Thang Nguyen 555

I woke up by the alarm: my brother called back. He tested negative (for the coronavirus.) Good news! He is my big and only brother. When I started school at age 4, he was 21 – at the School of Pharmacology (he fainted at the sight of blood, hence, no Medical School option!).

Growing up in the shadows of two college siblings was playing catch-up: from language acquisition to musical taste, from ballroom dance to social development – while outside world was a gumbo of French Colonial, Traditional Vietnamese – much influenced by Chinese – and the emerging irreverent GI’s ethos: spent all your army pay before deployed back to the jungle.

Had my brother been tested positive yesterday, today would have been a sad time; time to make “arrangement”, pack up dark clothes – if travel were an option at all.

God spares me another trip back East, which I did last month when his wife passed away. According to known statistics, he is more at risks as an 81-year old first-year widower with some underlying conditions.

My brother is no angel. Part of him was made of those “soft genes” i.e. love for women, music and parties. But he also works hard, and nobody questions his undying love for the less-fortunate. He has donated a large chunk of change to orphanages and wounded-vet associations.

In between classes, this pharmacy student had to pick up his younger brother from Kindergarten (my sister had her share of dropping me off) on his Velo Solex.

On one occasion, my left foot got stuck in the rear wheel. That grind hurt a lot, even at 20-miles per hour.

My brother had wide connections among his medical peers: doctor friends to check out my tiny willy – “oh, it’s not worth a circumcision…just keep pulling it back every night”….” Or his dentist friends:” oh, your brother got a cavity. Let me help”.

Not once I saw money change hand. It’s war time. Thuy “Mexico”, as my brother was known – and still is – is always ready for parties: his violin, his amplifier, his guitar and microphone. He never touched the Chinese greasy lobsters VA restaurants put out on those occasions (instead, he taught me to squeeze down our throats a few drops of lemon juices).

“On va chantez les Parisiennes”et…”Mexico, Mexi…………………………….co” (the audience gasps at mid air, turn-heads to make sure there were no incidence on stage).

His attachment to Romanticism lagged the actual movement for about 10 years, same as mine with the 60’s. But what he inherited, he embraced.

The dancing, the singing and the camaraderie. He buried his first daughter on the front during one of his tours in Central Vietnam (Quy Nhon)

Then on April 29, 1975 he went about town, per my brother-in-law’s request to seek help/search for a way out. Both had been refugees of the country’s 1954 partition. 21 years in South Vietnam, with births and burials. These two Northern refugee boys-turned-men: decent yet hardened men who would stop at nothing to provide for and protect their loved ones.

But fate dealt them a curve ball. Despite their training in the US, they had no one to turn to for a passage to the US on Saigon last days.

Eventually, they managed to “flee without forwarding” ( see my other blog).

If his were a positive covid-19 test result, I’d probably cry for the turn of event. I would put on those music he used to sing all those years while the rain poured and pounded on our tin roof (those monsoon seasons found him shirtless, in front of a mirror, and practice moving his chest muscle from left to right and back). I would put on some of the stuff in my closet which he sent (heck, even our blanket was his – well-put-to-use during Texas Deep Freeze last year).

Nowadays, my brother still flips through some French instructional books (we’re both teacher’s kids, with natural affinity to French culture and language.) He has never returned to Vietnam, but he had visited Paris. Perhaps to validate his dreams, his longing for something better. Humanity got this urge to flee, a wanderlust to seek out a better place, a more permanent one.

Perhaps our time on Earth is to sit, with boarding passes in hand, waiting for sudden departure (the Terminal).

COVID-19 or not, positive or negative test result, we already know our fated outline: birth, life, death and burial. In between, I shared some good years with my brother – when he was stuck at home before getting drafted and married, like when we siblings painted the house on the days leading up to Tet.

Growing up in his shadow has been hard and honoring.

To reproduce their ethos, you would need to combine those 1917 movies, 1945 movies and 1975 movies. In them, my brother and sister – young kids then – ran around like “napalm girl” starving to death (1945) then ballroom- danced like there were no tomorrow (the US involvement 65-73 bought them some time), before fleeing again as refugees on one of those USS battle ships (whose sailors recently tested positive for the virus) to gladly start at bottom-rung jobs in remote New Jersey town, like one would in Brooklyn, the movie.

To get to where he is today, my brother has paid a dear price (working until he is 77 year-old at an all-Black all-shift D.C. hospital). God spared him yesterday despite dry cough and slight fever.

I sure am glad for him. When gone, he will no longer be there to serve as a reminder of where and what we have been through, and how worthy it has been to experience our own version of the “stations of the Cross”. Stuff that makes humanity what it is: the power to remember, to reflect and to reciprocate.

Last month, upon returning from his wife funeral, after saying goodbye to both my sister and brother, I had a feeling I had seen my parents – despite dead and buried – who have left behind their gene sequencing, hence their images living through my siblings, so I wouldn’t be alone.

We are both copies and copy machines. We make copies of ourselves who are copies of others ( 70+ DNA sequences plus a few of our own, both demons and achievement).

I figure I am not much different from Thuy Mexico. Perhaps more in English than he French. Perhaps more rock and roll than he with Slow Rock. Perhaps a notch wilder just as he when compared to my father’s. But we are all lucky S.O.B’s having survived so much thrown at us, from the turn of the 20th century to the next. Take aways: stay alive, stay positive and test “negative”.

I wouldn’t say I love my brother, in a sentimental way. But I know I wouldn’t want to entertain the opposite – of him testing positive. Back then, I was just glad he show up on time in his Velo Solex and short-sleeves, leaving behind jeers from peers “hey, Thuy Mexico….you’re gonna pick up your “baby” from all those random encounters with girls? hahaha”.

The summer of my 8th grade, I took up Hapkido. Had to keep up with my classmates, who, one by one, held Tae Kwon Do and Judo titles; who, when horsing around, often used my face for target-practice

It took some arm-twisting for my mom to sign the Release Form and open her purse my Martial Arts uniforms – white belt- to start. We warmed up then practiced moves and kicks. A few weeks into it, a red-belt Master visited our class. He had us line up to kick a piece of wood he was holding.

When he shouted “next”, it’s my turn to build up momentum, then in slow motion. jumping up high in the air, right leg in full stretch and locked knee. Having held it for a while, the Master twitched and jittered to re-brace himself and the board. That split second, with a moving target, I missed. Punching through thin air, I landed sideways and heard my left arm breaking on impact.

That whole summer, 15 year-old, home-bound and restless, I was bored to tears. Tous les garçon de mon age….went out dancing, chasing after chics etc…while I nursed a broken arm i.e. no guitar, no singing, no washing and no scratching. In short, a lot of Don’ts and no one could tell me the Do’s. People stopped by and signed my cast, as they would on a guest log-in book at funerals.

I flipped the pages of Essential Idioms in English by Dixon:” Get on- Get off; Put on – Take off, ” but couldn’t help experiencing sudden sadness. In between lessons, I gazed beyond the confine of my house, located half-way in an alley with two imposing long tombs (perhaps of a high-ranking mandarin’s and his wife’s).

I rarely reflected on life, certainly not that early in life.

