery surrounding the streams was idyllic, with green, exuberant tropical vegetation. The water was clear and turbulent in places. Sometimes it gave us the impression of being immersed in a Jacuzzi tub with its cool and singing stream, soothing our pain and worries. There was a place where water was deeper and overlooked by a shaded promontory. Some children could not resist the thrill of diving there and a few lost their lives doing so. However those streams of water were one of the few bright spots of my memory about Bataan. Another fine moment was the celebration of the Vietnamese New Year. We had a fair where fake fire-crackers were hung from fake Vietnamese cherry trees. The pagoda was decorated with look-alike Chinese characters welcoming Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. For us, it was a day of painful nostalgia that marked another year in exile; at the same time Tet, as always, brought us some amount of hope for the future. That night, we had a large bonfire that burned until the wee hours. I remembered that fire well because I was able to get a warm bath for the first time in years, from a bucket of hot water. Another memorable event was our trip to Olongapo, a nearby Filipino city of about one hundred thousand inhabitants. The people there thrived on service provided to American servicemen stationed at the nearby military base of Bataan. We sneaked out of our camp because in theory we were not allowed outside. We boarded a small Filipino boat that took us to the city. We shopped for a few cheap items. I bought my first Sony boom box and a little uni-focus, Instamatic Kodak camera that cost about 16–20 dollars. I was eager to spend that precious money because I wanted to have the pictures that would later become witnesses of the most memorable days of our lives. One of my favorite pictures shows my wife in front of our apartment. Above her hangs a five-pointed, star-shaped paper lantern that I made myself from bamboo rods and paper for my children. It is a Vietnamese tradition to hang that kind of paper lantern during holidays like Christmas or Mid-Autumn Festival. Another picture shows my youngest son dancing with his daycare friends;

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another one has our children at a welcoming party when Mrs. Marcos, First Lady of the Philippines, came to visit us in her helicopter. I also remember my first ice cream in years that we had at a small restaurant where one of the Filipino teachers, Ms. Ninfa Alderette, took us. At night, we also had some entertainment at a few makeshift cafés at some refugees’ apartments. On March 27, 1982, we left Bataan and boarded our charter plane in Manila, headed for Newport News, Virginia, via San Francisco.

15

Guam, the Transit Island Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: For six months in 1975, Guam, an island in the Pacific Ocean, became the screening area for all the refugees coming out of Vietnam. The dynamics of Operation New Life are described. Eventually, more than one thousand people returned home via the illfated Vietnam Thuong Tin I boat.

The first 130,000 refugees who escaped from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon arrived in Guam for processing before heading to the U.S. mainland and other countries worldwide.

Operation New Life Operation New Life was launched on April 23, 1975 (and ended on October 16, 1975), with the goal of resettling the refugees. The first refugees arriving by plane in the last week of April were bused to the first staging area where they could take a rest and complete their paperwork. They received “K” rations, consisting of ham, crackers, jelly and peanut butter as well as sanitary kits. Once rested and fed, they went through a brief physical examination before being sent to the customs service. They were then given refuge in the galvanized Quonset huts1 at the “Tin City” on the grounds of Anderson AFB (Air Force Base). In Saigon, during the last days of the war, some Vietnamese had offered bribes to Americans ranging from $600 to as much as $7,000 to 157

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help them escape. Evacuees were reported to have brought gold plates sewn into coat linings through customs. Others who tripped the airport metal detector were found to have gold bullion shaped into cylinders hidden in their rectums.2 Guam was an island 32 miles long by four to 12 miles wide populated by 80,000 islanders. In the north was the Anderson AFB, home to the largest fleet of B52 bombers which played a major role in bombing Vietnam and Cambodia during the war. About 225 tons of food and supplies arrived by air every day from the Travis AFB in California. Some of the supplies arrived through the Apra Harbor in the southwest part of the island. They were then transported on flatbed trucks that traveled along the western and main two-lane highway that linked the harbor to the Anderson AFB, forcing the islanders to share the road with military trucks and buses carrying the evacuees. The highway that went through the capital, Agana, and two other small towns, was crowded during the war and Operation New Life. With the refugees arriving following the fall of Saigon, the State Department looked for assistance in the resettlement effort. Australia at that time said it would accept only a few hundred young and single refugees. Singapore and Thailand closed their doors, although Thailand had accepted 60,000 Vietnamese when the French pulled out of Vietnam in 1955. West Germany would accept a few thousand refugees. The U.S. mainland was not very enthusiastic either. California said it would throw roadblocks into any plan to relocate the refugees in that state. Representative White of Texas argued the refugees should be resettled only in the Trust Territory.3 In effect, nobody wanted the refugees.4 Guam thus became the transit area, the Asian Ellis Island for the thousands of incoming refugees. Civilian employees of the military establishment and their military counterparts began working twelve hours a day to get the tents up and ready for service. They erected at breakneck speed 350 tents per day with a housing capability of 6,000 people, but it was not enough. On April 27, evacuee flights were redirected to Wake Island, 1,500 miles northwest of Guam for 48 hours so Guam could catch up. The “Tent City” capable of housing 50,000 people was completed in just ten days: It rose on Guam’s northern plateau at Orote Point at the Naval Air Station. As of April 27, there were 20,000 evacuees on the island. After a lull, the real phase of Operation New Life began with the announce-

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ment on May 3 that following the fall of Saigon, over 100,000 Vietnamese had escaped the country and headed for Guam. The biggest health risk was the possibility of an outbreak of infectious disease related to the massive influx of people. In the past, Guam had experienced mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, yaws, Dengue, and filariasis.5 Trash and junk cars are the perfect breeding ground for the Aedes mosquitoes — carrier of the Dengue virus — that are very common on the island. At the time the evacuees left Saigon, there was an epidemic of Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in the city. A 9-year-old Vietnamese became the first casualty on the island. Brought to the hospital with fever, rash and shock in the morning, he died in the afternoon. Only one in 1,000 cases of Dengue developed into the fatal form of DHF.6 On May 6, three cargo ships carrying 16,000 evacuees appeared in Apra Harbor. Most of them were confused, tired and hungry; many were ragged and barefoot. Others had medical problems, some of which had been acquired during the trip, like conjunctivitis. The following day, three other cargo ships brought an additional 15,000 evacuees. Another 15,000 people were expected on May 8. These were not people who flew in a week earlier after a three to four hour flight; the latest evacuees arrived after six-to-eight-day trips aboard ships that had minimal sanitary and bathroom facilities. Most carried a small bundle or basket containing all their earthly possessions.7

Sorrow Days at the camps were slow. There were the usual three meals when people got the chance to gather in line and discuss the news. There was not a lot of news floating around. The compound was isolated and there was no TV or newspaper. There was the beach, although no one, except the young ones, was interested in suntanning or bathing. The rest lived in their own world. These were days and nights of soul searching, recriminations, anxiety, despair, and sorrow. They asked themselves how they could have lost the war, what went wrong, and how they could have done better. What could they have done? They did not have enough soldiers, armaments, ammunitions. They ran a defensive war while the enemy was on the offensive all the time. They never car-

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ried any attack on the North. They waged a war while trying to rebuild the country, while the enemy just concentrated on waging the war despite a ruined economy. Had they had better leaders, they could have done something different. If ... if ... if... there were so many ifs.... In their minds, they retraced the whole war and found mistakes and errors everywhere. Like candidates who had lost an election, they just blamed themselves for everything. Some, like Mai Lien, worried about their families. She and her siblings were sent to safety in Saigon then Phu Quoc while their father, an ARVN pilot, had to stay back because of his job. They did not know whether he was able to make it or not. They wandered around asking anyone if they had seen their father. They stayed back and were the last ones to leave the Guam camp. Despite the long wait, they still did not see their father. Some worried about the future, which seemed so uncertain. How would they learn the language, get a job, earn money and so on? How would they take care of their children and to which schools would they send them? Others worried about the food. They were certainly not used to the American food, although it was delicious. They missed their nuoc mam (fish sauce), pho, mi, and so on. Would they be able to get enough ingredients to prepare these dishes? Some worried about the weather. Although they had not seen snow, they already dreaded it. How would they stand the cold weather? Others were just bored and frustrated from being locked up in the camps. What they worried about the most was their impotence in the face of new events. After losing the war, they were then being fed and housed and were not able to do anything positive. The refugees were finally able to publish a newspaper, which was heavily censored by the Navy. It served as a tool for the latter to communicate with the refugees. They learned of the battle raging at the United Nations that planned to recognize the new communist government in South Vietnam. Australia had already recognized it. Many other countries planned to follow. It was the U.S. against the world. The paper also informed readers that 46 South Vietnamese Navy ships carrying 7,000 refugees had stopped in Singapore for food and water before heading for Guam. President Ford was asking for 507 million dollars in resettlement funds. By May 7, the official count of the refugees reaching Guam had reached 64,076.

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The Thuong Tinh I Odyssey Confined on huge freighters for a week and then in camps for months, some refugees began having second thoughts. They had plenty of time to think about the overall situation. Many were missing home or their families, others found it difficult to adapt to the new land, food, and environment, and others simply had enough. Confinement, idleness, depression, and overcrowding further sapped their morale. They talked to each other and many voiced the opinion of returning home. Their restlessness increased day by day. On the evening of August 31 and September 3, 1975, repatriates burned two buildings, damaged several vehicles and sent to the hospital four of the U.S. Marshals who had been assigned to contain them. Demonstrations were followed by hunger strikes, head shavings and other forms of passive resistance. Finally, they were given the green light. The ship departed on October 16, 1975, with 1,546 repatriates. News was hard to come by. No one ever heard of the 1,546 people again until many years later when news trickled out with each successive wave of boat people. Our friend would board the Thuong Tin and go home to praise the Party, struggle for its line. Now we have heard he’s buried at Yen Bai — Stop scorning him and let him rest in peace. Cao Tan8 Navy officer and poet Truong Sa escaped to Guam after 1975. There, he had a change of heart thinking that the communists, also being Vietnamese, would welcome him back. He decided to go home on the illfated Vietnam Thuong Tin I (Vietnam Commercial Bank), the boat many of them took to come to Guam. This was after many months of negotiation with the new government. They landed, not in Saigon, but at the port of Nha Trang in central Vietnam as ordered by the authorities. Instead of receiving a warm welcome, they were arrested and confined in the former Korean Army installation at the Ru Ry pass north of Nha Trang. The ship captain was tried as a spy and shot to death. Communist “justice” was fast and deadly. A few weeks earlier, he was a free man at Guam, but he decided to meet his fate by returning to the communist land.

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All the men were sent to the A-20 reeducation camp, about 100 miles northwest of Nha Trang.9 Women and children were sent home after a short incarceration period. Truong Sa was interned in various concentration camps for a total of ten years before being released. He later escaped by boat and relocated to Canada. He could only comment that returning to Vietnam in 1975 was his biggest mistake. The passengers of the Thuong Tin thus became some of the earliest victims of the communists. Repression would continue for years until today.

The Gate to Freedom Days at the camp were long because we had nothing to do. One day, we were told to pack for we would leave the camp the next day. To where, they did not know. We had no clue about the future either. America, the magic land, was a big unknown to us. We knew about American culture — or part of it — through our dealings with the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, although we had never discussed or learned about American culture. Our knowledge of it was at most cursory. We knew less about American than French history, less about American than French civilization. We knew the U.S. had an impressive army, we knew about their dealings, but not about how their people lived and behaved. We stood there in awe of the country, the land, but also confused. Confused about the turn of events, about the future, about the Americans, and about almost everything. We did not know what the future entailed for us. We were apatrid; we had no country to depend on, no country to live for. This is difficult to explain to anyone who has never been in that situation. It is like having no identity, nothing. One is suddenly nobody ... neither American, French, Thai, or Vietnamese. As an apatrid, one has lost one’s identity. For the second time in our lives, we lost our umbilical cords and did not have time to grow new ones: It was as if we were floating in space without any attachment to anywhere. Some refugees asked themselves why they should go to America if the Americans were directly or indirectly the cause of their downfall. This led them to apply for asylum in France, Canada, England, or Australia in an attempt to bypass the U.S.

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We ran away looking for freedom, but at the gate of Freedom, we suddenly became confused. Too confused to understand its full meaning and too confused to savor it. How could we savor it if our feet were still embedded in the past and not ready to embrace the future? Behind our back, an unfinished tragedy, In front of us, an uncertain future. The present was rather unsteady: We did not know on whom to lean and what to do next. As we walked on the tarmac of Anderson AFB on that bright and sunny May day from our bus to the Boeing 747 that was waiting for us, we did not know where we were heading. No one had told us about our “secret” destination. We slowly climbed the stairs deep in our thoughts. The past was murky. The future foggy. The present hazy. It looked like South Vietnam again. However, this time we moved on because at least we had FREEDOM and PEACE. And because America is the land of “extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”

Statistics Refugee Arrivals

Refugee Departures

Anderson Air Force Base 39,310 Naval Air Station Agana 31,610 By ship 40,999

Andersen Air Force Base 109,553 Naval Air Station Agana 1,756 Guam community 455 Deaths 25 Total 111,789

Total 111,919

Transport Aircraft 443 Ships 21

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Quick Glance 4 miles of chain-link fence erected 6 miles of power lines 10 miles of communication lines 20 miles of drains and water lines 280 power poles installed 1,300 acres of land cleared and graded 3,664 tents erected 2,500 tons of rice used 3,442 ounces of disinfectant 5,241 tons of material and food issued within the first ten days 14,109 U.S. military and DOD civilians participated 80,000 gallons of detergent 92,000 toilet paper rolls 327,000 plastic bags 403,104 square feet of plywood used during the first three weeks of Operation New Life 3.9 million paper towels 9.5 million paper plates 19 million paper cups 17.5 million sets of plastic flatware Crisostomo DV. Operation New Life: http://www.guampdn.com/guampublishing/special-sec tiond/operation_newlife05/01_overview

16

I Left My Heart in ... Saigon Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR ’S NOTE: What makes Saigon so difficult to understand although so endearing? The author gives seven different reasons.

Oh Saigon! I lost thee, like ye lost your name, Like a river with its meandering and sad waters, Like an emotionally distant lover who ran away. I whisper: “Do you remember?” So goes a song that was composed after 1975. Like millions of others, I fled Saigon at the conclusion of the war. Although it was a long time ago, it seems like it was yesterday. I still can imagine myself strolling down Nguyen Hue Avenue, sitting on the Bach Dang pier to watch the meandering Saigon river flow lazily through the city, dashing through her narrow and busy streets on my Honda motorcycle trying to avoid her reckless drivers, and eating pho noodle soup in many of her pho restaurants. Although it is a cliché, it is true. Do I remember Saigon? The question is, how I could forget the seductress on the Mekong River? Saigon in 1975 was a vibrant city with a rich and complicated past that trapped her citizens like a woman holding her lover captive with her charms. From a small village among the swamps, she grew into a large cosmopolitan city whose name was recognized worldwide. However, not a lot of people seem to known her convoluted past.

