by Laura Lam
I moved back to my parents’ house. My mother’s attitude towards me had changed since I had started working in an office, but I still found myself unable to return to the family atmosphere feeling comfortable. I was now working for a large international travel agency in the city centre. The monthly salary was equivalent to one hundred American dollars, of which I was able to save at least half. After six months on the job I was invited to participate in a joint-investment land project with the director and senior staff. The director was a very wealthy man involved in various land investment schemes. He once told me, “The only way to make big money is to buy more land and to make it produce.”
My work was going very well but toward the end of 1973 I found myself increasingly uneasy with the director. He had been exceptionally generous to me and a few times had given me indications that he was fond of me. I interpreted his attention to me quite wrongly. This was my work place and to maintain a purely professional relationship with him was most important to me. The director was in his late fifties and had a strikingly beautiful wife in her early thirties. The fact that she was so beautiful convinced me he wasn’t really interested in having an affair with me.
It was lunch time and I was trying to finish some work at my desk. The director came in, rather unexpectedly, asking me why I hadn’t gone to lunch. He sat at the edge of my desk. I was nervous; he appeared completely relaxed. I made an excuse to get up but as soon as I left my chair he sat down on it. He took my hand and whispered something and pulled me down onto his lap. Embarrassed, I got out of his hands and left the office and didn’t return that afternoon.
I quit the travel agency. I sold all my shares in the land investment project for an equivalent of twenty-seven hundred American dollars. I converted all the cash into gold taels. When the director found out, he didn’t say anything and didn’t seem to be bothered or upset by it. I despised him as much as I despised the Apple Man.
I worried about keeping so much gold at home. Although I had an account with a Vietnamese bank where my salary went each month and an account with the Bank of America, I didn’t trust them. Like other Vietnamese, I never trusted any bank or financial institution in my country. With an escalating inflation rate, I was looking for the safest kind of investment. So, in early 1974 I used all the gold and part of my savings and bought a two-bedroom apartment being built in Sai Gon. It would be part of a housing complex in a rather modest but pleasant location. Most of the financial resources I had could cover three-quarters of the total cost. I was planning to pay for the rest with my income from a future job. I would live in the apartment with one of my brothers. My mother suggested that instead of buying the apartment, we should sell my parents’ house and buy us all a bigger house. ***
While working at the travel agency I had met a captain in the US Navy, named Julian. He learned that my boss was a stamp collector. And so was he. I arranged the meeting and met Julian in the office. He was in his mid-thirties, well built, wearing glasses, which reminded me of a Confucian scholar despite his Western look. I was intrigued by his seriousness and gentle manners. We had become quite friendly with each other. One day Julian telephoned me, “I am wondering if you are free after work tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Would you like me to pick you up? Perhaps we can take a walk and do some sightseeing along the waterfront?”
“Sightseeing… I suppose so. I should finish here around six.”
“Can you wait and I will be at your office shortly after that?”
“Sure.”
When Julian arrived, we walked from my office all the way to the waterfront.
“Have you and my boss made any plan to meet again this week, Joo-lin?” I asked.
“Yes, we have. We’ll meet again tomorrow afternoon. By the way, my name is not Julin. It’s Julian.”
“Jewel-lin. Right?”
He shook his head.
“Joo-a-lin.” I said again, “Joo-a-lin.”
Again he shook his head.
After several failed attempts to pronounce his name correctly, I decided to call him “Captain” and nothing else. And I would always address Julian as Captain in all future correspondence with him.
“Do you have a family in America?”
“Yes, I do. My parents and a sister.”
“Are you married?”
“I was. But I’m divorced.”
Sitting at a stone bench and looking at the river, I suddenly noticed that his white navy uniform had turned into brilliant white under the darkening sky – until now I had not realized how spookily white would stand out in darkness. I wondered whether I should stop wearing white. But I quickly concluded that it would not be possible. Julian asked me about my job and family. I was interested in knowing why he was so passionate about collecting stamps. A few people passed by and stared at us. We got up and made a turn toward Nguyen Hue Boulevard. I was feeling uncomfortable being with a foreigner in army uniform in full public view. Julian noticed my uneasiness and suggested that we go to his place.
He had the strangest diet. He invited me for dinner that evening and served only fresh milk, bananas and sandwich bread. He indicated that this was his regular diet. He never explained why he didn’t eat meat or other food and I didn’t dare ask him. I soon made my excuse, “Captain! I think I must go now. Thank you for a nice evening.”
He looked a little disappointed and asked, “Can we meet again if you are free during the weekend?”
“If you’d like. Perhaps not this weekend … maybe sometime next week.” I answered with some reservation.
His lack of interest in other food concerned me. This kind of diet reminded me of poor Vietnamese, who had often been told by the health professionals they should eat plenty of bananas and tofu to acquire enough nutrition for survival. From the time I started dating Julian until he left Viet Nam, a period of two and a half months, we had five evenings altogether, eating bananas and bread and drinking milk. I told him my stomach couldn’t digest fresh milk and he went out and bought American soft drinks. He had never gone to any restaurant before he met me, and we never went to any restaurant either. Aside from his unusual eating habits, he was a gentleman and demonstrated a lot of affection.
