BY THOMAS VAN NGUYEN
SEPTEMBER 25, 2003
EL MONTE, CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT 2003 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Edited for re-publication June 2015
FOREWORD
"Give me liberty or give me death" -- I heard the famous words of Patrick Henry for the first time in my English as a Second Language (ESL) reading class at Northern Virginia Community College-Annandale Campus. This struck me why my two older brothers and I, along with forty other people, escaped out of Vietnam on a small boat in late December 1979. The Vietnamese "boat people" have a profound understanding of the meaning of these words. They were willing to sacrifice their lives in the pursuit of freedom.
I vowed to myself that never again in my life would I live under a communist regime. Either communism without me, or me without communism. This was also one of the main reasons I joined the U.S. Army later in my life. I'm proud to currently be part of a team of men and women whose job it is to protect this nation, its people, and its allies around the world, and to make sure people live in freedom.
The fact that Russia, where modern communism was born, has transitioned to "democracy" and that other communist countries around the world have been undergoing major changes, does not convince me that communism is not a threat to the world any longer. Make no mistake: any form of communism is a threat to the world. In fact, the people in Vietnam still don't have freedom of speech, religion, press or any other type of self- expression. The communist government in Vietnam still constantly suppresses and commits crimes and cruelties against its own people and against humanity. As I write this article, many Catholic priests, Buddhist monks, and other human right activists are still being jailed and tortured in prisons throughout Vietnam.
Through this true story of my escape out of Vietnam, I condemn all the crimes and cruelties that the communist government in Vietnam has committed against its people and against humanity. I ask the government of the United States of America and the United Nations to demand the communist government of Vietnam to stop committing crimes against its own people. It is my wish to bring to justice all those who are responsible for these atrocities against the Vietnamese people for all these years, in accordance with international laws.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Lieutenant Colonel Adam Siegler, 311th Corps Support Command (COSCOM), Judge Advocate General (JAG), who encouraged me to write this story to share with everyone. Without his encouragement, this article would not have been published at this time. I also thank my niece, Lan Lien, who edited this story to make this version on November 22, 2003. My special appreciation to Mr Leslie Ozawa, NTC Public Affairs Office, who edited this version for re-publication in June 2015.
Dedication
I would like to dedicate this story to all Vietnamese "boat people" around the world, especially those who were not fortunate enough to survive to tell their stories. I would also like to dedicate this story to the millions of South Vietnamese soldiers, to the more than 58,000 US soldiers who fought and died during the Vietnam conflict, and to those who were jailed by the Vietnamese communist soldiers in the concentration camps as a result of this war. These soldiers are our unsung heroes who sacrificed their own lives while fighting for freedom in Vietnam, especially those who stayed in the country until the last minute to carry out their final duty to their country, regardless of its consequences.
About the Author:
Thomas Tho Van Nguyen arrived and settled in Annandale, Fairfax County, Virginia in July 1980. He attended Northern Virginia Community College-Annandale Campus from September 1980 to April 1983.
In April 1983, Nguyen moved to California and continued his education at California State University, Long Beach, majoring in civil engineering and joined the U.S. Army through its Reserve Officer Training Corps program in 1986. In May 1988, he received a BS degree in civil engineering from California State University, Long Beach and was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve as a second lieutenant. In November 1988, he began working for the City of Los Angeles, Department of Transportation in November 1988. In August 2003, he received an MBA in IT management from Touro University International, Cypress, California.
In his Army career, Nguyen has served in engineering, adjutant general, transportation, contracting and program management duty assignments. He was mobilized from July 1996 to February 1997 in support of Operation Joint Endeavor (OJE) stationed at Taszar Airfield, Hungary. He also deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Iraq, from Sep 2006 to Mar 2007 and in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Afghanistan, from Mar 2010 to May 2011.
He is currently on active duty in the Army's Active Guard Reserve program and assigned to the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, as a plans and training officer. He previously served in the Army Reserve as a contract management officer at the 311th Corps Support Command in Los Angeles. He has two children, a stepdaughter who recently graduated from University of Southern California in May 2014 and one daughter, currently studying at University of California at Los Angeles.
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
From the fall of the Republic of Vietnam in April 1975 until the early 1990's, an estimated 800,000 Vietnamese made their way by boat or ship, trusting to luck on the open sea, fending off pirates, storms, starvation, and good will of passing ships and nations, to find new homes and lives in the United States and other nations sympathetic to their plight. As a 15-year-old, Tho Van Nguyen was one of the lucky refugees. According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, another 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese boat people perished at sea. --editor's note
SAIGON FALLS TO THE COMMUNISTS
In April 1975, I was almost fifteen years old. My father, Khanh Van Nguyen, had just retired from the South Vietnamese Army as a Signal Corps captain. We were living on the army post in Go Vap, where the 60th Signal Corps Battalion was based, just outside Tan Son Nhut Airport.
My father had retired at the age of 58, after serving 22 years in the South Vietnamese Army. As a young man, he was a school teacher in a small, rural village near the border of what was then North Vietnam. He then served as an interpreter for the French Army. When France began withdrawing its forces from Vietnam, he joined the South Vietnamese Army in 1953 when he was 36 years old.
I do not know how far away the 60th Signal Corps Battalion was from Tan Son Nhut Airport, but I knew it was not that far, probably between eight and ten kilometers.