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Saigon was a multinational city: Saigon had seen many masters come and go. The Chams were the first settlers followed by the Khmers then the Vietnamese.1 The Chinese Ming and Huong, defeated by their enemies in China, sailed to Vietnam and found refuge in Saigon and its vicinity. During their southward expansion the Vietnamese settled around the area in 1623 although they only gained control of the region in 1698 and renamed it the prefecture of Gia Dinh-Bien Hoa. When the Nguyen lords lost their throne in Hue, central Vietnam, in 1777, they took refuge in Saigon and made the town their headquarters. Saigon ended up becoming the major battlefield between the Nguyen (Nguyen Anh) and the Tay Son rebels on four different occasions. Beaten, Nguyen Anh retreated to Ha Tien, Phu Quoc then Siam. With great pain he rebuilt his army and with the help of Le Van Duyet took back Saigon in 1790. For the next 12 years, he relentlessly marched northward all the way to Hanoi and re-conquered his capital of Hue. Saigon was renamed Gia Dinh Thanh and was placed under the control of General and Viceroy Le Van Duyet while the King settled and ruled from Hue.2 The French took Gia Dinh Thanh in 1859 and later switched her name back to Saigon. They lay down the foundations of a Europeanstyle city which they used as the economic capital of their colonial empire. During World War II, the Japanese came and used Saigon as their base for expansion into Southeast Asia. The British and the Americans came later. Unlike her sister-cities of Hanoi and Hue, Saigon’s flavor was due to her multi-ethnicity that created a unique freshness and a warm openness to modernity, foreign cultures, religion and commerce. Raised on a bend of the river, Saigon looks across the Pacific Ocean and longed for modernity and commerce with Southeast Asian countries; Hue, on the other hand, remained anchored in a monarchic past, and Hanoi to a martial and military past. A city with many names: She was born as the Cham village of Baigaur before becoming the Khmer Prey Nokor, the village hidden in the forests (from Prey: forest, and Nokor: village, land). For a long time, she remained a small, sleepy fishing Khmer village on the river. She was also known as Sai-Con or Sai-Gon from the fields of cotton (Gon) that surrounded the village. How and when Prey Nokor became Sai-Gon

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remains unknown to this date. When the Siamese fought against the Khmers and threatened the Khmer port of Mang Kham (Ha Tien) on the Gulf of Siam, all maritime activity was diverted to Prey Nokor. And the village grew to be a major commercial center with links to China, Malaysia, and India. Nguyen Anh made the town his headquarters after the Nguyen lost their throne in Hue. From that town, he waged a 25-year-war that ended with the recovery of his throne. Saigon became Gia Dinh Thanh to be governed by a viceroy. The French, who took over the town in 1862, renamed her Saigon and made her their colonial city, a home away from home. The name stuck to the city until the end of the Vietnam War. Saigon was also known as the Pearl of the Orient or the Mistress of the Mekong. Saigon was about images: During the war, with the city filled with foreign correspondents, her image was flashed around the globe, making this city in the swamps recognizable worldwide. It was the image of Ngo Dinh Diem triumphant over the rebels Binh Xuyen that catapulted him into the role of “America’s Miracle Man” in Asia (1955). The image of the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc brought down the Ngo regime (1963). The image of the Viet Cong who infiltrated into Saigon all the way to the American Embassy caused America to turn her back on the war (1968). The picture of the Hue Massacre turned the population away from the Viet Cong (1968). The picture of Americans and Saigonese climbing the stairs leading to the helipad signaled the end of American power in Asia (1975). The picture of a Viet Cong tank smashing through the gates of the Independence Palace marked the enslavement of the Saigonese by the Hanoi government (1975). And there are many more. A city of many heroes: Most of them were unknown civilians who propped her up unselfishly over many centuries. First, the Chams and Khmers built her from the ground up in the insalubrious marshes of the river. Then came the Vietnamese who marched hundreds or thousands of miles to settle in and around the village. They drained the marshes and brought with them improved rice culture technology, which eventually boosted the delta’s rice production. The Chinese arrived with their commercial know-how and ship-building knowledge.

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Nguyen Anh (r. 1802–1820), the scion of the Nguyen lords, began with nothing. Dispossessed from his throne, broke and beaten by the Tay Son, he was on many occasions close to being captured by his enemies. He led a rough life, hiding from his constant pursuers in the marshes of the delta, then under a priest’s bed and later in the forests of Ha Tien before escaping to Siam. He doggedly survived all these ordeals and for 25 years relentlessly worked on regaining his empire. He mobilized the delta’s agricultural and manpower resources, coordinated the various political, military, and religious factions, and rebuilt the Saigon shipyard to make it one of the most competitive in Asia in the late 18th and 19th centuries. He systematically marched northward, beating his enemies one by one and finally recovered his throne in Hue. Le Van Duyet was the commander who led Nguyen Anh’s army to victory. After 1802, he was rewarded with the title of Governor and Viceroy of the six southern provinces (present day South Vietnam). He opened Saigon to regional commerce with other Southeast Asian states and practiced religious tolerance (toward Catholicism) against the orders of the Hue regime. King Minh Mang was obviously upset but could not do anything against his father’s benefactor and his own tutor. Upon Duyet’s death, Minh Mang revoked all his titles and ordered his tomb razed. Duyet’s adopted son, Le Van Khoi, upset at this injustice, raised an army and led a southern insurrection against the Hue regime. He died three years later defending the Saigon citadel against the Hue army. Two thousand rebels, men, women and children, were executed and their bodies thrown into a mass grave, the Plain of Tombs, midway between Saigon proper and Cholon.3 Phan Thanh Gian, the compassionate viceroy and great southern commander, under Tu Duc’s orders negotiated the 1862 treaty of Saigon relinquishing Saigon and the three eastern provinces to France. He knew too well his soldiers armed with spears and daggers would be no match against the French soldiers’ guns, and took the blame in place of the emperor and committed suicide by taking poison. His body was exhumed and beheaded on the court’s orders. Another patriot was Nguyen An Ninh, who was born in Saigon in 1900 and graduated from Lycee Chasseloup Laubat (later renamed Jean Jacques Rousseau) in 1917. After graduating from a Paris law school, the revolutionary spearheaded the fight for freedom from colonial rule in Saigon. The French governor repeatedly warned him against writing and

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distributing subversive material but to no avail. Ninh was finally sent to Con Son to serve a life sentence. He continued his fight in jail before being liquidated by his jailer right before the arrival of the Japanese. Who knows what this young and idealistic man could have brought to the country, had he remained alive.4 He left behind many famous words, including the following: To live in such a way one has no shame of living To die in such a way to avoid sarcasms To live for posterity, and to die for one’s country without complaining of imprisonment. The capital of political intrigues: It has been suggested that when the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon sneezed, the Presidential Palace shook. In a city full of intrigues where almost anyone might plot against anyone else: generals against generals, Buddhists and Catholics against generals, Buddhists against Catholics, politicians against each other, peaceniks against Americans, the U.S. Ambassador maintained contact with all parties while underground Viet Cong kept stirring the pot. Northern spies infiltrated many governmental offices, the army, and of course the Buddhist organization. It had been estimated that Hanoi had 20,000 spies in the South. Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, an ARVN officer, was a double agent and a friend of the reporter Stanley Karnow. His remains were transferred to a patriot’s cemetery near Saigon after the war.5 But who would believe that the Perfect Spy did indeed live in Saigon? Working for Caltex in 1954, he was sent for a two-year training in California and upon his return to Saigon worked as a correspondent for the U.S. Military Advisory Group. He seemed to know everything about the war as well as Saigon’s political intrigues and his reports were thought by his American employers to be correct and insightful. He was trusted and given glowing reports before going to work for major foreign news organizations. He used to spend time with foreign correspondents at Givral, a chic drinking place and relic of the old French culture, doling out information about the South Vietnamese army and its allies, the Vietcong and the war in general. Foreign correspondents, however, never asked themselves how someone could know that much about the war

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without holding any official position in the government. After 1975, he revealed himself as Colonel Pham Xuan An, a Viet Cong spy imbedded within the Americans in Saigon. He apparently enrolled himself as a Viet Cong in 1947 and seven years later became their intelligence chief in Saigon. He fed Hanoi with the positions of Saigon’s troops, their morale as well as the Palace’s policies and goals while giving the Americans no important clues. He played his game so perfectly that no American or Vietnamese official ever suspected him of being a spy. He even befriended Tran Kim Tuyen, Saigon’s intelligence chief. He helped Tuyen escape to the U.S. on the last day of the war knowing full well that Tuyen would have been tortured to death had he remained in Saigon. It is ironic that Saigon’s intelligence chief could not even save himself and had to use the help of Hanoi’s chief spy.6 After the war, he was recalled to Hanoi where he underwent political “training” for being seen as too independent-minded. He was given a position in the army but decided to retire instead in Saigon at the rank of General. For the next three decades, he remained an enigmatic and almost invisible figure in the city. He never gave out any interviews: His statements to former American co-workers were rare and few. He wrote not a single book although some U.S. publishers would have loved to have printed his story. His one and only request: to attend a conference in the U.S., was denied. He lived a life that was akin to a house arrest: Rarely venturing outside his house, he enjoyed raising birds and betting on cockfighting. His visitors were pre-screened by the police who decided which one would be allowed to see him. He knew too much for Hanoi to let him go free. He died peacefully in Saigon in September 2006 as a consummate spy who was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Who knows what the Perfect Spy has reserved for us in the future? A new book about An was published in 2007.7 A city of contrasts: Where riches coexisted with extreme poverty, where tree-lined boulevards dotted with European-style villas stood in sharp contrast with slums, where expensive foreign cars fought for the right-of-way with two-wheeled motorbikes loaded to the sky with wares, pigs, chicken destined for the market. This was a city where fortunes changed hands fast and where people lived for the present without thinking about the future because the future looked too grim to them.

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A city of eternal change: Having witnessed many masters come and go, she remains the ultimate survivor that grew stronger, better, and more beautiful with time. Left alone by the Nguyen who ruled the country from Hue in the 17th century, she thrived under military rule with her diverse population of Khmers, Vietnamese and Chinese. It was only when Hue fell that the Nguyen made her their exile capital. Once they regained control of Hue in 1802, Saigon was turned over to another warrior, General Le Van Duyet, who luckily was an open-minded viceroy. The general let commerce flourish and protected missionaries and religious freedom. Brought back under strict Hue control in 1832, she deteriorated until the French took over, modernized and made her their “Pearl of the Orient.” The Japanese liberated her from the French. The British then freed her from the claws of the Japanese. The Americans brought Ngo Dinh Diem who flushed the unruly Binh Xuyen out of town. She then became the generals’ residence before succumbing to the North Vietnamese who enslaved her and rendered her destitute. In the end, they slowly released their grip on her. Although she fell on her knees many times, she was the reed that bent to all winds but never broke. Although mistreated, mishandled, and relegated to the back burner on many occasions, she re-emerged anew each time to make headlines on her own. This is a short story of Saigon, once known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” where I took my first steps in life, where I biked to go to school under the canopy of tamarind trees each early September, where I skipped out during intermissions to play ball with classmates, where the image of nervously giggling schoolgirls holding onto their non la and dressed in their elegant, white ao dai the lower ends of which floated in the winds is forever imprinted in my mind, where I made friends and met competitors, where I was exposed to Vietnamese, then French then American cultures that widened my horizon, where I saw the war up close and personal with its endless killing and mutilating processes, and destruction of land and properties, where man could be wolf to man,

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where a person could be there one day and gone the following day, where tragic events, difficulties, tribulations were as common as day and night, where people accepted suffering as part of their daily lot, where women bravely struggled to raise their children alone while their men went to war, where everyone hoped and looked for peace each spring without ever seeing it, where tears were as common as raindrops, where endless suffering and poverty opened my heart to the world. This was the city that shaped me and made me into the person I am today. I am indebted to her for all the experiences she has bestowed on me. Although the old Saigon is an ocean and decades away, I’m still holding her dear and near my heart.

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April 30th Thach N. Truong

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author recalls some of the April 30s he has spent in Vietnam and abroad since 1950.

April 30th, 1950, I am a little boy astray From my mother in the street, Hesitant, I cross the street to Hàng Ngang, I’m lost in Hàng –ào, I enter Hàng Bông, I look all over Searching for my mother, An older kid leads me to Hàng TrØng, I rush back home, My Mom runs to me Hugging her, I burst into tears. April 30th, 1975 Lying at home Capitulation news spreading My eyes dazzled My head tipsy Tumultuous city Military uniforms, knapsacks, 173

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Firearms, bullets, All over the streets. Familiar faces Now bragging red arm bands Prison cells are open Criminals, big and small, out errant. Many stores are looted Radio music strident The day after Back to my job Old friends not showing. April 30th, 1976 In reeducation camp They celebrate “liberation” A day off from labor I enjoy my bowl of rice mixed with gravel Few grams of sliced meat Few twigs of potato plants To celebrate the Revolution Which gives us enough Food and warm linen Remembering my hungry wife And starved children. April 30th, 1978 Holding my parole paper Overjoyed I walk to the gate They hold me back: “Wait a few more days, Only after we change the currency.” A few days later, back to my city, The cyclo driver looks at the former prisoner And scolds: “No more officers’ wives, Corrupted, women are gone to the cadres’ side.” I enter my home, My wife brimming with tears Welcoming me back from the dead.

17. April 30th (Truong)

April 30th, 1980 Refugee camp With thousands of people Who have braved death and seas Leaving behind their native land Their ancestral tombs Their spouses, their properties Just to breath The air of liberty. April 30th, 2007 I land in Noi Bai airport I am back in my old town Thousands of red flags I look for my narrow streets My church, my old school still there Decrepit everywhere. Cars and people jam the streets Next to them all splendid High rise hotels and villas, People Army’s barracks, People Committees headquarters, Showing off their opulence With arrogance. I go back to my old village Poverty is rampant With a seven day work week Peasants sell their labor abroad Sacrifice for their children. April 30th, 2008 In the country of the star spangled banner Freedom is in the air I breathe Looking at big and small yellow flags I understand now the true meaning Of social well being Of liberty and happiness Independence and unification The true value of my beloved country.

