Synopsis
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In 1975, the North won Vietnam’s civil war, and LP’s dad, high ranking in the Southern Army, was imprisoned. The children lost everything, hunted for food, swam to school, and after 7 years, got their father back.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone. My story will bring you back to Vietnam in 1975.
Vietnam went through a 20-year civil war. The North then became a communist regime, and the South want to be a democratic regime. And the North want to capture the South and unite the country under the communist regime. And they did. They invaded the South and successfully overcame the South. And that ended the war in April 30th, 1975.
A couple days after the end of the war, my father was taken to the political prison. He was 31 years old. Six weeks before that, he was a captain in the South Vietnam army. My family at the time lived a prosperous and well respected life.
Every day my dad had a driver who came to pick him up to go to work and drive him home. And sometimes the driver would drive my older sister and I and the whole neighborhood’s kids to our school when they were only two blocks away. And we’d pile into his Jeep and we bang and laugh. We had a wonderful time. My dad often took me to his work, where I saw him in his uniform. And I was like five years old walking along with him, and I felt proud because I saw his troops stand straight, saluted him. He was my world.
Our house was always filled with guests—his relatives, his friends who came to ask him for favors. Because at that time he was like the second highest commander in the city, in the military. And during the, you know, war times, a lot of people want to escape. You know, they don’t want their children to got enlisted. So they should come and ask my dad to took their children under his wing. So that’s why our house was always filled with guests.
And my grandmother, his mom, also often visited us, and I knew that she very proud of him. And every time she came she brought a lot of gifts from her farm, all kinds of farm produce. And then my parents would ask the whole neighborhood came to cook and then serve the whole neighborhood. Like sometimes we had like a hundred people come.
At that time I learned that the people in my blocks or in the city where my dad worked, they were actually the refugees from the North. Like after 1956, the North became the communists, and people afraid so they fled to the South. So at least like a million people from the North fled to the South, and many of them lived in that city that my dad worked.
And the kids in my neighborhood, I saw that many of them didn’t have nice clothes or like they went to school without shoes. So that’s why I asked my dad, you know, “Why the kids they don’t have shoes?” And I have my nice clothes and you know, I have a bodyguard sometimes at school for us.
My dad often told me and my older sister that he saved money for us, so when we grow up he would send us to the US to go to school, because that’s what his dad and his mom done for him and his three older brothers. They all went to colleges in Vietnam and went to the US to, you know, professional school and then came back to work in the South Vietnam government. Two of them actually worked in very high positions in the South Vietnam government.
However, my dad’s dream ended. And my family at that time ended when the war ended.
The day my dad was led out to go to the political prison, I was seven years old then. He touched my hair, he looked into my eyes, and he told me this: “From now on, you will help your mom take care of your younger siblings.” I didn’t say anything, but I knew I need to grow up very fast. I looked at him walking out of the gate, and I felt in that moment that probably that is the last time I saw him.
A million people in South Vietnam at that time experienced what we went through. Their husbands, their fathers, their brothers were taken away to the political prison, if they worked in a high position in the South Vietnam government. Their families were thrown out in the street. Their houses were taken. Their bank accounts were taken by the government. Whatever possession that the government can lay their hands on, they will take it away from them.
Three of his brothers also were sent to the political prison, and four of my mom’s brothers-in-law also were sent to the political prison. So overnight many of my uncles and aunts and my cousins became homeless and fatherless. And we didn’t have any means to live. We was like stripped completely bare. Everyone was so scared. Some of my aunties, they tried to escape Vietnam, like many Vietnamese in the South Vietnam, they used boats to escape Vietnam. But because my mom didn’t have any money left, so we couldn’t escape Vietnam.
Luckily my grandmother, my dad’s mom, took us to her farm. She built us a little hut, a very tiny one, just enough for two queen beds, and that’s all we had. We didn’t have chairs or tables or anything, because the days that we evacuated from where my dad worked, we left in the middle of the night. We walked out of that house with only our sleeping clothes. And I left without even my shoes.
So that was the first time I experienced how people didn’t have shoes. And for like the next 10 years, I only had one pair of shoes.
The government allowed the political prisoners’ families to send them food and essential stuff or visit them. At this time, 1976, my mom made two trips to see my dad. And now he already was sent to the northern border between Vietnam and China, so it’s like a thousand miles away. And it took my mom like two months back and forth, and after two trips, she ran out of the money and she got terribly sick because the north is very cold, and she didn’t have, you know, money to buy clothes when she got there. And she almost like died when she got to Hanoi.
Eventually she had a nervous breakdown because she ran out of money. So for a long time she forgot about us. I was eight years old then. My older sister was nine. My two younger sisters, five years, three years old. And my younger brother at that time was one year old.
So the five of us, we huddle in that little hut. My grandmother gave us a little piece of land so we can grow rice. But at nine years old and at eight years old, you couldn’t do much. But we worked. We worked on the field every single day by bare hands. We didn’t have money to buy tools. And my grandmother, she tried to show us how to do stuff, and so we just followed her.
