Volume 8, 2008

Kim Chi Le is currently a student at Christopher Newport University.   She would like to thank Professor Phillip Hamilton of the CNU Department of History, who assisted her in the production of this paper.

I LEARNED ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY and Vietnamese history over the years, but many things have always been mixed up in my mind.  And I was never sure who was right and who was wrong; but I can say now that many people like me only wanted to live peacefully.  Others wanted, however, to be powerful and rich.  I think these reasons led to the war.

I am Vietnamese and was born there in January 1939.  My mother asked a Buddhist priest to pray that her baby would be a boy.  She already had sons, but knew that girls were not valued in Oriental culture.  The priest offered no encouragement, saying he believed she was carrying a girl. After returning home, my mother had a vision of a huge green dragon in her yard.  Dragons are regarded as male symbols.  As a result, my mother deeply believed she carried a boy, and she told her priest of this.  That will not happen, he said gently. You will bear a daughter, but I can promise you now that she will be a Good Girl.

After my birth, my parents told me about the some of the important wars that had happened throughout Viet-Nam's history.  Before I was born, there were numerous wars with China, with Cambodia, with the country of Chiem-Thanh as well as a Vietnamese civil war.  When I just six years old, a war with France began and conflicts would continue in my country until 1975.

The War with France:

The war began because the French had taken over my country as a colony over a hundred years beforehand.  Yet when the fighting started in 1945, I was six years old.  I saw many things changing quickly and I asked my parents, What's going on?  They did not answer, but their faces told me that they were very worried.  The war eventually came to my village, so my parents gathered all of their things, and we escaped by boat to a large town where my grandparents lived.  During our journey, we saw abandoned boats and dead people floating on the water.  I was scared and thought my parents were scared, too.  Three months later, my parents learned that their house had been destroyed.  My parents were shocked, but they tried to cope. 

After the war began, all the schools closed.   Soon afterwards, my brother asked my parents to let him go to our cousins to borrow some books to read.  He assured them that he would be back in three days, but he never returned.  After a week, my parents and many of their friends went looking for him.  However, they never found him, and everyday our family cried. No one wanted to eat, and we all got sick.  The following year my father was killed on the way to my parents’ house, and my sister was also wounded. 

The Viet-Minh (short for Viet-Nam Doc-Lap Dong-Minh) was a communist organization, but it emphasized moderate reforms and national independence.  In August 1945, when World War II ended and the Japanese surrendered, Viet-Minh forces rose throughout the country and declared the establishment of an independent republic.  From 1945 to 1952, Viet-Minh soldiers often used our house (which my grandparents had built) and lived with us.  My mother had to supply food for them to cook. 

During these years, the French fought against the Viet-Minh, and I heard and saw many tragedies in my neighborhood.  For example, a Viet-Minh soldier was wounded right in front of me during one fight.  He cried out to a fellow soldier for help.  But when he came over, they were both shot and killed right in front of me.  The noises of gunshots frightened me nearly out of my mind.  I did not know what to do.   So I lay in a shell-hole beside the road with a girl friend.  I closed my eyes and waited.  About four hours later, Viet-Minh soldiers came over and told us that the battle was over.  On the way home, I saw people I had known who had died in the fighting as well as houses that had been destroyed.  The sights were terrible.  My girlfriend eventually found her home, and I walked further on alone until my sister found me.  We held each other tightly but could not say a word.  Nor could we cry either.  I did not know what to make of what I had experienced.  Many such events happened during these years, but I try to forget them.

In 1952, the French undertook a large offensive near my village. 

During their operations, they took over our house and about a hundred soldiers lived there.  As a result, our family had to evacuate to Long-Xuyen province in the Mekong Delta region. My mother built a small house there and ran a small business to take care of her seven children as well as four nephews and two nieces. She was a widow, but she was very strong and intelligent. She was the first lady in our city who went to college and became a schoolteacher. In fact, she worked until we were all grown and independent. Afterwards, she became a Buddhist nun and remained one until she passed away. She later told us: The wars were terrible. They ruined every thing; they turned our lives upside down.  If I had known this, I would have become a nun before I got married.

In 1954, French forces were defeated by the Viet-Minh at Dien Bien Phu in northern Viet-Nam; soon afterwards, the French agreed to end the war. At the peace conference held in Geneva, negotiators for the two sides accepted an interim compromise.

They divided Viet-Nam at the 17^th parallel, with the Viet-Minh in the North and the French and their Vietnamese supporters in the South. To avoid permanent partition, a political protocol was drawn up, calling for national elections within two years to reunify the country.

I was initially very happy to wait for the election between Ho-chi-Minh of North Viet-Nam and Bao-Dai of South Viet-Nam, but in 1956 no elections were held.  Then a strange figure named Ngo-Dinh-Diem appeared and gained control of South Viet-Nam. 

