San Jose says goodbye to ‘Black Eagle’ Ly Tong

Former South Vietnamese fighter pilot left a legacy

In the glass rotunda of San Jose City Hall, with white chrysanthemums and gladiolus flanking photos of a handsome young fighter pilot, the city said farewell to Ly Tong, a man they considered a hero.

Tong died April 5 in San Diego at the age of 74. The cause of death was lung disease.

Tong, known as “Black Eagle” to thousands of former South Vietnamese soldiers and people who fled their homeland to escape communist rule, refused to surrender his native country, launching peaceful attacks that twice landed him in prison.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who met Tong during the man’s hunger strike 10 years ago, told a crowd of more than 200 people, many of them in the uniform of South Vietnam and sporting red and yellow ties, scarves and hats, that Tong had an unbreakable spirit that earned him the reverence of so many people here and throughout the world.

That same unbreakable spirit, Liccardo said, lives on in all the people who work hard to create a better life for their children, in every activist and advocate for Vietnamese people, and in “every teacher and parent who opens their children’s eyes to the past” and sacrifices Tong and other made and continue to make.

Saturday’s memorial was sponsored by San Jose City Council member Johnny Khamis and co-sponsored by Vice Mayor Chappie Jones.

Tong, the son of a wealthy farmer, was born in the central Vietnam city of Hue. His father was executed as a revolutionary and Tong joined the South Vietnamese Air Force, becoming part of the air force’s elite fighter squadron, Black Eagle.

Near the end of the Vietnam War, Tong was shot down and sent to a reeducation camp. He escaped in 1980 and began a 17-month, 1,500-mile journey to freedom that covered five countries and harrowing conditions. When he reached the United States, then President Ronald Reagan welcomed him.

But it was his attempts to liberate his homeland that perhaps won him the most notoriety. In 1992, he hijacked a commercial plane leaving Bangkok and ordered the pilot to fly low over Ho Chi Minh City, where he dumped thousands of pamphlets urging people to rise up against the communists. He then parachuted from the plane and was arrested. He would spend six years in prison before an amnesty agreement brought him back home to the United States.

In 2000, he performed another leaflet-dropping flight over Havana and was hailed as a hero by anti-Castro Cubans in Florida.

He followed that up a few months later by taking another plane and papering Ho Chi Minh City with more calls for resistance in leaflets that he signed “Global Alliance for the Total Uprising Against Communists.” He was again arrested and spent another six years in prison, charged with hijacking.

Tong never gave up on his dream of freeing his country, doing what he could to spark revolution among generations of U.S.born Vietnamese for whom the war was only part of history.

Age and time never bent his will to help his people. In 2008, he staged a 28-day hunger strike in protest of efforts to rename the “Little Saigon” neighborhood.

Two years later, he dressed as a woman to get close to a Vietnamese pop singer whom he perceived as supporting communist ideals. As the singer performed at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Tong offered him a bouquet of roses, then pepper sprayed him in the face, an act that won him six months in the Santa Clara County jail.

Tong’s legacy was celebrated Saturday with song and ritual. Former South Vietnamese soldiers and pilots filled the rotunda, acting as honor guards for Tong’s memory. Banners that read “In Memory of Hero Ly Tong” dotted the hall alongside pictures of Tong during his military and militant days. Newspaper accounts of his exploits were framed and displayed.

Tong refused to surrender, and many of those at the memorial have taken up his cause, petitioning and marching for human rights in Vietnam and for China to retreat from Vietnam’s waters.