Before the fall of Saigon, every afternoon around 4 p.m., I used to climb up and sit on the hot, sheet metal rooftop of my house to watch my favorite scene of the day: the Skyraiders, A-37s, and F-5Es fighter aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force returning from their daily sorties. By the time they flew over our house, they were at their lowest horizontal formation. Then the left-most aircraft would break off very sharply to the left, and descend for its final approach to the runway. This procedure was repeated until the last aircraft landed.
The morning of April 27, 1975, President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned, and Tran Van Huong took office as President of South Vietnam, only to resign the next morning.
On the morning of April 28, Duong Van Minh, known as "Big Minh", took office as President of South Vietnam. A few hours later, around 11 a.m., I saw two A-37 fighter aircraft fly very fast and very low over my house, circling the Tan Son Nhut Airport. Shortly afterwards, I heard the thundering sounds of bombs being dropped. I immediately realized that Tan Son Nhut Airport was being attacked. Then I heard a series of anti-aircraft gunfire and the exchange of gunfire from the two attack aircrafts amidst the concussion of exploding bombs.
Duc, one of my two older brothers, ran outside the house, looked skyward, and yelled, "The anti-aircraft gun shots look beautiful! Just like fireworks!!!" Then my mom, Sanh Bui yelled loudly, to call us in and to get into our bunker inside the house. A few minutes later, a few F-5E fighter jets from Tan Son Nhut Airbase were able to take off, confront, and chase the two A-37s away.
I remember clearly that this was the first time in my life that I saw these F-5E jets fly that low with a full payload of ammunition under their wings and giant bombs under their bellies. A few hours later, my parents told us we had to move from the army base to my older sister's house in Phu Nhuan, closer to downtown Saigon.
My father used his motorcycle to evacuate our family. I sat on top of the fuel tank of my father's motorcycle. I had my hands holding on the steering bar. My head was tucked just under his chin. Behind him, on the back of the motorcycle were Duc and my mom. Thanh, my oldest brother, had his own moped and he took his older sister, Hoa, on the back.
As soon as we got outside the base, I couldn't believe what a chaotic scene I saw. Thousands and thousands of people were pouring onto the streets all headed to Saigon, some people riding motorcycles, some riding bicycles, the rest just walking, yet nobody knew where
they were going nor what they supposed to do next. My father stopped and asked a man who was walking with his family, "Where are you going?" The man replied, "I don't know, just heading to Saigon."
We arrived at my older sister Huong's house late that afternoon. As soon as we got inside, my father asked her: "Where is Kieu?" Kieu was my cousin, a first lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Air Force pilot who flew C-47 transport aircraft. Huong replied, "He stopped by this morning riding his motorcycle with another South Vietnamese Air Force pilot. They both were in their pilot's uniform. Kieu told me that they had missed the last flight of the South Vietnamese Air Force evacuating Air Force personnel to Thailand that morning at 9 a.m. He told me that he and his friend would go out and find out what was going on and come back to let us know." He never returned. That was the last time Huong saw him.
Kieu's mom never heard anything from him again. Looking back, the only answer I have is that Kieu and his friend were gunned down by the Viet Cong in the streets of Saigon, in all the chaos. Also, in that late afternoon, I saw a group of young South Vietnamese soldiers who stripped off their military uniforms right on the street, including their boots. They just kept their shorts on.
Two days later, on April 29, just as the sun cast its last rays on Saigon for that day, Duong Van Minh announced over national radio and television networks for all South Vietnamese troops to surrender unconditionally to the communist government. I remembered it was the darkest moment in my life. Certainly, it was the darkest moment for Vietnam.
That night, all of Saigon went dark because nobody went to work. Every office and facility was abandoned by its employees. Everyone was trying to find their family and do whatever they thought was the right thing for them at that time. All my father could do was to go outside the house with a radio in his hand, get together with some neighbors, and listen to the BBC station broadcasting in Vietnamese from London, to try to understand what was going on. Occasionally, he switched to the Voice of America (VOA) station which was broadcasting in Vietnamese from Washington, DC.
On the morning of April 30, our parents decided that we should return to our father's army base. We headed out of Huong's house and got to the base before noon. My father went to his office to find out what was happening. He soon learned that his long-awaited pension check would never come, because the communist had won the war.
I still remember the afternoon my father came home to let my mom know the bad news. It was around 2 p.m. on May 1, one day after the communist took over the entire Vietnam, and we were still living in my father's army base in Govap, Saigon. My mother cried like a baby the entire afternoon after she learned about the bad news. My father didn't say a single word. He just sighed heavily every few minutes. He accepted all the consequences, no matter how hard and difficult they were.
Two days later, the communist regime ordered all of us, the people who lived in the South Vietnamese military bases, to leave the bases within 72 hours, or we would be evicted. A few hours later, I saw the first group of Viet Cong patrolling our base with AK-47 machine guns in their hands.
The next morning, I was curious enough to take a walk to the main gate connecting the military housing where we live and the army base. This gate used to be opened and only closed during business hours. As I approached toward the gate, I realized the gate was permanently closed by concertina wire and the VC had booby-trapped the wire with hand grenades hanging on the wires. I decided to walk up close, to see whether or not they were real grenades. When I was about three feet away from the wire, I realized they were indeed real and I saw a VC guard with AK-47 in his hand only a few feet away on the other side of the wire. He didn't pay attention to me, probably because I looked like a little kid at the time.
