From 1980 until I came here in 1992, I worked at anything I could to make money. Sometimes I drove a lambretta in Saigon. I worked as a laborer, I took any job. I can repair radios a little, and I did that. I worked in a church. Sometimes I went into the forest and dug the roots of the bamboo tree and sold them. I did anything to support my mother and sisters.
I had to attend class, like the class of my stepfather. It was a class for young adults only, civilians, not only Amerasian, but Vietnamese also. The Communist government forces us to attend the Communist youth meetings.… If we don’t agree to attend, they will take us to work like a farmer, to dig the ground. They will make us do forced labor.
If you say, “Now in Vietnam there is freedom,” that is not true. I have seen in the building here in camp on the wall somebody wrote, “Don’t hear what the Communists say, but look at what they doing.” In Vietnam today it’s like that.
In Vietnam many people want to use the Amerasian to get to America, to make the documents to go. Three times it happened. Two women and one man came and told me that they wanted to go to America with me. The man told me, “I will give you two taels of gold if you go to America with me,” and I just give him a shake of my head. And the two women, the first one came and said if I became her husband she would give my family three taels of gold. But I feel very angry. I do like this [Vu makes a slapping motion], and I threw her out of my house. My mother was very surprised, she said, “Why did you do like that?” I didn’t say anything.
I knew at that time she needed me, but when she would be finished with her dream, she wouldn’t care. When she needed me, she would do anything she could, and when she finished, she would throw me out. I don’t want anybody to look down on me. I am a human being.
Another woman who lives in Saigon came to my foster mother’s house and said to my younger sister that if I agree with her, I will be her son [on the application for the ODP program, so they can go to America together]. But she is only about six or seven years older than me. I just laugh.
Finally, I agreed to change my papers and go to the United States because I wanted to study more. I have two brothers [actually foster brothers from Vu’s foster parents] in the Palawan refugee camp. They say that if I come here, they will be accepted as refugees by UNHCR, so I agree to go.
Life in this camp is comfortable. It’s very important for us to live here because we have the first step to know how the United States is, and we learn more English.
I will go on to study when I get to America, and I hope have a good job. I would like to become a reporter, but now my English is very bad. I must study and study.
In Vietnam, people always look at me strange because I am different. Even if I am reading a book or a newspaper, I catch people looking at me because I am a black boy. The Vietnamese look down more on the black Amerasian than the white. I don’t know why, but I know it is so.
I have an inferiority complex. I have had it for years. It’s very hard to explain in English. For example, I am looked down upon by the people who live around me. Little by little, day by day, it is impressed on my memory. If I am busy, working for example, I don’t think about it. But when I am alone, it stays in my mind.
I worry about discrimination in America, from Americans. I have seen it in the TV, and I read about it in the newspaper. I am very worried about that. I have seen the white and the black fighting together, and one or two months ago I saw in the TV about the violence in Los Angeles. Men that live in the world must be united together, friendly.
I think that the way I talk now . . . I have never said to anyone what I said here.
Postscript: I stopped by Vu’s billet one night in August to give him a transcript of his interview. He was squatting on the floor, and his “mother” was rubbing his head. Vu explained she was a faith healer, practicing a technique taught to her by an Australian.
I asked Vu if I could take a picture to use in the book. He thought for a moment and replied, “No, no picture. But you can use my story, that’s okay.”
Nguyen Tien Dung, Mr. Loi, and Bich Dung
“Life is unjust, hatred everlasting.”
Nguyen Tien Dung is in the PRPC with his elderly stepfather, Mr. Loi, and his Amerasian stepsister, Bich Dung. Bich Dung’s husband and child are also here.
We first met in March of 1992 at the monkey house, the PRPC detention center. I was visiting an inmate, and Dung was doing a short stint for violation of the camp liquor ban. Now, two months later, he is back in, once again for drinking, and for vandalism. I was told by his neighbor that one night at midnight, Dung went on a drunken rampage, destroying, among other things, the door to her billet, before the blue guards, the camp security, hauled him away. Pleasant and unassuming when sober, he exhibits a penchant for destruction, particularly self-destruction, when drunk. He drinks when depressed, and he is often depressed.
