Familiar, terrible memories for many Southeast Asians
Bach Truong rarely left her office to have lunch at home but by good fortune she was there on April 30, 1975, when her husband, Thanh Van, rushed in the door. Thanh, a communications officer in the South Vietnamese Army, could barely get out the words to her. The president of
South Vietnam had surrendered at noon in Saigon and the Americans were gone; the communists were coming and it was time to run. They packed quickly, knowing there was no time to say goodbye to family or friends. The freshly painted pink walls Thanh had labored over in celebration of their newest baby blurred in the background as Bach hastily grabbed her three children, stuffed several small bags with food and warm clothes and rushed out onto the streets of Can Tho.
The news had spread quickly. Crowds were pushing and shoving — a state of chaos never seen before in her quiet and unassuming neighborhood. People were calling out names, their loved ones lost in a sea of manic turmoil. Soldiers were disrobing right there in the middle of the road, tossing their uniforms as far away as possible in order to seamlessly blend back in with the locals. There had been no warning. U.S. President Richard Nixon, on the brink of impeachment, had continued to promise that the few American troops left in South Vietnam would protect them until a true peace settlement was established. But the communist Northern Vietnamese captured city after city, making their way down the country toward the capital. After providing more than 15 years of support in the war against communism, many South Vietnamese trusted that their American allies would not abandon them should Saigon be invaded. They weren’t prepared for evacuation. Everyone was running for the airport.
On Aug. 15, 2021, I sat with Bach,, my mother-inlaw, and watched in disbelief as videos showed a large crowd of people running alongside an American Air Force cargo plane, some desperately clinging to it, as it lifted off from the Kabul airport. A few days later, another photo of hundreds of Afghans and foreigners stuffed into the belly of a large cargo plane appeared, sparking outrage. The Southeast Asian community demanded to know why the U.S. keeps finding itself in this situation — airlifting out of countries with chaotic and broken exit strategies for the people it promised to
protect in exchange for their allegiance. Explosions at the gate to the airport on Thursday injured and killed so many. Is there any integrity left in America’s word?
These powerful images, showing the current devasting plight of the Afghan people, have brought about familiar, terrible memories to many Southeast Asian refugees. We are glued to the local news channel with our grandparents, chattering about it in coffeehouses with friends, whispering to one another as we lay sleepless in bed, writing late into the night to get a voice out on behalf of Afghans.
I asked a Laotian girlfriend, a first-generation child of refugees like me, what her parents had said to her about it. “My dad got pretty emotional,” Donna Phonevilay said softly over the phone. “I’m not sure how much they’ve been able to process — their life, survival, since they arrived here. They have suppressed so much out of necessity and then this just brought it all back.” Her parents arrived in Houston in 1980 and stayed here as the Laotian community continued to grow. As with most refugee communities in the U.S., it was easier to find solace in one another after so much loss. “They are so grateful they are not still living in Laos, dealing with the communists and all the money-under-the-table business; yet, at the same time, they feel they were robbed of a life lived how they wanted,” Donna said.
The Afghanistan war has buzzed in the background of CNN breaking news and social media my whole adult life, filling my head with hurtful memes, negative stereotypes and unfair judgments of everything happening there. As an American-born Hmong woman, I shamefully admit to have found myself worried of what will happen if the “wrong” refugees make their way into the U.S., the same way many Americans felt as the first wave of Vietnamese refugees entered in 1975.
I heard the disappointment in my father’s voice when I asked if he had any fears about them. “You don’t know because it didn’t happen to you, but I still remember how scared and worried we all were. We knew Americans were afraid of us. They didn’t know we were their No. 1 ally!” he said.
“We must welcome all the Afghan refugees, as many as the U.S. can bring over. You think they want to come and live here in America, but I tell you the truth — they don’t. The culture, language, finding food and jobs — no one wants that hardship. Americans may be afraid but Afghans have lost their country, been separated from their families, maybe forever. Their tears have fallen until there is no more. There is no choice. They have lost … everything.”
Donna attests to this exact feeling about her parents. “I’ve gone back to Laos with my parents and they are completely different people in their homeland. Here in the U.S., sure you can earn what you are worth but back there, our culture is hospitable and amiable. My parents, they glow; my dad is confident, my mom is a lady about town and I can see it in their eyes. They are home, they are alive.”
Many times over many years, I have dried the tears of my grandmother, Chee Lo, who recounts of how she lost all of her seven brothers and sisters after they ran into the jungle at Long Cheng. Her husband and twin brother died agonizing deaths after being infected with Agent Orange on the journey to the refugee camps in Thailand; she watched five of her seven small children be slaughtered in a surprise ambush before they reached the Mekong River. No, the Afghan refugees coming here now are not seeing this as an exciting opportunity to live in the United States. They have been broken and they need our help.
Despite the struggle to survive and integrate into a new country, many refugees in the U.S. prosper and take advantage of the opportunities here. My own parents, within five years of landing in Memphis had saved enough money to open their own Chinese restaurant that would eventually grow into a chain with more than 100 locations throughout the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
My mother-in-law tells me, “When we first arrived here to America, our sponsor didn’t know what to do with us so they had me washing dishes day and night and my husband had to cut the grass for a whole month. They didn’t know I could do so much more.” And more they did. While working for 30 years at Honeywell, they raised two sons who graduated at the top of their class and earned degrees from Georgia Tech, Duke, Stanford and Vanderbilt; one a chemical engineer and the other, a cardiologist. Within one generation, her family has been lifted out of despair because of the opportunities here — and that makes the past a little more bearable. I asked her what we all can do for those who are now arriving every day in the U.S.
She smiled and said, “Donate money. Donate time. Find a church who is sponsoring a family and help. Remember that they are people with dreams, too, and they are worth saving, just like me.”