But that summer, being “sheltered in place”, I wrote for our class white-paper ( posters on the school wall near those ping-pong tables) about coming-of-age, about the road ahead and my existential loneliness ( other classes often illustrated similar theme wirh simple sketches of young girls whose stoic faces half-covered in Cher-like hair).

I knew then and now, that people were joined together for a while, biologically or what not before parting ways, sometimes amiably, other times with slam doors. Either way, life is fleeting (even when people’s tombs were huge) and the sum of all choices, sometimes with no choice e.g. came home in a casket from the war-front as in the case of my next-door neighbor.

I knew each was with different options and orientation. Many from well-to-do families (great zip codes), or influential ones (Army brats). As a TK (teacher’s kid), I grew up humbly and possessed few material things.

Even the bike I rode to school was salvaged from a rusty broken frame, garbage haul from my aunt’s balcony. The life I lived was a part-time one: I had to “Airbnb” my Dad with his other family.

I knew we were of different breed, despite our (martial arts and school) uniform and universal language of math and science, subjects that many already showed signs of mastery.

I had my own inarticulate demons to wrestle with, so poorly that I turned my grief inward while screaming my lungs out – with guitar as my shield, performing at imaginary concerts after-school to quench hunger.

Somehow I got through that summer. Four years later, we faced the inevitable : the war could not go on forever: friends found themselves socially distancing for fear of sabotaging their family escape plan.

We knew that life as we had known it, would never be the same.

Post-war rebuilding e.g. major and mate (mates, in my case) required us to drift further apart. When we saw each other , South Vietnam or Southern California, something were missing. I couldn’t for the life of me put a finger on it.

All happenstance in a new social order i.e. Maslow scale ( survival, security and self-esteem…). We can’t find our way home. Never again, even with a fast walk through the once-familiar serpentine alley.

As with that broken bike and arm, time heals.

That summer, I used quarantine for reflection. I conjectured that my life would zigzag like the serpentine alley “Around the bend, we will take a different path at those forks on the road”.

” I hope when we meet again, further down the trail, there won’t be too much of a gap between us..” (Khuc Quanh – Bich bao Uoc Vong B3- 71).

It was my first writing about love and friendship outside my immediate family.

Without that incident, I would have played guitar summer long, not given a thought about that far-flung future and the only thing that broke would have been those poor guitar strings. ___________________________________________________________________

For my class of 68-75 who had to face with so much coming at us while coming of age.

—- Eyewitness account —-

“To see a World in a grain of sand And a Heaven in a wildflower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour”. –

Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

– Historical timeline –

1945 2 million died of famine per WWII upheaval

1954 Partitioning at Ben Hai River per Geneva Accord

1968 US embassy breached

1969 540,000 US boots rotating with some more than one tour

1970 Kent State massacre – Cambodia bombing protest

1973 Paris Peace agreement – Nobel Peace Prize to 2 sides

1974 Watergate and war aid (3.25 B promised) denied

March 29, 1975, Da Nang – Convoy of Tears

April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell

April 22, 1975, President Thieu resigned

April 22, 1975, Martin ignored evacuation order

April 23, 1975, President Ford at Tulane University: “Game over!” (bookmarking President Johnson’s 4/1965 promises at John Hopkins)

April 25, 1975, President Thieu left for Taiwan (w/ a Scotch hang-over while Martin pulled his flight stairways out and away- as if to unhook SVN life support)

April 26, 1975, ARVN planes took off, one-way, to Utapon to salvage

April 27-28, 1975, bombs and rockets on Tan Son Nhut

April 29, 1975, Big Minh regime-change expert (63 and 75) – with P.M. Vu Van Mau calling on the US embassy to evacuate all US personnel within 24 hours.

In all, 4.6 million tons of bomb dropped, 150 billion dollars spent and 3.4 million dead. 58.220 US service personnel including last 2 killed as this story unfolds.

________________________________________

Monday Night April 28 – 1975

Living by the airport, my sister, her husband and their four young children saw smoke rising. since the ammunition depot got hit by artilleries and air bombs. All packed up “to grandma” to stay out of bomb and fire. My brother, a pharmacist Captain was also living with us. At 4 AM a barrage of bombs (dropped from stolen aircrafts) hit the airport again. Casualties: 2 US marines at Gate 4 – and 8 of my sister’s neighbors.

Air traffic circulation and control ceased. Hundreds more dead. DAO hangar was littered with hard-earned embarkation paper and possession (even burnt dollars smell mixed with stench diesel).

Previous weeks saw half-empty World Airways C-141s ferried 50,000 passengers over Saigon sky onto Clark then Guam. Most ominous was Operation Babylift. One of the two US Air Force Galaxy’s crashed. Lower-deck deaths: 206 orphans, orphan-wannabes and their tag-along. Marcos, US ally in the Philippines, took issue with Vietnamese “illegal” dumping.

A month earlier, Da Nang and Nha Trang Airport saw unruly mob got punched or plunged from mid-air to drown. Worried about overload, one of my classmates, in Air-Force overall, jumped out on take-off. That split second self-preservation costs him 44 years from Saigon to San Diego.

His “sliding doors” (a movie about missing the metro train; with the second version crammed in and live a different life). My turn with nine hurdles to face just to get from the University of Saigon to Penn State University.

Noon on Tuesday April 29 – 1975, corner of Ban Co – Phan Dinh Phung (renamed Nguyen Dinh Chieu St.) District 3, Ho Chi Minh city.

After that sleepless night, my sister and her youngest anxiously watched and waited for the return of her husband and brother. Both left earlier on a recon mission around our sieged Saigon. A stranger approached her:

” Do you know the way to the river?”

It dawned on her the US was leaving for good (“decent interval” from 1973 to 1975, from 3.2 billion to 700 million, and Operation Homecoming for all POW’s)!

This central-region curfew-violator had strong urge and momentum to flee – he didn’t care for the Prime Minister Vu Van Mau plea for reconciliation (Ambassador Martin – himself was in deep denial, doubling down on prolonging the back-door negotiation to honor his son.)

Meanwhile, my brother and brother-in-law – both with job training in Denver and D.C. – frantically roamed the streets, knocking on doors in vain. Former DOS colleagues, under the Ambassador Bui Diem, just shrugged:” Je ne sais quoi”! (Diem himself went off-script – like everyone – Ford included – after South VN’s 722-Million USD final fund appropriation got voted down).

Fool’s errand they attempted, both dozed off in exhaustion. The weight of war (all male adults in my family were drafted. I myself received the civil service notice – up next! if flunk med school).

“After all, what could possibly happen!” my father assured no one but himself: “One was with custom enforcement then DOS, the other, a medic Captain – both non-combatants. Re-education camps, if it came to that would be lenient. Besides, don’t you all know there is an enforced curfew?”.

“If people could roam, so can we”.

“There must be a way out!”,

My sister retorted. That stranger/seeker ignited my sister’s protective instincts and intuition not to mention core contrarian perceived as lack of tactfulness.

Unrehearsed and unprepared, the nine of us sardine-packed into a Simca. My mom’s teacher salary and saving – soon-worthless – had been quickly and equally divided up on the days leading to that (should we be separated – not unusual given their 1954 North-South evacuation).

Now that I have had some distance from the event, I could appreciate that wisdom: a cousin of mine never got news of her MIA husband after the collapse of central VN – photo on the altar or not. Quite an agony.