Diem argued that the North Vietnamese government was Communist and that it wanted to take South Viet-Nam by force.  He used the Americans to help gain control of South Viet-Nam and prevented national elections.  He was also a Catholic and expected everyone else to become Catholic.  I will never forget his funny secret rule, “If you want to have a good job, you have to became a Catholic.

As a result of his attitudes, many oppressive actions occurred over the years to Buddhist monks and nuns.  In 1963, the monk Thich-Quang-Duc committed the act of self-immolation at the corner of Phan-dinh-Phung & Le van-Duyet Streets of Saigon in front of the Cambodian Embassy in order to draw attention to the oppression Buddhists faced.

In the fall of 1963, Diem was overthrown and killed in a coup launched by his own generals.  Three weeks later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  When Lyndon Johnson became President of the United States, he had misgivings about sending American troops to Viet-Nam. I don't see that we can ever hope to get out of there once we are committed, he remarked to one senator in 1964.  But when Communist Viet-Cong guerrilla fighters attacked an American air base in South Viet-Nam in February 1965, Johnson introduced hundreds of thousands of American ground troops into the war.

By 1968, the number of American troops in Viet-Nam had grown to 500,000 men, and the war had become increasingly brutal.  American planes dropped more tons of bombs on Viet-Nam than all sides had used in World War II. They spread Agent Orange that destroyed forests in order to deprive the Viet-Cong of hiding places, and they dropped bombs filled with napalm on suspected enemy villages.  The U.S. Army pursued Viet-Cong and North Viet-Nam forces in search and destroy missions, but these missions often did not distinguish between combatants and civilians.  Recalling these events is still very difficult for me.  I felt sorry for Vietnamese people, including me! ! !  Indeed, I witnessed many, many terrible events during these years! ! !   Bombs often dropped in my neighborhood during nighttime attacks and some families were completely wiped out.  Other people were wounded and they cried and shouted.  Those of us who survived trembled night after night.

Indeed, we worried we would not live for another hour.

Tet offensive (Jan. 30, 1968):

In January 1968, Ho-Chi-Minh and the Viet Cong attacked South Viet-Nam during the Tet holiday, copying a strategy Vietnam's King Nguyen-Hue employed against China in 1785.   At that time, I was employed at the Ministry of the Interior in the South Vietnamese government.  My husband, Thai-Van Khanh, was trained for military duty in the United States, and he served as an interpreter for meetings between Americans and South Vietnamese officials when they conferred on U.S. base construction projects.

Right before the offensive, I had left Saigon to go to my hometown to visit my mother.  The next morning, I turned on the radio and heard the reporter say: We are at war; all the military and civil services employees must present themselves to the nearest government office immediately.   Each worker must then return to his or her office or face severe discipline.

I was shocked. Returning to Saigon with my year-old-daughter was almost impossible because bridges were destroyed, and roads were blocked by soldiers who had been ordered not to let anyone pass.  But I had to go.  About half-way to Saigon, loud gunfire made my daughter cry and made me more frightened.  Thus, I could not go further.   But there were no houses nearby for shelter and we had no food and drink for a whole day.  At one point, I saw a boat nearby in the water, so I held my daughter tightly and ran. I jumped onto that boat and lay down there. My daughter was scared and cried most of the time. She held me tightly, and when she was too tired, she slept on my breast.  Luckily, the owner of the boat gave us some food and drink.

Finally, I reached Saigon on a South Vietnamese naval ship, which was meant to take soldiers and civil servants back to their jobs.  While onboard, I heard the news that the neighborhood where I lived had been completely destroyed and nobody had survived.  I held my daughter along with a little bag that contained our few necessities.  We came to my father in-law's house, and the whole family was surprised to see us. Then my brother in-law gave us a ride to our home, which was still standing.  Several days later some of my husband's friends came to visit and one of them told us: "I had an order to destroy this area completely, but I remembered your family lived here, and then I saved your place."  I did not know if that was true or not, but I did appreciate them and thanked God and Buddha.

American force to withdraw from Viet-Nam:

In 1975, the Americans announced they were going to withdraw completely from South Viet-Nam.  We were all surprised.  Until then, I did not understand how America, the most powerful nation in the world, had lost a war in a small country like Viet-Nam.  Nobody really knew about Viet-Nam before the French surrendered at Dien-Bien-Phu in 1954.  The people in South Viet-Nam were disappointed when they learned about the U.S. pull out.  It was shameful for us.  We felt like orphaned children whose parents had thrown them out onto the road.  The Vietnamese Communists, however, were proud of themselves. They said, "We had a good reason to fight to protect our country. We should win. They were the invaders and they should have lost. The small ant bit the big elephant and made the big elephant shout loudly.