Dung has practiced the almost ritual scarification common among Vietnamese Amerasians. Raised, pendant-shaped burn marks define the length of his right arm in neat, grisly rows of three. These were self-inflicted with a lit cigarette in Chi Hoa prison during a period of dejection. His right forearm has been slashed into a mass of scar tissue. Running down the right calf is a tattooed message in Vietnamese, roughly translatable as, “If your lover betrays you, be true to yourself.” On the inside of the left calf, “Life is unjust, hatred everlasting.”
Dung is an intensely handsome young man of nineteen. A purple dot tattooed above the bridge of his nose resembles a Hindu caste mark and endows him with an almost Indian aspect. A number of Amerasians sport this same tattoo, but it seems to be purely ornamental, devoid of any significance. Abandoned as a baby, Dung never knew his biological father, but from his own dark skin believes him to have been a black man.
We sit outside the wire fence that encloses the cellblock and watch as guards bring out large hoses and spray down the cells. The prisoners scurry out of the lock-up; two are Vietnamese, the other thirteen or so are Amerasian.
Dung speaks briefly to my interpreter and then fishes inside his shirt. He pulls out a silver medallion and hands it to me. “U.S. Marine Corps” is imprinted on one side. An eagle straddles the earth, upon which is engraved “For Service to Corps and Country. Semper Fidelis.” On the flip side is written “First Marine Division.” A diamond outline houses the number one. Inside the number, written vertically, is “Guadalcanal.” On the bottom of the coin is etched “Vietnam 1969.”
As we examine the medallion, Dung’s face breaks into a smile of immense satisfaction. His index finger gestures towards the coin. “Father,” he says.
Dung: I was born in Theresa hospital in Da Nang. My mother abandoned me, she refused to pick me up or feed me, so I was told. She left this coin with the doctor. She said it belonged to my father. [Dung hands me the Marine Corps medallion.]
I am here with my adoptive father. He and his wife adopted me from the hospital. They always gave me a lot of affection, and I love them more than if they were my real parents. I have an Amerasian stepsister. She was also adopted, and she is here in the camp too. My stepmother is dead, she died in 1983. This is my family. I never knew my real mother or father, all I have of them is this coin.
My stepparents had one child, a daughter. She was killed in 1978 by her husband. She was married to a junkie, and he used all their money to support his habit. Finally, they were out of cash, and he tried to force her to steal money from her mother. She refused, and he beat her to death. Then he poured poison down her throat to make it look like suicide. Her body was taken to the hospital, and an autopsy was done. It showed that her spleen was ruptured, the doctors could see that she had been beaten. The police arrested her husband, but he was only sentenced to three years in prison. My sister was pregnant when her husband murdered her.
I went to school for five years. I was the only Amerasian in the clams. I couldn’t stand the taunts, My lai, My den [Amerasian, Black Amerasian]. I had many fights, the Vietnamese would gang up on me and
beat me up. Eventually I couldn’t take any more abuse, so I just stopped going. My sister went to the same school, but she studied in the morning. I went in the afternoon. People taunted her too, but she was cool-headed. “Ignore those people,” she told me, “Stay in school.” I couldn’t, but she did. She went for nine years.
After I quit school, I just helped out at my stepparent’s business. They had a stall in the market that sold altars, the kind Buddhists use for worship.
When I got older, I looked for other work. I went down to the seaport in Da Nang to try to get a job as a porter. The man told me straight out that he wouldn’t hire an Amerasian, so I wound up working at the Da Nang train station. It’s not what you would call “official” work. I just waited on the platform and helped people unload crates, luggage, sacks of rice and they would pay me whatever.
By the time I was a teenager, I saw very clearly how things worked. I was discriminated against at every level. The police and the government didn’t want me. People don’t want to hire Amerasians, don’t want to socialize with them. My family was looked down upon because they had adopted two Amerasians. So more and more, I began to dislike Vietnamese.