Uprooted in 1954 at least they were given 300 days not 2 minutes.

P.S. As I re-read my mom’s hand-written last testament, at age late 80’s in US assisted living, apparently, with dementia, she could not tell facts from fiction. The house we left behind that day, later and long ago was confiscated, first the upstairs where I used to sleep then the whole house in exchange for my dad’s passage and papers to America. Naively she instructed my sister to split the sales proceed three-ways.

My father wished us luck: “I am too old to worry what/ifs”. He, my part-time dad, French Artillery Army discharged (and two brothers fought on previous war), was with Air Vietnam corporate account. His other family (monogamy was written into law per Diem’s sister-in-law after the fact) lived a few blocks away. A man of two-minds, like LBJ, he was to spend that next decade stoically bogged down by two residences and my half-sister to eventually leave to join us right before the country changed its direction.

His sliding door!

Ban Co, where we lived, was a northern refugee enclave. Walls got eyes. One would not look for or find tranquility there, except for siesta. Moving about in a serpentine and narrow alley, residents tolerated one another. Often times during my teen, they were captive audience of our live music and loud quarrel.

For fear of rousing up and rattled their siesta (per Ken Burns, 1/3 of Saigon residents were indifferent to the nation’s change of the guards), we tiptoed and avoided eyes contact. “Where are you going! or worse, we knew it! they had been a mole”.

At Tet 68, urban combat was in front of our very eyes, as plainclothes police chased and shot infiltrated VC force in sandals and black pajamas on the tin roof. Our apprehension wasn’t without precedence (not to mention dire prediction about 1 million about to be slaughtered).

For reinforcement, I called in a few markers. Mysteriously at the ready, with a Carbine N-1 in black (pajamas), our next-door “homeboy” escorted us out while I pulled the barbed wires cordon out of the way. His silent “wink” – an emoticon – concealed our tacit understanding – “we’re even!” (On that day, I cashed out all my social “deposits” e.g. hey, let me light that cigarette, just as my mom did with her three-decades savings.)

First hurdle!

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TAN SON NHUT AIRPORT

The airport was airtight secured. We learned later 5,000 evacuees still trapped inside. We drove pass Airborne troopers, all spread out in human cordon. M16s fired “pop pop pop” incessantly and indiscriminately in the air (my hot-war soundtrack throughout, from flares to choppers, F-15’s, B-52’s, AK-47’s, M-16’s and Colt-45’s. Carbine N1s were just for students neighborhood watch).

“Stay out!”

The property was condemned – per Ambassador Martin’s in-person assessment earlier. Northern spies stole A-37’s to destroy the runway and rendered Freedom Birds rescue inoperable. Like Chevy Chase European Vacation, we cautiously completed the roundabout before heading diagonally for center of town, passing by my friend’s residence.

Second hurdle

Feeling futile and witless, I signaled a time-out. Not all my social deposit was cashed out just yet. My pre-text? we needed extra fuel should our aimless itinerary take us down the Mekong. Actually, it’s more for me to stop and say goodbye. Emptying his jerry can, my type-C personality friend, rarely spoke but this time, made small talks: “Where are you heading!”

I just shrugged. Our ambassadors didn’t even know.

The day before, one of our friends had flown the coop. Bewildered and betrayed, Phong and I helplessly watched people loot Thai’s house. Consequently, and empathically, I did not want a repeat (just in case). His father, a local skipper, was well-positioned should they decide to set sail. (Years and gold bars behind, he did get to S California.) His sliding door.

US EMBASSY

A few blocks out, where just two days before Phong and I were in line for a Visa application (the adults of my family, per instructions, stay home instead of in line). The authority wanted to quelch city-wide panic. Yet the atmosphere turned chaotic anyway in front of the Embassy, given sudden influx of Central region refugees in makeshift tents.

Surrounding streets might obey curfew but not there. Thousands, mostly young, foreign and native were scaling its steel gate or snaking through its newly re-enforced concertina wires on top

Marine sentries (170 in flak jackets, helmets and bayoneted M-16s, constantly scanned and cherry-picked Press credentials and foreign Passports, all in life-and-death urgency.)

According to “Paper Soldiers”, out of resentment, someone in the crowd aimed a Carbine at those guards. Luckily, both guns and camera were confiscated. No one wanted further panic and bad press. Press Attache Office just shrugged: case dismissed! Unlike across the ocean where White House Press Secretary was in deep discussions about sending marines to rescue marines, an idea that was shoved under the Oval Office carpet.

We spotted a familiar face: my second uncle, a chauffeur for some agency. Like Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard, he backed out far enough for an imaginary runway before scaling over people. His Hail-Mary hop catapulted him over the 14-foot wall. We certainly would not dare to try similar feat, not with 4 kids, a 60-years-old Mom and luggage.

Not that our luggage, our security blanket, was worth showing: (giay to tuy than) mere photocopies of an USAID form letter showing US Embassy logo & letterhead: “Any help that can be rendered to …. the bearer of this letter, will be appreciated” signed by Robert B. Brougham, Acting Training Officer, USAID with my name scribbled in – last of nine. (the way they list surviving relatives seen in obituary). In fact, I later read an Obituary of South Vietnam on WSJ printed May 2, 1975.

What could we hope to bring in two minutes.!

Reality hit us like a brick. Cold-sweated!

Turned around? Not with barbed wires and checkpoints mushrooming behind by the hour. Rumors of some down-river option did not help. Per Tiziano Terzani (Giai Phong), Hwy 4 was blocked, Hwy-1 Newport Bridge saw hot battle and burnt tank like a scene from A Bridge Too Far.

Obtaining extra fuel from my friend was just wishful thinking, perhaps for me to “earn my seat”, since ALL male adults carry the weight of war and consequently reap its Sorrow of War.

Sheltered and buffered from the front (150 billion bought us a few decades), I was boxed in. The Mekong? A mystery. No power no connection, we were deflated and besieged. The whole city was (except those who were with ready red flags to switch side).

Years of fighting and endless propaganda (farewell address by Thieu and subsequent tearful resignation by President Huong, Five-O-clock Follies the US press detested) reduced to credentials and currency of no use to us except for a one-hundred-dollar bill my brother-in-law carefully concealed under his Larousse flap.

Dazed and dispirited, back against the wall we watched waves after waves of sweat-slickered shirts who kept at it. Adrenalin Mad-Max attack by attrition! Survival of the fittest.

” I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…and …children listened” over the radio as Operation Frequent Wind got underway in 105% heat.

At 3PM, per one report, one of the Embassy’s groundkeepers tied a long rope around his 30 relatives for a hush hush “mercy please” entry at the rear gate. Quite a tough call for those on-post Marine sentries who were also charged with burning a million dollars’ worth of cash.

Suddenly echoed an ear-deafening screeching noise. An oil-dry manual 10′ shifter operated by a newly recruited hence inexperienced bus driver (they did some dry-run around the city in weeks previous just for contingencies like then). The likes of my chauffeur-uncle (who had walked out of his job to save his own skin). Those chauffeurs stopped for wads of dollars in lieu of bus token (off list and not at-risk walk-ins unlike sheepish passengers previously assembled at 13 safehouses waiting for DAO black bus to take them to the airport auditorium). The convoy of hundreds of evacuees were heading toward tourist district, since at that time, airlift was no longer an option..