We prepared the field. We weeded, we scatter the seeds. The season usually lasts six months. So in that six months we didn’t have anything to eat. So every single day we had to go to the river bed and try to catch the little clams on the river bed, or go to the field and catch the little field crabs. You know, first I was so scared because you know, you really had to go into the hole and pull out the crabs. And sometimes the crabs, you know, just get into your finger. And when you pull it out it’s all bloody. But my older sister, she was very brave because, you know, if she doesn’t do that, then we didn’t have anything to eat. So eventually I learned how to endure the pain and put my hand in and try to get the crabs out, and we did that every single day.
And that’s all we had to eat for that 15 years. We didn’t eat eggs. I remember like two times I got sick and that was the two times I ate eggs in those 15 years. And that’s how I’m so small like this. And also because most of the time I skipped meals, because my younger brother at that time, he didn’t have anything to eat. So my older sister and I, we skipped meals for him. And my grandmother, she wanted to help us, but she didn’t have money to help us. At that time she was already in her late 70s. She lived with my aunt, but my aunt, for some reason, she didn’t want to help us, so she made it very difficult for my grandmother to help us.
So sometime my grandmother had to skip meals that were served for her by my aunt, and she put in her pocket and put into her pants and hide it from my auntie’s family. And she would bring it over to give it to my younger brother. And sometimes she even had to steal rice and bring it to us, you know, one or two handfuls. And she had to sneak out at night and brought it over to us. Thanks to that, we survived.
Every day was a struggle. We didn’t have any means, you know, we were so little. And my mom, sometimes she came home to visit us. And then, you know, for months she forgot about us. So my older sister and I took care of my three younger siblings. But besides all of that difficulty, my grandmother always insisted that all of us need to go to school and do well.
So every day she woke me up at four o’clock in the morning and told me that, you know, I had to study very well. Because in case that my dad didn’t come back, or in case that she died, I will help my sister to take care of my younger siblings. Because that’s what happened to her when her husband was taken away by the communists and they buried him alive.
They took away all the land that they had. And my grandmother was the one who took care of her kids, raised my father, and sent him to school. So I knew what she means, that my dad might not come back home.
We didn’t have money to buy books or pencils, so most of the time I had to do my homework on the mud or just study by heart.
But I study very well. I was an A student all the time, and every year I got a scholarship. And I learned that my academic achievement really scared a lot of people. Like they couldn’t believe that, you know, we were so poor, but how can we study so well? And I can see that my grandma, she was very proud of me. I can see that in her eyes.
Every year I brought a scholarship back—you know, just like meagre stuff, some books, some pencils. And she’d touch it. The way she’d touch it, I still remember her eyes light up.
So years came by very slowly, every day like eternity for us. But school kept us alive and focused. We lived across the river from school, and we didn’t have a boat to go to the school. So most of the time we had to ask people to give us a ride to school. And some days when we couldn’t ask anyone to give us a ride to school, we had to swim over.
But you know, we cannot like swim the way we swim here. We swim with one hand like this to hold the books and pencil and just swim like straight like this, you know, just one hand and swim across.
But my older sister and I never missed a class. We understood that, how much education means for us. Because that kept us away from our life—our, you know, miserable life. And school open us to places that we cannot go, we couldn’t see. We didn’t have TV. We didn’t have electricity. At night we couldn’t study.
We had to…there’s some seed that, you know, you dry under the sun and you brown it. And that’s how you burn it and that is what we use as light. And one time I was helping my sister to do her homework and my hair got caught in that. And it’s just like in no minutes it burn half of my face, and I end up in the hospital for a month. But I still study, and I stay -an A student all the time.
I missed my father very much, so every night I told my sisters and brother about my dad, how he used to play with us after work every day. We’d play silly things, like hide and seek or like train ride. And he’d tuck us in every night. He had four daughters, but he treated us the same as my brother. Because in Vietnam, you know, people usually treat boys better than girls.
But my dad, he treats us the same.
The first year came. The second year came. The third year came. The fourth year came.
By the fifth year we lost hope, because two of his older brothers already passed away in the prison. They shared the same political prison, but they wasn’t allowed to see each other. But my dad knew that. He sent us letters twice a year, so we start to lose hope that he might not make it home.
The sixth year came. The seventh year came. My brother at this time was already seven years old. When my dad left for the political prison, he was only six months old. He never saw how my dad looked like. We didn’t have any, you know, pictures because the night we left, evacuated my house, we didn’t take anything with us.
One afternoon my sister and I came back home from school and we were on a high bridge, and I heard somebody shouting, “your daddy’s home!” At first, I didn’t recognize what it means, but when I looked over across the river, I saw my dad. And I was almost jumped into the river to swim over to see him. That’s what I felt at that moment, like I was reborn.
