I. The escape.
Memories are like jumbled jigsaw puzzle pieces. Some fit
perfectly. Some are so strange that you can’t figure out where they belong. I
just found a stash of old photos my dad gave me before he died. Several photos
of me spanning back more than sixty years: an infant on his mother lap, a young
lad in Boy Scout uniform, a first year college teenager student arriving in Los
Angeles airport. The “me” in the photos seemed to be a stranger, but also had
the vague familiarity of memories long faded.
Since I had some English ability more than anyone else,
during the 1968 Lunar New Year Communist offensive, my oldest sister Teresa and
I were assigned to stay at our meager home to protect it. The village was
infiltrated by the Viet Cong. I was there to explain that we were civilian, not
communists if the American soldiers were to assault house by house. I still
remember the awesome sight and frightening sounds of the gunship fire demolishing
a nearby home where the Viet Cong were hiding.
I passed the two consecutive years Baccalaureate I and II
with highest honors and was selected to leave Vietnam for college in the US.
The war was raging on in Vietnam in 1970 when I was granted this very rare
privilege. We were very poor and without any connection hence the approval
allowing me to leave was an exceptional opportunity. My parents told me and
their relatives many times about their joy and pride of their son’s early
achievement.
My financial situation during my undergraduate years was
pitiful. I arrived with eleven US dollars in my pocket. I was granted the
monthly amount of $150 (US dollars) at the official exchange rate. Of the 150
dollars, I set aside 50 dollars for my family. The black market value of the US
dollar was several times higher than that of the official exchange rate. One of
my mother’s distant relative by marriage, Uncle Xoi was very wealthy in Vietnam. It was not legal
for Vietnamese to stash money - of which some or most were ill-gotten gains - in
foreign banks. The uncle already having a Chase account, illegal at the time in
Vietnam, allowed me to deposit the 50 dollars monthly to it. In return, he gave
my parents inflated Vietnamese piasters, helping my family with a little more
money due to this exchange.
Life was quite tough. I still remember the good smell and
rare treat while visiting the apartment of well-off Vietnamese students from
wealthy families and was invited to share some of their sumptuous home cooked
steaks. I struggled to balance school, and my night and weekend jobs:
housekeeper at Long Beach Memorial hospital cleaning toilets, floors, removing trash
as well as the operating rooms’ hazardous waste; also working at Jack-in-the-Box
and as a student assistant at the University library. These under-the-table
cash payments – since I was not allowed to work openly and legally – and the
monthly $100 allowed me a very meager existence at the same time paying for
school tuition and fees. (My scholarship was only partial.) The university fees
were maxed out over 12 semester units. Most Vietnamese students took very high
number of semester units to save money.
I had a small 125cc Honda motorcycle for commuting to
school. During the second year, I had an accident which broke my right leg and
left me bed-ridden for the whole several months. Thanks to the kindness of
friends and neighbors I was able to get food and water for the duration.
In early 1975 I spent several months explaining to my
father that the situation in Vietnam was very desperate and the final collapse
was near. My father was a low level employee of Air America which was the
airline subcontracted to the CIA in Vietnam (see Figure 1). I contacted the CIA
in Virginia to plead for my family’s evacuation. I threatened to talk to the
Long Beach Independent and the Los Angeles Times newspaper. I wrote letters to
California Senator Alan Cranston, Dr. Henry Kissinger to ask for their
intervention. I also met with Dr. Stephen Horn and his wife, Nina who also
wrote letters to Senator Alan Cranston to support my plea. Dean Willard Reeds of the University Civil
Engineering department loaned me the keys and allowed me to use his office
telephone to call Vietnam. This was the rare time that I earned C’s in classes,
due to time spent waiting for the Agency calls, calling, pleading, threatening
the Agency, and calling my father at night in Vietnam. These activities took
most of my day time and energy. I had to return to campus in the middle of the
night to phone my brother-in-law’s office, so they could call my father to the
phone. Imagine a 22-years old foreign student with limited English proficiency
determined to use whatever channels necessary to rescue his family. Some have
said that not 1 in a million could have done this.
Figure 1