Lately, I met a Special Forces translator. He was abandoned only to make it to Hong Kong years later. Apparently, he missed his Rendez-vous (short notice and shortage of drivers – themselves left the job).

Third hurdle!

We tailed the convoy. Tu Do Street (now Dong Khoi), once bustling with tourists and foreigners, bar girls and rock bands. Over the bridge we slid onto a less-wealthy district 4 (only a mile apart, but miles apart). At maximum speed possible only during curfew, the lead bus skidded then made a sharp left to Pier 5 dock. Had my brother failed to floor the over occupied car to tail bumper-to-bumper, we would have been cut off.

Those drivers always had ready a bottle of Scotch to bribe the guards who couldn’t care less now that the “occupied force” was leaving, much less about a small unofficial car in tow.

The boom barrier like a “guillotine” drop, slowed to a stop by its counterweight. Those slow-down seconds afforded us to slip right through. Our “sliding doors”. If I had had two heads, one would have rolled – more likely – the romantic twin side of that pre-med aspirant, who just a few days earlier, had collected donation in his SPCN Lecture Hall for Central-Region refugees – not knowing himself about to ask:

“Do you know the way to the river”.

Fourth hurdle

CLUB NAUTIQUE PARKING

Inside the gate, in broad daylight, shirtless bystanders were milling about, lurking and looting. Office supplies and abandoned equipment littered the ground. Even police changed to plain clothes to join in: “Finally US Aid got to us.” He meant furniture and air conditioner, luxury none of us on “dong” salary could ever afford. Even on my brother’s medic captain’s pay, his first wife couldn’t afford to stay “til death do us part”.

What had been bottled up e.g. class resentment, religious and ethnic strife, 400X Hiroshima worth of bomb – 4.6 million tons to be exact- agent Orange and agent CIA, death and destruction, divorce and dispossession – coup after coup, long speeches and teary farewell (they, us, them, which side was which) finally popped, Khmer-Rouge style: the inmates running the asylum when the lit blew up.

My brother saw a parked car whose chauffeur slump over its steering wheel. His body was the only one on the lot that wasn’t moving. There was nothing more dangerous than young men who suddenly be in the possession of a loaded gun. (revolutionary chic’s!).

(pg102 of Terzani’s book lists an inventory by the University of Van Hanh, whose students collected: 1,525 carbines, 2,596 M-16s, 399 M-72s 174 M-79s and three boxes full of pistols. A week before we were collecting donations for refugees in flux from DaNang; student activists always collect something as it seemed).

Private vehicles and Army Jeeps previously status symbols turned liability (the ultimate was Ky’s handgun and jet used to court his hostess de l’air later turned spouse). After offloading all passengers, the convoy made a U turn for additional haul. We, the tail, stood out like a sore thumb, an easy mark among lurking zombie-like looters.

At the water edge stood an imposing 10-foot static sandbag wall, partitioned the haves and have nots. This barge-turned-bunker blocked our river view. It’s an 11th-hour plan conceived by the Oval Office, the Embassy, and Can Tho outpost, a brainchild of Carmody (see Honorable Exit). Army Engineers Corp retrofit, a marked improvement from previous all-hell-broke-loosed open-air vessels, death traps which allowed for shoving, slipping in stampede.

Like a WWI bunker, it was stacked with sandbags in all sides. Thieu’s swift and sudden withdrawal from Highland MZ caused chain-reaction and cautious preemptive plan.

Lightning-fast retreat left disgruntled civilians and Army – who themselves abandoned by superiors – with no time to evacuate their immediate families. Mob hysteria could care less friends or foes. SVN dominoes (not the theory of the same name by the Eisenhower administration) fell one by one, folding MR map from Central Region to Central District, better known as Convoy of tears. Jail house was wide open, and freed prisoners served as high octane fuel into a bonfire.

War at the waterfront.

Standing atop the sandbag heap – a lone gun (M16) in un-tugged white short sleeves creamed:

“Just get out of here”

seeing my brother-in-law take his time, linger (Xem xet tinh hinh – situation assessment we call SWOT).

April 29 – Late afternoon, Pier 5

Engine idling, we huddled. Having loaded and unloaded time and again, we grew skeptical. Fifth and final attempt over the sand wall (we couldn’t see who, how many, were supposed to board, where and when it was going to start). Now we were at the water edge (filled with oil and God-knows-what in the water) I could not envision my mom and brother swim.

Millions of calculations. Nine little heads!

Opportunity cost, push/pull. To climb or not to.

Push comes to shove, should we turn around, would the men be sent to Kham Chi Hoa – our city jail per “America in Vietnam”, 41.4 per cent of people shared this appraisal about fear of reprisal.

The jail later was wide open at the change of the guards on previous month in Da Nang, and soon in Saigon the next day. Or worse, as in subsequent Killing -Field next door e.g. beheaded for wearing glasses?!? so, the government does not bother with feeding and reeducating (Hue 68 was still on our mind). Not unfounded, since I grew up with episodes of Cambodia “cap duon” (beheading). Goose bumps I felt every time I passed the Cambodian embassy (that fear was confirmed when years later I saw skulls-exhibit at the village of Ba Chi.) Growing up eye-witnessing a monk-burning at that same intersection was drama enough.

Since I barely got my first beer for passing the SAT:” Mama, life has just begun”.

What about the children and their future medical studies (always family high hopes and pressures from the draft board). For others, like my other half-uncle in the Navy. to stay meant to endure re-education in hopes of reuniting with his mom/brother, a train conductor – from up North.

Without embarkation papers at the Embassy was one thing. To leap on the barge on a meant-business stranger’s get-out-of-jail card was another (Nixon’s nose grew with his China card, promised bombing and funding aid on empty).

No one thought of cranking down the window.

Inside, that stuffy Simca served as makeshift jury deliberation room, eerily quiet all of a sudden for a loud family.” Are we going or not!” I blurted out – my “are we there yet” since I was soaking-wet – like a Mexican stand-off in the backseat.

Our window of opportunity was fast closing. Chronos vs Kairos, time vs eternity.

An imaginary PA “All-Aboard” would have tipped the scale.

Suddenly, a unanimous decision made itself, like a poker last draw. My brother-in-law tossed the car key to a bystander, that shirtless one in “xa lon’ (male sleepwear short) had made a few passes (canh me)..

” Eternity in an hour”.

To this day, no one knows where the car is …

and over the course of 24 hours, not just key to the car, but key to the country that got changed hands (2:30PM) “Infinity in the – empty – palm of your hand”.

Knots in our stomachs and knapsacks over our shoulders, we filed out, leaving behind decades-long worth of “beaucoup dien cai dau” (often heard during my upbringing aptly delivered by our Kieu Chinh in Hamburger Hill). Between Operation Homecoming and Vietnamization of the war, we should have been warned (yet day-to-day we were caught up in the whirlwind of dollar inflation, husbands let wives be whores, taxi picked up only expats for bigger tip).

The day before, when RVN Congress convened to confirm Big Minh, only 136 out of 219 were present. Even our Chief of Staff Cao Van Vien had fled right after Thieu. As we speak, our Chief of Armed Forces himself was on the stairway leading to that infamous helicopter lift at 22 Gia Long St..

