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Those on the “wrong side” struggled
The Vietnamese who allied themselves with the American-sponsored Saigon government were viewed with suspicion. The men were sent off to reeducation camps for months or years, leaving remaining families no choice but to fish or farm or scrape for a living in a devastating economic environment.
It was extremely dangerous to attempt to leave the country, and those who managed to escape faced a grueling and uncertain journey in leaky or overcrowded boats, vulnerable to multiple disasters including starvation and killing or rape by pirates. Reaching friendly shores often meant months or years in crowded, over-stressed refugee camps while waiting for approval and transport to countries that would accept them.
It was not until 1990 that the government began to implement a limited departure program that allowed people to leave the country.
Exodus from South Vietnam
It is estimated that up to 300,000 people in Vietnam were sent to reeducation camps, and one million people were relocated to New Economic Zones. When the Saigon government was falling in 1975, the U.S. military evacuated 130,000 Vietnamese who were then resettled in the U.S. Between 1975 and 1995, an estimated 2 million people left Vietnam, more than 700,000 by boat. Thousands of the boat people died on their journey.
“ I felt like a person at the bottom of society.”
Phung Le was a military officer who worked for the Saigon government Defense department. He was a prisoner in nine different relocation camps in a nine-year period. After his release, he was classified as a non-citizen and lived under strict surveillance. Because of his status, his children could not attend university. Le escaped by boat to Malaysia. Eventually most of his family joined him in the U.S.
“We hadn’t escaped for our future, but for our kids’ future”
Hung Lang was a second lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army. He spent three years in reeducation camps that he said were really “jails.” He escaped in 1984 with eight family members and 14 other people crammed together on “a small boat with only a little food, water and gas.”
“On the eighth day out my three-year-old daughter died, on the ninth my four-year-old son died, and on the tenth my wife’s smallest niece died.”
They were at sea without food or water for 13 days before a fishing boat took the refugees to a camp in Indonesia. Lang and his wife were resettled in the U.S. in 1987 and now have a son and daughter.
“My soul died”
Jade Quang Huynh escaped in a boat that was attacked by Thai pirates. The refugees fought them but lost all their possessions, finally managing to keep the pirates from kidnapping anyone. Huynh said his “soul died” as he watched the women wrapping up the naked girls who had been raped. They finally reached the relative safety of a refugee camp in Thailand. Huynh was later resettled in the U.S.
Sources:
– Mary Terrell Cargil and Jade Quang Huyhn, Voices of the Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and Survival