I looked in the opposite direction toward the housing area. I saw a handful of South Vietnamese officers and soldiers from my father's unit standing behind the brushes in front of some houses. I walked toward them and recognized a few of the men. They had on shorts but were shirtless. As I walked up to them, they pulled me off to the side and told me, "You are stupid!!! You are crazy, that VC could have killed you." That afternoon, my parents moved us back to Huong's house in Phu Nhuan, Saigon.
The following week the communist government started to show a documentary film of Dien Bien Phu on national television. For those who are not familiar with the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French Army unit had chosen the valley of Dien Bien Phu as their base, because it is surrounded on three sides by high and dangerous mountains. The French troops thought they only needed to guard one direction, the only entrance into this valley.
I guess the French military logic was that the Viet Minh (Vietnamese communist soldiers) didn't have manpower and technology to climb over these high and dangerous mountains to attack them. The French were only partially correct. The Viet Minh at that time didn't have long range artillery to fire artillery shells over these giant mountains to attack the French, nor did they have any aircraft to attack the French.
As a result, the French assumed they were protected by this natural terrain. I was amazed to see this real black & white documentary film showing the Vietcong using ropes to pull 105mm howitzers. Men pushed these guns up the hills and through the thick jungle until the guns were situated near the top of these mountains surrounding the French. The documentary film showed how sometimes the ropes would slip or break, sending the howitzer crashing downward, running over men who were pushing the gun from behind. At other locations, the VCs pulling the ropes were also helped by elephants pulling the guns uphill.
While this was going on, other groups of Vietcong were using digging machines to dig tunnels through the mountaintops at selected locations to shelter and hide these big guns once they got to these locations. Then there were other groups of VCs (mostly females), whose job was to hand-carry the howitzer shells up the mountains to these tunnels. The video showed how determined the Vietcong were to situate themselves at a vantage point in order to defeat the French.
Altogether, the Vietcong were working like an ant colony in the thick jungle. The peak of the operation happened at night. The French on the other side of the mountain never knew what was going on. I remember thinking to myself that it would take the Vietcong months to complete the task, before they could get ready for an attack. When they finally had everything they needed to attack the French troops, the order to attack was given. The Vietcong pushed open the well-camouflaged covers of these tunnels and fired their big guns down into the valley where the French troops were stationed. After seeing this documentary film, I understood why the French troops got defeated badly at Dien Bien Phu.
FARMING IN CAM DUONG VILLAGE
The following month, my parents learned from their friends that the communist government was giving away jungle land at Cam Duong village, Long Khanh Province, which is about 80 kilometers northeast of Saigon. My parents took Duc and me to apply for this program.
Each family was given approximately 2 acres of jungle land per person to turn into farmland. I will never forget the day we arrived to accept our land. It was approximately 12:30 p.m. After the local government official measured and marked our portion of the land, my father immediately took a jungle knife, went to the surrounding trees, and chopped off big tree limbs to build our first house before nightfall.
Duc and I followed our father to help and do whatever he told us to do. We had to carry these tree limbs to the exact location he indicated to build the house. Everything was hard labor. We very quickly learned the value of our own labor. The next morning, Duc and I were amazed by all the different kinds of animal footprints around our new and hastily built house.
We soon learned to distinguish wild animal footprints and what animal they belonged to. We continued to improve our house until we felt comfortable enough to live in it. In order to supply meat for the family, my father taught us to make bamboo traps to catch wild animals, mainly birds and squirrels. We also had to go to a creek to fish and get water, but this required walking 15 miles in steep-sloped jungle terrain, because the creek was at the bottom of the valley. The most difficult part was carrying buckets filled with water and walking up the mountain in slippery and difficult jungle terrain, all while barefoot.
The following year, I started to notice the communist soldiers, armed with AK-47s, guarding a large group of former South Vietnamese soldiers leading, them from their camp to a remote location, walking through the jungle and crossing near our land. These soldiers were looking and gathering tree branches and carry them back to their camp for cooking. I noticed they used only their bare hands to break the wood, which is very difficult because most of it was too big to be broken by hand.
Once, one of these men walked up to me and asked to borrow my jungle knife. He looked so happy as he talked to me, because he knew we were people from the south and not from the north. I didn't know what to say, because in my family, we could only afford one jungle knife per person, and it would cost a lot of money to replace one. So I replied that I couldn't let him borrow my knife. He still had a big smile on his face as he walked back to formation. To this day, I will never forget his face. I realized he was so happy to just be in the presence of someone from South Vietnam.
After two years of hard laboring, we were able to make a nice farm out of our jungle land. However, soon afterwards, the local communist government announced a new government program to plant rubber trees on this land and turn the whole area into a government-owned rubber plantation.
The communist regime then confiscated all farm land and ordered all farmers to relocate into a government's cantonment, where housing was laid out in duplex housing complexes. Two families lived in one house divided only by a thin bamboo wall. I was able to hear my neighbor's snoring every night, and I could easily peep through the cracks in the bamboo wall to see my neighbor on the other side of the wall.
I soon learned that this is the communists' favorite tactic to exercise to control people control: create a system where everyone can easily overhear or observe others going about their daily conversations and activities.