No more time. The whole city was a wet sponge that soaked up sweat and sulfur, blood and tears. Catholic paratroopers shot each other to bypass doctrinally forbidden sin (of suicide). No one had the last say, or if there were, it’s the sound of self-inflicted shots (one shot in front of the soon-to-be-taken-down statue of shoulder-to-shoulder soldiers and allies).

Apprehension and anticipation, anxiety and anger all imploded. Like my friend who jumped – we hopped (Thoa, this is for you in San Diego. Who could see the future.)

__My mom over first, followed by our young. We climbed without showing any papers in cramp legs and under the watchful eyes of that lone civilian expat atop the heap.

Unscathed and hassle-free we claimed our spot on the barge rusty and stain floor with 10 per cent occupied. All clueless evacuees in strange surrounding, it was quite unusual since barges were intended for cargo transport.

Catching his breath, my brother noticed some weeping girls. With their father were only violins for luggage.

We tried to calm ourselves behind the bunker’s wall which soon packed with next convoy load. As more joined in, I caught sight of my math teachers. It struck me as odd since they had on slick tailored white shirts, perhaps for an A/C airlift (all day we saw only soak-wet shirts) The genius looked quite out of place, against the backdrop of blood-stained barge. Since we had never seen each other outside of school setting, their squatting like mandarin among the mass – signified a real reversal and reset of social order.

Oh, how society would remarkably improve if everyone behaved as fellow species on inter-galactic travel i.e. long-haul civility (win/win) vs short-term cannibalism (zero sum game).

Our teachers – also northerner – were perhaps pondering:

Will this river-barge be sea-worthy?

What capacity does the towboat have e.g. fuel and horsepower?

How long would it take to get to destination X from Pier 5 dock, wherever X was?

And most of all, how much and with what currency exchange/interest rates are we going to live on when/if all got there in one piece?

Luckily for them, math was math, wherever one goes.

Fifth hurdle

Growing up, I kept hearing about Operation Passage to Freedom. As Gordon Lightfoot put it: “Just like an old-time movie…the ending is just too hard to take”” If you could read my mind”. It’s my turn, in a digitally mastered version of that old-Black-and-White 16-mm or super 8 footage. What I had imagined i.e. famine and future; family and fortune, took on real experiential meaning e.g. would I be allowed to scribble some post-cards to my dad, as previously sent from the North.

1954 intra-country evacuation footage showed old folks in cargo net, craned up and swung over before gently dropped aboard US-assisted French Southward ships, with fanfare and banners e.g. “To join the exodus is to keep your dignity” (Di cu de giu gin pham gia con nguoi) on “tau ha mom” (WWII cargo ships). Suddenly it’s our turn, our story. World Airways chaotic evac soon sees its repeat outside of Con Son Island with refugees lifted inside cargo net once again.

30 days’ worth of retrofitting the barge (3/75-4/75) vs 300 days to pack (54). Years later, veterans of war were legally and orderly processed for departure under a bi-lateral agreement. What screwed up in war was finally rectified in peace.

Instead of a grain of sand, we found a wall-full, a buffer between barge and bystanders. Melody began as if to hasten our departure. Songs of my family – given huge generation gap, I couldn’t relate to. Cry, my beloved country. “Ben cau bien gioi…” (By the Bridge over Ben Hai). Wages and vignettes of war over late dinner now became mine.

Suddenly jerked forward, I stopped daydreaming. The future had reached back like a thousand-years-old sleeping giant after an afternoon nap. Our self-initiated Operation Passage officially began.

We didn’t need form letters or fuel tank after all.

Paris of the Orient, Hotel Majestic and my sister’s bank facing out at ben Van Don grew smaller and slowly out of sight.

Tears welled up my eyes. Instinctively, I knew it’s an Allez sans retour. Deja vu for the adult. First for me. I tried to commit the last of home to memory. 18-years of e.g. 3 pupils to a desk, books for graduation, first date and first beer, all-nighter exam crunch and all-nighter neighborhood watch duty waiting to be drafted to the front.

“And Phai Song” …No, you must live (to raise up the children, let me die)

”Mot con ngua dau ca tau khong an co” (when one suffers, all suffer)

”Nhieu dieu phu lay gia guong”….(love one another)!…then Bang!

Like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon I was surrounded by shifting shadows. Noticing my wet eyes, one of my nieces asked if I miss my dad. In fact – it’s my friend who we had just stopped by to see a few miles out.

Since I was no longer safe in my cocoon, with guardrails and grammar, conjugation and composition, I realized this would be a cold Turkey. Adapt or die. In denial, I could hardly come up with an excuse for what had just transpired: a sudden, unplanned act of collective betrayal – in my brother’s case, pre-mature AWOL on the eve of a nation on its last leg.

Be Run Be.

No turning back.

Ebb and flow. No lights and no warnings. What at first seemed easy turned difficult. No check-ins hence no updates. Bait and switch. Twice, unhooked, in the dark, we were left to float. As we used to say “mac xac may” without the towboat, barge turned floating hearse.

Betrayal begets betrayal.

Our fate and future. Nine lives – Band on the Run- at the mercy of shooters and looters. Occasional flashing flares and ear-deafening rockets jolted us. Standing room only we heard our own pounding hearts. Grazing bullets could have buried inside those sandbags. At times, we were just a short swim from shores. Children were too scared to cry.

Aimlessness wrenched us throat dry.

Overnight, I turned gray.

Shielded and semi-soundproof, we missed out on all anxiety and action in the city.

That night, not just us who felt or were abandoned. South Korean diplomats as Third-Country nationals, like Iranian and Indonesian, Hungarian and Polish, while waiting for evac helped themselves to the embassy bar. Why let good wine go to waste! Around the pool, some even tossed paper airplanes made out of real money. The same currency my mom had divided up among us the day before. Others, in groups of 45-50, staged for Heli-lift. In one account (Honorable Exit), they commandeered an official limo – even a fire truck – to amuse themselves, turning “America” into Arcade, a frequent Embassy’s Luau Night even after Thieu’s three-hours radio farewell address.

Eventually and unfortunately, 420 – including hung-over South Korean – got left behind (and had to straighten out those paper “airplanes” to buy some breakfast) – italics mine. Far Eastern Economic Review journalist reported “plain dainty Jane” looted Embassy couch (ghe salon), once seated dignitaries and diplomats – from Lodge to LBJ. Slightly burned dollars from DAO or the Embassy, later seen resurfaced in Guam.

Had we made over the wall of the Embassy, we might have moved in full circles.

Intended mostly for our US Ambassador and his crew, Operation Talon Wise, at 4:58AM, pulled anchor, with (Tiger, Tiger, Tiger) boarded next-to-last Chinook- 46 Lazy Ace 09. A still photo showed Martin in crumpled suit and bloodshot eyes aboard the USS Blue Ridge while giving interview i.e. “oh, I thought we still had a shot at it”…. blah blah blah. Tears, tear gas canisters and liquor bottles rolled down the stairs to end decades-long US involvement.

At 7:50 AM the last eleven marines (having told the remaining crowd that “I will not leave you behind” – Marines’ mantra except for a quick stop at the john “mac dai”).

Eyes scanned, flags (of our fathers) folded – in contrast to Iwo Jima’s military ceremony.

