“Departure, Survival, Success”: A Q&A with Vietnamese chronicler and refugee Tu-Ha Nguyen

By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Tu-Ha Nguyen

April 30 will mark 50 years since the Fall of Sái Gón. To commemorate the complex and deeply painful anniversary, Mountlake Terrace resident and Vietnamese refugee Tu-Ha Nguyen, who works to preserve and chronicle stories of Vietnamese refugees, will hold a discussion at the Mountlake Terrace Library on March 30 from 2 p.m.—4 p.m.

Titled, “Departure, Survival, Success: Celebrating 50 years of the Vietnamese Refugee Experience,” the discussion will examine the Vietnamese refugee experience through the three themes of Departure, Survival, and Success.

In advance of the event, Nguyen shared some of her and her family’s story with the Northwest Asian Weekly.

Northwest Asian Weekly
Where in Vietnam did your family live? Do you remember any of your life there, before you were forced to flee? Does anything particularly stick with you — any memory, human, plant, feeling — from your hometown?

Tu-Ha P. Nguyen
Our family lived in Saigon. I was a small child of 4-plus years when we left. While this might surprise some people, as a little kid in Southern Vietnam, I possessed a rare gift. I had an uncanny ability to recall the aroma of certain food items, the sound of my grandfather’s voice and what it felt like to be held.

A few years later, after we fled Southern Vietnam, once we were safely relocated to the eastside of Seattle, and had begun the process of assimilating to American society, my dad showed me pictures from the Old Country. Some of the snapshots touched me deeply. Daddy was shocked by my questions that clarified the venue and identities of people within those few images.

NWAW
When did you leave Vietnam for the United States?

Nguyen
According to my folks, we left one day before Communist forces from the North took over our country of birth. That was Tuesday, April 29, 1975. 

On Wednesday, April 30, 1975, all bets were off, as anyone found wearing Southern Vietnamese military uniforms—like my maternal pseudo-uncle, [who was adopted by my mom’s folks, one of dozens of children adopted over the course of 40 years between 1930-ish to 1970-ish], were arrested and thrown into holding cells. Many of these South Vietnamese soldiers quickly became POWs within their mother country. 

Let’s rewind and then fast forward a bit, ok?

Around 2008, I worked for a western Washington research group that allowed me to interview all kinds of Vietnamese people within many levels of social and economic stature. The scientific research was about the level of Vietnamese healthcare education and general consumer knowledge within Viet communities in a handful of Washington State counties.

In the course of my job duties, I spoke to former Republic of Vietnam (Southerners) military service members who were tortured ruthlessly and beaten almost to death by their own countrymen from the North. That experience was more than eye-opening to me. The tragedy of human suffering, merciless physical, mental, emotional brutality and unfathomable carnage during the war and post-war Vietnam blew me away, led me to tears and caused me to be physically ill.

During my work shifts, I listened to numerous accounts of cruelty, oppression and atrocities experienced by South Vietnamese veterans at the hands of their North Vietnamese captors.  There were numerous moments when images of Hanoi-Hilton style re-education camps were illustrated verbally to me by older South Vietnamese men who were subject to the abhorrent and vicious, unrelenting daily beatings and torture. 

Sometimes, after a phone interview concluded, I raced to the bathroom just in time to lose my lunch. There, in the safety of a corner of the woman’s bathroom, underneath the outdated, sometimes working, female napkin vending machine, I collapsed in tears of anger, disgust and absolute grief as the vivid, horrific images of prison camp life chronicled by those former POWs raced through the inner core of my mind. 

Until the very last breath I take on earth, I don’t think I could ever forget any of those stories. Perhaps I don’t want to be free of those horrible narratives because that is one way I can choose to honor all the people from every side of the armed and combative conflict that resulted in the loss of millions of civilian and military lives of American, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodian human beings. 

…

[L]et’s go back to your original question, the April 1975 timeline, what we knew then, and other things we found out later.

As The Northern troops closed in on Saigon, neighbors, friends and family in Southern Vietnam had to burn any clothing and destroy more material items that read “Made in the USA.” This practice happened, because any alliance to the U.S. was perceived as an act of betrayal and treason by the Vietcong. All of these perceived “crimes” were punishable by prison time and/or death.

