When I was younger, my father always told me stories around dinnertime. He loved the food of his homeland--especially chao, a Vietnamese soup, and my mother would make delicious dishes; the combination would cultivate my penchant for home-cooked cuisine. The stories fed my imagination while the food filled my belly. As the steam rising from the rice swirled in the air and the rich smell of pork permeated our dining room, my father would jump into a story. Regardless of whether or not my brother and I actually looked like we were interested, my father would narrate his tale, his eyes glazing over and fixing on some far-off land as he transported us into his world. There were many anecdotes about his time in re-education camp; these mainly revolved around the lack of food and the back-bending work that my father endured every day for seven years. He also told us about the dangers that existed for him and for those he loved after the war. The moral of these narratives was always to be grateful for the food and well-being we enjoy in America. My father told the same stories over and over again, as if re-telling them would bring back all the memories he left behind in Vietnam.
This is my favorite story from our family dinners; I hope it provides some food for thought.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The small house shuddered with the insistent knocking on the door. "Open up! This is an official inspection. You are required by law to allow us to enter!" It was neither the loud banging nor the harsh commands of the officers that woke me from my nap, but the worried whispers exchanged surreptitiously between my parents. I was barely three years old, babbling and bellowing with hunger. One of my two aunts who lived with us saw that I was awake and came over to shush me back to sleep.
A sea of voices rushed in, drowning out the usual calm of our household. A crowd had gathered around the insistent officers. I wanted to see what was going on outside and started to wail insistently. My mother walked by and picked me up, hoisting me onto her left hip. Thin lines of worry crinkled her smooth forehead as her eyes looked wildly around, as if searching for an escape route. Meanwhile, my father clumped up and down the stairs, grabbing books and stuffing them into bags. My two aunts were similarly animated, going around the house and rearranging objects with frenzied movements. One aunt headed into the kitchen to stir the chao, the Vietnamese rice soup we were to have for dinner.
The smell of chao drifted in the room to awaken my sleepy senses, beckoning me towards the kitchen. I tried to look around my mother's side to see if my aunt would bring me some chao. Squirming, I pointed my finger hopefully to the big pot, but my mother's attention was elsewhere.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The loud noises came again. I wondered if the house was going to collapse. I felt my mother twist, her hips swiveling as she made sure that my father and aunts were finished with their preparations before admonishing, "Let's let them in." Grimly, my father nodded. My two aunts looked at each other and quietly glided into the living room as my parents marched towards the front. I rode silently on the rhythm of my mother's determined stride.
"Just a minute!" My mother's left arm encircled me, clutching me tightly as she opened the big metal door with her right hand. My father stood behind my mother, uncharacteristically silent, his face a stoic mask. "We apologize for making you wait officers. As you can see, we have a baby in the house and had to make our household presentable for you."
Sunlight poured in from the entrance, flooding my eyes and blinding me with its brilliance. As I squinted and rubbed my eyes, I was aware of my mother's backward movement while the strangers silently advanced into our house. I couldn't tell whether or not the thudding I felt were their heavy footsteps marching through the tile floors of the living room, or my mother's beating heart.
As I peeked through my fingers, I saw three men wearing green uniforms with high black boots. One man smiled at me, his crooked teeth leering at my face. Another man started to rifle through our belongings. The third headed into the kitchen with an expectant grin on his face.
"I knew it! Chao, just like my mother used to make." One of my aunts was in the kitchen, stirring the pot. Shaking like a leaf, she nevertheless managed to squeak, "Would you like some?" He shook his head, smiling, "I can serve myself, thank you." He grabbed the ladle from her and proceeded to scoop himself a serving.
"Get back in here!" The man rifling through our cabinets was making a big mess. Interrupted by the sharp command, the chagrined officer in the kitchen hastily put the ladle and soup bowl down and headed into the living room. "Find anything in there?" the messy officer asked. "Only some chao." replied the hungry man.
His comrades helped him sort through piles of paper, toys, clothing and jewelry. I stared at them and then at my mom. I wondered if she would reprimand them. Their mothers didn't teach them proper manners, I decided.