At seventeen, I stopped working at the train station. The work was very heavy, very hard, lifting all day. I was tired. I didn’t want to do that anymore, I wanted to have fun.
One evening I was sitting in a cafe with a friend, drinking wine. A group of Vietnamese came in, and there was trouble between one of them and my friend, but I didn’t really know what was happening. A brawl erupted, and the police came and took us to jail and gave us a terrible beating. They let us go, but I was furious that they beat me for no reason.
I had this tattoo made. [On Dung’s left calf is tattooed “xa hoi bat cong—thu van kiep” (life is unjust, hatred everlasting)] When the police picked me up the next time, they saw the tattoo and this provoked them even more. They took great pleasure in beating me and taunting me. “Unjust,” they said, “Well, here is some more unjust.”
I was picked up and beaten many times, usually for fighting or drinking, or for no reason at all. I never really stole or committed any crimes. I just drank too much. My life was miserable, and I tried to drown my sorrows.
All the time it was the same cop who would pick me up take me to the station, and beat me. I wanted revenge. My friend Vinh and I saved up some money and bought a gun. We planned to kill that policeman. We hid the gun in Vinh’s house. Somehow, the police found out, and they went to my friend’s house and arrested us. Vinh was tried and sentenced to five years. He is still in prison now. I was considered an accessory, since the gun was not in my house. I didn’t receive a trial. They just sentenced me to two years hard labor.
First they took me to Tho Dan prison in Da Nang for three days. This used to be an armory, where they kept guns and bombs. After that I went to Hoa Son prison, in Quang Nam Da Nang province. After about ten days there, they shipped me off to Tien Lanh labor camp, also in Quang Nam Da Nang. Tien Lanh means Angel, and the joke was that you had to be an angel with wings to escape. This camp has both political prisoners and criminals, but they are separated, not kept in the same buildings. At work we are nearby, but in jail we are separate.
In the camp there are two lines of five buildings, each separated by about five meters. Each one was about fifty or sixty feet long and maybe thirty feet wide and held about fifty prisoners.
The dai bang, chief prisoner, was called Thanh Seo, because of the big scar on his face [“seo” is scar in Vietnamese]. The guards choose the dai bang from aggressive long-stayers. They use him to keep the other prisoners in line. The people in the cell hate the dai bang, but they can’t get back at him because they would be the ones to suffer, since he has the support of the guards. The guards hold the dai bang responsible for escapes and problems. He has to keep order. We even had to ask his permission to go and take a piss, so he would know that we were not trying to escape. If you didn’t follow the rules of the cell, he’d beat you. You had to get up on time, go to sleep on time. There are so many rules, and you have to learn them well. When a visitor comes, the guard tests you before you can see the visitor. He might say, “What is rule number three?” and you have to recite it before you are let out to see the visitor.
Tien Lanh is a labor camp, and most of the labor is farm work—clearing land, planting rice. We worked from seven to eleven, got a small bowl of rice, and worked until five P.M. and then back to the cell. The farm was about ten kilometers from the prison. We had to form a line, with a guard at the beginning and a guard at the end, and we would walk to work. If you tried to make a break, they would shoot you. If you work slowly or try to stop for a while, they beat you with the rifle butt. If you try to escape, they fire in the air three times to alert the other guards. If they catch you, they beat you really badly, almost to death. This happened to Wo Van Thanh, an Amerasian who also came to the PRPC. He was in Tien Lanh with me. He got caught trying to escape, and they beat him savagely. He later got TB and was treated here. His departure [from the PRPC for the U. S.] was delayed.
After six months at Tien Lanh, I came down with malaria, a very bad case. They sent me to the hospital in Da Nang. When I was feeling better, I was able to escape from there. I made it to my house in Da Nang, and then I got to Ho Chi Minh City by train. I would hide at checkpoints, you know, nhay tau [“to jump off the train,” expression used in Vietnamese to indicate avoiding paying the fare]. I’d leave the train at the station and get back on before it pulled out, or I’d hide in the toilet when the conductor came around.
