Small Bamboo

by Tracy Vo

  They spent the next couple of days drifting on the ocean. They had no destination, no plans to sail anywhere. They just wanted to get out of Vietnamese waters. The ocean was calm and Uncle Thirteen gazed out at the open sea and thought about the rest of his family, wishing they were on the boat with him. Then a large ship from Denmark spotted the small fishing boat, picked up the refugees and took them to Japan. Uncle Thirteen couldn’t believe his luck. He was finally out of danger. He stayed in a resettlement centre in Yokohama for four months, working out what he would do next, before he managed to make contact with a friend in the United States who eventually sponsored him to immigrate. Uncle Thirteen then flew to Illinois where he lived in a refugee camp for several months.

  Uncle Thirteen had desperately tried to track down my Uncle Three; no one had heard from him since his escape months earlier. Before Uncle Thirteen left Saigon, he wrote down a few addresses on a small piece of paper in case he ever made it out. Uncle Three’s sister-in-law, who lived in France, was one of these. Uncle Thirteen wrote to her, asking her to tell his brother that he’d managed to flee Vietnam and was in the refugee camp in Illinois. Back then it took weeks for a letter to reach France so it was a frustrating wait for Uncle Thirteen, but finally a reply arrived—and in it were Uncle Three’s contact details in Virginia.

  Uncle Thirteen rushed straight to the phones that were provided for the refugees in the camp; he was so excited he could barely dial the numbers.

  ‘Hello?’ Uncle Three answered.

  ‘Brother Three, it’s Tan!’

  At first Uncle Three couldn’t speak. He could barely believe that his brother was calling him, and then he was overwhelmed with happiness. He had thought it would be a very long time before he saw any of his family again. As soon as he found out where Uncle Thirteen was, Uncle Three got straight on a plane to Illinois.

  When Uncle Three arrived at the camp and saw his younger brother, skinny and exhausted, he wept. As Uncle Thirteen told Uncle Three how he escaped, he also started crying.

  Uncle Three put his arm around him and said, ‘Come, Brother. I’m going to take care of you now. Let’s go home.’

  4

  SAIGON CHANGED FOREVER

  Uncle Thirteen lived with Uncle Three for about four years until he met his wife and decided to move to California. The brothers, Uncle Three and Uncle Twelve, who were living in Virginia, and Uncle Thirteen, who had moved to California, constantly spoke of their worry for the rest of the family back home. They wondered how they were, if they’d managed to hold on to their house, if they had enough money, and if they could help their loved ones get out of Vietnam. Communication between family members had stopped as soon as the Communist government took over. Uncle Five had a telephone in Saigon but the lines were cut off. In the days, months and years following the Fall of Saigon, the South Vietnamese were paranoid. They didn’t know if their phone lines were secure or if their letters would be opened and read by Communist officials. Most made the tough choice to cut off all communication until they knew it was completely safe. But it left my three uncles in America with many heartbreaking questions that would remain unanswered for several years.

  The brothers who escaped were very fortunate indeed. Of the ones who were left behind after the war, two would endure the worst treatment and suffering when they were forced into re-education camps by the Communist government.

  First, the story of Uncle Eleven, who joined the South Vietnamese Air Force in 1969. Uncle Eleven says that when he thinks about the eight years he spent in those re-education camps, he feels lucky—lucky to be alive, that is. Some days he still can’t believe he made it.

  As a helicopter pilot, Uncle Eleven came under attack several times but there is one incident he will never forget. One morning, Uncle Eleven was called into the middle of the jungles to evacuate an injured soldier. It was a highly dangerous rescue mission as the area was crawling with the enemy, but he had two gunners on board, as well as his co-pilot, and there were ground troops at the landing zone. As he flew closer to their destination, his helicopter came under fire. He was close to landing when a rocket got him from above. The helicopter crashed. Uncle Eleven blacked out.

