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Excerpt from a statement about his
experiences as a refugee, 1975–76

Published in Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American
Lives, edited by James Freeman, 1989

"When we set out on our journey, we had no idea what would happen to us or what country would allow us to land. All we knew was that we had to get out, even at the risk of losing our lives."

After the Vietnam War ended in a North Vietnamese victory in 1975, huge numbers of South Vietnamese people began leaving the country. Some of these people had supported the South Vietnamese government or its American allies. They worried that the country's new leaders would consider them enemies and take revenge on them. Other people wanted to leave Vietnam because they held religious or political views that would make it difficult for them to live under Communist rule. These people...