My parents escaped their war-torn country and became refugees.
Luckily for them, finding a new home country was easy. Making themselves at home in this new country was however challenging. At the time, escaping Vietnam during the war more or less had 4 options:
- Stay – some people stayed because it made sense, or they didn’t like the inconvenience and ambiguity of starting their lives over elsewhere, or maybe it just felt too dangerous to try and leave.
- Sponsor – when a friend, family member, or stranger in another country agrees to take care of you and does the paperwork to bring you over and immigrant into their country. You would be coming over by plane…very easy and safe transport route this way.
- Boat people – when you escape by a private boat and god knows if you’ll successfully reach another country alive. Awfully dangerous journey full of death, sadness, and sorrow.
- US boat – when you escape by jumping onto an American marine boat and they then allow you to immigrate into the United States.
Let’s go over the wide realm of possibilities, shall we?
OPTION 1 – staying in Vietnam
Staying in Vietnam seems like no big deal to some, but an impossible option to others.
Generally, nobody wants to leave their country. It’s their home and where they feel most comfortable. Even moving around within their country seems like a massive inconvenience.
The communist party first took over the north of Vietnam. So it’s actually the northerners who most hate the communists since they firsthand experienced how bad it was to live under their rule.
- Massive loss in money value when exchanging old government currency to new government currency.
- Brainwashing and imprisonment if you were part of the old government (or had worked for them). You could also be put in jail for wearing glasses since they might have considered you too smart.
- Anti-social rules to prevent people from rising up or rebelling against the new government.
- Sons taken from families and forced to fight in the war.
- Daughters taken from families and forced to serve as sex slaves to maintain soldiers’ morale.
- Other disruptions in everyday quality of life and daily routines.
Many people made the decision to leave the north, and go to the south. My father’s parents (and his oldest siblings, he wasn’t born yet) moved to the south in 1954. My father’s grandfather stayed there and died there. They had a house already and didn’t want the unfamiliar feeling of being in a new land.
So who the heck would want to stay in the north?
- Somebody who joined the communist party – probably most obvious reason. Someone who works for directly, or indirectly (like an informant/spy) for the communist party. Or makes money providing service to them.
- Perhaps people or old people in isolated regions – whose lives aren’t affected much.
- Stubborn people – who really just insist on not going anywhere and don’t want to leave their home.
But for most people…the collective feeling is “living under communism sucks, and we gotta go!”
And who the heck would want to stay in Vietnam at all?
The northerners were moving to the south in mass numbers. Taking what little they could. All they could carry was their gold and pretty much nothing else. Once in the south they would have to start over.
The southerners at this time had heard about how bad the communists were, but they didn’t actually experience it for themselves so they had no idea and weren’t really worried. They didn’t imagine life to be any different with or without communism. Since my mother’s family were from the south, they weren’t worried at all. They thought they would just stay in the country and live life like they always did. But the northerners knew better…
Once word had made way that the communists were now making way towards the south of Vietnam…and also that the US troops were arriving in south Vietnam to “prevent the spread of communism in the world”…the northerners were the first to want to leave the country. The southerners would soon feel the same once a full scale US-Vietnam war had begun.
My father’s family (originally from the north, but now living in the south) were absolutely keen to escape immediately and willing to take any risks to do so. My mother’s family (originally from the south) were initially resistant to leaving. They had 2 houses and didn’t want to leave Saigon. They did however try to save gold and send off their oldest son Vito to escape but he was caught and put in prison. Once he got out, they too felt they must absolutely leave.
OPTION 2 – sponsored immigrants
The easiest way to immigrate elsewhere, and leave Vietnam in the safest way possible.
My mother’s family was very lucky since they left Vietnam by plane. Safe flight transportation to a new country, without any danger or risk along the way. This was made possible because her sister Anna was a journalist who married an Italian journalist (Corrado Greco – from a Greek family who immigrated to Italy). Anna had already immigrated to Italy and lived with her husband Corrado there.
To sponsor immigrants means somebody (like a family member, friend, or any random person) already in the new country agrees to financially support and help assimilate immigrants into the country. Since my aunt Anna was now a housewife and didn’t have any income, it would have to be her husband Corrado who would have to do the sponsoring. It was him who did all the paperwork proving income and agreeing to provide support since Italy doesn’t offer money for refugee support like richer countries. It took 2 years of processing to finally get the family into Italy.
- My mom’s version of the story – they got sick of living under communist rule. and complained to Anna’s husband Corrado. And in a show of sympathy and compassion, he began to do the paperwork to get them sponsored.
- My cousin Giovanni’s version of the story (son of Anna/Corrado) – Corrado always wanted to take Anna from where they lived in Rome to the south for vacation and meet up with friends and family but Anna always seemed sad and unhappy. So he felt maybe it was because she worried about her family. And this realization triggered him to start the sponsorship process.
OPTION 3 – boat people
“Boat people” is a common expression for the refugees who fled Vietnam by boat.
Their journey is absolutely full of danger every step of the way. With tons of death, sorrow, and sadness. Betrayal as well. About 800,000 boat people survived the treacherous journey while many others never made it. There are many books and documentaries of the “boat people” refugees and their sad tales of pain and suffering. An interesting and highly recommended read for anybody who doesn’t know about it. What I share below is really just a tiny fraction of what happened.
The first step is deciding the boat.
One option is to have your own boat and cans of fuel, and drive the boat yourself. This is perhaps a good idea if you’re a great driver, want to move privately, want to have more personal control over your destiny, perhaps you felt your boat would be smaller and harder to detect. The idea however could also be more dangerous since your boat is smaller and slower, maybe won’t hold against the waves.
