Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004
Flight to Freedom (Aug. 2000 WFD Calendar) http://hr.dop.wa.gov/wfd/freedom.htm
Two State Employees Who Cherish Freedom
[Editor’s Note: Mai Nguyen and Thy Le are employees in the Washington
State Department of Licensing who fled South Vietnam after its fall to
Communism. The articles below tell their stories, in their own words.
They provide the rest of us an opportunity to reflect upon the freedoms
that we take for granted.]
CHANGING WORLDS
by Mai Nguyen
I am a citizen of the United States, but I am a native of Vietnam. I
love Vietnam but I will only go to visit. I would not be welcomed there
because I believe in freedom. It is why my family and I came to America.
The Communists run Vietnam and even though the country is better since
the war, it still does not allow its people to think and be what they
like. I would like to tell you my struggle to get to America.
One day I remember after dinner, my sister came to tell us to go to change
our clothes. I asked her for what and why and she said that we were going
on a vacation. I thought this kind of weird to go this late at 8:00 p.m.
or 9:00 p.m. at night. But my sister said to me that it wasn’t a problem,
we were still going. So, we took off.
We went to a small boat. I asked why we were taking a boat. At that time
she gave me and my brother sleeping pills. She told us we were escaping
Vietnam. I was 14 years old at the time. We left Vietnam, in that small
boat, around January of 1979.
One system as far as getting on the boats would be for one family member
to pay the fees for escape and the rest of the family would hide and then
jump in at the last minute. This would allow them to remain on the boat
without paying the dues. The owners of the boat would be afraid to turn
them out of the boat for fear that they would go to the communists and
tell of the escape. This is what we did because we had no money left to
pay. My sister told us when to jump into the boat and we did what she
said. After we get to America my sister is the support of the family while
we have a chance to go to school and learn. I made a vow then that I would
work hard and help others because of those in America who helped me. I
remember that vow and still try to help all I can for those who need help.
When I got into the boat I saw lots of people already there. It was very
difficult for people to get out of Vietnam like this. We had no identity
papers, no money, no food, no water and only the clothes that we had on.
We could take nothing with us. My sister had family pictures but they
made her throw them away.
There were 150 people on the boat. The boat was about 12 feet long. There
was no room to lay down or stretch. I never forget, in my life, what happened
through this ordeal. It was very scary and worrisome when I knew we were
about to escape and I wondered if we would make it or not. This was the
fourth attempt to escape. The first couple of attempts were futile. We
paid money for the transportation but it never occurred. We were robbed
of our funds! It was a hardship on us. We didn’t have very much to begin
with.
I was very sick on the boat, from lack of water. Of course I was seasick
and that didn’t help. We were on the boat approximately one month. Along
the way three babies would perish and their bodies would be thrown into
the sea. There were no ceremonies to say goodbye to them. The boat just
kept moving. At times I felt my own life was in jeopardy because of my
continued illness. 147 people survived though many were sick and weak
and had no strength but to lay around.
You may not know that Vietnam was so very difficult to leave. This was
home, but the lack of freedom and fear of what might happen made it too
dangerous to stay. We sought freedom in small boats even though we knew
there was a good chance that we would be caught by pirates, who steal
and rape those attempting to escape, whole families sometimes. I lost
many dear friends this way. One day we were rescued from our little boat
by an American ship. Only one person in our boat spoke English. The people
from the American ship fed us and gave us water to drink and they gave
us vitamins. We were very thirsty and hungry but they knew to give us
only a little at a time so we wouldn’t get sicker. Then they took us to
a Malaysia refugee camp. Here was no transportation there for us to move
around and no way for us to make a living. I stayed in the camp approximately
2 years. We lived in tents. While we were in the camp we learned English
every day. The Red Cross supplied us with rations. At times the camp felt
like a prison.
Finally we reached the United States. We were very glad but we were nervous.
We had to learn from scratch, new trades, new language and a new school
with a very different culture. In the beginning I did not venture much
out of our apartment. You must remember how different my new world was
from the one I grew up in. There was still much fear associated with American
people as being similar to those we had escaped from. It was necessary
back in Vietnam to contribute money for everything you did. It didn’t
matter whether it was work, play, or anything. Many things were done under
the table to prevent the government getting their hands in your life.
My brother was put into prison after the Americans evacuated Vietnam in
1975 because he was a soldier who supports the American military. When
he was released from prison he moved in with the family but was very much
afraid of any noises. Prison in Vietnam is a bad thing and many bad things
happened there.
In Vietnam it was not uncommon, after the fall of Saigon, for Communist
soldiers to burst into homes looking for those who had opposed them. They
terrified people, even to the point of pointing guns at family members.
Money was the only thing that would speak to those who invaded our homes.
