Phương Hoàng

Journey to the land of the free

Hành Trình Tìm Tự Do

I was born in 1975 in a family of 7 children, a typical family size at that time in Vietnam. After the communists took over the country, life was horrible for all the Southern Vietnamese. City residents were relocated to a remote area to learn how to work and live as farmers without any training or supplies. Rice production and distribution were controlled by the government. Farmers were stripped of their land and forced to work in the Hợp Tác Xã where all rice produced will be collected by the government and distributed “to the people by what each need.” Unfortunately, the communists always had a lot more needs than the rest. Society is stripped of all basic human rights, the market closed, travel restricted. People were divided into groups of families and the communists monitored the daily life of all citizens and the arrested anyone who dared to speak up…Cannot live in such inhuman condition, millions of Vietnamese tried to escape and hundreds of thousands died on the journey to freedom. And that is where my story begins.

In this picture, my older brother and I were at 3 and 4 years old. Little did we know, 2 years after this picture was taken, we partook in the most horrible journey of our life.

On a dark night of Summer 1980, my cousins, my brothers, my sister and I followed my father to get on a boat similar to the picture here. To avoid being caught, we were hidden in the hulk of the boat where the fishermen kept their fishes and supplies. Most people couldn’t adjust to the smell and the movement of the boat, so they kept vomiting for hours inside the hulk, making the smell even more intolerable and made more people vomited. Fortunately, we got out to the international water without being seen. We went smooth for a few days and that was when everything went wrong.

The main engine broke down. The boat should have had a backup engine but unfortunately, the captain had sold it 2 days before the trip to pay for some hooker and gambling debt. After learning the truth, the owner of the boat got so furious. He has organized many trips to sneak people out of Vietnam and this time, he brought his own family with him so he took it very seriously. Being so upset, he decided to take revenge on the captain. That night, when the captain was sleeping alone on the deck, as usual, the owner of the boat snuck up on the captain and used the boat anchor to smash the captain’s head then threw him overboard.

The next morning, the sailors woke up and found out that their captain was gone. They found blood on the anchor and some blood trace on the deck. It became obvious to them what happened. Now it’s their turn to take revenge.

The sailors gang up and killed the owner of the boat. Not stopping there, they threw his entire family overboard. The mother died first, but the daughter and her husband were very strong. They kept swimming after the boat for hours begging for mercy but every time they reached the boat, the sailors smacked their head with the row paddle and pushed them out. After the second day, their figures start to get smaller and smaller until they disappeared beyond the horizon. Without the engine, we floated for days and eventually ran out of food and water.

The condition on the boat was similar to the picture on the right. We all started getting weaker and weaker. Onboard at that time, there was a mother and a few months old baby. She ran out of milk for her baby because nobody had any water left. The baby was crying and crying until she decided to let the baby drink some seawater and that was a fatal mistake. A few hours later, the baby died and the mother went mad. She creamed and attacked everyone around her. The sailors were left with no choice but to tie her up and threw the baby corpse to the sea. Unfortunately, the baby corpse floated and for some reason, it followed the boat for days. It was an utmost horror for people on the boat. But I didn’t know about it because, at that time, I was also on the doorstep of death myself. My father later told me both my brother and I were about to die when my father found some “water” and saved us.

The “water” my father found was actually coffee. Even though the boat ran out of food and water, the sailors overlooked their bag of coffee they often used in their fishing trip. Until today, I don’t know exactly how it works but somehow when they used the seawater to make Vietnamese coffee, all the salt in the seawater was filtered out by the coffee and left us a bitter coffee liquid. Yes, it was very strong and bitter but it was not salty. The coffee was rationed each man on the boat will get 1 spoon if he rows the boat for a while toward the Malaysia islands. My father rowed and got a spoon in his mouth. He crawled over to me, opened my mouth and spitted out a little for me, and repeat the same for my brother. And he kept doing that, rowed, got a spoon, came back to spit into the mouth of my brother and me. And yes, coffee liquid mixed with my father’s saliva saved our lives. Many times in my life, I wonder if my father knew that he was sacrificing his life at that time when he spitted out the coffee to save me. Then when I have my own children, I understand all fathers would do the same without even thinking. That’s just how we love.

The next day, when we started seeing Malaysia islands on the horizon. Our boat was hit by a storm, the storm that brought water and saved our lives. Unfortunately, that same storm also blew us away from our target and pushed us all the way back to Côn Sơn island of Vietnam where we got arrested by Vietnamese coastguard. And that was how I became a prisoner at 5 years old.