  As Uncle Eleven started to regain consciousness about fifteen minutes later, he thought he could hear muffled voices. He looked over at his co-pilot. He was dead. One of the gunners had also been killed. He looked out his window and saw the other gunner running deliriously in circles, blood streaming from his head. He soon collapsed and died. Uncle Eleven didn’t know if he himself was alive or dead or if this was just a terrible dream.

  Then the voices slowly became louder and clearer. It was the ground troops calling out to him, ‘Lieutenant?! Are you okay? Lieutenant, can you hear me?’ Uncle Eleven snapped out of his dreamlike state. ‘Lieutenant! We need to get you out of here!’

  They were still being fired upon as the ground troops cut him loose from his seat and dragged him from the helicopter to a nearby bunker. Another helicopter eventually arrived and evacuated the injured soldier and Uncle Eleven, the sole survivor of the crash. My uncle thought he might have had a few broken bones, but doctors at the army hospital found only cuts and bruises. No broken bones, no internal damage, no head injury. Uncle Eleven says, ‘The day I survived that crash was a bloody miracle.’

  Uncle Four was the only brother who joined the South Vietnamese Army. He knew from a young age that his future was with the army. He enrolled in 1951 at the age of seventeen, rising to the rank of major during the Vietnam War. He was also a paratrooper, and he would parachute into the most dangerous areas, trekking through the jungles and crawling through tiny tunnels as he fought the enemy. His journeys would take him right across Vietnam, from the South to the North. About a month before the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, Uncle Four was stranded with many of his fellow soldiers in the middle of a remote jungle in North Vietnam. He knew that if he was captured after the Communists took over, he would be killed. So he stayed hidden and avoided the enemy as they advanced towards Saigon.

  Dad’s family hadn’t heard from Uncle Four during that entire month. They were sure he wouldn’t return home alive. Then, the day after Saigon was taken, on 1 May, there was a knock on Uncle Five’s door.

  ‘Brother! You’re home!’ Uncle Five was overjoyed to see him.

  Uncle Four collapsed with relief as his brother-in-law hugged him. He was exhausted and dirty, and his bare feet were bleeding. The family fussed over Uncle Four as they fed him and gave him some clean clothes. He explained that he had desperately tried to make it to Saigon faster but the North Vietnamese soldiers were everywhere. He still couldn’t believe he was home. And finally safe, or so he thought.

  Uncle Four and Uncle Eleven were ordered to report for re-education at the same time as my father, in June 1975, but their experiences could not have been more different. While my father sat in a classroom for three days and was lectured on the Communists’ regime, his brothers were forced to live it.

  Uncle Four and Uncle Eleven were told to bring enough belongings for a month. Uncle Eleven was relieved, having thought they would be away for much longer, but Uncle Four had his suspicions.

  ‘Let’s see if they keep to the schedule,’ he said.

  By this stage, Uncle Four had four children and Uncle Eleven had two, but the men had been away fighting the war for many years, so their families were also relieved that they would be home, permanently, in a month. They were hopeful that their lives would resume some kind of normalcy then.

  Uncle Four and Uncle Eleven said their goodbyes to their wives and family then headed to different locations in Saigon to report for their re-education camps. Both believed that for a month or so they would be educated in the ways of the new regime and perhaps do some manual labour. But they were wrong. It was night-time. My uncles were unaware of the fact that all movements of prisoners were done at night. They were loaded onto old army trucks which were completely covered so no one could see in and the prisoners would h
ave no idea where they were going. There were dozens of camps around the country, with those in the North reserved for the previously high-ranking soldiers or officials of the South Vietnamese military.

  When my uncles arrived at their respective camps, they found the conditions appalling beyond anything they could have imagined. Day in, day out, they were subjected to the new regime’s propaganda—the same lines, the same rules and the same negative slogans against the United States and the South Vietnamese. They were forced into hard labour, from planting crops and building wells to clearing jungles and sweeping minefields. They worked all day, six days a week, and were frequently whipped with bamboo sticks until their skin was bleeding and raw. If they didn’t complete their tasks for the day, they were beaten; some were beaten to death. A month passed and my uncles realised they weren’t going home any time soon.