Farmers had to build their own homes. The communist regime did not compensate or assist in any way. After the duplex houses were built, farmers now had to walk between 5 to 10 miles to go back to what was once their farmland, depending where their farm used to be, and cultivate the what crops they grew between the government's rubber plants. The maximum time for cultivation between the rubber plants was three years. That was when the rubber trees reach their full height, thus preventing any crop harvesting activity between them.
Soon afterwards, the communist regime ordered at least one member from each household to work for the government-owned rubber plantation. The salary paid by the communist regime was not enough to feed one person on a daily basis. My brother Duc had to work for the rubber plantation. I came to understand why the communist government gave away this jungle land to people. They did that to get the land developed for free and they ended up reaping the benefits in the end.
Every year, when the harvest was completed, the government ordered all villagers to sell their newly harvested rice and other crops to the communist government at a very dirt-cheap price. The government allowed each family to keep only a very minimal amount of rice and other crops per person per year. Government patrols came down to each house in the village and inspected what food and crops each household had, based on their headcounts.
The purpose was not to have the people store enough rice and food to feed themselves, but to keep them constantly hungry and looking for other means of obtaining food, so they would be too occupied or too weak to think about rising up against the government.
I think this is the principal failure of communism. After the villagers knew that they couldn't keep enough rice and other crops to feed themselves and their families for the entire year, people started to cultivate fewer crops, because they realized that the more they labored to grow crops, the more they would have to sell their crop at a dirt-cheap price to the communist government. This was barely better than having communist soldiers actually come to people's homes and confiscating their crops and property.
REVOLT AGAINST THE COMMUNIST REGIME
In 1978, my father came home from the farm one evening and whispered to my mom, Duc and myself that he had met a former South Vietnamese soldier who secretly informed him and other farmers who were former South Vietnamese soldiers that he was a member of the South Vietnamese guerrilla forces. He said that his commander sent him and other members like him to different villages to recruit and establish local forces. The plan sounded too good to be true. It fit with everything we had been dreaming about. All the farmers who were former South Vietnamese soldiers believed this man immediately.
The plan called for them to establish a local force at each village and identifying one helicopter landing zone, so that three months later, when the "D-Day" came, the United Nation and U.S. forces would arrive in helicopters and land at each village to attack the communist government.
The local force already in placed would receive minimal training from the U.S., and UN soldiers to take over the task of maintaining security to protect the village. U.S. and UN forces would move on to the next area, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, we all were so happy to hear this plan and we started to anxiously await "D Day".
Soon, the secret groups were established, and they even made special military ID cards for each member with the title that that person would like to hold, based on the person's experience and education in the South Vietnamese Army. They were told to keep their military ID card in a secret place until "D-Day" came.
About one week before the planned "D-Day", communist soldiers drove their military jeeps to the houses where these secret members lived, entered each house and arrested the secret military member, after reading a charge of being a traitor. Then they blind folded and handcuffed the person, and put him in the back seat of the jeep and went on to the next house. This went on for several days, each day after 9 p.m. After one week, the communists were able to arrest all members of this secret group.
Needless to say, D-Day never came. During the week, the communist radio stations throughout the country constantly broadcasted the news that the communist government had discovered a big plot involving traitors who conspired to rise against the communist government. The communist radio station boasted that the regime had arrested thousands of members from these secret military organizations throughout the country, mostly from central to southern parts of Vietnam.
After hearing this, I was convinced that the whole D-Day plan was a setup by the communist government to arrest all of those who were willing and able to assist any guerrilla uprising against the communist government in the future. Communist countries are well known for this kind of strategy. They are willing to kill anyone who even has the slightest thought to go against the government. Most the men arrested ranged from 20 to 55 years of age, the most capable age group to fight against the government. I believe that the only reason my father wasn't arrested was because he was 61 years old at that time, and he was thought to be too old and too weak to be a militant.
About three months later, while working on our farm in the late afternoon around 4 p.m., I heard a series of small arms fire echoing from the mountain in Long Khanh Province. The fighting was so intense and lasted for several hours, until well after the sunset. This was a reminder that the so-called South Vietnamese guerrillas were still alive and fighting.
After the fall of Saigon, we heard that an entire South Vietnamese infantry division that was defending Long Khanh at the time didn't surrender. They instead withdrew to the jungle in the mountain and began their guerrilla warfare. However, I realized that without any support from the people and outside sources, I wasn't sure how long they would be able to survive in the jungle. Malaria alone could wipe out most of them without proper medicine.
PLANS FOR ESCAPE TO FREEDOM
After laboring for five years on our family farm, trying to make a living and to feed our family, Thanh was able to find a man who was trying to organize a secret trip to escape out of Vietnam for freedom. Thanh immediately let my mom know about this and gave her the man's contact information.
My mom was able to pay for her three sons, Thanh, Duc and myself, seats on a tiny and unseaworthy boat which would participate in a secret and dangerous mission--evade the communist coast guard patrol boats and escape the country to freedom. We heard many stories about the "boat people." Many people made the journey to find freedom, but many more people died at sea or were captured by the communist police and died in prison. Some people were shot by the communists at sea or on the beach while attempting to board their boats.
My mom told us that the organizer said that the best time to escape by small boat out of Vietnam was from January to March, because the Pacific Ocean is normally very calm during this time of the year. That was why he planned to escape right after Christmas of 1979.