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A Love Affair Christina Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: A Viet Kieu writes about her love and deep attraction to the people of Vietnam after she visited and worked there for more than two years. She traveled around the country from north to south where she became fascinated with its natural beauty and faced first-hand its warm and welcoming people who treated her like one of their own.

I always knew that I needed to go to Vietnam but for what reason and under what circumstances was unclear and uncertain. Perhaps reason wasn’t my guide, perhaps it was something greater than my rational mind could comprehend, and perhaps it was love that was my guide; the love for the country bestowed upon me by my Vietnamese parents or the latent love for the country that would soon develop. This desire to travel across the world and to leave my comfortable surroundings was strong. And all I knew was that soon enough I would go to live in Hanoi. Prior to my departure I read and re-read a memoir by Dana Sachs, an American journalist who spent some time in Hanoi, and I would underline certain sentences without knowing why or when or if those words would ever be more than mere words on a page. She wrote: “Staring across the rice fields toward that unknown mountain, I’d felt alone and quite terrified. My plan to come here, which had once sounded like a great adventure, now seemed foolish, like a game of pretend that I had taken too far. I had nothing except a backpack and a wavering determination to build a life for myself in this place.” 179

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When I arrived in Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport, I thought of her words and how they so strikingly mirrored my own. I had no idea how this adventure would unfold and whether or not I had made the right decision in moving to Vietnam. I only knew to make the most of the experience. Perhaps because I view my life through a lens of love, I often compared my experience with Vietnam to a love affair of sorts, for it was certainly a country that I feel in love with over and over again. Eric Fromm defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” I believe Vietnam contributed to my personal growth, for in many ways I was able to face myself, see myself more clearly in this familiar yet unfamiliar context. I was able to pose questions I perhaps didn’t ponder while living in the States. I fell in love with the natural beauty of the country — from the northernmost tip bordering China all the way south where the country meets the Gulf of Thailand. I loved and embraced every region, every variation of this country — the green rice paddies of the countryside to the cluttered and bustling Mekong Delta to the beautiful, rocky islands of Nha Trang to the fresh and verdant Central Highlands. And, of course, I loved the human extension of the country — the people whom I was eventually able to see as my own people. I was often asked by my friends at home whether Vietnamese people harbor resentment toward Americans. Perhaps they do. Perhaps they mask it well underneath their open, loving and gracious demeanor. But, in my opinion, they have truly mastered the art of forgiveness. They consider it a compliment that foreigners, especially Americans, are now coming to Vietnam to live and work. They want to teach you about the rich history of their country, they want to demonstrate by example what it really means to be hospitable, they want you to understand and embrace what it means to be Vietnamese. Their desire to open their country and their hearts is in essence what it means to be Vietnamese. You show a modicum of interest, they give you their world. One evening my roommates and I threw a housewarming party. We anticipated this would be a large gathering so we hired some of the street children, who we would frequently encounter as we were walking around Hoan Kiem Lake, to watch the guests’ motorbikes. These were children who were sent from tiny, remote villages in Vietnam to work in the big

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city of Hanoi selling postcards or other handicrafts to support their families — children who are usually found meandering around the Old Quarter and the famous Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Children who have learned to speak fluent English not because of any formal schooling but because of their interactions with foreigners. Children who knew me and all my friends by name and who would warmly greet us at every possible encounter. Children with so much potential, but so little hope to move beyond their current situation. As I was cleaning up outside of our house, I saw a light in the house across the alley. A house so small compared to our own, yet with its own simple beauty and charm. I saw the figure of a young girl moving around the house. She came outside carrying large pots and hot water in order to set up her family’s pho stall, which would open at 6:00 A.M. every morning. Pho, a traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup served with thin rice noodles and fresh herbs, is the most common breakfast food. A twelve-year-old girl should not be up at 3:00 A.M. prepping a food stall. She should be resting and prepping herself for a long leisurely day with other 12-year-old girls, during which they would get ice creams and ride their bikes around the streets of Hanoi. Or she should be resting and prepping herself for a long day at school to learn wonderful things that would stimulate her mind and brighten her future. What we spent on alcohol for the party was more than this family would make in a month from the pho stall. The contrast between her life and mine was so visible and sad, but I saw in her and the street children a quality which extended to most Vietnamese people — the ability to make the most of her situation, her lot in life. I loved and admired them for possessing that ability. I loved their openness. They were so completely honest and uninhibited when it came to their emotions. “Are you sad today, Christina?” My coworkers would often ask me that question. And if I said I was in fact sad, it was not something I should withhold. I was allowed and enabled to unleash my feelings. I bought a 1969 Vespa simply because it was beautiful. But there was only one tiny problem — I didn’t know how to drive a Vespa. Although I had never driven a motorbike, the Vespa seemed to operate easier than the Honda Dream motorbikes, which were so ubiquitous in Hanoi. Little did I know that the antique Vespas are difficult bikes to drive. I just didn’t have the dexterity and balance to maneuver this bike

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through the streets of Hanoi, clogged with fruit vendors carrying bamboo baskets on their heads, people walking around selling balloons or any other gadget that would appeal to foreigners, crazy young people speeding on their Hondas and motorbikes, old men on bicycles, men transporting pigs, chicken, glass, TVs, everything on their motorbikes. I couldn’t do it. At my most courageous moments, I would bravely venture around my neighborhood block. The day that I successfully made it around the block four times, the whole neighborhood was standing outside their various small businesses that were run out of their homes to watch this crazy foreigner try to drive her pretty bike. And when I did, they cheered and smiled and laughed and clapped. They were more than my neighbors, they were my family. They watched me closely, partly because they were suspicious and curious, but I took it positively and embraced it. They always knew where I was going. They always knew what I liked to eat. They always had a cup of coffee waiting for me. Perhaps because they have so much less than people in developed countries, they don’t focus on all the material items since that is something so unknown and unreachable to them. Instead they must focus on what is real in their lives — people. Their smiles, their faces remain so vivid in my memory. Vietnam placed them there. She taught me so much about people, about life, about how I should value each and every individual and love the sameness in all of us despite our different socioeconomic, ethnic, religious backgrounds. She extended herself to expand my understanding of people and teach me the subtle beauty of humanity. As I left Noi Bai Airport there was no fear inside me, I was overwhelmed with a great satisfaction and was proud of the life I had created in Vietnam. I felt I did live to the fullest, seizing every opportunity possible to make this the most amazing adventure, but I owe everything to Vietnam. I cried for seven hours until I arrived in Tokyo’s Narita Airport; I cried because of the beauty of my experience in Vietnam. My friend told me that my experience in Vietnam could be encapsulated by a quote from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: “For do not direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

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Little Saigon, Westminster, California Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: The dedication of a memorial in Orange County, California, to the fallen American and South Vietnamese soldiers during the war, highlights Little Saigon, California, as the home and capital of the exiled Viet Kieu. Built on the lands of orange groves and strawberry farms, it has become a vibrant ethnic community with its restaurants, shopping malls, stores, and offices catering to the needs of the refugees. The best Vietnamese food outside Vietnam is served in Little Saigon. It is also the economic and cultural center of the Viet Kieu, with its own political voice; it is a free city, a vibrant echo of the old Saigon.

Three decades ago Orange County, California, was mostly farmland or orange groves close to Los Angeles. It had a few Korean stores alongside large empty boulevards. Slowly, the refugees coming out of Camp Pendleton near San Diego began settling in the area. They found the virgin area an ideal place to rebuild their lives.

Difficult Beginnings The refugees could barely find what they needed in the nearby local stores. There was no rice (except for Uncle Ben’s rice, which was too mushy for their taste), and no fresh or frozen seafood, oriental noodles, egg roll wraps, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, mint leaves, oriental vegetables, or other herbs necessary to the function of a good Vietnamese cuisine. 183

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Someone then opened up the first few oriental shops and grocery stores that catered to the particular needs of the new immigrants. Many more would crop up to meet the growing demands. Life was difficult for the new immigrants in the late 1970s. Besides the language barrier, difficulty finding a good-paying job, lack of native Asian food, and the American culture itself presented challenging problems for the refugees. Nothing was more different to their eyes than Western culture itself. If the American culture was young, vibrant, noisy and unabashed, the Vietnamese culture was rigid, old, and structured according to Confucian principles. If American youngsters could be unruly and argumentative, Vietnamese youngsters were taught to respect their elders under any circumstance. If the Americans loved fast food, noisy music, loud and friendly discussions, and unabashed exhibition of wealth, pride, and self-congratulation, the Vietnamese on the other hand appeared shy, introverted, low-key, and passive. They also indulged in classical music and home-cooking. The two cultures, like Yin and Yang, were bound to clash in the minds and lives of the refugees. The sudden and unplanned departure from their native country left them unprepared for all these changes. As they stacked up in boats to leave their homeland at a moment’s notice to escape the communists, the thought of living in a foreign land hardly crossed their minds. They did not have the faintest idea about their ultimate destinations and had no time to study the languages and foreign cultures they were about to face. Their native country was not as complex and its rules and regulations were not as complicated as those of the U.S. As by-products of the Vietnam War, they left their country completely unprepared to live in foreign countries. Their priority was to get out of their country. The rest could be dealt with later on. As soon as they got out of the refugee camps, they had to work hard to earn a living and to be self-sufficient in the new country. They labored day and night and took over the dirty and low-paying jobs no one wanted. Hau Dien once wrote: We’ll spurn no job, however low or mean. Hired to clean toilets, we don’t wince or flinch; Told to dump garbage, we agree — Okay! 1 As they became successful with time, they were viewed as an economic threat to many natives. On the Gulf of Texas, they had to com-

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pete against local fishermen who saw their catches decrease with time. They became targets of the Ku Klux Klan and were called names. Others, despite obtaining U.S. degrees from top universities, faced a glass ceiling and were unable to move up the ladders. And even if they did, they just remained marginal players in a world that tried to keep them out with invisible rules. This explains why in the beginning they felt “lost” in a country they did not fully understand and that in turn did not understand them. They felt trapped in a jail, one from which they desperately tried to get out. Many cried and wished they had never left home. Feeling “disconnected,” Bui Khoi despaired: His tears of woe flooded on his eyes. He sobbed for homeless life, The uncertainty of to morrow....2 Unlike immigrants from other countries, they could not return to their homeland, especially before the 1990s, unless they wanted to land in a communist jail. As they had no place they could call home, they could truly be labeled “homeless.” They went to work to build a new place they could call home. The beginnings were humble and difficult because of lack of capital, language problems and culture differences. What they could not find, they would improvise. A Chinese Vietnamese realized there was not enough hot sauce to meet the demands of Vietnamese palates. He also noticed that peppers and chili were available right across the border from Southern California. He set up a shop, bought Mexican chili and peppers, designed a way to make hot chili paste, and packaged it in plastic bottles. The product was a hit among the refugees and made him an instant millionaire. Finding that French pastries were expensive and available only in specialty shops, a few people opened their own bakeries to produce them: Soon French bread and pastries flooded the market. Over the years, Vietnamese supermarkets and strip malls had opened their doors along Westminster and Bolsa Avenues in Orange County to supply the new immigrants with goods, groceries and services. A town that breathed a Vietnamese ambiance and where signs, colors, smells, and sounds were reminiscent of the native Saigon, took shape: a Little Saigon transplanted in the middle of America. Everything people were looking for from groceries, restaurants, and jewelry and clothing stores to physicians and lawyers’ offices was available. Within two decades Little Saigon became the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam.

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Pho Food was plentifully available and the best Vietnamese food outside Vietnam was served in Little Saigon. Rows of cooked dishes from pork, beef, and fish to soup and vegetables were available for immediate consumption. Workers and busy moms who were too tired to cook at the end of the day came by to purchase some of these already prepared dishes. All they needed was to heat them up and meals would be ready. They did not even have to open any can or scale any fish or prepare any meat. All kinds of restaurants were also available: Some specialized in certain dishes while others offered a garden variety of dishes customers could choose from. I especially love to taste the seven-dish beef where beef is prepared in seven different ways: This has always been a rare treat for me. Pho is a typical Vietnamese noodle soup that is served with either beef, chicken, or seafood. The beef is either half-cooked or well-done according to the customer’s wish; it can come with tendons, fat and stripes or neither. Pho can be a delicacy if appropriately cooked and served the right way with thick hoisin sauce,3 hot sauce, bean sprouts, and oriental herbs. The hotter and the spicier it is consumed, the better it tastes. Pho derives its name from the French feu or pot-au-feu. In the early 1920s, some Vietnamese cooks, apparently after making soup for their French guests in a pot-au-feu, noticed the soup tasted particularly good in the cool northern weather. They modified the recipe of the bouillon to include bones and vegetables instead of meat and potatoes, which they could not afford. They brought the dish home and their families loved it. Thus was born Vietnamese pho.4 The dish arrived in South Vietnam with northerners who fled the communists in 1954. Southerners gradually embraced the soup, which became prevalent in Saigon by the late 1960s. The Northern pho, bland, with rare morsels of meat, was rapidly transformed in the rich Mekong Delta into a tasty, well-seasoned Southern pho with large portions of meat, chicken or seafood and served with plenty of herbs. Pho has also displaced southern brands of soups: banh canh and hu tieu My Tho, a modification of the Chinese hu tieu. Vietnamese have a love affair with their pho, their national food that can be consumed at any time during the day. This fact has surprised many Americans, who often marvel at the fact that Vietnamese can enjoy soup at breakfast, lunch, or supper. Pho can fill up a person’s stomach and

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replace a whole meal. It is the soup that makes or breaks the dish. The best pho comes with the most delicious soup, which they savor avidly and make a lot of gurgling noise while gulping it down their throats. Even Emeril Lagasse, the famous New Orleans chef, showcased his own version of pho on the Food Network a few years ago. If Emeril features pho on his show, the product has most likely taken root on American soil. Americans who have tasted the soup have begun to like it. Many have become frequent customers of Vietnamese restaurants. The Chinese also enjoy pho, which is similar to their mi and hu tieu, both of which are very tasteful. There are plenty of pho restaurants in Little Saigon, but the best ones are usually crowded and serve nothing else but pho. They are recognizable by the signs exhibited in front of the restaurants: There are the pho 79, pho 77, pho 99, pho Tau Bay, and so on. The restaurant owners use the numbers 77, 79, 99 to attract the attention of the customers and to remind them of the once famous Pho 79 restaurant in Saigon. I remember going to that restaurant very often when I was young. Pho restaurants have rapidly mushroomed in major cities around the world thanks to the Vietnamese diaspora. General Nguyen Khanh, a former South Vietnamese Head of State, has even opened his own pho restaurant in Paris. In a small town in Virginia about twenty miles west of Washington, D.C., are located two pho restaurants in two shopping malls within two miles of each other. Since pho is a simple, tasteful, and delicious dish to prepare, many restaurants on the West coast are now offering it as part of their menu. I have visited two restaurants in San Francisco that carry Vietnamese signs in front of their buildings. The waitresses are Chinese and cannot even speak Vietnamese. The pho served there has a very distinct Chinese flavor and cannot be compared with that served in Little Saigon.