  Uncle Eleven spent a total of eight years in different re-education camps in South Vietnam. Five of those years were at the Suoi Mau camp in Bien Hoa. The English translation of Suoi Mau is fitting—it means River Blood, though the camp was also known as Bloody Stream. Uncle Eleven was released from that prison in 1982; he then tried to escape Vietnam, but was caught and thrown into another re-education camp in Ben Gia, Tra Vinh.

  When I asked Uncle Eleven about his time in the camps, his voice was still full of pain and bitterness. It was tough for him to recall such horrific memories. It broke my heart when I heard his story:

  Every day we only had two little handfuls of rice to eat. We were given only a small amount of water to drink. Can you imagine in that hot tropical sun, working and digging holes all day, and you can’t even have a big gulp of water? And, how did we survive on such a small amount of food? We relied on our families, who would sneak in homecooked meals for us. But those visits were quite rare and there was never a guarantee that our families could get the food into the camps. Sometimes they were caught and the food was taken away. We had to conserve every bit we had.

  We never had enough water to clean ourselves. You know those army helmets? Well, we got one of those filled with water for bathing—between six of us! Each day the guards made us gather in groups of six in the searing heat. We would squat down and huddle around each other. Then one of the guards would bring out a helmet filled with water, only one, and he would splash this tiny amount of water on us. That was our daily shower. But I came up with a trick. I managed to find a small hand towel and when the guard splashed water on me, I would try and catch the water with the towel so it was soaked. I kept that with me all day. It was my little saviour on those really hot days.

  Most days were so tough, on our bodies and our minds. I didn’t know if I would ever get out of there alive. I wasn’t sure if I would see my wife and two children again. After a few years, my mind was numb, I felt like a robot. Doing the same thing every day, being starved, beaten and tortured. Also, because we weren’t fed enough, we couldn’t think straight. Some prisoners would ask the guards to shoot them so they didn’t have to live another day of this misery. But they just laughed at the prisoners. They would rather see us suffer than take the easy way out, which was to be killed.

  It wasn’t just food and water that was scarce in those camps; medical supplies virtually didn’t exist. Disease spread like wildfire. The prisoners were so malnourished that their bodies couldn’t fight off deadly diseases such as malaria, beri beri and dysentery. Some of Uncle Eleven’s friends became very ill. They begged and begged for medicine but were never given any. Starvation and disease were the most common causes of death. American university research papers report that 165,000 people died in those re-education camps.

  Family visits were few and far between. If the prisoners were lucky, their families came once every month or two, and the visits would last up to thirty minutes. It was difficult for the families to keep track of where their relatives were because the prisoners were constantly moved around. This was designed to prevent family contact and also to stop the prisoners from forming bonds with the guards. Uncle Eleven’s wife couldn’t travel because their children were young, so he would be visited by my grandparents, my Aunt Fifteen and her husband.

  The last time my grandma visited Uncle Eleven was the day before she left Vietnam for Australia (my parents had sponsored my grandparents to migrate). It was 1984. The camp at Ben Gia, Tra Vinh, was very remote. A small minivan transported relatives to the prison but the journey was extremely dangerous. The road was in terrible condition and the van was crammed with supplies, so the passengers were forced to sit on the roof where the luggage normally went, hanging on grimly and keeping their heads down as they drove through enclosed road bridges. But my grandmother didn’t care about the dangers of getting to the camp—she needed to see her son because she didn’t know when, or if, she would ever see him again. After my grandmother left Vietnam, my Aunt Fifteen and her husband continued to make the perilous trip to visit Uncle Eleven every two months and take him food; this was, he says, his main means of survival.

  As for Uncle Four, he was held in camps in North Vietnam, which made visits very difficult. The journey from the South would take about three days by train. It was an exhausting trip. Every opportunity they could get, Uncle Four’s wife, his eldest son, Anh Sy, and my grandma would make the journey north to see him. But on one visit Anh Sy wasn’t with them.