It was the last week of December, 1979 when my mom took Duc and me to the southernmost province in South Vietnam, Rich Gina. Thanh was working in Saigon. He went by himself and met us at the organizer's house. Late that night, we all met together at the house of the trip organizer. I figured he collected a lot of gold pieces from his clients who paid him in order to join the trip. The house was a typical thatched house right next to a big lake that connected to a big river, which in turn, connected to the ocean. Behind the house in the lake and under the dim light of the less-than-full moon, I saw a few, tiny wooden boats docked behind the house.
Soon after, I met Duc and Thanh inside the house. We were escorted to the rear of the house and led onto one of the tiny wooden boats. We were told to lie down on the floor of the boat. The sides were about 5 inches higher than my face when I lay down. Then the guide left us and went back inside the house.
Thanh, Duc, and I were soon being eaten alive by millions of hungry mosquitoes from the lake. About ten minutes later, I heard a motorboat in the distance approaching our boat. Soon, I saw the searchlights. I knew it belonged to the communist coast guard boat. Then the beams of the searchlight went across our boat as we held our breaths and kept our bodies as close to the bottom of the boat as possible. Fortunately, the communist coast guards did not see us and left the area. About fifteen minutes later, the guide showed up and led us into the house again. That was our first failed attempt to board our boat.
The next morning my brothers and I met our mom at the house. The organizer put us in a car and took us to a marketplace, which was also a docking area for boats. We and the others attempting to escape were told to dress in dirty clothes and try to blend in as dock workers, to avoid being detected by local people who would most likely notify the communist police. We were dropped off in small groups of two and four at different places, in order to avoid being found out by the local people. It was an extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible task.
My mom wanted to see all three of us get onto the boat before she went home, to make sure we were fine. Therefore, she stood near us, while we all pretended not to know each another. While we were standing there, an old lady was selling food right next to where I stood. I overheard her telling a young female customer, "These people came from Saigon to try to escape by boat." When I heard this, I looked to my mom. She was about 15 feet away from me and I was sure she also overheard the conversation. We didn't know what to do or say. We only could slightly nod to one another, silently acknowledging that we had heard the comments.
After about five hours standing at the market, nothing happened. We were then told to move again before the sun set that evening. My mom knew that it had become too dangerous for her to see us off, so she left and went back home. This was our second failed attempt to escape.
That evening, the organizer took all of us, one small group at a time, to another quiet beach and told us to walk to a designated location a few miles away. We walked in groups of two and four at a time, about 500 feet apart, and pretended that we did not know each other. While my brothers and I walked, we were followed and approached by a middle-aged man. He came to us and said loudly, "I knew you are trying to escape the country. Why don't you give me all your money and all your other things. You won't need them anyway. Otherwise, I'll call the communist police."
I told him that we did not have any money. The guy kept following us and repeated the same demand. We didn't know what to do, so I finally said to the man in an attempt to make him go away from us, "We don't have any money or valuables with us. Why don't you go to the groups behind us. They probably have something for you." This time, the guy left us and went to the groups behind us. This was our third failed attempt.
Late that night, a little after midnight, the organizer took all of us to his house again and we waited until the morning. While at his house Duc, Thanh and I had our asses chewed off by one of the men from the groups behind us. They had learned that we told the man who was begging us for money to go to them instead.
The next morning around 6 a.m., on December 28, 1979, we were led to a port to catch a ferry to one of the islands. It was about a two -hour boat ride from the mainland. Again, we were disguised as local people on their daily business, and we pretended that we didn't know one another.
Our entire group of 43 people boarded two ferries. About 9 a.m., our group got to the island and we quickly dispersed into groups of two and three people in this marketplace. It was another long day of waiting. By about 2 p.m. we were starving, because we didn't even have anything to eat in the morning.
Then I saw the organizer approaching and he was carrying a long banana branch which had about fifteen bunches of the giant banana. Three of those bananas would fill my stomach. He looked around and recognized his group. He then dropped the banana branch on the ground at the center of the group and left. Then the people in the group, one by one came to rip bananas off the bunches. We went back to our positions to eat. Within five minutes, the whole banana branch was gone. I found it so funny but couldn't think why I should laugh or smile at this, considering the danger around us at that time.
By 6 p.m., we still did not see our escape boat and we were really worried. Thanh asked the ferry operator for its schedule and found out that the last ferry to leave this island was at 7 p.m. That meant if our boat didn't come for us by 7 p.m., we would be stranded on this island. The communist coast guards would be able to arrest us, because people who didn't live here came to the island only during the day for the village market. No one was allowed to stay overnight.
About ten minutes before the last ferry of the day was to leave the island, we were told to board a tiny boat which had just pulled up. From this boat, we would be transferred to a bigger boat to finally begin our journey across the Pacific Ocean. We were so happy that our boat had finally showed up. After about one hour, we passed another small island, and I saw another boat not much bigger than the boat we were on. The only difference was that the new boat had a cover. We then transferred onto the bigger boat.
ESCAPE INTO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
It was about 8:30 p.m. when I climbed onto the bigger boat. It was so dark I could not see anything at all. When we were all inside the bigger boat, I heard a man's voice to my right. He whispered to the guy next to him, "If you resist or make noise, I'll throw you into the ocean!" The other man replied, "I'm cooperating. Please untie me and remove my blindfold, I'm hurting."