American dollar bills became inflamed, charred, unrecognizable fractional bookmarks of George Washington’s face, as people were forced to be free of evidence that could link them up as allies of the West. Families hid any proof of friendship and planned cooperation with U.S. military personnel by hiding small trinkets and other valuables inside the walls of their homes. 

For some small business owners, there was a brief sigh of relief when power outages camouflaged the validity of their working relationships—trades, buying, and selling—with Western commerce.

NWAW
What did your and your family’s life in the United States look like, when you first got here? What do you remember about your house and your loved ones?

Nguyen
When I was a grade schooler in my hometown of Redmond, Washington, my dad drew me a map. According to Daddy, after we left Southern Vietnam, we stopped in The Philippines. Other islands in the South Pacific became temporary homes called refugee camps. They were made up of not-so-glamorous provisional huts or tents where men fought with each other for small plastic bags of water, or milk for their kids. There was constant conflict between families in the camps.  

We were a people with no vestige of security. Our hard-earned high school and college diplomas meant nothing. We had no country to call our own. We would start over with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the few pictures we rushed to grab on the way out. We said goodbye to our grandparents and more family in great haste.  It took months, sometimes years, to know if a loved one was missing, safe, or presumed dead, given the few possible passages out of the Old Country on various modes of transportation.

Our first 4th of July in America was at an army base in Arkansas. 

A Western Washington church sponsored us to [move to] the Pacific Northwest. We arrived at Sea-Tac Airport in August 1975. We were greeted by church members who transported us in a van to what was previously utilized as a parsonage for a pastor and his family. The small, unpretentious, older style farmhouse sat right next to a gravel parking lot that belonged to the church that sponsored our family of seven people to the eastside of Seattle (actually, in the crowded arenas of my cerebrum, I somehow remember my blood-related paternal great-uncle and another pseudo-uncle arriving with us, so the family unit might have been a total of nine people, but that’s an entirely different story that can be relayed another time). When we arrived in Redmond, the future Microsoft campus was a giant chicken farm.

My two older sisters lived upstairs in a quaint, cozy attic space. They were 14- and 13-year-old teens, and had their own, tiny French window that faced the main street below. Five years or so later, we would climb out of that French window to physically twist and turn the physical, small structure of a low-tech antenna that was perched right above the attic space.

The three of us younger kids shared a small bedroom downstairs on the main floor of the home. There was a bunk bed and a tiny bed that formed something like a capital “L.”  The top bunk bed was my 10-year old brother’s territory. My 9-year-old sister’s bed was the bottom bunk.  I slept in the tiny bed parallel to my sister’s bed. There was a small, but in good working condition kitchen. The walls of the kitchen were painted in a pleasant canary yellow color. My mom and dad shared a room next to the only bathroom in the house. That’s right: One toilet, one shower and one bathroom sink for seven-to-nine people in a majority female group.

We were lucky to have fruit-bearing trees on the small property. There was a cherry tree in the front yard of the house. An apple tree adorned the backyard next to the stand-alone garage structure with a tiny storage shed attached. The church folks and the friends we made in school afforded us the chance to get back on our feet again. 

Even so, nothing came too easy for us.  

If you ever get a chance to speak to a refugee resettlement organization and groups that work with immigrants, you will find out that it can take refugee families—no matter what country they came from—a few generations to simply “make-up” for the loss of having to leave their homeland. [At play is] the psychological destruction of their sense of security and an array of culture shocks [that come with] trying to get a new foothold on the “basics of life” in a new country.

In 1975, we were only one of a few Asian families within a lily-white community. We really stood out when we went to the grocery store and other places in town. A few years later, more Viets [and] other people of color, arrived from Southeast Asian countries like Laos and Cambodia. Our family was able to “blend in” a little bit better by then.

It was a different time back then. 

The America that we were raised in was a musical rainbow of Partridge Family and disco beats. My first “for real” American president was Jimmy Carter. Some of us learned more English slang and otherwise accepted popular culture American terminology by watching black-and-white TV shows. There was a lot to learn from episodes of “My Three Sons,” “Bewitched,” re-runs of “Leave it to Beaver,” “Happy Days,” and of course, the Saturday night, fantastic trio of “The Lawrence Welk Show,” “The Love Boat,” and “Fantasy Island” on ABC. 