Little Saigon, California: Viet Kieu’s Exile Capital Little Saigon has grown so big it has its own senior community and parks frequented mostly by Asians. Fountain Valley Hospital, as well as other local hospitals, caters to the Vietnamese’s medical needs. Its medical staff is composed mostly of Vietnamese physicians and nurses.

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Patients are even served ethnic food. A funeral home and a cemetery cater to the needs of the Vietnamese community. Little Saigon previously boasted one mall, Phuoc Loc Tho, with its numerous stores and a food court serving ethnic food. New malls that have sprung up everywhere are rapidly changing the landscape. The community has begun to invade adjacent streets and to spread to nearby neighborhoods. Shops with Vietnamese signs abound. There are three different stores of the same grocery chain within Little Saigon itself. Fabric stores carry different brands in a multitude of colors. Shoppers can choose the fabric of their choice and have their ao dai custom-made right in the store. Seafood restaurants offer a variety of menus including steamed dungeon crabs, sautéed lobster, fried shrimp, fried or steamed fish, and so on. Many Vietnamese medical, dental, and law offices have opened their doors to keep pace with local demands. Little Saigon makes them feel right at home in the middle of America. With growths come new pains like parking problems. People fight tooth and nail over empty parking spaces. They dive in as soon as a driver pulls out, ignoring another driver who has been patiently waiting for that spot for some time. Tempers flare up and vulgar words are exchanged leading to occasional fistfights. Over the years, Little Saigon has become a vibrant city. It is home to many South Vietnamese who have escaped the communists in their search for freedom. Once they have seen the area, they tend to gravitate toward it. They are attracted to its crowds, shops, restaurants and way of life. The warm ethnic atmosphere reminds them of the old Saigon, the city most of them were born in or lived in for some time and the place they had forever lost. Little Saigon has become the cultural and economic center for the Viet Kieu. It is the rallying point and the common link for these displaced people, a place where they can freely mingle and feel at home. It also represents the fighting spirit and the resilience of these people: It is the place where they can display their intelligence, hard work, dynamism, economic aggressiveness, and scientific and cultural know-how. Although they have lost Saigon and South Vietnam, they have rebuilt a new city in which they can freely express themselves, a city where freedom is respected and one in which their talents can blossom instead of being constrained by communist ideology. The result is a fascinating

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and vibrant Little Saigon that continues to grow and to serve as a beacon for the free Vietnamese people. Three decades earlier, they were chased out of their homeland for cherishing freedom of choice, politics, religion and commerce. They fought for their lives hanging onto any kind of floating vessel just to get out of the country. Today they have built a new city in a new land out of nowhere so that they can exercise their freedom once more. “No other people have born so much adversity and yet contained their pain or anger so much within themselves.”5 They do not forget the time when they were floating aimlessly in the South China Sea fighting for survival and waiting anxiously for ships to pluck them out of the cold and unforgiving sea. They do not forget when they sat idle, bored, and desperate in refugee camps waiting for a country or sponsor to step forward and to give them a second chance in life. They do not forget the time when helping hands led them through a maze of regulations to get a job or an apartment and to wire them to this society. Now economically stable, they can afford to be generous and return the favor. A refugee who subsequently became a hotel owner in the state of New York did not mind giving two million dollars to the funds for the 9-11 victims. According to CNN, Magdalena Lai was so grateful to get a second life in the U.S. that she decided to build a float to express her thanks to America. Once her idea was accepted, she sold her house in order to raise the $100,000 required for the project. Her dream was finally realized when her float, symbolized by a boat braving the seas decorated with flowers and adorned with a “Thank You America” sign, made it to the 2002 Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, California. It is ironic to note that the Viet Kieu have become an important economic power that has contributed three billion dollars yearly to the native Vietnamese economy. Most of this money has been sent home to relatives still residing in Vietnam, invested in the local economy or used for renovation of churches and pagodas. Without that money, the economic outlook would have been worse than it is now. Hanoi, however, has never been “magnanimous in victory; instead it determinedly tried to erase the very existence of South Vietnam.”6 It requires Viet Kieu to provide proof they are of sound mind if they ever want to set foot on Vietnamese soil. This is just a demeaning formality, for the Hanoi government does not require any such thing from any other foreign visitor. The fact that Hanoi does not accept dual citizen-

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ship leaves the Viet Kieu with minimal consular protection if they run into trouble: A middle-age Vietnamese-Canadian lady was charged with drug possession and shot to death a few years ago despite objections from the Canadian embassy. Viet Kieu, however, are subject to a dual pricing system under which foreigners have to pay double the price for transport and hotels. It seems they are “Vietnamese when it suits the government and foreigners when it does not.”7 Recently changes have been made to allow the Viet Kieu to enter Vietnam without needing a visa. But the Viet Kieu would not let the communists take over Little Saigon, this island of freedom which they have fought so hard to build and maintain. A few years ago, one merchant had the wrong idea of plastering pictures of Uncle Ho and the communist flag on the window of his shop in Little Saigon. The Viet Kieu reacted strongly and angrily. They boycotted his store until he took down the pictures and went out of business. Since that time, every store in Little Saigon flies the South Vietnamese flag: three horizontal stripes against a yellow background. The red stripes stand for the blood shed in defense of the country by people originating from the northern, central, and southern regions of Vietnam. The yellow color represents their skin color. Orange County and a few other U.S. cities where Viet Kieu predominantly live have also passed ordinances recognizing the South Vietnamese flag as the official flag of the Vietnamese. A bronze monument depicting an American GI and a South Vietnamese soldier in army gear have recently been unveiled in a park in Orange County. It serves as a memorial to the 58,000 U.S. and the 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers killed during the Vietnam War. It is also a tribute to their courage and dedication, which will not be forgotten as long as the Viet Kieu live in the area. Little Saigon, California, a stepchild of the old Saigon, has emerged over the years to represent the exile homeland of the Viet Kieu, many of whom have spent more time abroad than in their native land.

20

The Journey Home Hieu V. Ho

EDITOR’S NOTE: A young Vietnamese-born doctor came back to his ancestral home, hoping to treat people in need and to bring home new scientific ideas. It turned out he was on the receiving end; the motherland brought back old memories and gave him a new vision of medicine and new hope in human nature.

After more than a quarter of a century, the long-awaited trip back to my birth home was filled with excitement and expectations. Ever since I can remember, it has been my goal and dream to return home. The land where I was born and the place from which my family had to flee for a better life. With my backpack filled with medicines, a first aid kit, medical books and a stethoscope, I was ready to go. Hundreds of thoughts ran through my mind. After years of hard work, preparation and plenty of luck, I was now a medical doctor. How many people can I treat and how many lives can I alter? How much can I do for all the orphanages I have read about? The intentions were good and the plans were endless. Unfortunately, there were hurricanes and floods in Danang the moment I arrived in Saigon. It was unsafe for me to go to the area. I was unable to find a hospital in Saigon to volunteer in, but I was fortunate enough to find an Acupressure Medicine Master who was willing to take me under his wing and share with me what he could during our limited time. This was not evidence-based medicine and did not have any statistical data support. But, I did witness its ability to treat difficult medical issues that we deal with on a regular basis like migraines and chronic pain. I met people that traveled from Hue and Hanoi to be treated by 191

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him. Speaking to them, I found that they had tried everything else (Western medicine and acupuncture) and this was the only thing that gave them relief. It was fascinating to see that a majority of the patients responded very well to the treatment. I am used to fumbling over multiple medications with very limited response in similar cases. The foundation of this practice is based on the use of pressure, heat, vibration and blood flow. The pressure point patterns were as or more complicated than anything I have learned in medical school. There is no use of medicine or needles; therefore side effects are essentially nonexistent. I am not 100 percent convinced, but I am very impressed and will continue to study this form of practice. I have traveled to many places in my life and have met many different people from all over the world. There were two kinds of people I met in Vietnam, the rich and the poor. The rich lived very, very well. But the majority of the people were poor and those were the hardestworking people I had ever seen in my life. I had thought working 80 to 100 hours a week during medical residency was difficult until I met these people. The majority of the working class worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and 365 days a year. There were a few days off to visit their families during the year, but otherwise there were no weekends and holidays for them. They didn’t have much of an option; if they were not happy, there were still hundreds of other people waiting right behind them to take their jobs. On one of my tour days, I decided to go to Cho Lon, the ethnic Chinese “grand market.” The place was filled with thousands of people trying to make literally a few pennies. The minute I stepped into the area, I was solicited by hundreds of people trying to sell me everything from food and clothing to souvenirs. I sat down and had a nice bowl of soup for lunch that cost less than one dollar. Then I started walking through the crowds of people. Some had a stand to put their stuff on and others only had a simple blanket on the floor. I pictured in my head my pregnant mother with two sons, approximately 30 years ago, sitting in the same spot trying to make a few dollars. It was extremely difficult for me to walk through these areas without stopping and buying something. It was not that I wanted any of these things, but it was rather because I wanted to find a reason to buy some of them. I kept these emotions inside and my traveling colleagues were not aware of my mental distress. I myself did not fully realize what was going on.

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That afternoon, I met two teenagers who were fleeing the flood up north and were trying to shine shoes for some food money in Saigon. I offered to buy them lunch, and they were ecstatic. Both of them looked emaciated, soiled and lost. To my surprise, they offered to show me a much cheaper place to eat, a ten-minute walk away. It was on a side street where people cooked and sold meals out of small pots, using whatever utensils they could carry on their backs. I would have easily paid for whatever meals they wanted. But they did not want to abuse my generosity and waste my money. I asked myself what I would have done if I were in their shoes. If my parents had not risked their lives so many years ago to bring me to the United States, I could have been in their position. Would I have had the integrity that they had or would I have tried to take as much as I could? I was so touched that I prepaid their meals and gave them some money for the road. I left them with some encouragement to try and study hard in school to find a better future, knowing very well that attending school without money for books and food was almost impossible when they were happy enough with just having something to eat for the day and a place to sleep at night. There are still a lot of poor children in Vietnam. I don’t think there is an official curfew. Therefore, they are always wandering around trying to make a dollar. The law prohibits them from soliciting, but they are allowed to sell things for a dollar or two (lottery tickets, fruits, roses, candy). Some full-time laborers only make a dollar a day and this allows for another source of income for a poor family. A large number of these children don’t have a home to go to or they share a small room with five to six other children. The money they save, they send home to their families in the countryside. On my walk home to the hotel that evening at approximately 1 or 2 A.M., a little nine-year-old girl selling roses approached me. Each rose cost less than 60 cents. I asked her why she was out so late and what her parents were doing. She was helping her parents work to support the family. She worked every single day until 2 to 3 A.M. and went home, fed herself with whatever was available and slept until the next day. She stated that her parents both worked until 4 A.M. every morning. I assume they worked for the city picking up trash or they must be one of those people going through the trashcans looking for whatever they could reuse. The little

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girl also informed me that her siblings were still in Hue (my father’s hometown) and that she was the eldest. She and her parents rented a little place to sleep in while they were trying to make money to send home. I was used to seeing girls her age playing with dolls, attending school, and worrying about what to wear to school the next day, not walking around in a city by themselves at 2 o’clock in the morning trying to make less than a dollar. I gave her some money and asked her to just keep her roses to sell them the next day. She gracefully accepted the money, but insisted that I take the rose. Again, I was shocked by this little girl’s sense of pride, integrity and lack of greed. How was it possible that someone with so little carried herself so well? I was so touched I took a large amount of what was in my pocket and gave it to her. She walked away with a beautiful smile and I turned into the dark corner of the hotel and broke down and cried. The amazing strength that those people showed in handling such hardship so well throughout the whole day brought tears to my eyes. This time, I did not have to ask myself if I could do what she did if I were in her shoes, I know I could not. My motherland, the land where I was born, the land that gave me life. When I first came, I was hoping to give back after more than a quarter of a century, but instead I received. In my short time there, I learned about a new form of medicine, the true nature of hard work, and an unexpected kind of honesty and integrity. The people of Vietnam have taught me much more than I could have ever imagined, the true appreciation of money, food, humanity and life in general. My motherland, like my loving mother and my caring father, after decades continues to give and help mold me into a better person. It nurtured and fed me when I was born and continues to feed my mind, soul, and body. Hopefully, one day I will be able to give back to my fascinating homeland and the amazing people that live there.

21

On Searching Christina Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: The journey in search of meaning and love is a circuitous path that leads us to our inner selves, for we cannot love if we do not understand ourselves.

