The smallest refugees: I was one of them
April 30, 1975, just about 40 years ago. On a U.S. military base in Guam, in a Quonset hut my family has been sharing with two dozen other families since we fled South Vietnam a week before, the bunk beds are filled with people listening to my father translate a BBC radio announcement: Saigon, our nation’s capital, has fallen to northern communists. No one makes a sound. Not even a gasp. Then a child starts sobbing. Dad says, “Maybe the adults have no more tears.”
The spell breaks. While some stay in their beds and stare into space, others drift outside toward the cafeteria that by then was serving 20,000 refugees. It’s lunch time after all. What else is there to say? Everyone’s exhausted. As a song sums up Vietnamese history until then: A thousand years enslaved by the Chinese enemy; a hundred years dominated by the French; 20 years of daily civil war — a mother’s legacy I leave for you.
My parents had been born in the north, and their families were among a million who fled when the country was divided into communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended French colonialization in 1954, but our civil war just exploded — with both sides manipulating U.S. politicians, financial aid and military forces.
Of the 3 million servicemembers Washington sent to Vietnam, 60,000 died and 150,000 were wounded (including my future father-in-law).
For the Vietnamese on both sides, 4 million soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.
The last U.S. combat troops left in 1973, but American diplomats, security units and journalists stayed till the end. Dad, a former South Vietnamese lieutenant fluent in several languages, was managing editor of an English-language weekly; he told my mother to begin preparations to flee Saigon. In his youth in the north, Dad had wanted to join the nationalist Vietminh to end French colonialization, but when it turned communist, he lost all illusions. Both his and Mom’s families abandoned homes and businesses in 1954 because they didn’t want to live under communism. My parents now realized they’d have to do it again.
By 1975, I was in third grade, the eldest of five. South Vietnam’s president resigned April 21. Early next morning, packed with photos, a change of clothing for each of us and all of $20 U.S., we taxied to the airport. We spent all day standing in line and got on a Pentagon cargo jet about 9 p.m. After our C-130 was in the air, American soldiers went around shining flashlights out the windows. When Dad asked why, they said that we had been shot at, but that the darkness helped so only the wings were nicked.
We spent a night at a U.S. military base in the Philippines, sleeping on air mattresses with thousands of other refugees. Then a week in Guam and a month north of San Diego at Camp Pendleton, one of four U.S. bases assigned refugee duty.
When we arrived that May, Pentagon records show, Camp Pendleton had 18,000 Vietnamese living in eight “tent cities.” My family of seven was assigned to city No. 8, tent 88, which we shared with several other families. By the time the operation closed five months later, Camp Pendleton had aided more than 50,000 immigrants.
We were among a million Vietnamese who fled over two decades after the war ended, one of the largest exoduses in modern times. Hundreds of thousands, known as boat people, chose to face the open sea and pirates rather than stay in Vietnam. Those who survived lived for years in refugee camps in Southeast Asia before relocating to new homes.
Children are living in refugee camps again. The world is seeing its largest refugee crisis since World War II. Fighting in Syria, Yemen and other torn nations has displaced tens of millions of people.
When I see pictures of kids staring out of a refugee tent, I can’t turn away. I’ve been there, sleeping on a military cot, playing outside as much as possible to escape my traumatized parents’ forced smiles. Forty years later, an American with children of my own, I still recognize myself in those refugee eyes.
Forty years later, an American with children of my own, I still recognize myself in those refugee eyes.