While I am thinking about it, please let me mention the following.

… [T]he many legs of our dangerous voyage to an uncertain life in America … [were] a great source of immense sorrow and emotional pain for my mom and dad to relive in the storytelling [to me].

There was enormous loss in each narrative they shared with me over the course of some years.  An extraordinary amount of struggle occupied their eyes. Their pupils revealed vignettes of agonized souls. It was not an easy decision to make. The forced resolution of leaving all that they ever knew to find a new land to raise their children in was super-tough. My folks left behind their parents and more extended family. Most of these kinfolk were never seen again in-person, either by my parents or us children.

What little money mom and dad saved over four decades of life in Vietnam could neither be accessed nor retrieved, before the desperate departure. Mom, dad and my older siblings witnessed real-time fighting, death, and destruction, and experienced the vast chaos of leaving Saigon before its fall.

Our novel life in a new land in the mid-1970’s was a very humble beginning. 

My folks chose to leave everyone and everything they ever knew so their five children could have a chance in a democratic, free society. My parents valued education and the limitless opportunities that America had to offer given that we had the desire to apply ourselves and the drive to work hard. Mom and Dad knew that a good education would be the key to a better life, as more marketable skills could furnish money that would allow us to build the life we wanted to make for ourselves in our new country. An advanced education would be the ticket to even out the playing field of “haves” versus “have-nots.” Besides, we had no choice but to leave. Had we stayed, we surely would have been murdered by the enemy.

Let’s go back … and talk school.

The church members helped our parents register us kids for school. The two older kids went to junior high school. The next two kids attended elementary school, while I was enrolled in the “Head Start” program of King County. My mom went to vocational school. My dad was able to speak English as well as his native tongue, because he was educated in the U.S. in the 1950s. A member of the Southern Vietnamese Air Force, Dad was invited to become a liaison officer to learn how to fly fighter jets with the United States Air Force. Daddy graduated at the top of his class and later became a flight instructor.

Upon our arrival in 1975, Daddy worked night and day to help other refugee families resettle in western Washington. He served as a translator and interpreter for the foreign language phone bank. I remember many nights as a little girl, when daddy was a communication conduit between an English-speaking social worker and a displaced Viet immigrant. There were other scenes that involved the police and a Vietnamese refugee. Daddy did what he could to help both parties understand each other. Sometimes, my dad assisted in getting folks a “get out of jail card” — other times they weren’t so lucky. Like many groups of immigrants throughout America’s history, there was a learning curve for us to understand American customs, etiquette and laws. Later, Daddy would manage an award-winning, bilingual, hard-copy newspaper that featured some of the best writers and photographers known to the Vietnamese on the West Coast of America.

NWAW
How did people here treat you and your family? What was your school experience?

Nguyen
For the most part, the majority of the people in our community were very kind and welcoming.  Back then, it was quite common for the church folks to come over on a Saturday night and have an impromptu potluck dinner with us in our tiny home that they so graciously furnished with hand-me-down-style furniture and other basic necessities, when we first arrived.  

The friendly neighbors and great community of the church far outweighed the variety of petty racial attacks we experienced. For example, I made friends with some kids from school. We must have been 7 or 8 years old at the time. I was the only non-white kid in the group. Back then, it was fun to gather tiny rocks and throw them as far up into the nearest tree as possible. The higher the rock could land in the tree, the more accolades you received from your play pals. Somebody’s male relative in a house nearby the grade school witnessed our rock-throwing challenge. The man yelled out some expletives at us and then looked directly at me. Using his finger to point in my direction, he shouted, “Listen here, you Kung Fu girl. Go back to where you came from!”

My response to him was a shout out to the kids who were present.  I said to my playmates, “Yeah, let’s go back to my house to play!” After all, that’s where I “came from” right?

Outside of that, there were several incidents of people yelling at us when we were crammed into our less-than-fancy, used, but new-to-us 1978 moss green Ford Pinto. Most of their yelling at our family happened on the freeway. We had to strongly encourage Daddy not to yell back at the agitators.

