Posted on 04/30/2005 4:35:07 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Bitter memories of the fall of Saigon, signifying the end of the Vietnam War 30 years ago today, will be shared quietly among Vietnamese refugees in homes, cafes and restaurants across America.
Public demonstrations are planned in Washington, D.C., and Vietnamese-American enclaves like Westminster.
The San Gabriel Valley is home to 41,300 Vietnamese Americans, or 46 percent of the county's Vietnamese-American population, including ethnic mixes from that country. In one Rosemead Vietnamese restaurant, a group of men talked recently about what it was like seeing their country torn apart by civil war and arriving in America penniless and broken-hearted.
The men sipped Heineken poured over ice a tradition in sweltering Vietnam and talked about their home country. Each would like to some day go back. Van Cu Nguyen, 75, of South El Monte pulled out a stack of posters for today's rally in the capital and the men analyzed the collage of black-and-white photographs.
Some in the photographs the men knew personally, generals martyred during the war. Others tug at their hearts, pictures of young Vietnamese girls sold into slavery. The conversation, in Vietnamese, quickly grows passionate, but a consensus is reached today is a day of shame.
A family mourned
"My sister, the Vietminh killed her,' Nguyen said. She traveled around the countryside as a trader, but communist soldiers mistook her for a spy. "She wasn't. She was going to market to sell goods.'
That same year the Vietminh which later became the Viet Cong prevented his mother from getting to a hospital. She also died. For Nguyen, civil war in Vietnam started 15 years before the U.S. sent troops. By the time American soldiers came, half his family was dead.
So when the communists came to Nguyen's village outside Hanoi in the early 1950s and asked him to join the revolution, he was not interested.
"It made me very angry because we were fighting Vietnamese to Vietnamese,' Nguyen said. During the war, he worked for the French and United States governments as a civilian.
He fears returning to Vietnam, saying the government there would make him "disappear.'
Like many Vietnamese Americans of the war era now living in the San Gabriel Valley, Nguyen escaped by boat.
It was a harrowing five-day journey on a crowded vessel. Pirates and storms were an ever-present danger. Eventually, he made it Malaysia and then to the San Gabriel Valley, where, starting with nothing, he raised a family and eventually retired from an electrical company.
Nguyen will be one of thousands of Vietnamese to gather today in Washington, D.C.
Haunted by memories
Allen Co, an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, is a South El Monte city councilman who escaped Vietnam into Thailand by boat.
Co said people of his generation feel bitter memories about the war, while a younger generation struggles to understand the war's significance.
"Since this is 30 years and a lot of people either weren't born at that time, or they came to the United States very young, the war experience is basically just a story to them,' Co said.
Co fled Vietnam at the age of 19, one month before the fall of Saigon. Communist victories, rolling like a juggernaut across the country, terrified South Vietnamese.
"Horrible. It was a horrible experience,' Co recalled. "Panic all over, because a lot of people didn't believe Vietnam would fall, so a lot of people never had a chance to get out.'
His mother and younger sister left by boat shortly after the fall of Saigon never to be heard from again. They either drowned at sea or encountered pirates during their escape. He prays they drowned because it would be a quick death. A capture by pirates could have led to a lifetime of physical or sexual slavery.
"Death would be a short time of pain,' Co said. "You hear a lot of horrible stories about pirates.'
Tri Nguyen, 54, of Walnut, was a lieutenant for the South Vietnamese coast guard. His job was to provide support to ground troops by firing into the jungle from off the coast. On April 30, 1975, his boat was moored in the Saigon River and the order to evacuate was already nine hours old.
Nguyen was the highest ranking officer on his gun boat the captain had fled a week earlier.
"I didn't leave. I felt, why should I have to leave?' Nguyen said. "I told my sailors, 'If you guys want to go find another ship and leave, if you want to go home, go home.''
But surrender was unconditional, the war was really over and Nguyen, as an officer, was marked for death. He took the ship out into the Pacific and met up with what remained of the South Vietnamese fleet. The smaller ships, like his gun boat, were sunk. Thousands of sailors boarded the large boats and sailed to the Philippines. From there, they were transferred to the United States.
"My sister went everywhere looking for me,' Nguyen said. "She went to every concentration camp looking for me.'
It was two years before he finally made contact with his sister, via letter, laced with codes and written under a fake name.
Even 30 years later, Van Cu Nguyen and Tri Nguyen actively try to effect regime change in Vietnam. Although the battle is no longer bloody, the war is still on for these two men.
"We can try to do something to change our regime without blood,' Tri Nguyen said. "My commission is not complete yet. I was an officer in the Navy, my mission is not complete yet.'
A soldier's story
For American veteran Mike Felix, 58, of El Monte, today is a day of internal conflict.
"On the one hand, for many of us veterans we're trying to forget about yesterday and the horror of war,' Felix said. "On the other hand, we don't want people to forget the war.'
Felix was a sergeant with the special forces demolitions squad in Vietnam. He saw heavy fighting during his 1967-68 tour, and he can remember how he felt 30 years ago today upon learning of the fall of Saigon.
"Felt pretty terrible,' he said with a frown. "I thought it was disgraceful. It shamed me.'
Felix came back to the United States to live a normal life. He became a teacher and raised a family. He now works for the El Monte-Rosemead Adult School, serves as chairman of the El Monte Veterans and Homeless Affairs Commissions and commands VFW Post 10218 in El Monte.