All the sailors on the boat were charged with murder and executed. It was twisted somehow because these sailors saved us on the boat but at the same time, they were indeed murderers. But in their mind, out in the sea, they were the laws and they carried out the justice they knew: paying death by death. In my mind, I’ve never judged them. I never care about what the communist government said about these sailors. The communists were all BS anyway.

For the rest of us, each was charged with illegally crossing the border and served 2 to 5 years in prison. My father was special because he traveled with 6 children (2 of my cousins, my sister, my 2 brothers, and me) so the communist government decided to be merciful and charged him 2 weeks in prison instead of 2 years. Come to think of it, my father was completely out of his mind to go on such a dangerous journey with 6 children. But I love him to death, my old foolish dad.

Have you ever tried prison food in Vietnam? Each prisoner received a ball of rice about the size of a child’s fist and 1 grain of rock salt. The rest came from visitors if you have any. We didn’t have any visitors because it would take a few weeks or even months to get the news to our family in Saigon. During that time, we live on that ration. My father, my cousins, and my oldest brother were locked in the cell. My sister, my older brother, and I were free to roam around the prison front yard. We were hungry and had nothing to do but just hang out there. Then we smelt food. Yes, food! It came from the building next door where visitors brought food to their family being held in prison. So we went there and … begged for food. Sometimes we waited until they finished and ate some scrapped food leftover on the bowl. But some prisoners were very nice and shared food with us.

I still remembered one time a man waved me over and gave me a claw of rice field crab. It was very small, about the size of a pinky finger but I was so jubilated that I immediately ran back to my father cell waving the claw on my hand like the olympian waving his trophy, “Ba, ba, ba, con có cái càng cua... ba ba, con có cái càng cua....”. My dad cried. I didn’t know what he thought but I enjoyed my claw like never before and remember it for the rest of my life. Later in my life, whenever I felt down, whenever I felt like a failure, mistreated, beaten up…, I remember this claw, this moment of my life. Nothing could be worse than that moment, it is still much better than that dark time and I immediately felt better. That claw gave me motivation to fight, to endure all the hardship life threw at me. That claw made me who I am today.

We were released after 2 weeks in prison and went back to normal life. The picture on the left was me at 7 years old when I received my First Holy Communion. “Normal” is oversimplified indeed. We tried to escape from Vietnam 3 more times without success and with the penalty of the death of 2 of my best friends but that is another story.

Eventually, I came to the United States by airplane under the Orderly Departure Program ODP in 1995 after 12 years of waiting. It’s so hard to describe the feeling when I put my step on the airplane to come to the United States. “Đi Mỹ”- going to America was the dream we all had growing up. That was a dream that myself and millions of Vietnamese were willing to trade their life to achieve. This is the reason I had so much sympathy for the illegal immigrants trying to cross the Mexico border to the US. I know exactly what they feel. The image of children being separated from their parents at the border is the exact image of me when my father was locked in the communist prison in Vietnam in 1980. But I digressed. This country is where my dream came true. This is where I build the life I want.

Life in the US in the first few years were hard, but it is nothing compared to the prison time. My family of 7 lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. My parents were in 1 room, my 3 brothers, me and my cousin lived in another room. Most of the time we studied at school or library so we only went home to sleep. Yes, during the weekend we also went to study at the library. We were poor, very poor but we were so happy. We were so happy because we knew our future will be different, very different. I graduated with Summa Cum Laude from my community college with an Associate degree in Physics, then went on to U.C. Berkeley to finish off my Bachelor's degree in EECS, the most challenging major in Berkeley.

But my life was not the only study. During these years, I reunited with a group of my childhood friends, among them there was a very special girl. She wore dark blue shirt in this picture. We knew each other since 2nd grade and I did admire her. But we were so different that I never approached her. You can see in this picture my hair was completely different from my friends. I was wild and naughty. She was very timid and smart, the smartest girl in my school back then and she still is.

But in this life of diaspora, we reunited and became best friends. When I transferred to Berkeley, the friendship grew another branch and I officially asked her out for a date. Knowing me too well, she said she only agreed to date if I will marry her. That sounds ridiculous, right? But I was a fool in love so I said: “Why not?”.

And that is how this story ends: I found my home in the land of the free.

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