If you could bribe them everything would be well. If you didn’t bribe
them, they tormented you daily. Everyday necessities would all be done
under the table. We were not allowed to go to the market. Even if you
had money, everything was done in secret.
My husband was a graduate from military school. He was a soldier who
supported the American military. He was imprisoned for 6 years. He made
it out of Vietnam, but he lost all his family. We, his family, are very
precious to him because he has nothing else. I know sometimes he still
fears losing us too. It took 7 attempts for my husband to escape. While
he was imprisoned in Vietnam he had to work 12 to 14 hours a day and he
was put in a bamboo cage at night. The food supply was very meager and
he was fed only once a day with a small portion of rice. It came down
to catching what they could on their own without being caught. Their diet
would consist of rats, snakes and anything they could catch. After being
released from prison he lived on the streets for a few years before escaping.
He very much appreciates what freedoms that America offers.
This is my story, but it is only one of many. We talk about it sometimes
with others who understand our agonies, but we mostly talk about today.
Many people don’t want to remember because then they have to remember
those who could not escape, or those who tried and died. You can never
know the stories of those who were thrown into the ocean. I only escaped
that fate by a day or two, or you wouldn’t know my story either. America
is very important to us, but we think of, and always wish the best for,
our much-loved Vietnam.
MAI STORIES by Mai Nguyen
One day my family went fishing down to Westport [Washington] where we
caught some many fish and crab. This is a first time to go fishing. I
don’t know the rules that said the crab is suppose to be a certain size
and sex when we caught the crab. So, we caught all sizes and both sexes.
We left and took it to the car. I remember that an officer stopped us
and asked for Driver License. He said, “Do you know why I stopped
you? Because I saw you caught the crab. Do you know that it’s the law
here that there is a size and sex limitation?” I said, “No”
and I got a ticket about $500.00.
I am so surprised because in my country we do not have this kind of law.
When I came over here, everyday I am taking the bus to school. One week
later I saw the boy ride a same bus with me. He is giving me a middle
finger. When I came to the United States I do not speak any English. I
think he said to “hello” to me. So, I said “thank you”
to him. After I talked to my friend she said it’s a bad word, that it’s
not nice. I’m so embarrassed that I learned a bad word first. Next day
he did it again then I shaked my head and said, “no! no!”
FREEDOM AND DEATH
by Thy Le
Freedom is such a valuable thing that we can’t buy it. Any day that I
live without freedom, I feel sorrowful and depressed.
Freedom is very precious, important, and it must he present in our lives.
That is the reason that the people always struggle to get freedom. Even
if it demands danger. As I am a Vietnamese, I lived with the Communists
for twenty years. I had a lot of experiences with the Communists, and
I thought that Communism was a terrible system; one system where people
do not have freedom, and they have to do whatever the Communists tell
them.
After April 30, 1975, when the Communists took over the south of Vietnam,
they brought an atmosphere to my country. Some of the lucky people left
Vietnam at the right time. They found freedom in other countries around
the world, but they also had to pay a high price for that. They lost everything
they had. They left Vietnam with nothing on hand, and not knowing where
they would come to, or what would happen to them, except they would have
freedom
The rest of the Vietnamese who were soldiers, business men, public-workers
or even popular citizens, had to leave the city by force of the Communist
to go to the jails, re-education camps or to the uncultivated places where
there was not enough housing, medicine, food, clothing, and it was dangerous.
They worked hard, but they did not have freedom. The Communists controlled
their lives. They always wished for freedom, and they tried to escape
Vietnam to find freedom in other countries. They walked to Thailand or
they went overseas by small boats to Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia,
or Hong Kong. Their trips were very dangerous. There were a lot of threats
from pirates and storms, and many people who could not survive thirst
or hunger died, and their bodies were destroyed in the ocean before they
could find freedom.
In my big family, we had many people who tried to find freedom in other
countries. Some of them their dream came true and they found their freedom,
but some of them were destroyed by the ocean or by other dangers. One
of these Vietnamese who tried to escape Vietnam to find freedom is my
aunt. After the communists took over South Vietnam, she did not want to
work for them, so she tried to escape many times. She told her family,
“love my motherland, my Vietnamese, but I have no choice. I had to
leave Vietnam for freedom, Freedom is always in my head, and I often see
it in my dreams. If I can live just one day in freedom, I will pay anything,
whatever I have, even my body and my soul.” However, after a few
times, she was defeated,and two times she had to go to the jail and be
tormented by the Communists. Nevertheless, she still kept her dream to
find freedom. At last, her dream come true, she came to America in 1978.
After she came to America, she wrote letters for my family when we still
live in Vietnam. She was telling us how she had come to America. She told
us that she would never forget the day she left Vietnam because it was
her most terrible memory.