Communist victory in April 30, 1975:

Several months before the Americans left, our supervisors in the government had told us to make a list of family members to evacuate to the United States.  Each person had to be a direct relative with a South Vietnamese government employee and in good health.  We all prepared our lists, but there was not enough time to get everything in order.  Then, as the Communists approached, everything turned chaotic.   For instance, supervisors simply abandoned their jobs and their employees. My top supervisor was General Tran Thien Khiem, South Vietnam's Prime Minister and Defense Minister.  He also left his post without telling anyone in our office.  As a result, we were all forced to fend for ourselves and most of us did not get out.  On April 30, therefore, I waited in Saigon for news.  Then I heard on the radio that Saigon had fallen and South Viet-Nam had lost the war! ! !  I opened my window and saw North Vietnamese soldiers with big bags on their backs and with flags on top of their guns as they marched in a long row down the street.  I was heart-broken.  I stayed home, but then my former eleventh-grade teacher, Professor Tran-Thuong-Thu, knocked on my door.  I opened it and invited him in.  He said, "Don't worry, I will protect you with my life; don't do any thing until I say so.  The reason my teacher could help me was that he had been a Communist and for a time had been held in a South Vietnamese jail.  Along with a friend who was a South Vietnamese army captain, we bailed him out of jail.  Thus, in 1975, he said, "Now I can repay your help in getting me out when I was in jail."  Then he brought me many essential supplies on which to survive.

After their victory, however, the Communist authorities always closely watched my husband and me, and they treated us like enemies.  So I realized we couldn't live with them any longer.  Indeed, large numbers of Vietnamese felt they had to escape.  Therefore, we decided to leave, but to go separately, each with some of our children, and by different routes in order to not attract attention to ourselves.  My-Hanh and Quoc-Anh accompanied me, while my twins and their younger sister, My-Duyen, were to leave with their father, Khanh.

Escape and Arrival in America

My passage to freedom was very difficult.  My two children and I escaped from Vietnam in May 1979, leaving by a tiny boat crammed with other refugees seeking to escape.  We were trying to reach Malaysia and were on the open seas of the Pacific for seven days.  Many times our boat was swamped by the rough seas.  It was also boarded four times by pirates, who stole gold, clothing, and other valuables.  (Ironically, because their motive was thievery rather than political, the pirates compensated us with food, cigarettes, water and gasoline!).  Exhausted, we finally reached the coast of Malaysia. Then I stayed in a refugee camp in Indonesia with my two children for almost a year.  We moved from camp to camp, one was on Indonesia's Kuku island while two others were located on Galang Island and Malaysia  for interviews and health check-ups. We always had to fill out paperwork.  Then, finally, we were permitted to take an airplane to the United States.   

On March 25, 1980, my 11-year-old daughter and my 6-year-old son arrived in Newport News, Virginia, and I have lived there ever since.  Like most new refugees, we were completely dependent upon churches and government resources to survive.  At first, I received assistance from the federal government as well as from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, located in Newport News.  However, despite my lack of English language skills, I was ready and willing to accept any possible employment.  Because I worked as an accountant in South Viet-Nam, I thought I could do that in America.  But my English was so poor, I could not handle it.  Therefore, I attended Kees College and took some accounting classes.  Meanwhile, I also did a variety of jobs involving sewing, manufacturing, and cooking in order to make ends meet.

Back in Viet-Nam, however, the situation for Khanh and my three other children was very bad.  Several times they tried to escape, but each attempt was unsuccessful.  Then during the last escape, the twins disappeared, and we never heard from or saw them again.   At the same time, Khanh's health began to decline.  Because he had been a civil engineer and inspector for the South Vietnamese government, he had managed many construction jobs throughout the country.  However, all the dirt and asbestos he was exposed to affected his lungs.  Serious health problems then started when his emphysema and asthma went untreated.  For many years, I learned of his declining health by letter, which was our only communication.

While waiting for my husband, I was determined to build a good life for my children in Newport News.  Because I had won the Cook of the Year contest of 1981 (sponsored by the Newport News Daily Press), I decided to start a restaurant business.  I had had no previous experience in such work and so took a job at McDonalds as well as at some other restaurants, hoping to learn from observation.  After a while, I rented a Victorian house near the Newport News Shipyards.  My children and I lived upstairs and the restaurant was located downstairs.  There was, however, little space for customers inside the building.  So I served a limited menu of Vietnamese items as take-out orders.  Whenever ships came into the yards for repairs, my new business prospered.  But after they departed, there were few customers.  Moreover, because the area was not very safe for my children, I eventually sold the restaurant and moved to a better neighborhood.