The efforts of all three officers produced a mess the magnitude of which I'd never seen. Clothes, baubles, and even my own toys lay in a foreign landscape on the living room floor. It was as if our cabinets and drawers had erupted, forming new islands of rubbish scattered everywhere. While my parents and my aunts looked on silently, the officers marched through the debris, picking up and pocketing random bits of jewelry. Their heavy boots crunched on plastic and glass as they looked around to make sure every cabinet, drawer, shelf and closet in our house was ransacked. Satisfied, the men turned and marched in a straight line to our front door.
The smell of chao lingered in the air like smoke left on a battlefield. My stomach grumbled and I gargled happily, thinking of the chao that I would soon enjoy. As if brought back to life by my noises, the adults suddenly moved from their statue-like poses. My aunts rushed into the kitchen and my father followed. With me on her hip, my mother struggled to catch up.
Finally! I licked my gums in anticipation. They're going to get me some food!
My father looked at my aunts expectantly. They both looked into the pot, smiled and nodded back to him. My mother rushed into the kitchen, breathless. "Did they find them?"
Find what? I wondered. They found all my toys, I thought mournfully. What nasty men!
My aunt dipped the ladle into the soup and carefully scooped around until she hit something. Slowly, she raised the ladle towards my mother's face. I saw my mother's shoulders sag with relief: swimming in the rice soup among pieces of chicken and carrots were my father's dark military medals.
I can still remember my parents and aunts talking excitedly over the steaming pot of chao as I hungrily looked on. I never understood the full significance of the incident until I was much older. Apparently, the family had to hide the fact that my father was intelligence for the South Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War or risk being arrested by the new government. My father tried to hide all of his war memorabilia, but he realized he would eventually have to get rid of them permanently. He couldn't throw them out in the trash for fear of being discovered by garbage men who worked for the Communists, so he was thinking of burying them the day the officers came for a surprise inspection. To this day, even in the safety of our Connecticut residence, he fears throwing out personal memorabilia and documents in the trash. Without the big pot of chao to hide his medals, my father would have been caught and the family arrested for their association with him. This harrowing tale was retold to me many times as I grew up. My aunts and mother continued to marvel at how close we came to being caught by the communists. From that day on, they made it a point to make chao often, and the dish continues to be one of my father's favorite.
An ESL student by day,
A waitress by night.
She flies
Faster than a speeding
Bus, more persistent than the toughest soy sauce stain
Strong enough to balance five
Heaping plates on her arms
She flies
A flutter of hands, folding clothes, caressing weary faces
Wiping away tears and dust
Vanquishing dust bunnies beneath her children's beds
She flies
Home to rescue five
Hungry teens from hunger pangs
Working for the rich
Giving to her family
But beneath her matronly uniform
Behind her indefatigable mask of smiles
Under her tough, stained apron,
She is more than a woman,
A wife, a sister, an aunt, she is
My mother.
My father is a stout man is his late fifties, whose mischievous grin and laughing eyes belie his life experiences. When I was younger, he used to bring me sweets and little toys, and tell me stories at night. Now that I'm in college, he diverts his attention to other children and often arrives unexpected at friends' homes, carrying gifts and merriment. Looking back, I imagine my father to be the Vietnamese Santa Claus. Graying hair and lines creasing his face are the only signs that he might have lived through a difficult time. When telling stories of the past, he is once again a man in his twenties. During an interview, he uses his hands to gesture and employs everything from fruit to chopsticks to model the action.
Born in July 19, 1944 in Ha Noi, Dzung Truong grew up in a big house with four other families. Surrounded by many aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives, Dzung remembers a warm home. The change in his childhood began around 1945-46, when families were fleeing south due to the war against France. His own family's flight was rife with danger and complications. "Elder Sister Van and me we were too young to run, and no one was available to carry us. My parents had to hire someone." The hired hand strapped a bar across his shoulders, carrying each child in attached buckets. "I was carried in one covered bucket and Elder Sister Van was in the other bucket." In 1946, Dzung lost his mother. "While she was running, my mother (Luong Thi Duoc) was in her seventh or eighth month of pregnancy--she fell and miscarried the baby, and she died. We buried her there. My father brought us across the river, but he was also sick, and there was no medicine at the time, so we lost him as well." Dzung believes his father drank contaminated water.