He tries not to dwell on the blood he saw in Vietnam and the terror he felt every second he was a soldier there.
"A lot of Vietnam veterans, we try to think of the happy times, the relationships we made, the friends we met,' Felix said. "We don't think about any of the people we killed or any of that. ... At least, for me, I try to think about what few happy times we had, listening to Jimi Hendrix, playing air guitar.'
But the fog of war lingers.
Vietnamese in the Valley
San Gabriel Valley's Vietnamese-American community is still a somewhat-isolated ethnic enclave, but like many immigrant communities, a process of assimilation is under way. A burgeoning Little Saigon is taking root here, mainly along Garvey Avenue, Valley and Rosemead boulevards, where the streets run through Rosemead and El Monte.
Rosemead has the highest concentration of Vietnamese in the county, with 7,175, according to the U.S. Census. The city has a strong connection to Vietnam. John Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant, and John Nunez, a veteran, were both elected to the Rosemead City Council on March 8.
"There were some days that were really scary out there,' Nunez said. "I don't look back at those.'
Census figures show 6,766 Vietnamese live in El Monte; 5,390 live in Alhambra; 3,850 live in Monterey Park; 3,180 in San Gabriel; and 2,619 in West Covina. Other sizable populations in the county live in Long Beach, Pomona and Temple City.
One thing many Vietnamese refugees and veterans have in common is the desire for a better future without forgetting the past.
"My family's destruction is what I can never forget,' Co said. "But we can continue to be depressed or we can use that suffering and convert it into positive strength, to make sure it is not repeated to anybody.'
1. Was he saved so that we may meet again? 2. Should we have stayed and finished? 3. Could we have won and saved all those people? I know this is a sensitive subject, so I apologize if I offend someone. My philosophy is such that my family and many others sacrificed sons, daughters, husbands, mothers, was it for naught?
I wish I could answer even one of your questions. (Believe me, I have asked them countless times the last 35 years).
I started conversing with other vets online in 1996. During the course fo these communications, I was able to find the mother of one of my friends who was killed in action in Vietnam. Also, I was put in contact with a young woman, who, like you, lost her dad when she was a baby. I saw both of these men shortly before they were killed.
Both of these contacts blossomed into true friendships. It turned out that I received as much of a blessing as these women did - for I was carrying a burden also.
My advice for you is to try to locate your dad's unit. If you are able to, then find out if they have a reunion. The second person I mentioned (the one who was a little baby) attends each of our reunions.
If you were to attend just one reunion and were able to meet those who served with your father, you would quickly discover that the questions you asked in this thread and their answers really don't really matter.
Thank you for your service. Have a great day.
We did our best to liberate a country from communism. I know that sounds trite, but it was an effort to help another country. ( I remember asking my father, who had served in the Pacific during World War 2, about the morality of that war in the early 70's. He said that as a Christian Nation we are obligated to help those who are oppressed.)He was exactly right. What's that old saying? "Evil will triumph if good men stand by and do nothing."
I entered the service shortly after the fall of Saigon, not because of that but to do my small bit for my country. I wish I could have done more.
We certainly could have won that war had we been given the resources and support.
There are 53,000+ heroes who never came home from that war, and we must never forget the sacrifice they made.
Your father continues to be a hero to many of us who came after. We try to honor and exemplify them by working hard to preserve liberty in this country, and raising our children to understand the sacrifice that has been made so that they can live in a free country.
God Bless you.
It is appreciated more than you know.
No man who dies in the dense of freedom has died for naught. Be very proud of your father, as he was a hero in the truest sense of the word. He may not have been successful in his effort to guarantee liberty and freedom for millions of South East Asians, but he died trying. For this, our country will forever be grateful to you and to him for your sacrifice.
If your father served with a Special Forces unit in Vietnam, you may be able to contact someone who knew him on these web sites:
http://www.sfahq.com/reg/
http://www.sfahq.org/
http://www.projectdelta.net/
No one can really answer that for you. I think the following quote from the article is good advice for everyone: "But we can continue to be depressed or we can use that suffering and convert it into positive strength, to make sure it is not repeated to anybody."
.2. Should we have stayed and finished?
I think so.
3. Could we have won and saved all those people?
I believe we could have won. We would not have been able to save all of the people, but perhaps many more than we did.
Here are some threads that may interest you:
Quynh Dao: Vietnam protesters fall silent - (Hooah! Chalk up one commentary for the good guys!)
.
Take heart, my fellow Freedom-Loving Freeper, for your father was in Vietnam because...
Sacrifice begets Sacrifice:
MEL's -PASSION- was sparked BY -WE WERE SOLDIERS-
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1085111/posts
.
.
The Vietnamese-American Community's love of Freedom and dedication to returning it to their homeland Vietnam is...
THE Example for the rest of us to follow...
in a new Time of War...
in a new Century...
with an Enemy that's now...
just around the corner and...
up your street...
with our own Freedom...
directly at stake...
here at home.
.
I thank God every day for men like your dad.
I believe our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has a special place in heaven for men like your dad. And if the love of Christ is in your heart, then you will indeed see your dad again. Jesus is the justification and the sanctification and only He knows our hearts.
We did win the battle against the communists in Vietnam. We won the only victory that was allowed us; to make the commies pay heavily for their ambitions. Ultimately, we won the war against communism. Thanks to men like your dad.
(John 15:13) Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.