After the restaurant, I volunteered my services to the Newport News Department of Public Welfare to help with accounting matters.  After a time, a position as an accounting technician opened up.  I applied for it and, even though there were over 100 applicants, I was offered the job.  I believe that attending classes at Kees Business College, Thomas Nelson Community College, and Christopher Newport University as well as my experiences in a lawyer's office, in real estate and in accounting provided me with the essential skills.  I worked in the Department of Public Welfare for sixteen years and retired in 2004.  Throughout these years, however, I had to be frugal.  At one time, for instance, I retrieved two discarded televisions sets from the dumpster outside my apartment.  One set had no picture and the other had no sound.  But by putting them together, we were able to enjoy both.  The only downside was that I had to pay double for the electricity!

Over the years, my children advanced rapidly through school, earning honors along the way.  Indeed, their bedroom walls were increasingly decorated with plaques and other records of their scholarly and athletic accomplishments.   After my daughter My-Hanh finished high school, she attended and graduated from Virginia Tech, earning a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering.  She later earned a Master's Degree from Virginia Tech and afterwards took a job with Price-Waterhouse, which soon became IBM .My son, Quoc-Anh Thai, also did very well in school.  He was the valedictorian for his class at Warwick High School in 1991.  After he completed high school, he was accepted by the University of Virginia, where he pursued his pre-medical education, studying biology, psychology as well as philosophy.  He also spent a term in Oxford, England, where he studied human physiology.

During his last year at the University of Virginia, his senior research thesis concerning the functioning of the brain was actually published by the American Medical Association.  Afterwards, Quoc-Anh attended and graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.   Always an enthusiastic student and capable athlete, nothing ever diverted him from his goals in life.  In fact, he worked his way through college by being the guinea pig in various medical research experiments.  Never knowing if he was receiving medicines, viruses, or placebos, Quoc-Anh would always write to me about the luxury of having quiet places to study and of enjoying wonderful meals provided by the hospital.  Luckily, in most experiments, he just received the placebos!

During his four years of medical school, Quoc-Anh received scholarships and grants to conduct research in vascular diseases of the brain. This led to several international scientific publications.   He also spent a term at Adenbrooke's Hospital of Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, to learn about medicine within a nationalized heath care system.  After medical school, he interned in general surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and was eventually appointed an Instructor of Neurosurgery and joined the Neurosurgery Faculty. In 2004, Quoc-Anh spent two weeks in Africa, where he and another physician gave free brain surgeries to ten needy patients who desperately needed treatment.

My husband and daughter join us in America:

          As my children progressed in school, I constantly tried to help my husband and younger daughter get to the United States.  After many years of fruitless efforts, I decided to write a letter to Senator Paul Trible.  He replied and included for me a letter from the State Department of the United States of America stating that, unfortunately, it was the Vietnamese government which established the interview schedule concerning who leaves the country.  Thus, there was nothing that either the State Department or Senator Trible could do for us.

In great frustration and desperation, I asked my sponsors in Newport News, Dr. Addison M. Duval & Mrs. Elsie Duval, to help me write a personal letter to President George H. W. Bush.  I enclosed in it a copy of an essay my son wrote while in high school that explained his grief over being separated from his father at a time when he needed him most.  President Bush and his staff in the White House listened because Khanh was soon notified by Communist Vietnamese authorities that the U.S. government wanted his immediate conveyance to the U.S.  Soon afterwards, my husband and my daughter My-Duyen were flown by air ambulance to Bangkok, with a doctor and nurse in attendance.  After 10 days of hospitalization, medical treatments, and rest in Thailand, Khanh and My-Duyen flew to San Francisco, Washington, DC, and then to Newport News. Although his last flight to Newport News was a short one, my husband was so weak, he had to depart the plane in a wheel chair.  With constant medical attention and drugs, my husband's health improved enough for him to plant a small garden around our house.  He also began to share in the successes of our children.    But unfortunately, he never completely recovered from his illnesses and died on December 30, 1996.

My younger daughter, My-Duyen, spent many years in Vietnam taking care of her father.  Therefore, it seemed to me unrealistic that she would be able to catch up with her Americanized brother and sister.  But she was and is a talented seamstress and tailor. And she continues in that profession today as well as takes care of her three children.  

          Today, I am retired, but remain very active.  In particular, I enroll every semester in classes at Christopher Newport University, taking courses in English, religion, history and philosophy.  I also travel on university trips to historical sites in the U.S. as well as overseas.  Finally, I occasionally go back to Vietnam to see the family and friends I left behind so many years ago. While I always dream of other fields to explore and conquer and while I remain completely committed to my faith, I always try to be -- as that Buddhist Priest predicted to my mother A GOOD GIRL.

© 2008, Department of History, Christopher Newport University | All Rights Reserved