At the time of his parents' deaths, Dzung was just a toddler a little over two years old, while his sister Van was barely four. During a period of peace from 1946-47, the extended family returned to the city, bringing Dzung and his sister with them. He lived in his childhood home at 15 Luong Ngoc Quyen Rd. with his grandfather's family from his mom's side.
In 1954, after the Geneva Convention divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel into Communist North Vietnam and Democratic South Vietnam, the family moved South because they didn't want to live under Communist rule. "We couldn't bear to live in the North," Dzung recalls. His family escaped with many others to the South. That same year, Dzung's elder uncle Dac, who had lived with him when his parents were alive, accepted him as an adopted son. Dzung would live at Tang Rang, while Van went to live with another aunt in Saigon. He shrugs when I ask him if he was sad about the separation from his sister. "I didn't correspond with her at all during that time. Since I was so young, I didn't really miss her, so I wasn't really sad about that. I didn't see her again until six years later, in 1960." In 1964, Dzung once again had to move, leaving the small town of Tang Rang to attend school in Saigon. There, he was able to keep in touch with Van on a monthly basis.
In his foster family, Dzung felt like an outsider. "When I lived with the adopted family, with my uncle, I was only the nephew. I was never their son. Therefore, I felt that even though they loved me, I never received their full love, only 7 parts, while their real children got all 10 parts." Admitting that he never felt neglected or left wanting, Dzung was thankful for his foster family. However, he wished for his own family. "Ever since my childhood, I've wanted the love of a father and a mother, or the love of a brother or sister. But I never had that. Since I was so far away from Aunt Van, I never really experienced (sibling) love." Nevertheless, he is thankful for other sources of love. "When I was young, there were teachers who loved me and people who cared for me."
In 1966, at age 22, Dzung decided to go to work. He wanted to take care of himself and live independently. By 1968, the Communists had taken over Vietnam. Dzung recalls, "They took guns into the city during the Tet Offensive!" Dzung's uncle and adopted father, Dac feared he would be drafted to fight the war. Dac made Dzung work with him in an office job in hopes that he could avoid the draft. Regardless, everyone who was able and who came of age in 1968 was drafted.
On April 12, 1968, Dzung Truong became part of the South Vietnamese Army. He was 24 years old. Dzung reveals a light-hearted attitude towards his role in the army. "I didn't really care about the situation--I wasn't scared or anything because all my friends were in the army too."
"Training for infantry units took nine months. The school taught us everything from climbing to shooting guns. After I graduated from basic training school, they chose a profession for me. They chose me to be in MI (Military Intelligence) because I had worked for two years before the draft and had some professional skills." Dzung was in group G244 and a part of the men in Detachment C, 1st MI who worked at headquarters. "I worked with a lot of machinery. I worked at the Pentagon of Vietnam for 6 years. I was kind of like the CIA, but we were called the CIO, the Central Intelligence Organization of Vietnam."
Despite an emerging sense of duty, Dzung was adamant about not fighting in the war. "Whatever they needed me to do, I learned. But I never fought anyone as a soldier. I believed that if I worked hard and learned the skills to be in intelligence, I could work rather than fight." He took six months of additional training, learning to examine aerial photos to determine the position of the enemy. "It was kind of hard, and it took a long time, but when I graduated, I got a good position." He speaks with pride about his rank as an MI officer. "If they no longer needed me, they couldn't have demoted me to a lower position due to my rank. They couldn't bring me into platoon company."