After my eyes became used to the dark, I looked to my right. I could make out the outline of a man sitting against the wall of the boat with his hands tied behind his back and his eyes blindfolded. Two men sitting on either side of him were trying to control him. About fifteen minutes later, as the boat was speeding toward the ocean, the two men finally untied him and removed his blindfold. Later on, I learned that this man owned the boat we were using to escape. His long-time friend, the organizer of this group, had pirated his boat and forced him to go along with the group, against his will.
After traveling for about one hour, the men who were piloting the boat asked for a volunteer to go down to the engine chamber of the boat and use an empty can to bail water that had flooded the engine room. No one responded to their request. Finally, one of them said with a desperate voice that if nobody did this job, the boat would sink and we would all drown.
Immediately, I volunteered for the job. In the darkness of the night, I realized that the floor of the boat was full of people. Even in my bare feet, I couldn't walk between them. I had to climb to the side of the boat and use my hands to grab the girders supporting the boat's roof, then swing from one girder to another, until I made my way to the rear of the boat.
The boat was about 35 feet long, 10 feet wide, and the cover was about 6 feet high, yet there were 43 people on this boat. People were sitting on the floor of the boat for the whole journey. They were leaning against each other's back to sleep and rest. Nobody had room to lie down. Nobody knew how long this journey would be. We only knew that we were trying to go to Thailand, because that was the shortest route for us to reach a refugee camp. Once I got to the rear of the boat, the men showed me a small opening, with just barely enough room for one small person to go down. I got down and saw the engine was running.
The floor was extremely slippery, and water was several inches above my ankles. The chamber was filthy. I could see under the moonlight reflected on the thin layer of oil on top of the water. Needless to say, the chamber was filled with engine oil gas, and I could hardly breathe. When I squatted down, my face was only 12 inches from the spinning wheel of the engine.
The men gave me an empty metal can and I started taking the water out of the engine chamber. About half an hour later, I was almost finished and ready to climb back up, when a big wave crashed into the side of the boat and made it lean heavily to one side. My body was thrown toward the engine. I leaned on my back and grabbed the walls of the engine room to keep my body from sliding toward the engine. But the floor was so slippery, and my right foot started sliding toward the spinning wheel. Immediately, I heard a quick chucking noise and a third of my second toe on my right foot was turned into pulp by the spinning wheel. It was like pushing my toe onto the spinning, sandblasting machine. In a split second, one knuckle of my second toe was gone.
I raised my right foot and saw the white bone of my toe for a few seconds, before it was covered with blood. Then I climbed out of the engine chamber and asked for a piece of fabric to cover the wounded toe. After my repeated pleas, somebody finally gave me a small piece of old fabric mosquito net. I used it to cover my wound. I could feel that my toe was bleeding quite a bit the whole night before it finally stopped. From then on, I didn't know who kept the engine chamber from flooding, because I couldn't do it anymore.
The next day, around noon, the pilot told me that we were in international waters. We no longer had to worry about the communist coast guard. I asked the pilot how he knew that we are in international waters. He pointed and said that when the ocean water is black, that means we are in international waters. I looked down to the water and it was true. The water was no longer blue but black. I looked back at the direction where we just came from. I saw the water in that direction was blue, but from this point on, to the other side of the horizon, the water was black. So the pilot must be right, I thought. I guessed that the ocean floor is so deep here that it made the ocean water black.
Then Thanh and other guys on the boat found a piece of white fabric. They tied it on a long wooden stick and stood it up as a sign of S.O.S. Immediately, we saw on the horizon, a big ship rushing toward our boat. The ship was rushing toward our boat with such speed that it made us doubt whether the ship was really rushing to help us. We realized they may be Thai pirates that we heard so many horrible stories about.
We then warned everybody on our boat that we might be robbed by Thai pirates. All of the women on our boat were terrified, because they had heard so many stories about Thai pirates raping women, kidnapping them, or holding them hostage on their ships as sex slaves. And then, when they were tired of these women, the pirates would sell them to prostitution rings in Bangkok for money.
The women on our boat found black engine grease and ash and smeared them all over their faces, to make them appear dirty and ugly. I didn't think this would work. As I looked at the faces of some of the young women on our boat with black streaked faces, they looked so funny and seemed even more attractive. Again with the imminent danger we were facing, I couldn't even laugh.
Sure enough when the big commercial fishing boat was within sight from our boat, we saw about 30 young Thai men standing on their sundeck observing our boat. They were dressed only in their underwear. The fishing boat circled around our boat twice. I guess they were trying to see if we had any weapons on board. When they determined that it was safe for them to attack us, they sided their ship along our boat, and these young pirates swung on ropes to board our boat.
Each pirate was armed with a small fishing knife of about three to four inches. Most of the knives were very rusty. I could see these pirates were very amateur. I wasn't impressed with their knives, but I knew that it would be suicidal to resist them, because their ship could easily smash ours into pieces and we would all drown. It was best that we complied with their demands.
First, they conducted a full body search on everyone. I saw the pirates run their hands into the women's undergarments to search for valuables. Some of the pirates knew a few Vietnamese words and they asked the women questions as they were searching. Questions like, "Where do you want to go?" Amazingly, most women answered these questions truthfully by saying, "We want to go to the United States." Other women said, "I want to go to Germany, Australia, France, etc." You name it, they said them all.