The Architect of War was hasty in announcing “Peace is at hand”. Then “It’s over” (still with tuxedo giving a high-five in the Oval Office); before correcting at Press Conference the day after: “Sorry! we were eleven-marines short”.

That exit closed out US decades- long campaign against what had once been US iron-clad position against Communist aggression and expansion from China on down.

By pure luck we fled through the Saigon River artery on the most unseaworthy vessel (twice at zero mph stand still) right under the noses of danger. “Mother wants you to call home”? “Mom, it’s me, Whiskey Joe” overheard on DAO two-way “What are we going to do with the 2 (last US) bodies?” Reply: “Take them to the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital” (medical facility nearest to the airport).

Wednesday APRIL 30, 1975, OPEN SEA

Loud cheers erupted as we got moving again. Apparently, contracted to tow full load from the bus convoy, the towboat was running – with engine-light on. Everything that moved, especially overworked 75 Marines choppers, moved.

Of all objects at sea, we were the slowest but glad to be moving at all.

A 40-miles trip took us all night.

It was like D-Day only in reverse – screen right to screen left: Hueys, Chinooks and Sea-Stallions all zipped overhead and away from Cap St Jacque. Death of a Nation. Digitally remastered on Blu-Ray with surround sound, depicting a “Charlon Heston” type with wide-spread arms in Apocalyptic plague of single-piloted choppers dotting the sky.

Leaf-like boats battered and beaten swung up and down, even sideway to stay out of bazooka range. Under the watching eyes of world opinion and world press, a single-engine was hit causing huge splashes against an already bleak Vung-Tau sky. NBC footage showed what was transpiring that day (Last Days of Vietnam).

What started out with a boating incident (Tonkin) closed out with a boating incident (Vung Tau).

We wrenched rain waters from the camping “hole” of our poncho (first and last camping trip by our entire family, with adults holding each corner) to drink. A single bag of instant noodle for 9 like a scene from Polanski’s the Pianist (cutting a brown-sugar cube by dad’s pocketknife). When danger passed hunger emerged.

20 miles out, before GPS, we spotted the 7th Fleet 40+ war ships far on the horizon evenly spread out in battle-arc shape. Staging with protruded canons on the ready, battle ships canons spread out, like sun rays from afar. Here comes the Sun – on an overcast morning.

Apparently, the 7th fleet could have taken out those rocket launchers but were ordered to stand down, and show some restraint. That long war was largely a land-and-air (Heli and B52’s) war, exhaustive enough without an encore.

At the bitter end, we saw only chopper’s retreat and flares overhead.

Soft flesh and snail’s pace, we’re no match against the force of nature (vast ocean) or Soviet-supplied military hardware.

Technically, when you got transferred to a battleship (USS Blue Ridge?) or any ship it was as good as setting foot on US soil, our Ellis-Island moment.

Unsteady on a swaying gangway. we were however not greeted by any Statue of Liberty. Our “TSA” checkpoint was an oil-drum filled with freshly confiscated guns and knives. A navy sentry eyeballed all carry-on. Leaning to peak over the person ahead in line, the giraffe in me saw an open Samsonite sardine-pack with gold bars (glistening like les poisons doré– in the Au Marche poem I learned at French school).

Not everyone made their escape as hastily.

From one other account, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky also landed on USS Midway where he reluctantly handed over his handgun (purportedly a personal gift from John Wayne).

Passing the Security checkpoint was no cause for premature celebration.

Every empty surface on ship deck had been taken. A Huey pilot desperately and vertically touched down on the bucket-opening of the barge we had just left behind. His miscalculated and hail-Mary force-landing caused – steel-against-steel (sandbag walls) like sound in a custom sheet metal fab shop. Embers and loosened blade coming fast at us.

Faces. froze against wet floor. Except for my medic brother who hitched rides on leave from Qui Nhon where he stationed, none of us was ever allowed near a military chopper, much less brushing against its deadly blade. All day, everyone prayed for chopper landing. It finally arrived but a bit late and not as expected.

Pulling off that spectacular stunt i.e. repurposing abandoned barge into a Huey Helipad – without a slight regard for safety, the pilot, out of mercy, got a provision of water and an inflated raft to seek shelter elsewhere. He might very well be our first Boat People. One fewer than around seven thousand who were heli-lifted to offshore ships by Frequent Wind operation.

That day saw helicopters pushed off ship-decks, especially on USS Kirk. Tons of steel – sunk to the bottom of South China Sea and by extension the American collective consciousness.

Sixth hurdle!

May 4, 1975, Subic Bay

Per 1954 Geneva Convention, close to 1 million Northerners, majority of whom Catholics, elected or were persuaded to go South. Among whom Mom, Pop and siblings. Then history repeats itself. Joining Exodus 2.0 were me and my sister’s kids.

We chain-linked step-by-step down the ammunition dungeon. Saigon to Subic Bay float, we were like Jonah – in the belly of the beast – incubated but unconsolable.

Starved and seasick, in a blur, I mentally blocked out the diesel-stench (nothing to throw up) trip except for one chow call: an orange = courtesy of officer’s mess. So grateful and fearful (of starvation), I ate all, peels and pulp.

For fresh air, I climbed up to the open deck, only to see money tossed to the wind, like ash from an urn. In a trance, a guy with a thousand-yard stare, tossing “Ben Franklin’s” – our Tran Hung Dao bills, one handful at a time. Blood money or unpaid payroll – no answers, and if any, the answer is ” blowing in the wind” (at the Embassy, it took 8 hours to burn a million dollars of payroll, an order from Sec of Commerce).

Dust to dust.

No Sirens.

Only a silent rendition of Auld Lang Syne to end a set which opened with Bing Crosby’s White Christmas on Armed Forces Radio. “Mother wants you to call home” (since the song already was on the radio every two hours).

Later I met a former RVNN officer. His fleet was escorted from Phu Quoc to the Philippines by the USS Kirk. Their ship’s serial numbers got painted over, old-regime flags down, insignia off – per International-law. Those rusty ships were later donated to the Philippines and Thai Land, courtesy of the US of Great A.

If you want to see old men cry, this was it. National anthem, the lowering of the flag, the last vestige of SVN.

No tears of joy. Not the Liberation of Paris nor D-V Day. Weeping sailor vs kissing sailor, Subic Bay vs iconic Times Square where a nurse in uniform would tilt her head in mutual consent.

Indeed, finally feet firmly on shore, I spotted a line of subdued and disrobed RVNN’s – in newly issued white T’s and blue jeans. Apparently, not just flags and vessels, but uniforms and insignias, also stripped. The big reset.

Failure is an orphan. And orphan I started by selling our worthless currency “in the future, it will turn souvenirs”.

In the middle of the night, a welcome party handed us each a sandwich and a coke. Shoulders stooped, knees-deep wading in single file, we arrived in strange shores. Not A decade earlier, in contrast, Wayne-like marines eagerly and energetically splashed waters upon landing on China Beach into those welcoming leis and arms of our iconic Ao-Dai.

Seventh hurdle!

Summer 1975

After three days of vetting, then a cramped seating on a C130 floor, we flew to Wake Island given Guam already at over-capacity. Those same charter planes might have for days flown our troubled sky, carrying orphans and nuns, bar girls and bellhops, civilians and deserters. Per Woodward’s Shadow, it was when DoD Secretary ignored and disobeyed a Presidential (Ford) order:” bring as many aircraft as possible to bear” in rescue attempt. Ron Nessen, Press Secretary mentioned the 129 Marines still un-evacuated in the rear detailed to protect 34 overworked helicopters.