Until the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, Dzung worked at Can Tho, a camp where "only people like me with special papers can enter." Dzung had to share the space with American MI and communicated with them through a translator. He viewed the Americans as allies. "I knew they wouldn't do anything bad. If they met us, they had to be polite and greet me and acknowledge me as an officer. They liked me a lot, and I viewed them as friends. If I needed anything, I could just go in and they'd give it to me immediately."
Dzung's adopted mother Luong Thi Hanh wanted him to get married. He remembers her bringing him to many young women's homes to "look at their eyes:" to get to know them. Hanh knew many people in the community and was very active in the Buddhist pagoda. It was there that she met Tran Ha, a woman whose daughter Ai-Mai worked at the bank. In 1974, Hanh introduced Dzung to Ai-Mai, Ha's daughter. Dzung remembers meeting Ai-Mai and feeling that they matched. He smiles, telling me that he had met many girls, some more beautiful than Aimai, but that only she held his interest. On October 10, 1974, they were married.
He remembers the intense control the government tried to exert over citizens, even in the realm of love. As an enlisted officer, he was expected to uphold certain standards. To prove the legitimacy of the marriage, Dzung "had to give all this paper work to the government to assure them that I was marrying a proper woman belonging to a respectable family."
April 30, 1975 is the infamous date for the Fall of Saigon. After April 30th, Communists decreed that anyone involved in the South Vietnamese army must come to a reeducation camp to "learn about the ways of the new government." However, Communists wanted military and government personnel under the South Vietnamese under control as soon as possible, so they opened the re-education camps as early as October 1974 in anticipation of their victory.
"I was married for 3 days before I had to go to reeducation camp. (At first) I got permission to go home every weekend because the camp was only 10-20 km away. But after April 30, 1975, they brought me to Hoc Mon, then transferred me on a cargo boat to the North. Once people came, Communists kept us not for ten days, not for a month, but for a long time!" Dzung is still incensed twenty-seven years later. "Communists said one thing--only ten days! They wrote that we'd only need to pack clothing and food and money for ten days, so everyone believed. We all signed contracts that said this! But after ten days, after three months, after six months, after being moved from place to place by the Communists, I knew we were in for the long haul."
Dzung believes he was kept at the reeducation camps for seven years because of his MI status. "Communists were afraid of Military Intelligence because we could reveal information, so they brought MI to the North." Here, the re-education camp became known as labor camp due to the notorious back-breaking work forced upon prisoners. "Their main goal was not to teach us, but only to detain us. Many of them didn't even have an education beyond the 8th grade; how could they teach us?"
The time of imprisonment was physically demanding and morally disheartening. "The Communists put people like me into the jungle so that we would get sick and slowly die off. That was their goal... Everyone was miserable. Many people died of sadness... One week I'd see one gravesite. As the weeks went on I saw more and more graves."
Prisoners endured long days of menial labor and physical pain. "Everyday I needed to get 20kg of bamboo shoots. We had to peel the outside until we reached the soft white middle to collect. I worked in the jungle where there were leeches skinny as chopsticks. But once they stuck onto you and sucked on your blood, they would swell like fat sausages. I would lie there at night, tired and not knowing why, and my friends would see a big leech on my foot and pry it off."
"We were broken up into different labor units. The building unit made houses, the equipment unit made spades and there was a unit that grew wheat, a unit that grew vegetables, a unit that cultivated tea... In camp, our unit's specialty was building. I would carry cement, wood and everything needed to make buildings. I had to carry 16 pieces of brick, or carry tureens full of water and walk barefoot on a steep road." Dzung's unit also made and transported equipment for people to build houses. "I had to walk through the fields and streams to give equipment to the construction unit... It was heavy work, especially carrying the water. Sometimes I had to walk with the water for 1-2 km."
The fatigue wore down the men and made them more susceptible to accidents. "People who didn't know how to chop down trees died when trees fell on top of them."
"One time I carried such heavy water, I collapsed through a hole in the dirt road. Buffaloes had trod all over that part, making the earth soft and forming a deep hole, but grass had grown over it. I stepped on this area and immediately sunk down and got stuck. I couldn't move at all! I had twisted my foot. Eventually, my friends came and helped me out, but I couldn't work for two weeks."