I would never have answered any question from these pirates, because I knew they just wanted to rob us. They took all the valuables they found on the boat. They dumped all the containers on the floor to search for valuables. They even dumped out two five-gallon water jugs. The owner had brought a lot of fresh pineapple on board for our food supply. The pirates even chopped some of these pineapples in half to see if we were hiding any valuables inside them.
My mom had given Thanh new jeans and clothes that our older sisters had sent to us from the U.S. The pirates took them all. After the pirates took all of the valuables from us, some of the pirates asked some of the women if they were hungry. I guessed some of these women said yes. I saw the pirates give them a big pot of rice soup and some baked fish for them to eat. A handful of the women and men on our boat ate this soup, only to throw up two minutes later, because our bodies were too empty. These people were trying to eat too much at one time that their bodies couldn't take it.
One young woman on our boat (I learned later that she was on the boat with her fiancé) was smiling too often at the pirates. I guessed she was trying to please them so that they would leave her alone. However, the pirates took it as a sign that she liked them. One pirate grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the front of our boat and tried to push her up to their ship. The young woman now realized what kind of danger she was in. She started crying out loud like a baby while resisting forcefully. She was able to slip away from this pirate's hands and ran back inside the boat. Fortunately, the pirate decided to leave her alone, and they all went back to their ship. The ship then left us and disappeared over the horizon. That was our boat's first pirate attack. After the pirates left, I found out that they had taken our only compass. From then on, our pilot could only rely only on the positions of the sun, the stars, and the moon to continue our journey.
About three hours later, the pilot told us the worst news. Our only engine had broken down and nobody was able to fix it. The only thing we could do now was drift. I remember the pilot told me that he had to make sure that our boat stayed perpendicular with the ocean waves in order to keep it from keeling over. That was why the pilot had to lie down on the roof of the boat all day and all night, with one hand holding the rudder pole to steer the boat, while watching the direction of the waves.
During these days at sea, I realized how big and horrible the ocean could be, especially at night. During the day, I would look out on the horizon. I wasn't able to see a dot of land or tree anywhere. Sometimes, Duc and Thanh pointed out a cargo ship on the horizon, but we knew we had no way to catch their attention. We were too far away. Sometimes, Thanh and some other guys on the boat tried to yell out, while using everything they had on the boat to make loud noise in order to get the attention of these ships, but they did it in vain.
Sometimes at night, I would see beautifully lighted ships on the horizon (later on in the U.S., I found out these were luxury cruise ships). From the horizon, these ships were about the size of my thumb or index finger. I could only look at these beautiful ships on the horizon and wish we could be rescued by them.
One morning, I was sitting at the rear of the boat looking inside, to see how everyone was doing. I saw many people on the floor of the boat holding small plastic bags of green liquid. It looked like soda! I thought to myself, "Somebody brought soda with them and gave to everyone inside. How come they didn't give me one?" Then I saw a man sitting in the middle of the group raising his bag to his mouth and throwing up into the bag. I saw the green liquid come out from his mouth. Then I realized that their bodies were so empty and they threw up their green liquid that was coming from their liver or internal organ. That was not a good sign for them.
Finally, after two days floating on the ocean, one morning around 10 a.m., a cargo ship passed by close enough to see us and tried to communicate with us. When they positioned their ship close enough to our boat, I thought to myself, "Oh! My God!" From our boat, I looked up at their cargo ship and it was so gigantic. It was like looking up to a two or three story tall building. On our boat, only Duc and Thanh could speak some English, so they were yelling out loud, but they couldn't hear us.
The sailors from the commercial ship dropped a rope ladder down to our boat and let Duc and Thanh climb up to their ship to tell them why we were here and where we wanted to go. About an hour later, Thanh and Duc came back down to our boat and told us that the cargo ship was on its way to Singapore. The captain of the ship said Singapore didn't accept refugees at that time. However, they could tow our boat, and when they went by Malaysia, they would let us go and we could land on Malaysia.
Thanh then repeated the instructions from the captain of the commercial ship that all women and children on our boat climb up to the cargo ship, but all men were directed to remain on our boat. After all the women and children from our boat climbed up to the cargo ship, the sailors from the cargo ships threw us a big rope and signaled for us to tie the rope to the front of our boat, so they could tow us behind their ship. I guessed the rope to be about three hundred feet long and the cargo ship was probably running on its lowest gear. However, the speed was still too fast for our little boat. About an hour later, we started to hear cracking sounds coming from all directions on our boat. One of my older brothers tried to signal for the cargo ship to slow down, but nobody saw or heard us.
Thanh was really worried that our boat wouldn't make it through the night, so he found two empty 5-gallon plastic jugs and gave one to me and one to Duc and told us to hold on to them if the boat sank. To be honest, at that time, I wasn't afraid about dying because I had already been so close to death so many times before. I just took the jug to make Thanh happy, and then I put it aside.
That night was the most horrible night for us. At night, the waves are bigger and the ocean is more violent. I heard cracking noise from my boat every second. Sometimes, I felt the boat was tilting so much that I thought we would capsize. Needless to say, we were all soaked by the ocean waves. Thanh, Duc, and other young men on our boat worked hard all night to bail out of our boat. It was a miracle that our boat didn't sink that night.