I do remember a few times when small businesses tried to scare us into buying accessories for our old car that we didn’t need. I shared the unfortunate situation with a church member. She said, “People always try to con us white people too. Don’t take it personally.”

One old guy tried to trick us into thinking that we’d be sent back to Vietnam, if we didn’t buy a set of knives from him.  He freaked out when he realized that my dad and I could speak English just as well, if not better, than he could. That fact motivated the guy to move on.

My school experience was fine. Sure, there were awkward moments of cultural indecision and confusion, but after a few years, I was just another kid playing with all the other kids at recess.  Basketball was my sport.

NWAW
How did your lived experiences during childhood and adolescence affect both your personal and professional life?

Nguyen
Honestly? While much of my childhood had strife, due to my folks suffering from [post-traumatic stress disorder] PTSD from the many wars they lived through from the 1930s and beyond, when I look back, I consider myself very blessed. There is a silver lining in every rough cloud. I think my siblings and I appreciate more about what we might have now, because we started out with zero material items and such uncertainty “back in the day.”  

As children in the early 1930s, my late parents ran from all kinds of enemies—the Chinese, the Japanese Imperial Army of the 1940s, the French who occupied Vietnam for almost a century from the 1850s to the 1950s. I don’t think I need to unroll too much about The Vietnam War that U.S. troops were involved in. We Vietnamese have survived hundreds of years of wars. For us, it hasn’t been just one war that shaped the fabric of our society. No, every foreign invader who attempted genocide on us—they were all bullies who tried to annihilate every aspect of Vietnamese customs and the Viet people.

My parents were very strict, tough people. They were very traditional in their upbringing of us.  They had to be tough in order to survive those many chapters of war, dysentery, famine and The Great Depression during the 1930s. I am super-grateful that my mom and dad made the courageous decision to bring us to the States in 1975. I consider myself quite fortunate for the multicultural group of wildly talented and educated people from all parts of the world—Americans whose ancestors were refugees and immigrants themselves—who helped raise me from grade school to beyond college. Yes, it does take a village.

NWAW
How does the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Sài Gòn feel to you? What is stirring up for you in your memories and emotions? Are you recognizing the anniversary with any loved ones in any capacity?

Nguyen
The Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of The Fall of Saigon is a big deal for me. For a few years, I formulated in my mind how I would go about planning and organizing some kind of program to tell parts of my parents’ life story, so that their legacy of resilience and resourcefulness can be shared with future generations. Theirs is a story of old-fashioned courage and accomplishments, despite great loss.  

I miss my parents a great deal. They and my late brother suffered from kidney and heart disease. I’m dedicating this [Departure, Survival, Success] DSS presentation to them, my teachers and community.

I’m recognizing this special time with my immediate family, but I’m also attempting to share my birth family’s story with as many people who would like to learn about the chronicles of our journey to America.  

Even so, let me share with you the truth of the matter.

While my event is on the very last Sunday of this month, I’m not expecting a ton of people to show up. Know why?  

The Viet elders and more people who lived through the war are unwilling to re-tell their experiences. They don’t want to talk about it. You will recall that the Japanese were not willing to talk about their incarceration at respective internment camps until many decades later. 

Beyond all of this, the problem and the non-problem about the DSS presentation is that it’s simply not sexy enough to garner a big crowd. It doesn’t have the standard things like “sex, nudity, other naughty things” that attracts general audiences.

Last, but not least, this isn’t going to be a summer jazz festival where folks will sip on fun drinks while tapping their toes to the great tunes. No. I’m asking folks to think, to discern. Heaven forbid, folks might learn something in the process of this cultural share and review of history.

In my final analysis, I figure if only one person is touched and learns from my DSS share, that would be fine with me. My parents used to say, “If you can touch one person’s life during your lifetime, that would be fine, because one person is a universe.”

“Departure, Survival, Success” will take place in-person and over Zoom. For more information on how to attend virtually, those interested may follow the DSS event page on Facebook or follow @dsstuha.bsky.social on Bluesky. The organizer has requested that prospective attendees do not directly message them on either social media account. Interested attendees may contact vietdssallies@gmail.com with any questions.

Carolyn Bick can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.