"Another time, there was a bamboo that fell on my head." While other prisoners chopped bamboo trees around him, Dzung was caught amidst falling bamboo branches. "Fortunately, I held a knife in one hand. A bamboo tree actually fell on my knife and split in half. My other arm wasn't so lucky. It swelled and hung in a cast without medication for two weeks. To this day, my right arm is weaker than my left!"
When accidents or sickness occurred, very little could be done for the prisoners. "When I was sick, only two out of the 70-some people in my unit could stay home to rest, so I continued to work. Once, I walked by myself through the jungles, and they waited for me in camp, but I didn't get back until late. I was feverish, but there was a man who lived near the jungle who cared for me and told me to walk home. People looked for me and found me in the jungle. I was so sick I lay in bed for a month. My sickness had to do with intestinal problems--there was blood in my feces."
"At that time, my wife and her mother heard that I was sick, so they went to the Northern tribes to get me some medicine. They had to rent local clothes to look like the tribespeople so that they could purchase the medicine." Dzung believes the medicine helped him survive.
"Another time, I got a fever from mosquitoe bites and had to stay behind (in camp)." Dzung felt miserable that he had to lie down because his body lacked the energy to walk. "I was sad because there was no one else there to keep me company, so I begged them to let me back to work."
After a strenuous day of work, prisoners had very little time to themselves. "At night, after returning from work and entering the camp, at 7 p.m. there would be a conference to plan the next day and evaluate the current day. They'd tell us what we did well and what we did badly. It took two hours. If someone said .Dzung didn't do a good job today,' then I'd have to stand up according to Communist protocol and accept shame and excuse my fatigue and promise that I would do a better job tomorrow. After a couple of hours, they turned off the lights and we slept."
"Each person got two hands' span of space to lie down. To do this, we had to lie like canned sardines. One person lay one way, the adjacent people lay the other way to have enough room to lie down. In each little room there were about 60-70 people, sleeping on a floor that was a little elevated over the bare earth."
"We woke up really early in the morning. They hit a cowbell to wake us all up, .Keng keng keng!' We had to bring water into the sleeping area so that in the morning we could wash our faces. Each day before work we'd eat breakfast. At noon we had lunch and after work we had dinner."
Besides the constant fatigue, Dzung remembers being very hungry. "We ate very little. Every day, we ate a portion of rice as small as a quit (small fruit, like an orange) and some salt water. They didn't give us much because they feared that people would hoard food and leave... We ate just enough to survive." Pain punctuates his narrative. "Since we lacked food and medicine many people died. Sometimes I'd lie awake at night, not knowing when my turn would come, because a friend had died just two days ago, and a week after I would bury another friend in the fields. I'd bring another friend to the hospital, only to have him die. So I didn't know when my turn would come..." Dzung was miserable and constantly fearful of death. He speaks with resentment about the lack of food. "I was very weak when I came home (from the labor camp in 1982). During the time I served for the South Vietnamese army, I weighed 53 kg, which is about 120 lb. But after two years in the camp, I weighed only 39 kg!"
Many people couldn't take the inhumane camp conditions and hoarded their rice rations and attempted to flee at night. Unfortunately, communist guards usually caught prisoners as they climbed the fence that surrounded the camps. "I never tried to leave. I had friends who tried to escape, who were shot dead." If they survived, the punishment was severe. Five to six soldiers beat prisoners who were brought back. "I had a friend who was beaten until he vomited blood...(there were) welts all over his body." Afterwards, guards jailed him in a small box for three to four months.
Dzung helped his friend survive. Everyday, his duty included bringing rice to those imprisoned in the boxes, so he used this opportunity to feed his friend. "Before I brought my friend his portion, I would pack a lot of rice really tightly into the bowl and sprinkle a little rice on top of it. When the soldiers inspected the portion, it would look small and they would allow me to bring the food to my friend."