Stateless, we, “Asylum seekers” were with an A – alien – number. For the 130,810 of us, 3300 orphans included, our wishes were granted (Senate Judiciary Committee and the Indochina Migration and Refugees Resettlement Assistance Act). For context, approximately 125,000 Germans, most of them Jewish, immigrated to the United States between 1933 and 1945

The difference this time: no tattoo to shield, and not much of public support. Certainly not Senator George McGovern. An angered Ford (but not without compassion and moral leadership – shown in a stock photo, holding a bi-racial Babylift survivor at SF Airport, or emptying his pocket change to WH photographer) who then bypassed Congress and appealed directly to the VOLAGs and church groups for help with mass resettlement (Congressional brainstorm: an Amish-like self-sustained hectares in Pennsylvania to an industrial city off the coast of Virginia, per Dr. Hung’s book). We were lucky they did not go for the latter option to build “a bridge to nowhere”.

That summer with clear sky clean water, we processed our grief while the US government processed our papers. Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front) remarks:” NYC, and by extension, the US, was not all walls made of steel, but of papers”.

We had no desire nor inclination to spend a “vacation” at the expense of the American public. The adults bore the brunt of worry (Giay rach phai giu lay le = starved but hold on to one’s dignity).

Eighth hurdle.

From May to July, fish sticks and French fries, Fruit-of-the-loom, and Head-and-Shoulders. Consumerism reached us on the Island ahead of Mainland. Out of the 4 military installation-turned-processing camps (Ft Eglin, Ft Chaffee, Camp Pendleton, and Ft Indiantown Gap), we ended up with Pennsylvania, the closest to D.C. where my brother-in-law once visited.

Without being told, we scattered and resettled in four zip codes. At tearful goodbye, we agreed on Crofton, Maryland, our cousin address, for future reference (if you were to add foreign exchange students and expat wives, Vietnamese in America were just a handful including my cousin.

To us, Mainland, Maryland (Agnew land) or Disneyland was just as good as any.

Many shot-gun weddings were officiated by the camp Chaplain, mix and match.com as hastily as those songs from home I recorded in our barrack’s bathroom. We all fret separation and extinction.

September 1975, State College, PA

From Central District to Central Pennsylvania, I had to overcome social-economic, linguistic and logistics challenges: barbed wires, boom-barrier, sand wall, raining rockets and flying blades.

My itinerary was multimodal: climbing wall, wading waters, car and cargo planes, barge, bus and battleship. I was flanked by Carbine and Canons, M-16’s and rockets. Finally, only a few miles to State College, hold it … my house-church-designated rep, a divorced Unitarian minister with time in his hand (he took up Cello 101 at the University), showed some class by scooping up a Woodie-Guthrie-hat-wearing hitchhiker on Hwy 322. “How do you do!” I am Thang, from the war.

Only then my liberal arts education could officially commence – one peck on college typewriter at a time (sounded more like gunshots on my first day. What a nightmare).

Armed with 300 bucks- a fiscal increase from what was in the French dictionary we managed to slip out with us – 1975 fiscal left-over, disbursed and distributed via the IRC (International Rescue Committee)- I grabbed Penn State by the horns – like “holding Infinity in the palm of my hand”.

Humbly yet eagerly, I held on to birth certificate and my straight A’s transcript on Red-Cross stationary. Oh, almost forget that job Letter of Recommendation from the Bureau of Child Welfare – where I volunteered as an interpreter.

Having missed “Move-In” date, I played catch-up: from night shifts on campus to a job offer at WNEP-TV 16 upon graduation.

Ninth hurdle

To my surprise, Happy Valley itself was lagging behind Counterculture movement. Penn State not Kent State. Months-long hair and jeans helped me blend in. Seeing autumn foliage, I realized it’s a 2-seasons 2-wheels country, not a We but an I culture (in LA, it’s I-drive then Uber/AI drive) . My first impressions: a PA-licensed driver obeyed reflexively at a STOP sign amid heavy downpour in the camp. Rules-based reflex in a mono-chronist society, first comes first served.

My first impressions = my initial culture shock!

After a long and lonely winter, I sat on the grass (while others smoked “grass”) and heard “Here Comes the Sun”, Spring break (my Woodstock) opening number. I hummed along, knowing for sure” “it’s alright”. (The British Invasion arrived via Armed Forces Radio). Consequently, we, “Come together” at least those early adopters of Rock and Roll. (See Vietnamizing Woodstock)

Music and mourning aside, I am forever indebted to the 58,220 whose names were on dark marble Memorial in Washington. On his way to the airport, Frank Snepp noticed President Thieu looking away from: “The noble sacrifice of the Allied Soldiers will never be forgotten.” (Thieu’s predecessor, Diem, wasn’t lucky. He was shot by his designated driver in 1963).

A TK – teacher’s kid- my mom influenced me the most Old-style gratefulness, she never forgot her guardian-mother since before her time at a semi-orphan live-in at Hanoi French pedagogy boarding school. Years and miles later, she still celebrated each anniversary of our “grandma’s” passing, to remind us of roots and respect.

I could do no less i.e. remember and reflect on the sacrifice of Blacks from Mississippi and Whites from Pennsylvania.

P.S. Last week, I met a son of a G.I. Immediate kindred spirit struck. He said his dad had returned from over there utterly in silence ever since.

________________________________________

It’s been years:

• since that tamarind tree of the US Embassy was cut down to make room for helipad,
• since Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” – about going home – not fleeing from it
• since an NVN T-54 charged and crashed the Independence-Palace gate (no GPS)
• and since trade and travel finally re-established.

But something kept nagging,

“Do you know where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you…” heard over the radio that Wake Island summer.

What made us let go of the endearing for the estranged? Wanderlust?

Was it my brother’s hyper-anxiety? My sister’s protective instincts? My brother-in-law’s nostalgia for that Cherry-blossoms Parade (he showed us those travel slides after his DOS training trip)? Or I just wanted out, being stir-crazy and suffocated in the back – my mom and four of my sister’s kids in tow?

Did we even once think about our father? (We could have just climbed back over the wall or swam back – as 1000 petitioners did on Truong Son, a return ship from Guam). Or during our frenzy fleeing, we reached the point of no return.

A Black-Swan phenomenon.

Among peers, I had friends who:

• left on planned evacuation – Thai
• jumped in then out of plane – Thoa
• got off a helicopter but still in uniform (AWOL?) – Cang
• was with means yet ended up a Boat People – Phong

At Pier 5, our only hope was the known past would serve as guide for the unknown future; somehow, somewhere, we would find kind hearts and firm ground to start over.

Start-over I did, amidst 9% unemployment and a slim 36% of public opinion for us (vs 54% against per Gallup). Like a knife cutting through hot butter, I was on my own (my mom and her Ao Dai left behind in that cold camp without a sponsor; hers, oldest, took the longest from April 29 through Sept 13, 1975).

Living out of a rented basement, I juggled a janitorial shift by night and a Speech class by day! (my Speech class field trip was at an Udall’s presidential campaign on campus).