I never felt happier in that moment, because for seven years I pray, I dreamed of that day. I cry at night, you know, for him to return, and now he did. But when I saw him, I knew that my family still have a long way to go, because now he was reduced to bones and skin. The only thing that I could recognize from him is his eyes.
So he was sick for a long time, physically and mentally, and later on I learned that he tried to survive because of us, because he knew that my mom was really useless. She was a little princess in her family, so she didn’t know how to even cook. So he tried to survive just to come back because of me and my siblings, and he can’t do everything in the political prison.
We were happy that my dad went home, but our life didn’t get any much better. Well, by now, I was already 14, 15 years old. And now I’m four-foot-six, so back then then I was probably like four feet tall at 14 years old. But I became, you know, main worker in my family and my older sister. Because my dad, he’s still really sick.
He helped us to work in the farm, but when he was little, his father was the richest person in that town. They had all kinds of helpers, you know, attendants. He was sent to school when he was four or five years old, so my dad didn’t know anything, you know, about farming or even fishing. And he didn’t even know, you know, how to go and catch the clams or the crabs. So we had to tell him how to do it.
And actually I really, you know, showed him how to do farming, because in that seven year I really learned how to do it.
One night, we’d just came back from the field. That night, my dad was sick. That day we’d just scattered some new seeds for the new season. By midnight, it started raining, and it started pouring down. So I was just afraid that the water might’ve flooded our new seeds.
So I went out with my younger sister to check to see if…how the water got in the yard. By the time we got to the field, the water was already up to my thigh. And part of the barrier already broken, and the water rushing in floods some part of the field.
But water’s pouring down, and it’s like maybe one or two o’clock in the morning. Very quiet, very cold. And I knew that if we don’t do anything fast, the water will, you know, flood the whole field. So at that moment, I make a very quick decision that I need to lie out on that broken barrier and use my body to repel the water, to brush it in. And that’s what I did. I lied out on that broken barrier. And my younger sister, we both lied down and used our bodies to prevent the water to come in the field.
It was cold, dark, and the water was like almost up to my nose. And that was the moment I broke down to cry. Because for so many years I tried to hold into, you know, tried to be strong. But that moment, it broke me.
I was angry at God. I look up at the sky and ask God, like, why? Why he drove so much difficulty into my life and my family’s life. We just lied there for hours until the water stopped. The rain stopped.
After that night, my family decided that we couldn’t live in Vietnam anymore, so we tried to escape into Cambodia. Many, many times. That was 1987. But we couldn’t go all the way to Thailand, because in order to go to Thailand, we first need to go through Cambodia, then the US have an embassy there.
After several tries, two times, we almost got caught by the border control. Luckily, in 1989, my parents got paper from the US government to allow us, my parents, my siblings and I, to go to the US for good. Today, 49 years from that fateful day that drove my life, my family’s life, upside down.
But luckily, you know, my family’s still intact today. We just celebrate my father 80th birthday. Two weeks ago.
Like many, many refugees who came here, I think a lot of people in America or in the world, they don’t understand the difference between immigrants and refugees. Refugees like us who are stripped to our bones. We were threw out of our house. We were persecuted by the government.
I remember that one time I walked into the library of my high school. I wanted to check out a book, and the librarian told me that I wasn’t allowed to check out any book because my father was a political prisoner, and I was shocked. I understood then what freedom means. Not only that you’re in prison inside, but for that 15 years we lived in Vietnam, we were in prison under the sky. We couldn’t go anywhere because we didn’t have money to go, but because the government constantly barred us from real life.
So my dream at that time was that I want to read all the books in world. And I want to read under the the light, not under the street light. And so I did. When I came to America, my purpose, you know, my own goal was to go back to school. And so we did. And so did all of my younger sisters and brother.
My dad is very proud of us, because now my younger brother, who was like six months old when he left, he’s a doctor now. And he own his own practice in Stockton (CA). And my younger sister, who was three years old when my dad left, now she’s a dentist. And she owns her own practice in Menlo Park (CA). And my other sister, was a pharmacist. And my older sister, she owns her own beauty salon.
But I chose a different route. I chose politics. Because I understood that politics affect our lives. So when I came here, I knew right away that, you know, I want to get involved with politics. And so I was in student body government, and I was elected several times and was student body president.
And I was also, you know, involved in my Asian community in the last 30 years And currently I try to help, you know, organize all kind of political events and try to get the Asian community to go to vote, because we never know who we vote or we not voting, that will make laws that affect our lives, not just in America, but in other countries.
So I hope my story today will inspire you to learn more about the Vietnam War, because a lot of people think that it’s a forgotten war. But that war affected millions of people in the South, and that’s how many of us have come to call the US home.
And I also hope that, you know, you reach out and learn more about the Asian community. Because many of us came here not because of our choice, but we were forced to leave our own country. If Vietnam was a democratic country, I would love to go back there, but even right now when I go back there, I don’t feel safe.
And I also hope my story will inspire you to go to vote, because the person that you vote for really affects our lives. So please go to vote. Thank you.
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