I went to Dam Sen, to the Amerasian center that the United States runs in Ho Chi Minh City. I couldn’t get in “legally,” since I had not been interviewed or accepted to go to the United States. I stayed “illegally.” Many Amerasians do this.
Nguyen Tien Dung with his father’s medallion
One night I drank too much rice wine. I lost control and started shouting, “I am an Amerasian, why am I not allowed to stay here legally? Why do you try to keep me out, why do you discriminate against me?” I broke up some furniture and stuff. The police came, and I was back in prison, this time Chi Hoa prison in Saigon.
Back in prison again, I was depressed. That’s when I did this [Dung gestures towards the burn marks on his arm].
My family had applied to go to America through the Orderly Departure Program in 1983, but nothing happened. We applied again in 1988. This time my family received a call slip to come for an interview, but they didn’t know where to find me. They knew that I had gone to Saigon, and my girlfriend told them that I had been in Dam Sen. So they went to Dam Sen to look for me. The director told them that I had been sent to Chi Hoa prison, and they found me there. Shortly after, I was let out of Chi Hoa, and we went for the interview.
Dung’s scars from self-inflicted wounds
When INS sent me to the Vietnamese doctor for an exam, he looked at my scars and said that I must be mentally ill to do that. So they put me on hold.
A month later, I had to come down and see the American doctor. He didn’t say that I was crazy, but he thought that my scars were a cover up to hide needle tracks. He thought I might be a junkie, so I had to come down every month to have my blood tested, to make sure I was “clean.” I had to wait months before we were able to leave Vietnam.
While I was waiting, I married my girlfriend. She is a black Amerasian, like me. We had a ceremony, but we didn’t make the official documents. We had both applied for ODP already, and we didn’t want to delay our departures with more paperwork. She came to the Philippines ahead of me, and she left here for Arizona on December 9, 1991. I got to the PRPC on December 12, just three days too late to see her and my son. She delivered my baby here. We will join up again when I get to America.
I know that drinking is ruining me. This is the second time I have been thrown in the monkey house here for drunkenness and vandalism, but when I get depressed, I can’t help myself.
Dung’s stepfather, Mr. Loi, is a frail
, silver-haired man of seventy-two. The lenses of his glasses are thick and opaque; his eyes seem distant behind them. He moves about with the aid of a cane. Despite this air of fragility, Mr. Loi speaks concisely and lucidly, sliding effortlessly between Vietnamese and French. My interpreter congratulates him on his fluency in the latter.
Mr. Loi is bemoaning the dishonesty and inefficiency of the Vietnamese bureacracy that processes applications for the Orderly Departure Program. “It was very hard to get accepted by the ODP,” he states. “If you pay them bribes, the Communist officials will do your case faster. But I had no money, so I had to go around, from this place to the other, from here to there. I made the paper in 1983 and again in 1988, and we finally left in 1991. The Communist system is completely corrupt. ”
With us in his billet is Dung’s stepsister, Mr. Loi’s adopted Amerasian daughter, Bich Dung, a diminutive woman with an extremely pleasant disposition. At twenty-one, she is almost eight months pregnant with her second child.
We sit just inside the door of their billet. A few magazine ads decorate the wall, including a blurb for “recaps and previews of your favorite soaps: 1-900-321-SOAP.” Nearby is a Soviet-Vietnamese calendar.
Mr.Loi: I adopted both Dung and Bich Dung when they were about three months old. I raised them as if they were my own, according to Vietnamese custom, and I love them as if they were my own children. I am very close to them. When my wife was dying in 1983, she made me promise to always care for the children, no matter what happened, and I have. I devoted my life to them, and I never remarried.
I was born in North Vietnam, near Hanoi, in Bac Ninh province, Gia Lam district, Bac Trang village. Bac Ninh is famous for its pottery and porcelain, but my family was not involved in that. We were business people. I myself worked for British Shell company from 1950 to 1953. The director was French, so we were able to communicate. I learned French in school and can speak very well. I also worked for the tramway, the train lines.
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