I sit here nearly one month before planning to leave Vietnam (at least temporarily) in my favorite coffee shop in Hanoi — a coffee shop where I have often found refuge by being in a social space, yet alone in my thoughts. I consider what I have learned over the past years during which I have traveled back and forth to Vietnam, how I have changed and how my ongoing relationship with Vietnam has changed me. What I find to be the root of my journey is an ongoing search for myself, for meaning, for happiness, for life. It has been a long search, it seems — arduous and at times exhausting. But, actually it is only a mere segment of the long journey ahead of me, the long journey of life, the roller coaster that we are all riding. For some, however, the emotional ride isn’t as turbulent, isn’t as volatile. By nature, I am ruled by my emotions, which certainly add a lot of dynamism to this ongoing adventure. The journey, I must admit, has been blissful and painful, peaceful and turbulent, enriching and thought-provoking. Moments of clarity woven with periods of brooding. It has been my journey in and out of Vietnam over the past few years. Underlying this adventure has been the search for myself, my family, my understanding of life and love in a context that is both familiar and unfamiliar at once. 195

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I have always believed, since I first arrived in Vietnam as a naïve 22-year-old, that this was a heart’s journey pulling me aimlessly in one direction then another, dynamically shifting, never stabilizing and constantly yearning for deeper and richer experiences. It was a certain orientation in life, an orientation of the heart in which I chose to live my life. The first time I arrived in Vietnam, as a recent college graduate, I had grand ambitions of participating in social change, of working for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS in Vietnam, of being a voice for people who are often marginalized. At this time I believed that the only way to really contribute to social change was by working for a development organization, by attaching myself to a larger vision. Five years later, after moving from Hanoi to Saigon to London to San Francisco, I received another opportunity to work in Vietnam. Again, I somehow felt that I had to attach myself to the vision of an organization. This time this mandate was to support the rights of women and children in Vietnam. I wanted to believe in the organization, the grand vision, the work that I was embarking upon. I wanted to believe in something bigger than myself. I was mistaken in my theories, in my ideas of changing the world. I had not adequately worked on my own foundation, my own inner wellbeing. And ultimately, in my heart, I knew that before one tries to save the world, one must understand and ultimately save oneself. I believe that the kernels of truth, the elements of life that are the most mystical and magical are found in the human heart. I learn that by knowing yourself you can know the world. And giving the world a glimpse of who you are as a complete person is the best you can give the world. You change the world through your every interaction by embracing humanity, treating people fairly and living with an open and giving heart. But living with an open heart is a difficult lesson, particularly when you start to feel yourself growing. You continue to harness your strength and know what is good for you, but still you continue to put yourself through painful experiences. And you see how people grow disillusioned, disheartened and ultimately become cynical. And with every experience, every heartache, every night that you’ve shed tears, you have to remind yourself that hurting is part of the process, an unavoidable part of the

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process. And then you realize that the greater your capacity to feel the pain, the more space for love in your heart. Five years ago, I naïvely believed that love was about someone loving me. That love was object-oriented, that if I only found the right object that I could find love. And I believed that my heart and my happiness were someone else’s responsibility. In a similar way to my work, I wanted to attach myself to someone else’s grand vision rather than take my own grasp on the world. I was too frightened, fearful that I would never accomplish my dreams, never be strong enough to be the person who I wanted to be in this world. I never understood the implications of my actions and that it was my responsibility to take care of my heart. Yet I didn’t know the ways of my heart, nor did I know the depth of certain wounds. I still wanted love. But not to give love. I wanted to be loved. And I wanted this to be someone else’s responsibility, someone else’s burden. As I began to unearth the facades and to peel away the layers of the self that I presented to the world, I realized what I had been telling myself for so long — to be strong, to be independent. This independence came to define me and I believed it. Only to later discover that it was somewhat of an act or a massive front to cover up my deepest insecurities and probably the most real facets of myself. I found myself vulnerable and fragile. And then I started to understand how all of these feelings relate to love and this idea of “falling” in love, the breaking down of boundaries, these walls that separate us as individuals and then finding a connection and breaking down these walls. And then in moments you find yourself. You find what is broken and incomplete. At first you feel despair and even a bit of wonderment of this person you face, this real person that you’ve started to see truly. And you begin to see that vulnerability can also be a strength. Underneath these lessons emerges a new skill of giving and of loving. Your vulnerabilities surface and you see the vulnerabilities of others. And you see this as simply being human. I started to see my story in other’s stories. I started to see the human search for answers, the need to navigate their own emotional mazes. I started to see the potential of how we could help each other grow, who we could become under each other’s influence, how we could grow together, resonate on a certain level and give and share.

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And you realize that the questions and the search don’t end in the moments you believe you’ve found yourself, and mostly those moments may be fleeting. But you realize that this process is simply called living. And you learn to love the questions as much as the answers themselves.

22

On Being a Viet Kieu Nghia M. Vo

EDITOR’S NOTE: This chapter explores the deep meanings of being a Viet Kieu. It is not merely the fact of living abroad, driving a Honda, eating Pho, wearing an ao dai, or consuming nuoc man (fish sauce), although these are prerequisite conditions. It is rather a state of mind.

What makes a Vietnamese a Viet Kieu? Of course, living overseas instead of in Saigon, Hue, or Can Tho, for example, would qualify someone as a Viet Kieu. But does the length of overseas stay or the timing of arrival have any bearing on that designation? Could temporary migrants — those who went overseas for a period of time and then returned to Vietnam for good for some reason or another — be treated as Viet Kieu? Do recent arrivals — after spending their youth or whole life in a communist country — qualify as Viet Kieu? How about children of communist officials — plenty of them around today — who came to western countries to study, did not experience the ordeals other Viet Kieu went through, but in the end decided to remain abroad? The more we delve into the subject, the more complex it becomes. For not all Viet Kieu — even those who arrived in 1975 — shared the same feelings and opinions or went through the same experiences. They formed the most diverse group of people who had ever landed on foreign soils. There were generals and soldiers, professionals and fishermen, old and young, rich and poor Catholics and Buddhists, those who arrived on the heels of the 1975 debacle and those who suffered under the new regime for many years before escaping abroad. And then, there are second199

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generation Vietnamese-Americans — born and bred in western countries — who behave and feel differently than first generation-immigrants. But what defined and linked them together were their South Vietnamese heritage and their common aspiration for freedom. It is interesting to note how being an ocean apart can color our perceptions of the world in different ways. Andrew Lam wrote in his Perfume Dreams that one Vietnamese in Saigon would categorize the Viet Kieu into four groups. There are the fake Viet Kieu — plenty of them in Saigon — who “pretend to be returning Vietnamese Americans to either cheat people out of their money or seduce young women.” They are Viet Kieu who only stayed abroad for a short time, but not long enough to absorb the culture. They come home and “look and act like peasants in nice clothes.” Then come the real Viet Kieu — elegant, worldly — who are quiet and don’t show off. The “thank you” they tell the waiters who bring them drinks or food betrays them right away because native people never ever say thank you to waiters. There are also the so-called “patriotic” Viet Kieu who came home for whatever the reason. Overseas Vietnamese, however, would object to that last characterization. The majority, especially the over–50 generation, despite their deep love for their country, vowed not to return to Vietnam unless communism makes way for democracy. It has a lot to do with freedom, transparency and safety. Young Viet Kieu, on the other hand, born and bred abroad, are politically blind and thus more “history-ignorant” than their elders. Unbiased, they return home in droves, explore the country, see a new world and became the bridge between older generations, those who remained in Vietnam and those who had departed. Women, who are either flexible, or forgiving or simply practical, tend to return to Vietnam earlier or more often than men. The war and its brutality — killing, maiming, oppression, reeducation camps, and new economic zones — continue to affect men in a deeper and broader way than women. Going to war, being exclusively a male experience, leaves most of its unwelcome residues to this group. The main problem is not only the defeat — no matter how painful it was — but also the loss of the homeland, rights, belongings and mostly the loss of “self.” It often destroys the losers physically, financially, and emotionally and reduces them to a state of “nobodiness” unless they can channel their negative emotions into a more constructive direction. Overcoming that ordeal has been difficult for many men, especially those who deeply

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loved their country but are now separated from it by a vast ocean. The divide is not only physical but also — and mainly — psychological. Overcoming that psychological burden, on the other hand, characterizes many refugees and has made them into a new breed of Viet Kieu, the pioneers or new pilgrims who landed on foreign soils and remade themselves anew. For these and other reasons, being a Viet Kieu appears to be more of a state of mind than being physically present on foreign soil. Each of these characteristics will be reviewed and typical examples provided. 1. It is about carrying a lot of luggage. The Viet Kieu have gone through many “mini-lives” during which they have experienced peace, war, killing, uprising, shelling, bombing, escape, reeducation camps, new economic zones and refugee camps. They have suffered from incarceration, poverty, oppression, abandonment and discrimination. They have dealt with foreigners: Chinese, French, Americans, and citizens of other countries. All these experiences that have contributed to their national heritage have made them unique and therefore complex. Monique Truong, in her essay My Father’s Vietnam Syndrome, stated she misspoke when she labeled her father “a complicated man who had lived a complicated life.”1 Like many Viet Kieu who were born during the war, he sure had experienced a complicated life: Not only had he seen the best, but also the worst of times. Born in Vietnam, he was schooled in England and France. He married a Swiss woman with whom he had a daughter before returning to Vietnam. After a few years, he divorced his first wife and married a Vietnamese woman. He served in the ARVN before getting a job with a Dutch-owned oil company in Saigon. He escaped to the U.S. at the end of the war and lived as an expatriate in North Carolina and then in Houston, Texas. After getting an MBA from an American university, he went to work for an American counterpart of his former employer in Saigon. Being forced to retire early, he went to work in Saudi Arabia “too proud to sit still and too financially unsteady to stop bringing home a paycheck.” Somewhere in between, he married and separated for a third time before passing away in 2002. His third wife sent him off with a bouquet of red roses — the color of luck for having lived a long life. His first daughter, who flew in from Switzerland, greeted the mourners in French and his youngest daughter in English. As for Monique, in a rusty Vietnamese expression

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she meant to call her father a lucky man who had lived a long life. Instead, she said he was “a complicated man who had lived a complicated life.” Le Thi Diem Thuy, in her book The Gangster We Are All Looking For, called her father a “gangster” because of his dark past. An ARVN soldier trained by the Americans, he used to jump out of airplanes and to disappear for weeks in the jungles and hill towns to hunt down the Viet Cong in various search and destroy missions. After returning from these expeditions, he cruised after girls and sold American cigarettes on the black market. His friends fell around him one after another, during and also after the war. Following the fall of Saigon, he was sent to communist reeducation camps for a few years but “doggedly managed to crawl back into life.” He escaped to the U.S. where he successively became a house painter, a factory-welder and then a self-employed gardener. No one really knew the real person who behind the mask sometimes cried and sobbed at night without reason. Sipping beer, he talked with his friend about the war, how it was their youth and how when it ended it was like waking from a long dream or a long nightmare. He became prone to bursts of anger and rage, smashing television sets, VCRs and chasing friends and family down the street. Some nights, he would drive up to the seaside, park, sit and stare at the black water trying to look across the ocean toward his native country.2 The nightmares of yesteryear had apparently been brought over and transplanted onto American soil. Elderly male Viet Kieu rarely talked about their past. They would like to: Many had tried in the past although no one had tried to understand them. Slowly they clammed themselves into a closed world no one was allowed to enter until they took their hard-won and painful experiences with them to their graves. 2. It is about grieving. “There is no greater loss than that of losing one’s country,” Phan Boi Chau — one of Vietnam greatest non-communist revolutionaries — declared in 1907. He meant he lost his country to the French who ruled it as part of a colonial empire. Chau did not live to see that seven decades later millions of Vietnamese did indeed lose their country to their communist counterparts and ended up becoming expatriates. This is insane, but true. And the stronger their attachment to their homeland, the worse the loss is felt. And no matter where they reside at this moment, they still feel attached to the land they called

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Vietnam. The bondage turns out to be unbreakable no matter how much they would like to dissociate from it. The pain from the loss somehow resurfaces anew and often catches them at their weakest moment. Nguyen Thi Thu Lam, in her Fallen Leaves, described how successful a businesswoman she was in Vietnam in the 1960s. She opened the first laundry service at the Cu Chi U.S. Army base and had a dozen employees working for her. She divorced her Vietnamese husband to marry a lawyer and U.S. Army major. She too escaped to the U.S. after the war. In spite of her extensive dealings with Americans in Vietnam and in the U.S., she had difficulties divorcing her past: As for me and the Vietnamese of my generation, there will always be memories of another time and place, another life. I will forever remain an immigrant here. And even when I am happiest, I will remember my beloved Vietnam and the fate of its people. I am a child of war. I am a child of Vietnam.3 3. It is about taking risks. The Viet Kieu could not take much with them when they left their country. They only thought about reaching safety first. They jumped on a boat or plane and off they went. To where they did not know — they did not care — as long as they got out of Vietnam. It is the same risk-taking spirit that drove Phuong Anh Nguyen all around the world and back to Vietnam. She is not a household name. She is neither a model nor an artist. Simply an entrepreneur with a certain mystique, a radiant inner strength. A picture of her holding a martini and sitting in her Saigon’s famous Q bar graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine a few years ago. She was the one in Passage to Vietnam “wearing a bra and sunglasses astride her silver Vespa holding a live chicken by its neck — a picture that made her forever infamous in Vietnam.” The natives often remarked that “no Vietnamese would ever hold a live chicken by its neck.” She escaped from Vietnam in 1979 along with a hundred other passengers. She had to bury her sister on an Indonesian island after she died from injuries resulting from a violent rape by Thai pirates. Her brother was murdered while trying to protect his sister. Her mother became depressed and her father fell silent for a long time following that incident, although both recovered to some extent. Witnessing the violent

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deaths of two of their children proved to be too much for them. Phuong Anh studied in the U.S. for ten years before becoming restless and going back to Vietnam with her American photographer boyfriend to open Q bar. Since that time she has remade herself by traveling all over the world, playing elephant polo in Nepal, trekking in Peru, and attending a wedding in Morocco. She has counted among her friends writers, lawyers, millionaires, chefs, artists, NGO workers, and even movie stars. She has revitalized Saigon’s high-end pubs and redefined Vietnam’s sense of style. Her clothes — the bra as streetwear — have been copied by the daring in Saigon. Her wardrobe earned her a reprimand from the communist committee. She has houses in the U.S. as well as in Saigon and travels back and forth between the two countries.4 4. It is about embarking on the most amazing journey on earth. Despite all the risks and dangers involved — think about the tens of thousands who lay unmourned at the bottom of the oceans — the Viet Kieu kept coming in steady streams, year after year, from 1975 to 1995. Had all the nations not stopped this diaspora, they would still be coming. They came to the West to search for a freedom they could not find under a communist regime. As a result, many found peace and prosperity in new lands. With success came a soothing of the many wounds they have experienced over the years. Not all wounds have completely healed yet, but some more than others. The change turned out to be so dramatic that many still could not believe they had achieved the American dream. Who could imagine a rice farmer’s son who only brought “seven oranges with him onto a crowded boat thinking they should last him the whole journey across the Pacific” is now an architect who helps design high-rise buildings all over the globe? Who could imagine a jackfruit vendor’s daughter from the Mekong Delta becoming a Wall Street financier who negotiates her deals across time zones, oceans, continents?5 Geographic translocation somehow expanded their brains fivefold, their hearts tenfold, and their energy twenty-fold. Many Viet Kieu have realized they have found their heaven on earth. They only wish their countrymen could share the same freedoms they are enjoying. Their counterparts in Vietnam view them as having “big brains and deep pockets.” They look at them in awe but also with contempt. The journey in search for freedom and independence was also a