"My friend went through that and survived. During the war, he served as a Vietnamese SEAL, so he was very strong. That's how he withstood the camp conditions. He lives in the US today." Dzung continues to correspond with his friend through letters and more recently, e-mail.
Occasionally, the prisoners were allowed to communicate with loved ones. "Every three to five months, we got permission to write home." However, Dzung did not trust the Communist postal services. "I was never sure that Mom received all the information because sometimes they would send the letters, sometimes they wouldn't. Many times, the Communists did not send the letter to Saigon but kept it at the reeducation camp. I know because a Communist man asked me why I bothered to write; then he showed me the pile of letters."
"They kept the letters because they didn't want people at home to know the situation or news from reeducation camp. Sometimes I'd write a letter in February and a letter in May, but they might send the May letter first and then send the February letter later to lose the time continuity."
Dzung tried to communicate with his wife in code. "I would write, 'Here I really miss my father.' In the past, Grandfather worked in Lau Cai, so your mother would understand that I was in the North near Lau Cai."
In addition to written correspondence, prisoners were allowed to receive two gifts and one visit annually. "The Communists would issue a ticket, and with that ticket, we could receive packages." Resentment and irritation creep into his voice. "Even so, sometimes I got the gifts, sometimes I didn't...When I went up to the Communist offices to clean up, I would see opened cans of fish, labeled with your mother's handwriting. Then, I would know that they kept and ate everything instead of delivering her package."
Seeing loved ones was even more difficult. "The distance from the South to the North was very far. The one time your mother came to visit, she had to take the train for three days and four nights to get to the North. From Hanoi, she would need to take a ferry, then walk, and then wade through deep water to visit me. All this, for an hour visit!" Simultaneously infuriated with the Communists and grateful for his wife, Dzung marvels at the trouble Ai-Mai had to go through to visit him. "Once in camp, she got questioned. They interviewed her for half an hour about her education and family... Then we got to talk to each other for half an hour. We sat so far away from each other, our hands could not have touched if we reached out." During their conversation, a communist soldier sat at the head of the table, dispelling any intimacy and privacy. "We could only talk about the news before they took her away. After she left, the soldier would look through the gifts she brought to see if there was anything worth keeping. Then they would take it and claim to throw it out, but actually kept the stuff for themselves." Nevertheless, Ai-Mai made the journey to see her husband.
Prisoners learned to be resourceful with the few items they owned. "In the North, all the clothing I wore had holes, so I had to make my own needle and smuggle thread to mend them." Each year, Communists only issued one shirt and one pair of pants. "I had to get pieces of cloth to sew another layer of clothing, or even underwear." Most of his clothes were from 1975, when he initially thought he'd be in camp for only ten days, or sent from his wife and her mother.
Despite the harsh conditions in the North, Dzung made the distinction between Communists and Northerners; he never harbored any anger towards villagers. Likewise, local people empathized with prisoners. "Many Northerners cried when they saw that we worked so hard. They were good people. There was a family who lived near our camp. Every day, they lent me their treasured ladle to get clean water." Dzung tried to return the favor. "This family had a boy who wore a tattered shirt all the time. I saved and hid a Communist-issued shirt that wasn't branded to give to the boy." However, when he offered them the shirt, the mother thanked him but refused the gift. "She was such a good person. She told me that I should save the shirt because I never know when I'll leave the camp and need it."
Besides interaction with the locals, Dzung remembers simple pleasures. "What was best for everyone was the chance to bathe, because we were so dirty. Everyone desired to bathe. Afterwards, we'd take our clothing and wash it in the water." Reflecting back on how they walked back to camp, dripping wet, he feels lucky that he never caught pneumonia.
Despite the conditions, men found camaraderie and entertainment in each other. "One time, there was theater in camp, and I had to act and dance. The play was called .Nguoi Van Do,' which meant 'Person Who Lived Near the Sea.' It was all for fun, to amuse the others. We went to a theater and practiced, and everyone who wanted could perform. I dressed up as a woman, wearing a dress! We only got 5 weeks to practice and then perform the play. In the morning, we would practice, and in the afternoons we would labor. In prison camp we only had this form of amusement."