The next day, around 6 a.m., the cargo ship suddenly stopped. They lowered their rope ladder, and all the women and children climbed back down to our boat. Then they asked Thanh and Duc to climb up to their ship, and I saw the captain point out on to the horizon. Thanh and Duc came back down to our boat, and the cargo ship took off. Thanh pointed to the horizon and I could barely see a tiny speck on the horizon. That is Malaysia, Thanh said to everybody on our boat. The only problem was that the engine was not working, and our boat was still drifting on the ocean. We were not going anywhere.
A few hours later, another miracle happened. The pilot was able to fix the engine on our boat! We immediately directed our boat toward that tiny speck. It took us a whole day to get out of international waters and into Malaysian waters. We saw more and smaller fishing boats around us. One of them suddenly approached our boat and sided it. A handful of men jumped onto our boat and we suddenly realized that they were pirates.
They searched our boat but didn't do body searches like the first group of pirates. They were disappointed that they couldn't find any valuables. I was sure they were Malaysian fishermen, and I was not as scared as I was before. They armed themselves with small fishing knives, but I saw one pirate with an iron hook on his right wrist (just like Captain Hook, the Walt Disney character. He beat his hook against the wall of our boat, breaking a big piece of wood.
I knew he was angry because he couldn't find any valuables. We couldn't speak Malaysian, nor did these men speak English, so we had no way of telling them that the first group of pirates already took everything from us. After searching for about half an hour, the pirates left us, and we continued our journey.
About 8 p.m., when the darkness of the night once again surrounded us, we saw that we were passing by a small island because of a white neon light on the island. We were happy to see people on the island. However, we saw a few men, and they all had long hair and no shirts on, just shorts or pants. They didn't look civilized at all. We were thus afraid to land and kept going. Later on, we found out that small island was Pulau Bidong, the largest Vietnamese refugee camp in Malaysia at that time. The Vietnamese refugees living on there didn't bother to cut their hair, and so they all had very long hair.
About two hours, later we saw a line of trees and mountain terrain and were sure that we were survivors after six days at sea. During that whole time, I only had a few slices of pineapple to eat. I didn't need to drink much water, because the pineapple had so much sugar and water in it. I didn't sleep at all during those six days.
For my wounded toe, every day I took a bowl of ocean water and dipped it into it for a few minutes to prevent infection, and it had worked. It was a miracle that the infection didn't spread to my foot. It's amazing how your body reacts when you are in "survival mode." I didn't feel sleepy nor did I feel hungry. I wanted to stay awake the whole time and to see what happened during our escape. But during this whole time, terrible thoughts filled my mind about the dangers we were facing at sea.
But now knowing that we were going to live as we neared Malaysia, I started to feel "normal" again. But my mind was still wondered, "What if the captain of the commercial ship was wrong and that we were heading back to Vietnam?" "How could we be sure that this was really Malaysia and not Vietnam?" Can you imagine how crazy and stupid we would feel if we found ourselves on the coast of Vietnam again?!!!
While waiting as our boat approached a beach, I saw a young woman on my boat cooking a small pot of rice. She asked me if I would like some. I began to feel hungry but I remembered that the pirates dumped all of our fresh water out. So I asked her where she found water to cook rice. She replied, "I cooked the rice with ocean water!" I never tasted steamed rice cooked in salt water before. So I tried it and put one spoon of rice into my mouth. My God, it was so salty. It was much saltier than if I were to mix table salt into rice itself.
But I didn't have much time to think, because all of a sudden, there was a big bang and the boat shook violently. Then I heard our pilot say, "This is it, we hit the shore! Jump out of the boat and get onto the shore!" This was what we had been waiting for! I jumped out of the boat and into chest-deep water. It didn't take long for everyone from our boat to get on shore.
Some of the men went back to the boat and took everything they could find and brought them back to the shore to build a makeshift shelter for everyone to sleep until the next morning. The next day, around 6 a.m., I was the first one from the group to awaken. I walked toward the beach where the boat was and did not see it anywhere. Where was our boat? I wondered. Then I looked around me, and I saw small pieces of wood all over the beach. I was amazed to learn that our boat had broken up into pieces. It was so worn that it couldn't stand the ocean waves hitting it all night.
Soon everyone woke up and Thanh told five other men to make three teams of two men each, and they went out in three different directions with the hope of contacting the local police and finding out where we were. Again, we hoped that this was not Vietnam but Malaysia, as we had been told. About an hour or two later, one of the teams made contact with Malaysian beach patrol soldiers, and they led the soldiers to our location to begin the admission process to the refugee camp.
After two days and nights camping on the beach under the guard of the Malaysian police, we were admitted to the Pulau Bidong Refugee Camp.
Later, we moved into the United Nations refugee camp at Pulau Bidong, Malaysia. The boat owner, who had been kidnapped onto his own boat that was pirated by the trip organizer, could never be friends with him again. However, the boat owner never filed charge against the organizer. His only regret was that the trip organizer didn't allow him to bring his family along.
I and my two older brothers, Thanh and Duc, contacted our older sister who has been living in Falls Church, Virginia, and asked her to start the paper work to sponsor us to the United States. We stayed at the refugee camp for seven months, before we departed for the United States.
Eleven years later, in November 1991, the rest of my family from Vietnam came to the U.S. under the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) and my family was finally reunited in the US.
THE END
Afterword
On January 2003, my father passed away at the age of 86 in Westminster, California. My mother Xanh Bui, passed away in January 2010 at the age of 87. My oldest brother Thanh now lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and my next oldest brother Duc lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
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