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voyage against hopelessness. While Ho — the father of Vietnamese communism — preached freedom and independence but never delivered it, the Viet Kieu found real freedom in the lands of the West away from Ho’s hell. 5. It is about resiliency, hope and healing. Surviving the reeducation camps and the new economic zones was for many a major physical as well as moral victory — a victory over their captors but also over their own selves. It has made them more human, courageous, and resilient. Surviving the sea escape and the Asian refugee camps was another major ordeal. Surviving the culture clash, the new language barrier, the long hours of retraining in their new country was no less difficult. During the first few years in the U.S., they spurned no job and sunk to new lows in their lives. A general earned his living doing dishwashing in a restaurant. A former senator and ex-minister sold fried chicken for a grocery store in New Orleans. A former justice became a door watchman. A physician cleaned hospital floors. They were in the beginning “overqualified” for their jobs. If it was painful to lose one’s country, it felt terrible to have to swallow one’s pride in order to survive. They somehow survived, made ends meet and built new lives for themselves and their families although the downhill slide seemed endless in the beginning. There is no worse disgrace than for a three-star general to stare back at a lost war and not be able to do anything except fight with his own demons. He learned a long time ago that wars cannot be re-fought. And to hear his wife — who has become a short order cook — nag him constantly as to why he would not want to do anything to help his starving children. The hero of a hundred battles who once spat fire, now talks only in a nostalgic voice full of regrets despite its bravado. He sat silent submerged in his thoughts and past and realized his children had to bear the burden of his loss. The solution was neither easy nor simple: “If one cannot escape history one ought to embrace it fully” in order to transcend one’s own biographical limitations.6 Healing could only come after acceptance of the painful fact. The general just did that, managed to leave his past alone, went back to school and got an MBA degree. In the end, the Viet Kieu not only survived but also thrived. It was not, however, a continuous ascent to success, but a rough ride with a lot of upturns and downturns — more downward spirals in the beginning

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than upward moves. Years later, their resiliency and hard work finally paid off and led them to financial well-being and status. 6. It is about contributing to the new society. The penniless new immigrants were frequently relegated to low income housing in the late 1970s and mid–1980s. Uptown Chicago was one such place, a neighborhood ridden with drug pushers and pimps. People would not dare to venture outside after dark. By 1980, 48 percent of the uptown residents lived below the poverty line compared to 37 percent for the city as a whole. The 10,000 Viet Kieu who arrived there in the mid–1980s gradually opened one shop after another and, after a lot of struggle, transformed the whole neighborhood into a vibrant community with stores, shops, restaurants, and a car dealership and so on.7 Little Saigon in Westminster, California, was once a collection of orange groves and vegetable farms outside Los Angeles until the Viet Kieu from the nearby Pendleton camp arrived. With time, they transformed it into a new community with hundreds of stores, shops, restaurants and businesses. A cemetery and a hospital were opened to serve their needs. Little Saigon soon became the largest gathering of Viet Kieu outside Vietnam: It represents the capital of the transplanted Vietnamese in the U.S. They introduced pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup served with beef, chicken, seafood and vegetables, which became well-known in major U.S. cities. Many other places were similarly impacted by the Viet Kieu like Houston, Dallas, New Orleans East Side, Arlington, Virginia, San Jose and so on. Academically, Viet Kieu children were also achievers. They had higher overall math and science scores than language and reading. Although the refugee population made up less than 20 percent of the school population in 1985, 12 out of 14 valedictorians were of Indochinese background.8 The list of successful Viet Kieu includes, to name a few, a National Football League player in Dallas, a couple of Vietnamese Rhodes Scholars in England, a Vietnamese astronaut at NASA, a “boat person” who received seven degrees at MIT in five years, many CEOs of large electronic firms in Silicon Valley, another CEO at a Fortune 500 financial company. The list goes on and on. Three decades have passed since the Viet Kieu landed on foreign soil. From the few thousand souls scattered worldwide outside Vietnam

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in the pre–1975 years, the group has grown to three million people who seem to have established firm roots in many western countries. In the U.S., that colony of refugees has grown to become the second largest refugee group behind the Cubans. That exponential population growth, with its huge economic impact, could be traced not only to the 1975 diaspora, but also to the hard work and ingenuity of the members of that colony. That vibrant economic and cultural growth could only be sustained by a continuing effort by all its members. Membership does have its privileges and responsibilities. Being a Viet Kieu thus does not simply mean living abroad, although it is one of the criteria. It is foremost a state of mind. It is being resilient, hopeful, willing to take risks despite all odds, being able to reinvent oneself and being dedicated to freedom and independence. It is about acquiring the spirit of the 1620 Mayflower pilgrims that opened America to the world.

Epilogue The beauty and the glory of a people are based neither on war nor revolution nor on ideologists or emperors. — Nguyen Huy Thiep, Fired Gold

More than three decades after the end of the war, its repercussions still deeply affect the Vietnamese back home and abroad (Viet Kieu). The purpose of this discussion is to evaluate its effects on the society and the people it has forever changed. 1. Origins and nature of the Vietnam War The North-South conflict began in the 1930s when Ho Chi Minh convinced himself that Vietnam’s road to independence could only be communist,1 while other nationalists used different and less violent political approaches. Ho’s forces stole power in North Vietnam in 1945 and set about creating a conventional state on the Soviet model: a “gigantic steel mill rather than [a state that produces] more of the goods that make the life of people in a poor agrarian country somewhat easier.”2 This was followed by a land reform on the Chinese Maoist model that caused more than one hundred thousand painful and tragic deaths. In 1955 and onward, the communists brought the war to South Vietnam trying to conquer it by force. The fratricidal war between North (communist) and South (nationalist) Vietnam — supported by foreign powers — represents a fight over the nature of Vietnamese society.3 Vietnamese fought over whether the country should become a western democratic society or a totalitarian communist country. The war ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and the diaspora of millions of people. The fact that the South Vietnamese lost the war does not mean that their cause — freedom and independence from the communists — was wrong. It simply means they have been outmaneuvered.4 Their cause will stand and be picked up by other people for democracy, the rule of the people, which will prevail. 208

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Three million Viet Kieu presently live in over more than 50 countries worldwide.5 They can be differentiated into two groups: those who came as the result of the war (the boat people or political refugees) and those who were sent by Hanoi to Russia and former eastern communist countries as migrant workers. Throughout these pages, we are dealing with the first group. 2. Was the war worth it? If the Americans called it the Vietnam War (it was fought in Vietnam), the communists knew it as the American War, or the “War of Liberation” or the “Anti-U.S. War of National Salvation.” 6 The South Vietnamese labeled it as the “War against Communist Aggression” or simply the Anti-Communist War (it was fought against the communists). The war has thus been fought through different perspectives and lenses7 “not simply to reunify the country but to reunify in such a way that all opposition to the party [would be] destroyed.”8 Saigon fell to a “more brutal tyranny that was more effective, in part, because it was more brutal.9 The end-result has been the largest sea diaspora in the world. The truth of this war “lies buried with its victims, with those who died, and with those who are consigned to live in an oppressed silence for now and for the coming generations — a silence the world called peace.”10 It is regrettable that the South Vietnamese and the U.S. lost the war by halfheartedly fighting it.11 Had they won, they would have avoided: • the communization of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia • the killing of more than 60,000 South Vietnamese after the war through repression, revenge, or other reasons • the suffering of more than one million South Vietnamese officials and soldiers who were sent to reeducation camps to rot • the suffering of two million civilians who were sent to the NEZ • the “dark years” of 1975–85 where southerners suffered through misery, lack of food, and war in Cambodia • the “rape of Saigon” through the blatant confiscation of private and state property in South Vietnam, the control of Saigon and South Vietnam, and the enslavement of southerners.12 • the forcing out of Vietnam of two million of boat people, half of them having drowned at sea • the war in Cambodia where 60,000 Vietnamese soldiers lost their lives along with untold civilian Cambodians

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• the killing of two million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge • the establishment of a corrupt and oppressive regime in Vietnam, which is much worse than the Diem or Thieu regime • the continuing lack of freedom and the worsening of corruption in Vietnam13 • the untold suffering and lack of freedom that persist to this day. The pre–1975 southerners are still shunned in their own land and denied top positions. If they are lucky enough to hold governmental positions, they are lowly or unimportant ones. And the list goes on and on. We have failed the people of South Vietnam and by extension the people of the world by not acting aggressively and decisively during the war. Although the American effort was valiant and commendable, in the end it was not enough to protect peace and autonomy in South Vietnam. The war was not a fight for independence14 because the pre–1975 South Vietnamese had more freedom and independence under the Diem and Thieu regimes than under the present communist government. They could argue, protest, organize demonstrations, and form opposition parties. This is not the case in present-day Vietnam. Socialist Vietnam for the last three decades has had a one party-system and anyone who dares to challenge it is jailed, condemned, branded as a criminal, and oftentime executed. Prisoners of conscience fill the jails of the communist state. The South Vietnamese’s fight for freedom against communism was therefore worth it. It was a fight for FREEDOM. The American support and involvement were not only important, but also crucial to that fight. South Vietnamese thank their allies for the help they gave in these crucial times, although they would like to see it more as a relationship between allies than masters/servants. The fight for freedom is a fight that ennobled its fighters. If war loss was a tragedy, the “manipulative and callous manner with which the American administration and the American Congress dealt toward South Vietnam during the last years of the war (was not) one of America’s finest hours.”15 3. Was the revolution worth it? The war espoused by the communists was a war of brutal aggression and outright conquest of the South. It was ethically wrong because

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the real goal of the communist party was the political and economic control of the whole country, regardless of the wishes of the people. Southern nationalists espoused a Confucian approach to the conflict as well as respect for law. They were forced to fight against a communist invasion, although they were pacifist in nature. They realized that war was a painful and tragic event especially when it was fought on their own land, the South. The characteristics of communism and southern nationalism are listed below.16

Table I. Characteristics of Confucianism and Communism 1. Duration (years) 2. System 3. Goal 4. Organization Based on

Confucianism

Communism

2,000+ Socio-religio-political Can be authoritarian Social harmony

100Socio-politico-military Totalitarian Overthrow governments Class struggle Illicit or criminal Fear, terror Might makes right

Altruistic Rules of law Thien Menh (Mandate of Heaven) 5. Religious morals Morals Humanity (Golden Rule) Yes Individual Respect Everyone is A brother Family Respect parents Laws Respect natural laws Tam cuong, ngu thuong Freedom Yes Private property Respect 6. Means Persuasion Techniques Suggestion 7. Work ethics Just milieu 8. Deaths ? 9. Drawbacks Oppression of women Corruption (possible)

Good of Party No To be crushed underfoot A communist or an enemy Respect party only Communist rules only Communist dictates No State property Brute force, coercion Re-education, oppression Oppressive labor 100 million Oppression is the norm Corruption is the norm

The party has never cared about the people in general. They fired at and killed civilians without empathy or regret. They detonated bombs under the My Canh floating restaurant on the Saigon River, killing one hundred civilians. They shelled Saigon randomly during the war, hitting

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civilians and hospitals. They shelled and fired at the “Convoy of Tears” in 1975, killing more than 200,000 civilians and 20,000 soldiers.17 After sacrificing more than one million soldiers, they did not even take care of the wounded “who [were] left to survive in destitution” while building large houses for themselves.18 Once in power, they oppressed the people, denied them freedom of press and religion and established a corrupt style of government for the benefit of a small group: the Party members. Dr. Duong Quynh Hoa, a pediatrician, one of the founders of the NLF (National Liberation Front) and PRG’s (Provisional Revolutionary Government) Minister of Health from 1969 to 1976, criticized Hanoi for failing to provide good health care to the people, especially children.19 She resigned from the party in 1976. She once asked Hanoi, “What is your final goal — the final goal of the revolution? Is it the happiness of the people or power?” Then I answered the question. “I think it is power,” for absolute power breeds corruption.20 Duong Thu Huong worked for seven years as part of a singing brigade on the front during the war. She became a party member before “expelling” herself from the group.21 This regime “obliges people to live in lies and shame. The lie is that we are made to say that this regime is a thousand times more democratic than the “bourgeois” regimes. The lie debases the human being.”22 She wrote The Paradise of the Blind to criticize the corrupt power of the party hacks and the ruthless brutality of North Vietnam’s 1950 land reform. She was arrested and imprisoned in 1991, and was released seven months later under French pressure.23 Her books are banned in Vietnam. She has recently relocated to France to free herself from Hanoi’s censorship. Bao Ninh, a soldier in the Communist Army (PAVN), wrote in The Sorrows of War that North Vietnamese soldiers were not all heroic; many did not understand why they were fighting. For them, the highlands were a world of phantoms and damp nocturnal terror. “Here when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony.”24 He mentioned that fifteen years after the war “what we (Hanoi) have achieved was the poverty of the whole nation.”25 Bui Tin was a PAVN Colonel who accepted the capitulation of General Minh in Saigon in 1975. In September 1990, he left for France where he has remained in exile. He mentioned in his book that thousands of people were victimized and detained in a whole network of pris-

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ons. 26 He even called for an “end to the conservative, despotic and authoritarian Hanoi regime.”27 Truong Nhu Tang, the PRG Minister of Justice, noted that by July 1975, the leadership of the NLF and PRG were no longer “operative.” They had been folded into the northern Politburo.28 Northerners invaded the South like a “swarm of locusts” and fought among themselves over “houses, cars, prostitutes, and bribes.” Tang, feeling undercut by the Hanoi regime, escaped as a boat person on August 25, 1977, and relocated to France.29 By the end of the 1970s, many members of the NLF had escaped abroad or been jailed. Although they had fought on the winning side, Hanoi had treated them little better than the “puppets.” Having finally realized that they had been duped, southern revolutionaries like General Tran Van Tra, Tran Van Giau, Tran Bach Dang had formed the Association of Former Resistance Members to voice their concerns, although to no avail. By 2000, all the rank and file of the NLF either had been quietly jailed or executed.30 This was a sad conclusion for all those who had sacrificed for the revolution. The goal of the revolution was to establish the control of the communist party over the whole country. As such, the movement was ruthless and unethical because it forced millions of people to give up their lives in order to topple the legitimate but weak government of Saigon and to serve its own purposes. The party has become “a wild menagerie of personal fiefdoms, provincial power bases, ideological blocs and competing financial interests.31 The revolution has been a dividing instead of a unifying force: It tore the nation in half and kept the Vietnamese apart. It has failed to empower and to serve its people. 4. Effect of the war on the people “The people were neutral”32 during the war, although some were more sympathetic to one side than the other. Southerners voted with their feet, running away from the Viet Cong–controlled areas. After the war, they voted with their leaking boats. They had a morbid fear of communists33 and of their brutality and ruthlessness. The exodus constituted the severest judgment of the Vietnamese against those who governed them.34 They have a tradition of resistance to foreign aggression, but none

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to internal aggression. They (northerners and southerners) are “extremely cowardly toward this regime” (Hanoi),35 by failing to stand up alone and to express their disagreements. Many did: They ended up in jails or forever disappeared. The communists ruled the South as conquerors over the conquered.36 They descended in great numbers to take over everything from the principal political posts to the running of branch post offices, clinics, schools, food supply, and transport services. Their redundant bureaucracy leads to a lot of corruption. They are not professional administrators, just party hacks who are difficult to dismiss.37 After doi moi (renovation), the big state enterprises have been divided up, not among the public but among state organisms; party and government officials have the inside track in turning them into profitmaking enterprises and enriching themselves.38 Party members occupy the top positions in the state, in ministry jobs, trading companies, the economic police, customs, and transportation businesses and are extremely wealthy,39 while the rest live below the poverty line. The per capita GDP is $828 (140th in the world).40 Vietnam is a country of imbalances, with enormous regional and local differences. All the surplus comes from the south; not a grain comes from the north. In the late 1990s Vietnam produced 75 million shirts a year, the south contributes 50 million. All the marine products come from the south. The economy in the north is weak because of the Stalinist infrastructure established since 1954.41 There is only superficial prosperity due to smuggling and rampant corruption, but it is of little benefit to the overall majority. In this socialist country, people now have to pay to see the doctor or send their kids to school,42 social conditions that are much worse than under the former Saigon government. The revolution has not helped the people: It is a fraud. The reality is troubling. A young girl, after watching the Christmas displays in downtown Saigon in December 2008, states, “Everything here is fake, even Santa and the snow. What is real is to grow up and to get married to a Korean or Chinese from Taipei. Then you could send real money home to help your family.”43 It is sad to think that people are so poor that they can only see marriages to foreigners — who often exploit them as sex workers, slaves, cheap labor — as a way out of poverty. This is the tragedy of Vietnam today.