In camp, the dehumanization and the challenge to one's rank grated on many prisoners' nerves. Before the fall of Saigon and during the Vietnam War, Dzung was treated with the respect accorded to his rank and age. "Whatever I said, people would have to follow my orders; but when I entered reeducation camp, there would be a small kid about (my son) Quang's age (16) and they'd tell me this and that, and I'd have to follow their orders. Even though I was older, they ordered me around." This breach of respect also countered traditional values of deferring to one's elders. Many prisoners became disillusioned with the new regime. "After reeducation camp, many people felt they couldn't live with the Communist rule, so they left. Uncle Hien served as a General in the army and was also in reeducation camp. After he was dismissed from reeducation camp, he immediately jumped a boat (to leave Vietnam)."
"I left reeducation camp in 1982. There were people who stayed in camp even longer than I did! I stayed seven years, and that year they had begun to dismiss people." Dzung was detained until Communists judged that the South was stable enough to permit his release. In 1987 at least 15,000 people were still incarcerated in labor camps. When their term of imprisonment expired, they were simply sentenced to three or five more years of re-education. Dzung affirms, "There were people (at the camps) for eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, even thirteen years!" He feels lucky for getting out. "I still have no idea why they let me go when they did." The day he was released, guards gathered all the prisoners and read out names. "They read the name of one person higher-ranked than I, and I feared that I wouldn't be allowed to leave. Then they read my name, and I was shocked. I stood to one side. They kept me at the camp for another 10 days to do some work, but there was no longer a soldier following me everywhere. I got to go bathe and work by myself. Afterwards, I took the train to go home."
"That day, Ai-Mai came home from work and didn't see me, so she cried... She knew that 8-9 parts I'd die, that there would only be a small chance, 1 part, that I'd survive. Since she cried for me, I decided I wouldn't leave." He recounts tales of other friends whose wives abandoned them during their imprisonment period. "My wife, she's special because she waited for me. She didn't have to--it was a tough time, and she could have gone off. But she didn't...We stayed around, and one year after, my first child came along."
That first child was me. My dad chuckles when I ask him to talk about my first seven years of life, from 1983 to 1990. "Well you know, then you came along and grew up, and you know the rest..."
While my father and mother raised me in Vietnam, by 1983 my mother's entire family had fled to America. My dad was barred from any white-collar or government jobs. He had to work as a carpenter, helped build houses, swept floors and delivered packages until his brother-in-law hired him to wor in his dentistry office. At that time, Dzung had found a comfortable rhythm in family life and stopped thinking about going to America. However, dreams of a better future re-emerged when the orderly departure program (HO) began in the mid 1980s.
In 1990, my grandmother was able to sponsor our family to come to America. The first years in the U.S. were difficult. "We needed to start from the beginning--we had no money, no house, no jobs, nothing!" My parents juggled learning a new language, attending English classes and technical school while working part-time jobs to support my brother and me. Fortunately, we had the support of my grandmother and our extended family. For the first three years, we lived with my aunt Thuy. After graduating from technical school, my father quickly found a job as a machinist at Masterson's Manufacturing company. Here, his worksmanship and attention to detail, as well as his gregarious nature made him a favored employee. Meanwhile, my mother worked part-time at Stop & Shop and pursued additional schooling to expand her opportunities. In 1993, our family saved enough to buy a small house.
A devoted husband and father, Dzung remembers each birthday, both Vietnamese and American Mother's Days, Valentine's Day and Christmas. He gives his children money to buy their mother presents. When buying cars, he thinks about his wife's needs and gives her the better car to use. Now, in 2003, after 13 years in America and 30 years of marriage, Dzung is grateful for his wife and family. Both he and his wife work two jobs to support their daughter's college education. Despite the initial difficulties and continual struggles to support his family in America, Dzung says, "I realized that coming to America was a good decision because it secured the future of my children's lives. That's why I continue to work so hard."