One has to put the least strain on the system. Culture shock abated, I invited fellow exiled students to cake and music. White Christmas was on for the second time that year, this time, with real snow and boots outside, not 105 degrees back in late April outside of the US embassy.

We all needed a haircut (obvious from first impressions), with invisible tattoo as fellow sufferers of fate, like our Remarque’s Ravic, in Shadows of Paradise (under the table emigrant surgeon, operated for cash, only after patients got anaesthetized by licensed and legit surgeon).

Joining the huddle mass, we lived in quiet desperation. Our California Dream has been what we made of it since “all the leaves are brown….”. Remarkably, little Saigon is now fed up with Fillet Mignon. They also want wine to go with it, like Alain Delon. Oh well. When in Rome, drink like a Roman.

This story could otherwise be told from the P.O.V. of my sister’s protective instincts or my brother’s fear of reprisal.

My sister, a Director of the Agriculture Development Bank, rebuilt her credentials – hard earning a CPA of Commonwealth Virginia. Her 80th-birthday saw all four children intact! She – strong, sincere, straightforward – thrived on challenges e.g. find a way out, just like other adults crossing earlier River of Ben Hai.

Just like early settlers crossing the last few miles from Ellis Island to Staten Island, we waited anxiously from Wake Island looking to Ellis Island, luckier than most e.g. tossing babies (like basketballs), flying-on-empty or climbing over embassy wall or Berlin Wall.

May God rest her soul (a year shy of her migration 2.0. 50th Anniversary.)

My Medic Captain brother still couldn’t believe we pull it off. He once thought we were to “be stationed” for good out of a Wake Island barrack, like Captain Hawk Eye – in fact, our distinguished senator from Rhode Island had suggested just that, Borneo (like that last lepers’ colony in Louisiana) to save taxpayers some money.

To my brother, Maryland is Promised Land. His signature French refrain “Mexi….co” then Colora…do where he had previously spent a year obtaining modern medical equipment training, courtesy of the US of A DOD. Out of gratitude (he reminisced that “tasty” sandwich on Subic Bay, first food after five seafaring days) he donated back a large chunk of change from his Howard-Hospital paychecks to disable Veterans and Orphans of War.

A decade later, my P/T dad joined us, with violin in hand (not unlike those weeping girls). That lost decade – being fatherless, aimless, feeling guilty as Hell, God knows, I was. Being on my own, unknown and semi-orphaned,” I read so I won’t be alone”. No college-orientation nor graduation.

Years later my brother-in-law was laid to rest. His car key once again tossed. This time to his granddaughter. His marker: “Life passes like a blink of an eye” (or a Simca on its last leg). He was an integral part of our larger learner’s family (either dictionary or Hit Parade for music). Songs like “Never on Sunday” kept playing in my head as first heard at his home (AKAI tape).

For me, with Vietnam past and dawn in America, I let go things not under my control. Yet at times, the past creeps up, like a vinyl comeback: “When I was young, I listened to the radio, waiting for my favorite song” between “Your Song” and “Here Comes the Sun”, between self-deprecation and self-delusion (Me 1.0 pure Vietnamese. Me 2.0 do or die Americanized “banana” version. Me 3.0 on going, see my other blog).

________________________________________

April 30, 1975, was like a bookend. The other bookend -April 1981- found me comfortably settling in a graduate-school library, flipping through the pages of Newsweek for a break from assigned reading “the Medium is the Message”.

Its Asia section caught my attention. My people ventured to sea with a 50:50 chance of survival.

An aerial shot showed tiny boats small as autumn leaves, like one that got hit on my own journey six years earlier; women and children were on their vulnerable most without the 7th-fleet. Repeatedly raped and robbed by Thai pirates then abandoned to certain death – unless they took the last option to survive on fellow passengers’ dead meat.

Never did I envision a trip back so soon, even with self-recrimination and survivor’s guilt ( symptoms of PTSD).

“He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep while gaining that which he cannot lose”, by Jim Elliot, a fellow Wheaton alumnus, fresh on my mind and I owe him ever since (perhaps on Todd Beamer’s, another alum, when terrorists commandeered United Airlines Flight 93) for little chance to die.

After all, my other head already rolled – the other side of Pier 5. What’s left to lose. Having jumped through 9 hoops and hurdles, I might as well make it an even 10. ” A Chance to Die” a little.

Back to those prison-turned-makeshift camps. Slamming doors vs Sliding doors (“When you look behind there was no open door”). At the time, I barely got my US Passport – and my “GoFundMe” (for youngsters who could only relate to crowdsourcing) were typed letters and licked stamps to all in my address book.

In Hongkong, I offered any help I could: relief supplies, ESL classes, entertainment events and church-sitting (on my second tour). Hong Kong Island lock-ins were fed up with camp foods e.g. sardines just as we fish-sticks back on Wake Island.

My micro-fund raising from licked domestic stamps were spent on international stamps (those par-avion letters were sneaked out in my shoes end of each day and hot chili (in) for them. I would never forget that lone shirtless survivor – a half-Chinese boy who stuttered.

After 2 tours (thanks to student-loan payment deferral program), like a good short-sleeves Mormon, steward of blessing– I was distributing needed supplies to near-death fellow countrymen, before suddenly remembered I was myself was on the receiving end of a Coke and a sandwich on Subic Bay ( a nun and a priest – pastorally handed out). What else could a communication major do to give counsel to – as an example – 2 raped and forced-by-circumstances cannibalism survivors – besides being there – upstairs of that Jubilee prison for a show of support). Again, with culture shock and catharsis, I found in giving there is healing.

Instead of improving my IQ in school, I ended up with better EQ in life.

Like that currency-as-confetti “tenant” man, I found myself, on my day off, at the peak of Hong Kong New Territories look back and long for home by summer of 1981, was still off limits.

Our Father in Heaven, our father in homeland…:

Back then, in our long journey into the night, we faced the Unknown but intrinsically, our seeker’s DNAs constantly grabbed” Infinity in the palm of our hand”. A truth that hit home to me as it once did my sister:

“Do you know the way to the river”.

THE END

Credits for Crisis and Luck, the movie version 🙂

Homeboy w/ carbine N1 escort: Thai, neighbor

Father: Nguyen Duc Tien

Mother: Ngac Thi THo

Sister: Nguyen thi Bich Thu – Trung Vuong alumnus

Brother-in-law: Hoang Dinh Tuynh – Buoi alumnus

Brother: Nguyen Duc Thuy – CVA alumnus

Myself: Nguyen Duc Thang – CVA alumnus

Niece I: Hoang Thi Thu Tam

Niece II: Hoang thi Thu Nga

Nephew I: Hoang Dinh Chien

Nephew II: Hoang Dinh My

Friend I : Trinh van Thoa (San Diego) CVA

Friend II: Nguyen Dang Phong (S. California) CVA

Friend III: Do Thanh Thai (S California) who had fled early CVA

Friend III: Cang (pilot) St Louis, ran into him on same ship

Child Welfare Bureau at Indiantown Gap

Sponsor: Rev Ernest Hawk, rep of Sycamore house church

Sponsor: Dr Rustum Roy (Founder of Material Research Lab at Penn State University) and Waslunds at Weis.

Thank you for the shared memories and camaraderie along the journey out of the River of Saigon to blue ocean..