The scariest thing was deciding WHEN to leave and how many cans of fuel is enough. You don’t really know. You just saved all the money that you could for 3 to 6 months to be cans of fuel and then take a leap of faith and leave. But horrible things would happen. Maybe while you were saving up, somebody would find your hidden stash of fuel and stole them. Or snitched you out to the communists and you would be punished. Spies and snitches were everywhere. You sometimes didn’t know who you could trust in your neighbors/community.
Other times, you have no choice. The communist army is arriving soon in your town. And you wake up your family in the middle of the night and just leave. Taking whatever you can, with however many cans of fuel you have.
The second and more common option is to pay for someone to take you. This usually a fishing boat or rowing boat of various sizes. Sometimes even a big boat that could hundreds of people. You pay a fisherman (or smuggler) an amount and they agree take you and your family. But hey…you better pray they aren’t thieves just taking your money and/or worse, spies who turn around and report you to the communists.
Sometimes your boat leaves directly from your town/village. Other times you have to travel by road to a safehouse far away, and then wait there for a couple days until the conditions are right to travel by boat into international waters.
The second step is leaving Vietnam waters.
Leaving the Vietnam water territory is hard because of the Vietnamese coast guard and naval ships patrolling their waters. The boats will try to drift out there and act normal as if they were just going to fish. This sometimes works and they’re able to leave the Vietnam waters without much trouble. Usually by leaving in the night or even bribing government officials.
If the coast guard or naval boats see you, they’ll quickly order your boat to stop. Some boats will stop and with only a few people hiding in the bottom behind supplies and things…maybe they won’t get caught during the inspection. Other boats are full of people and will opt to just run instead. At this point, the military boats will start shooting at them.
If you’re lucky, your boat is fast or clever enough to outrun/outmaneuver them and you make it into international waters with no problem. If you’re not lucky, their bullets kill your boat on the spot (damaging engine, causing water leak or explosion) and maybe even some the passengers. Your boat is stuck and you’re dead either way. Or you may have something in the middle….the boat is semi-functioning, has a fuel leak or the rudder is damaged and it can’t steer. You may have escaped the military boats, but your chance of survival in international waters is almost zero with a malfunctioned boat.
The third step is surviving in international waters.
Making it to international waters may feel like ceremonious freedom, but you’re actually now met with a new set of dangerous obstacles. The absolute luckiest ones are the ones picked up by international cruise ships or tankers. In some cases, the ships genuinely want to adopt the refugees…taking them aboard and feeding them and taking them home for immigration. In other cases…the refugees have to act coy. Hiding everybody and showing only a few people on deck acting like stranded fisherman who just need a little fuel. Once a connection is made, the refugees quickly spring onto the ship and by international rules (not sure of rules of war, or rules of water), had to be saved.
For everybody else…their horrible boat people story continues on. At this point…they can die in 101 ways. With the biggest “luck factor” being the wind. Good wind would push you in the right direction, preserving your fuel supply (maybe you already ran out or your boat is damaged), and exposing you to dangerous open waters for the shortest time possible. Bad wind basically sent you in the wrong direction, used up your fuel, and exposed you to dangerous waters.
Big waves could easily flood and capsize boats. You could also just run out fuel, and eventually run out of food and starve in the open sea. There are even some stories of people who had to eat their dead relatives to stay alive. One of my uncle’s wives, she and her young sister were the only siblings to live because an old lady squeezed some drops from a hidden lemon into their mouth. This mercy kept them alive just long enough to make it. Their other sisters unfortunately had already perished from starvation and had to be thrown overboard as nobody wants the smell of death in the boat.
The other fear are the Thai pirates. They come on your boat, rape the females, kidnap the children, steal the valuables and even food and fuel supply, and kill the men or anybody daring to stop them (right in front of their family). Sometimes they just kill the men anyway. Whoever’s left when they leave your boat is as good as dead anyway. Maybe you don’t even want to live anymore.
The fourth and final desperation is making it onto another country’s shores.
If you’ve somehow…managed to get your own boat with sufficient fuel and good captain, got past the Vietnamese military boats, reached the open waters without running out of fuel and food, had good wind and good water, without being raped and killed by Thai pirates, and made it to a new country…you STILL have a major obstacle here.
Many neighboring countries did not want to accept refugees. They didn’t want to provide support for immigrants they felt were lesser beings than them. Maybe they felt the immigrants brought disease or bad political beliefs or whatever else they wanted to believe. But there you had…thousands of people who were luckily enough to survive the long dangerous journey when many on their boat did not…being denied entry and not allowed to dock.
So people who had luckily made it all that way would just die right there…just outside the shores of another country.
OPTION 4 – US Marine boat people
Some people were lucky to escape by US marine boat.
Although these survivors are typically lumped in as “boat people”, I don’t feel they should be considered the same as the others. Yes, they too had hardships but it’s very different.
The US Marines had huge boats near the shores of Vietnam that would be swamped with refugees. They knew the months-long journey in the seas were long and difficult and they didn’t have food for hundreds of people. So they were picky in who they let onboard. The selection process was simple enough. They kept the boat far from the docks and people had to swing onboard like Tarzan. They figured whoever was strong enough to swing would be strong enough to survive the journey.
My father’s whole family (except for one brother) would escape Vietnam this way. They swung onboard a big US Marine boat. This boat would take them first to Malaysia and then to the United States were they became citizens. The one brother that was left behind, had a wife and infant son (too small to risk), so he stayed behind with his tire business…tires he sold to the communist army. Once his son was just a little older, him and his wife had a small tiny boat that they took to who knows where. And he later rejoined his family in the United States.