That was a dark night, cold, and windy. She and twenty-three other friends
left Vietnam in a small boat. They come to the Philippines after four
days. They were very happy and thought that freedom will be near. But
their dream of happiness was never to become a reality, their boat suddenly
stopped working on the fifth day, and there was no mechanic on board to
fix it. Everyone in her boat had the same feeling; they were hopeless
and scared. Some of them cried and prayed to God. They entrusted their
bodies and souls to their Buddha.
Time by time gone, twenty days passed, and their boat still drifted about
in the sea. They were thirsty and hungry; they had to drink seawater and
eat the fresh-fish, or anything they found or caught. They were tired,
sick, worn out and felt that death came near by them. Even then they try
to do whatever they could. At noon of the twentieth day, four of her friends
jumped to the sea when they saw a big ship come near to them. Unfortunately,
the ship did not come to rescue them. They had found a fast death in their
search for freedom. Two days later, another three of her friends jumped
into the sea and died because they were so hopeless, sick, and worn out.
They died slowly and died in their dream for freedom.
The rest of them on the boat looked like dead bodies. They could not
move and waited for death, waited for a big storm, so they could die easier
or the boat could move faster. On the twenty-fifth day in the early morning,
they saw a long beach not far from them. They were happy. They waited,
confused, and tried to do anything they could to make the boat move faster;
they wished for a strong wind that could push their boat to land. In that
happiness, they were still scared and asked themselves what they would
do if that land were Vietnam. They loved freedom and did not want to go
back to Vietnam; they were scared of going to the jail. Finally my aunt
and her friends came to America. Everyone said “Thank God” and
they have had freedom from 1978 to now.
She told us that she loved this country and has freedom in America. She
can go back to school to improve her education. She can choose a way for
her future. Even though she had a hard time in the first few years, but
she likes freedom and love America. She also hopes that Vietnam will change.
Perhaps one day not far off, the Vietnamese will have freedom. She will
go
MY EXPERIENCE by Thy Le
Thinking about my experience reminded me back of my country and my family.
That was the place I had many souvenirs, memories, melancholy, and sorrows,
which I will never forget.
After April 30, 1975, when the Communists took over the South of Vietnam,
they brought a stuffy atmosphere to my country. We lost everything. The
Communists separated my parents.
My father was taken to a re-education camp, a kind of jail, because of
his previous relationship with the U.S. Army. In that time, my mother
was 21 years old. She was really a young mother of three children. My
older brother was four years old, I was two years old, and my younger
sister was just eight months. While my dad was in the jail, my mother
was only one who showed affection to us. We lost everything we had. We
lived with nothing on hand. So, my mother has to handle such a hardship
by herself. She worked hard to support us, prepare food to visit my dad
once a year from the South to the North of Vietnam, and she had to take
care of everything in the household. She early realized that all we needed
was love so she tried to warm up our spirits life.
Day by day, we had to live under the Communist pressure. In addition,
the Communists didn’t allow us to go to school because they had a prejudice
against my dad. They thought my dad had worked for the U.S. so they treated
him like he was crazy. My mother’s heart was hurt so much while she thought
of us. She was worried that we would become uneducated. So we moved to
a wild place called Bau Lam. We hoped that in a new place the people would
not know who we were. We did not have money for our journey except a bicycle.
After one day we came to my grandmother’s house. She gave to us some food
to eat on the way to the new place. The first thing we did was to make
a house by ourselves. We did not have money to buy beds, so we made our
beds from woods of the trees. Our house was made of the leaves from the
coconut’s tree. We had backache after we woke up because we had never
been on wooden beds before. Bau Lam was a small forest there were many
mosquitoes. Sometimes they made us sick. At the time we lived in Bau Lam,
my mother had to sell the bicycle because it was the last money we had,
then we opened a small Café. We hoped that we could earn some money
to buy food. So, we were lucky because many people came to our Café,
and not long after, we saved some money. After five years we planted our
own food, such as corns, beans, bananas, etc…we lived in that way
until we came to America.
My rough time was passed but I was still scarred when I thought about
the past. My stomach was not full when we just came to Bau Lam. We did
not have enough clothes to wear in cold weather. I had to walk to school
every morning about two miles because there was no bus, no car, and no
bicycle at that time. Besides that, the wooden beds made me feel sick
every morning. What scared me the most was the sound in the night from
the forest. So, every night, I never forgot to pray to God to help us
out of the life, because we lived today but we never knew what would happen
next.
Writing about my experience makes me feel very sad about my past. In
our mind, we always loved our motherland but we must leave Vietnam because
we had no choice. For our part, seventeen years of waiting for my family
is enough for a chance at happiness, freedom, and prosperity.
http://hr.dop.wa.gov/wfd/freedom.htm
A Big thanks to Karen Packard, the very supportive supervisor of Mai
and Thy, and to Dee Scharf, the DOL Diversity Committee Chair!
| Subject: FLIGHT TO FREEDOM |