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5. The world is round Two events in the last few months of 2008 show that the world is small and round. Things that would have been thought impossible thirty-four years ago are taking place right in front of our eyes. The first is the wedding of the daughter of the prime minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to a Viet Kieu, Nguyen Bao Hoang, in November 2008 in Saigon, aka HCMC. Despite all the communists’ rhetoric about the Viet Kieu being “traitors” to the nation (who in his right mind would want to stay in Vietnam after 1975 only to be sent to concentration camps?), the union may represent a sign of “thawing” between the two sides. Hanoi and the Viet Kieu usually do not see eyeto-eye, let alone get involved in a marriage. Only time can tell whether this marriage between old-time foes can last. Nguyen Bao Hoang was a 22-month-old when his parents arrived in the U.S. in 1975 as refugees. He received his undergraduate from Harvard (1995) and graduated with M.D. and MBA degrees from Northwestern in 2000. He later worked for an investment bank in Vietnam and tried some medical work before becoming the CEO of IDG Ventures, a U.S. investing company in Vietnam in 2003. So far, he has been able to raise $100 million for his venture. The other event is the election of Anh Cao as the first Vietnamese American in the U.S. Congress on December 7, 2008. The district is sixty percent African American and the election was delayed because of Hurricane Gustav. The result shows a political maturation and integration of the Vietnamese community within the U.S. political landscape. Anh Cao came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975 at the age of eight with his mother. His father, who was a South Vietnamese army officer, was sent to various concentration camps for the next sixteen years. From his prison, he advised his son to “study hard and give back to the community.” Anh Cao gathered degrees in physics at Baylor, philosophy at Fordham, and law at Loyola in New Orleans. He left the Jesuits and settled as a lawyer for the small Vietnamese community in East New Orleans. His life was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded his house with eight feet of water. He and the community rebounded afterwards.44 These events, although minor, show that while some Viet Kieu — the young ones — may be interested in working/investing in their native

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Vietnam as outsiders, others forge ahead and become more involved in the American world of which they are a part. If some have forgotten the ghost of the war, others still remember it vividly and refuse to have anything to do with Hanoi. The chasm between North and South Vietnam, which has been present for the last four centuries,45 has been aggravated by the introduction of communism in North Vietnam in the 1950s and made worse by the 1975 fall of Saigon. Vietnam is now reunified by name only, for behind this fragile unity, lies a country that could “balkanize” into two or three states.46 What tenuously holds everything together is the repressive communist rule, which in no way can replace the recognition of basic human rights and respect for common laws. Only the latter two elements could cement the country together for good. The long-term legacy of the war and of the communists’ assault on the South Vietnamese budding democracy has not been good socially, politically, or economically for Vietnam. It has also deepened the chasm between the poor Vietnamese suffering under a repressive communist regime and the better educated, generally richer, and more cosmopolitan Viet Kieu. That division is likely to remain as the Viet Kieu become more and more integrated into their adopted countries.

Chapter Notes Introduction 1. A. Nossiter, “History and Amazement in House Race Outcome,” New York Times, Dec. 8, 2008. 2. R.S. McKelvey, A Gift of Barbed Wire (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 86. 3. Ibid., pp. 71, 77. 4. Nguyen Van Canh, Vietnam Under Communism, 1975–1982 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 197–198. 5. Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 117– 142. 6. The NEZ (new economic zones) were the civilian equivalent of concentration camps where inhabitants were forced to do agricultural labor in previously deserted and arid areas. Civilians were shuttled to these regions and told to build their huts and to transform forests into arable lands. The government did not even check to see whether the land was suitable for agriculture or not. 7. Nghia M. Vo, The Vietnamese Boat People: 1954 and 1975–1992 ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 130–162. 8. N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Women of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 1–15, 27–41. 9. R.S. McKelvey, A Gift of Barbed Wire (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 27–29. 10. E. Porter, M. O’Donnell, “Facing Middle Age with No Degree and No Wife,” New York Times, August 6, 2006. 11. http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/archive/2006-07/2006-07-24-voa15.cfm. 12. http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/archive/2006-06/2006-06-26-voa35.cfm (part 1). http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/archive/2006-07/2006-07-05-voa14.cfm (part 2). 13. W.C. Robinson, Terms of Refuge (London: Zed Books, 1998), 61; B. Grant, The Boat People (New York: Penguin, 1979), 66; B. Wain, The Refused (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 70–73. Female victims were taken to the Kra Island where they were repeatedly raped. One hundred and sixty refugees died on the island and 1,250 others were rescued over a twelve month period. 14. A. Lam, Perfume Dreams (Berkeley: HeyDay Books, 2005), 22.

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Chapter 1 1. Europeans who came to Vietnam first wrote about that smile in the eighteenth century. Nguyen Van Vinh, in the Dong Duong Tap Chi (1914), commented: “The Vietnamese have the strange habit of smiling under any circumstance. They smile whether they are congratulated or yelled at, whether they are good or bad, whether they are right or wrong… There is nothing more frustrating than having to deal with a smile which is a response to your questioning or yelling at a person….” 2. Since ancestors are considered to be a part of the extended Asian (especially Confucian) family, they need to be revered and appeased through prayers and offerings. They, in turn, can protect the family from “bad” spirits. 3. Malaria is caused by protozoan parasites like Plasmodium falciparum, while Dengue fever is due to the Dengue virus of the genus Flavivirus. Both diseases are caused by mosquitoes and occur in rural and urban areas. 4. Confucius (551–479 B.C.) was a Chinese sage who left teachings that form the moral and political backbone of Chinese society for the last two millennia. Through conquest and osmosis, these Confucian ideals spread to neighboring Korea, Japan and Vietnam. With China, these countries form the “chopstick civilization:” they use chopsticks during meals and follow Confucian teachings. 5. N.M. Vo, “Confucian Women” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Women of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 1–15. 6. The Chams lived in present-day central Vietnam. They were seafarers, fishermen, great warriors, and part-time pirates. They had a darker complexion than native Vietnamese. Their civilization peaked from the 7th to 15th centuries A.D. They constantly fought against the Vietnamese who lived in present-day North Vietnam, and on various occasions occupied the Vietnamese capital, Thang Long (Hanoi). In its southward move, Vietnam took over the lands of the Chams in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Chams were heavily influenced by the Indian (Hindu) civilization. Ignorant of world geography, Europeans at the time of Columbus called the native people of America “Indians.” They also called the people from India Indians. This led to the confusion between Indian-Americans and Indians from India who are mainly Hindus. 7. N.M. Vo, “The Duality of the Vietnamese Mind” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 111–122.

Chapter 2 1. Saigon began as the Cham village of Baigaur, then became the Khmer Prey Nokor before being taken over by the Vietnamese and renamed Gia Dinh Thanh and then Saigon. See N.M. Vo, “The Origins of Saigon” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Women of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008). 223–232. 2. Pho is the national Vietnamese beef noodle soup. N.M. Vo, “A Short History of Pho” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 129–133. 3. N.M. Vo, “Roots of Southern Nationalism” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 35–73. 4. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending (New York: Arcade, 1996), 58.

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Chapter 3 1. Hero character of the 1982 film First Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone. Wikipedia: “a person demonstrating heroism through extreme violence, especially when outnumbered” (accessed 11/29/2007). 2. C.H.W. Ruhe, N.W. Hoover, I. Singer, Saigon Medical School: An Experiment in International Medical Education: An Account of the American Medical Association’s Medical Education Project in South Vietnam, 1966–1975 (Chicago: AMA, 1988), 52, 208. 3. http://www.morgalens.com/vietnam.html (accessed 11/21/2007). 4. http://www.thebattleof kontum.com/stars/smith_orbit.html (accessed 11/1/2007). 5. Montagnards are members of about 30 tribes living in the mountains and highlands of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). 6. D. Chong, The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story (Toronto: Viking, 1999). 7. J.K. Bruton, “Analyzing Vietnamese Culture” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Women of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 141. 8. B. Fall, Last Reflections on a War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1969), 220. 9. Memo dated April 5, 1975, to General Brent Scowcroft assessing General Fred Weyand’s special report to President Gerald Ford (Gerald Ford Presidential Library). 10. MR: Military Region. South Vietnam was organized into MR I, II, III, and IV from north to south. 11. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDdomino.html (accessed 2/3/2008). 12. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/24176/robert-h-johnson/vietnamizationcan-it-work.html (accessed 2/3/2008). 13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamization#Vietnamization.2C_1969.E2.80. 931974 (accessed 2/3/2008). 14. Terminology used in 2007 in relation to the Iraq War to designate the pulling out of U.S. forces from Iraq. 15. In October 1973, Arab members of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) imposed an oil embargo on the U.S. and its allies, Western Europe and Japan for supporting Israel in its ongoing armed conflict with Egypt and Syria, known as the Yom Kippur War. 16. GVN: Government of Vietnam. 17. http://www.frd.utexas.edu/library/exhibits/vietnam/750404g.htm (accessed 8/21/2008).

Chapter 4 1. The Mekong River is the eleventh longest river in the world (2,703 miles). It runs through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia and forms a delta at its mouth in southern Vietnam. 2. Funan was a Hinduized country that flourished in southern Vietnam between the first and sixth centuries A.D. It was replaced by the Khmer empire from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. 3. N.M. Vo, “Roots of South Vietnamese Nationalism” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 38–41.

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Chapter 5 1. Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 11–13. 2. Bo doi: North Vietnamese soldier. 3. Name given to Saigon by the French. 4. Tael: slightly more than an ounce.

Chapter 6 1. Viet Minh (abbreviated from Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi or League of the Independence of Vietnam) was a communist liberation movement. It hid its communist agenda so well that many non-communist nationalists were unaware of its communist connection and joined the group. After 1954, the Viet Minh got rid of the non-communist patriots to form the Viet Cong or Cong San Vietnam (Vietnamese communists). 2. In Vietnam, especially in the countryside, people often use a numeral (starting with number two) to designate their children according to the order of their birth. They never use the number one, which is officially reserved for the household head. Brother Five means the fourth born in the family.

Chapter 8 1. Conex: a large steel box formerly used for shipping merchandise overseas.

Chapter 10 1. Name derisively assigned at that time to wild or hardheaded youngsters. 2. Based on the Voice of America interview with Chau Dinh An in August 2005. http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/archive/2005-08/2005-07-20-voa10.cfm (part 1). http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/archive/2005-08/2005-08-05-voa23.cfm (part 2).

Chapter 11 1. Kieu is the heroine in Nguyen Du’s early nineteenth-century masterpiece. Born into a higher class and betrothed to a Mandarin’s son, Kieu was expected to lead a life of riches and comfort. Her father was jailed for suspicious reasons. After selling herself to free him, she went through a series of tragic and painful misadventures. She tried to kill herself by jumping into a river but was saved by a fisherman. In the end, she was reunited with her former husband. See Huynh Sanh Thong, The Tale of Kieu (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

Chapter 13 1. See Chapter 6, note 2, above. Auntie Seven means the sixth child born in the household.

Chapter Notes

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Chapter 19 1. Huynh Sanh Thong, Antholog y of Vietnamese Poems: From the Eleventh to the Twentieth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 199. 2. Bui Tien Khoi, “The Refugee,” Houston Post, Jan. 8, 1985. 3. A creamy black sauce available in any Vietnamese restaurant. 4. N.M. Vo, “A Short History of Pho” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 129–133. 5. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 290. 6. R. Templer, Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam (New York: Penguin, 1999), 324. 7. Ibid., 313.

Chapter 22 1. Monique Truong, “My Father’s Vietnam Syndrome,” New York Times, June 18, 2006. 2. Le Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For (New York: Knopf, 2003), 103. 3. Nguyen Thi Thu Lam, Fallen Leaves (New Haven: Yale SEAS, 1989), 23–24, 65–67. 4. A. Lam, Perfume Dreams (Berkeley: HeyDays Books, 2005), 119–123. 5. Ibid., 13. 6. Ibid., 27–29, 45. 7. N.M. Vo, The Vietnamese Boat People: 1954 and 1975–1992 ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 174–175. 8. Nathan Caplan, Children of the Boat People (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 156.