  ‘How is everything at home?’ Uncle Four asked his wife.

  ‘We’re coping,’ she replied. ‘We’re struggling a bit with money but everyone is.’

  ‘You look so skinny, Son,’ my grandma said. ‘We tried to bring you some food but the guards took it away.’

  ‘Why doesn’t my son come and visit?’ Uncle Four asked.

  For a moment Aunt Four said nothing, then she hesitantly explained: ‘The guards only allowed a certain number of people to visit this time, so he couldn’t come.’

  The visiting time was over and the guards were already at the gate. Aunt Four and Grandma said goodbye, promising to return soon with food. They did continue to visit every few months, which was as often as they could, but Uncle Four couldn’t understand why his eldest son no longer came with them.

  The truth was, Aunt Four was keeping a tragic secret from her husband. It was 1983 and my cousin was sixteen years old. Anh Sy was much loved by my uncle because he was the eldest of the children, but he was also smart, strong and considerate, so the whole family was fond of him. At the time my Aunt Four was running a business collecting bus tickets and her eldest son was working for her. One afternoon, both Anh Sy and his mother were on the same bus; he was standing near the front door collecting tickets and she was sitting up the back, on their way home. Anh Sy had had a busy day and was very tired. It was quite a distance until the next bus stop so he decided to shut his eyes for a moment. And then he dozed off, but just for a second before jolting back awake. He stood up straight again, concentrating on keeping still as the bus sped along the road, but soon his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep. Suddenly, there was an almighty crash and the passengers were screaming. Aunt Four rushed from the back of the bus to find out what was going on. She couldn’t see her son anywhere. Then, as she ran down the front steps, she saw her son on the road, covered in blood. She stopped breathing for a moment. He had fallen out of the bus while asleep (there were no front doors on the bus), and been run over by a truck. Aunt Four cradled her son on the road, wailing and crying. He had died instantly.

  For the remaining time that Uncle Four was in the re-education camp, his wife did not tell him about the death of their son. Because of her husband’s fragile mental and physical health and the daily suffering he endured at the camp, she feared that the loss of their son would break him, and he might lose the will to live, or even try to commit suicide. So Aunt Four decided she would tell him when he was finally released.

  In 1984, after Uncle Four had spent nine years in the North, he was moved to a camp in South Vietnam. He wasn’t told why he was being moved or how long he would be at the new ca
mp, but he was much happier because at least he was closer to his family. The camp, known as Z30D, was one of three in the coastal town of Ham Tan. Surprisingly, the conditions were slightly better than the camps in the North—the prisoners were given a little more food and water—but it was still terrible. One of the last visitors to see Uncle Four at this camp was my grandfather, who travelled there with Aunt Four and Aunt Fifteen and her husband. Grandpa was about to migrate to Australia to live with us and he wanted to see his son before he left. For Grandpa, it was a day of two emotional extremes. He was grateful to see his son, but heartbroken to see he was still being held captive. He was devastated that two of his sons, my Uncle Four and Uncle Eleven, were still in these horrid camps. Grandpa just looked at his son as he talked; he was so skinny and tired but still managed to keep positive. As he said goodbye, Grandpa held his son as tight as he had ever held him.

  In 1985, after a year in Ham Tan and after ten years trapped in re-education camps, being tortured and starved, Uncle Four was finally released. Of all my father’s brothers, he spent the longest time in the camps. Uncle Four realised then why the prisoners were given more food and water at camp Z30D: the government wanted them to look better before being freed, to show people that conditions weren’t so bad in the re-education camps. My uncle was never told why he was released. One day the guards just told him he was allowed to go.

  A small group was released that day and as Uncle Four walked through the gates, he felt as if he were in a trance. He couldn’t believe that he was finally free. In that state of mind, he had no idea what to do and just started heading home. Ham Tan was quite a distance away, about 170 kilometres east of Ho Chi Minh City. Uncle Four hitchhiked his way home. He had been away for so long it was the strangest feeling to think he was going home for good.