Epilogue 1. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 95. 2. Ibid., 105. 3. N.L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), ix. 4. B.B. Fall, Last Reflections on a War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 220. Fall wrote: “When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out administered.” Italics are in the text. 5. According to Wikipedia (accessed 9/22/2008), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Viet_kieu, the worldwide breakdown of Viet Kieu is as follows: • U.S. 1,599,394 (2006) • France 250,000 • Australia 159,848 • Canada 151,410 • Germany 83,526 • UK 70,000 • Japan 26,018

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• Taiwan 150,000 • Russia 150,000 • Others 600,000 6. M.A. Lawrence, The Vietnam War (New York: Oxford, 2008), 1. 7. N.M. Vo, “Confucianism and Communism” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Men of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 111–137. Saigon and the South Vietnamese have always maintained that the war was about the repulsion of the communist invasion. The 1975 fall of Saigon and the brutal repressive techniques used by the communists during and after the war confirm Saigon’s assertion and in a sense justify the American involvement in Vietnam. Had the war been fought differently, it could have been won (see note 9). 8. A.J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1003. The goal of the communists was and is the complete elimination of political opponents and the State of South Vietnam so that they can rule supreme in the country. It is interesting to note that they have borrowed that strategy from old monarchs of the past, whom they despise and vigorously criticize. 9. M. Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War (New York: Free Press, 1999), 245. 10. Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 343. 11. J. Record, “America’s own military performance in Vietnam aided and abetted the ‘North’s’ Victory” in M.J. Gilbert, Why the North Won the War (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 117–136. The author suggests a fragmentation of command authority, a dead end ground strategy, mistaken confidence in air power, a wrong style of warfare, and moral cowardice at the top of the list of the main causes of military failure in Vietnam. 12. A.J. Dommen The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1004–1005. The communists took over South Vietnam physically, politically, and economically in 1975. The result was an economic shift from southerners to northerners who now control all top governmental positions and own all industries and businesses in the South. Party members who did not have a dime while fighting the war have become the wealthiest people in Vietnam. Southerners dispossessed of their belongings, factories, businesses, and properties can barely make ends meet. 13. Vietnam is ranked 142/157 for economic freedom, 155/167 for press freedom and 111/163 in terms of corruption worldwide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam (accessed 9/22/2008). 14. N.M. Vo, “Roots of South Vietnamese Nationalism” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 67–71. The roots of South Vietnamese nationalism date back to the foundation of the country. 15. Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 341. 16. N.M. Vo, “Confucianism and Communism” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Men of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 120–131. Differences between Confucianism, which respects natural law and order and communism, which does not, are astounding. Many U.S. writers (Halberstam, Fitzgerald, Duiker, among others), fooled by communists’ intransigence and ruthlessness, have thought the two theories are comparable without going beyond the appearances. 17. A.J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the Americans and the French (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 903.

Chapter Notes

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18. Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 131. 19. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 225. NLF or National Liberation Front or the Viet Cong organization was set up by Hanoi in 1960 to destabilize the government of the Republic of Vietnam (Saigon). PRG or Provisional Revolutionary Government was the political face of the NLF. It took office on April 30, 1975 (fall of Saigon), and was dismissed in July 1976 (reunification of Vietnam). 20. A.J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 950. 21. In her cell, five people voted to dismiss her, and five voted against dismissing her. She cast the decisive vote to remove herself from the party. 22. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 145. 23. Ibid., 159–161. 24. R. Templer, Shadows and Wind (New York: Penguin, 1998), 20. 25. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 184–185. 26. Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 172, 174. 27. Ibid., 192. 28. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 269. 29. Ibid., 289, 297, 303. 30. A.J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 950. 31. R. Templer, Shadows and Wind (New York: Penguin, 1998), 90. 32. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 5. 33. Ibid., 173. 34. Ibid., 179. 35. Ibid., 142. 36. Ibid., 174–176. 37. Ibid., 215. 38. Ibid., 54, 66–67. 39. R. Templer, Shadows and Wind (New York: Penguin, 1998), 143. 40. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam (accessed 12/31/2008). 41. H. Kamm, Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese (New York: Arcade, 1996), 217–219. 42. Ibid., 44. 43. Private communication. 44. A. Nossiter, “History and Amazement in House Race Outcome,” New York Times, Dec. 8, 2008. 45. N.M. Vo, “Vietnam and the Vietnamese” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Men of Vietnam (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 7–13. The tragedy of the Vietnamese is that they have been at war with themselves and surrounding countries for the last four millennia. 46. N.M. Vo, “The Duality of the Vietnamese Mind” in N.M. Vo, C.V. Dang, H.V. Ho, The Sorrows of War and Peace (Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008), 111–122. Southerners and Northerners have evolved differently in the social, economic, cultural, and political fields during the last four centuries. This difference has increased following the communist takeover of the North in 1945.

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Suggested Reading Appy, C.G. Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides. New York: Viking, 2003. Caplan, N., M.H. Choy, and J.K. Whitmore. Children of the Boat People: A Study of Educational Success. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. _____, _____, and _____. The Boat People and Achievement in America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. Cargill, M.T., and J.Q. Huynh. Voices of Vietnamese Boat People. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Diem, Bui, and D. Chanoff. In the Jaws of History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Do, T. Saigon to San Diego: Memoir of a Boy Who Escaped from Communist Vietnam. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Dommen, A.J. The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Freeman, J. Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese American Lives. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Huong, Duong Thu. Paradise of the Blind. New York: Perennial, 2002. Huynh, Jade. South Wind Changing. Saint Paul: Graywolf, 1994. Isaacs, A.R. Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts and Its Legacy. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1997. _____. Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1983. Jamieson, N.L. Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Kamm, H. Dragon Ascending: Vietnam and the Vietnamese. New York: Arcade, 1996. Karnow, S. Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking, 1983. Lam, A. Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora. Berkeley: HeyDay Books, 2005. Le, Thi Diem Thuy. The Gangster We Are All Looking For. New York: Knopf, 2003. McKelvey, R.S. The Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Nguyen, Kien. The Unwanted. Boston: Little Brown, 2001. Ninh, Bao. The Sorrow of War. New York: Riverhead, 1993. Taylor, K.W. The Birth of Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Templer, R. Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam. New York: Penguin, 1999.

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Thong, Huynh Sanh. Antholog y of Vietnamese Poems: From the Eleventh to the Twentieth Centuries. New Haven: Yale SEAS, 1996. _____. The Tale of Kieu. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Thu Lam, Nguyen Thi. Fallen Leaves: Memoirs of a Vietnamese Woman from 1940 to 1975. New Haven: Yale SEAS, 1989. Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps. Berkeley: University of California, 1998. Vo, N.M. The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. _____. The Vietnamese Boat People: 1954 and 1975–1992. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. _____, C.V. Dang, and H.V. Ho. Remembering Saigon. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, March 2008 (SACEI Forum #1). _____, _____, and _____. The Sorrows of War and Peace. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, June 2008 (SACEI Forum #2). _____, _____, and _____. The Women of Vietnam. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, September 2008 (SACEI Forum #3). _____, _____, and _____. The Men of Vietnam. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press, December 2008 (SACEI Forum #4).

Index CEO 6, 206, 215 Cham 19, 110, 116, 134, 166 chasm 216 Chau, Loan 7 Chi Lang 51 children 43, 48, 57, 58, 66, 84, 88, 111, 119–121, 123, 128, 137, 140–141, 144, 146, 154, 155, 172, 181, 193, 199, 204, 205, 212 China 16, 29, 32, 35, 70, 71, 87, 95, 108, 147, 150, 166, 171, 186, 192, 208, 214 Cho Cu (Old Market) 31 chopstick 218 citizenship 5, 8, 189 Communism 2, 3, 5, 8, 37, 43, 44, 46, 55, 56, 65, 66, 68, 69, 74, 79, 86, 87, 96, 97, 98, 100, 105, 112, 113, 121, 122, 134, 138, 144, 149, 153, 161, 184, 188, 190, 199, 200, 202, 204, 205, 208, 210, 211, 213, 216 concentration camp 2, 3, 7, 8, 80, 88, 91, 92, 98, 99, 136, 138, 139, 151, 162, 215 conex 100 confinement 4, 139, 151, 161 Confucianism 43, 218 cong an 101, 105, 108 Convoy of Tears 65–66, 212 Cortez 36 criticism 96, 99

adversity 37, 189 ancestor worship 15 anti-communist war 209 ao dai 30, 76, 77, 80, 134, 171, 188 ARVN 2, 43, 45, 65, 86, 94, 98, 110, 113, 133, 136, 169, 201, 202 Australia 149, 158, 160, 162, 221 Bac Lieu 81, 83, 84 balkanize 216 banh chung 33 banh tet 33 Bao Ninh 212 Baria 13, 24 Bataan 153 bau cua co cop 34 betel 19 Bidong Pulau 5, 72, 85, 150, 151 bo doi 66, 67, 69 brainwashing 4, 87, 97 Buddhism 24–26, 43, 80, 123, 124, 169 Bui Tin 212 cadre 4, 97, 99, 100, 174 California 6, 118, 119, 123, 124, 158, 169, 183, 187, 189, 206 Cam Ranh 128, 144 Cambodia 3, 29, 100, 122, 141, 158, 209 Can Tho 50, 52 Cao, Anh 1, 215 Cape Cod 47 Catholic 6, 21, 22, 24, 26, 40, 43, 80, 114, 120, 123, 139, 140, 151, 153, 168, 169, 199

Dalat 111 darkness 8, 33, 61, 91, 124, 142 death 4, 5, 8, 14, 16, 39, 40, 48, 49,

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228 52, 66, 90, 99, 114, 122, 137, 138, 148, 161, 168, 170, 190, 204, 208 democracy 200, 208, 216 Dengue 16, 51, 52, 159 diaspora 1, 5, 8, 187, 204, 207–209 dinh 19, 20 divan 15, 54 divorce 3, 6, 7, 92, 201, 203 doi moi 214 Duong Quynh Hoa, Dr. 212 Duong Thu Huong 212 Duy Tan 42, 127 edema 89 escape 2, 5, 7, 8, 40, 55, 68–70, 81, 90, 99, 100, 108, 112, 114, 116, 117, 138, 140, 154, 157, 161, 170, 184, 201–203, 205, 213 family 15, 16, 23, 25, 33, 41, 43, 46, 48, 52, 62, 68, 70, 77, 79, 88, 92, 98, 103, 104, 111, 120, 123, 135, 140, 146, 152, 181, 193, 202, 214 fatalism 5 fight 16, 45, 52, 55, 56, 67, 84, 92, 169, 208, 210 Florida 118 flower market 32 Fort Indiantown Gap 46, 62 fortuneteller 33, 139, 140 fratricidal war 56, 208 fraud 214 freedom 2, 5, 8, 23, 27, 30, 36, 46, 55, 56, 58, 61, 81, 83, 113, 114, 116, 117, 123, 124, 138, 162, 163, 168, 171, 188, 200, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 211 Galang 5 gasoline 116 gecko 17 Gia Dinh 41, 141, 166 Gia Long 3, 36, 53 Guam 57, 58, 135, 157–159, 161 guava 17, 91 guoc 30 Ha Tay 88 hat boi 20 hepatitis 137 HIV 196

INDEX Ho Chi Minh 44, 65, 100, 208 Hoan Kiem Lake 180, 181 Hoc Mon 68, 94, 95 Hue 37, 42, 110, 166, 167, 171, 191 hungry 60, 61, 88, 90, 112, 114, 116, 159, 174 Huon, Dr. Huynh Van 41, 43 incarceration 4, 8, 86, 92, 97, 201 individualistic 36 inmate 4, 5, 90, 114 insurrection 113, 168 intoxication 4 Khmer 29, 35, 37, 166, 167, 171 Khmer Rouge 122, 210 Kuala Lumpur 146, 148, 151, 152 Lai Magdalena 189 Lam, Andrew 8, 200 land reform 208, 212 Le Thi Diem Thuy 202 Le Van Duyet 166, 168, 171 leadership 44, 213 li xi 34 Little Saigon 183, 185–187, 190 longan 14, 17, 18 lotus 20, 26, 27, 110 mai 33 maize 99 malaria 97, 98, 114, 159 manioc 90, 99 medical care 4, 148 Mekong 48, 50, 58, 115, 165, 167, 180, 186 Minh Mang 36 Morgan, Dr. 39 mosquito 16, 17, 25, 52, 54, 94, 159 My Canh restaurant 31, 211 New England 47 NEZ 5, 68, 94, 100, 105, 122, 209 Ngo Dinh Diem 167, 171, 210 Nguyen An Ninh 169 Nguyen Anh 53, 166–168 Nguyen Bao Hoang 215 Nguyen Thi Thu Lam 203 Nha Trang 42, 43, 111, 117, 133, 134, 162, 180 nuoc mam 53

Index oil crisis 44 opera house 30 Operation New Life 157, 158 oppression 2, 5, 84, 200 papillon 115 patriarchal 16 Pearl of Orient 30, 69, 167, 171 Pham Thi Kim Phuc 41 Pham Xuan An 170 Phan Rang 116 Phan Thanh Gian 168 Philippines 58, 152, 153 Phnom Penh 122 pho 32, 165, 181, 186, 187, 206 Phu Quoc 52, 57, 160, 166 Phuong Anh Nguyen 203 pilgrim 47, 58, 62, 201 Pioneer Contender 57, 58, 134 pirate 71, 73, 110, 140, 143, 203 Pleiku 65 poisoning 4 pond 36 Prey Nokor 29, 166, 167 programmed failure 44 PTSD 5 Pulau Tengah 144, 145 punctuality 14

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81, 92, 100, 101, 113, 120, 133, 141, 153, 157, 161, 165–171, 183–190, 201, 202, 209 sandwich 6 self recrimination 61 smile 13, 26 Smith, Dr. Patricia 39, 40 snake 65, 75 Song Cai 113, 115 sorrow 8, 108, 160 starvation 8, 87, 88, 90, 98 tael 70, 139, 140 tam tong 76 tamarind 30, 171 “Tent City” 158 tet 32, 33, 38, 40, 55 Thu Duc 52, 139 Thuong Tin 161 “Tin City” 157 torture 31, 170 Tran Thu Ha 8 Trang Lon 66, 67 Truong, Monique 201 Truong Sa 161 Tuy Hoa 43, 66 Tuyen, Tran Kim 170 tyranny 209

Rach Gia 52, 53, 71, 74, 78 rape of Saigon 209 Red Cross 144 reeducation camp 2, 3, 97, 162, 174, 200, 202, 205, 213 refugee 52, 54, 57, 60, 72, 117, 134, 144, 145, 150, 157, 158, 162, 183, 184, 201, 207 Rhodes Scholars 206 rice field 47 Russia 8, 209

Viet Kieu 3, 7–9, 37, 188–190, 199–207, 209, 215 Viet Minh 6, 14, 75 Vung Tau 14, 18, 24, 26, 47, 57, 58

sacrifice 55, 121, 213 Saigon 13, 29–37, 38, 49, 66, 76, 77,

yin and yang 29, 31, 184

Wake Island 158 Washington, D.C. 73 Washington State 47 whale 19, 20 xe ba banh 69

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