Shortly after the Paris Peace Agreement in early 1973 Julian said he would return to the United States. He assured me he would write to me from Florida. I wasn’t sure if I had fallen in love with him. I sensed that he loved me. I tried to imagine what kind of a marriage one would have with him. What would he be like as a husband? How would he bring up his children? I didn’t think I knew him enough or really understood him.
When we met to say farewell that spring Julian presented me with a package containing two English novels, which he had chosen especially for me. He hugged me as we parted.
“Goodbye! My dear Jasmine.”
“Goodbye! Captain.”
Julian wrote to me periodically and I didn’t always respond to him. But in early 1975 I would receive a long and serious letter from him, at the closing stage of the war, with what would prove to be a crucial offer to resettle me in Florida.
That year – 1973 – the last American troops left Viet Nam in late March, and the last American prisoners of war were released in Ha Noi in early April. In November, Congress overrode President Nixon’s veto of a bill restricting the president’s right to wage war.
In early spring of 1974, Cuc introduced me to the Ministry of the Economy and I was offered a job in the foreign investment division, after competing with several dozen candidates. There were so many unemployed women in Sai Gon those years and any office-job advertisement would attract a large number of applicants. I considered myself very lucky to be given this job. Or was it my destiny?
That summer I met Andrew, an English man from Hong Kong – through my office. From early 1975 I began considering the immediate dangers of the war. Transferring the ownership of the apartment to my parents, and accepting Andrew’s help, I turned my mind to ways of getting o
ut of the country.
FINAL DAYS
“We have finally achieved peace with honour”
Richard Nixon
“They made a wasteland and called it peace”
Tacitus
Spring of 1972, Year of the Rat. One evening, while Nam and his wife were sitting quietly in the lounge and chatting, Mai walked into the room holding a revolver, pointed it at Nam’s wife, and fired. Nam leaped over and tried to grab the gun from Mai but she shot him. His wife collapsed onto the tiled floor. Nam, with blood seeping through his shirt, was still able to wrench the gun from her hands. It was the gun from the case at the entrance of the house. Gun in hand, he stared at Mai in disbelief, but he could not bring himself to shoot her. Hearing the gunshots, members of the security force of the Joint-General Staff Headquarters arrived at the blood-spattered scene. Mai was handcuffed and taken away.
Uncle Nghiem telephoned us with the news. We were badly shaken. We got up, anxious to get to the hospital, but couldn’t go because of the night curfew. My father’s face was creased with pain. I occupied myself by preparing breakfast for all of us. I told my father that I would first go to Ngoc Phuong Buddhist temple, then we would meet at the ARVN hospital where Nam and his wife were undergoing treatment. The hospital was in the northeast of Sai Gon, and one and a half kilometres west of Ngoc Phuong.
After praying for Nam at the temple, I walked to the hospital. Nam and his wife had undergone surgery and the bullets had been removed. They were both in intensive care. Nam was alert and smiled at us, but his wife seemed too traumatized to recognize anyone. We went back to the hospital once more to see them, but were unable to speak privately to Nam because the ward was crowded with other visitors. After they were discharged, my father and I went to the Joint-General Staff Headquarters to see them. His wife was still shaken and too distraught to speak.
Although Mai and I had been quite close, I would never see her again. My father, Nam’s wife, and other relatives discouraged me from going to her trial or having any contact with her. But I couldn’t just let things end like this. I wanted to find out what had happened to her. Later, when I talked to Nam’s sister, I learned that Mai had been brought to trial before a military court in Sai Gon, and the court had interpreted her action as politically motivated. She had endured physical torture while being interrogated. When her sentence to nineteen years of imprisonment was announced, Mai responded with a contemptuous smile, “If, sirs, your regime survives that long!”
There had been two assassination attempts on Nam’s life in the Mekong Delta years earlier. This time his wife urged him to leave the country. His superior felt that Nam should be transferred to a diplomatic post overseas.
Feelings of mistrust started to grow during the final stages of the war. Neither Nam nor his wife talked to relatives or friends about the near fatal event which had led to their departure. They did not even say farewell. When I found out about the transfer overseas, they had already left Sai Gon. Shocked and upset, I thought that I didn’t know Nam at all. My father tried to explain that Nam was living under very difficult circumstances and he stressed how sad it must have been for my uncle to leave his homeland without saying goodbye to loved ones. I could sense at the time that my father was still devoted to him.
Uncle Nam had been a second father to me and my affection for him would remain intact. I loathed Mai for her violent betrayal.
Uncle Nam’s sudden departure was not an isolated event. Many senior government officials and high ranking military personnel feared for their lives and started sending their wives and children overseas, before making their own escape. From mid-1972 the Americans began reducing their troops in Viet Nam. Six months later the Paris Peace Agreement was signed. It promised that all American troops would soon leave Viet Nam for good. Without the Americans, the public anticipated the inevitable defeat of the Sai Gon regime.
The regime itself went into a frenzy of activity with President Nguyen Van Thieu declaring immediately after the peace treaty that the war “has begun again”. With more than two million tons of American made weapons, the government began drafting more than two hundred thousand additional men for the ARVN force in order to replace the departing American soldiers. The Thieu government still held more than a quarter of a million political prisoners in more than a thousand prisons. Unwilling to release them, the regime’s answer was to carry out mass executions in secret.
Angered by this, the National Liberation Front increased its regular and reserve forces. It also supplied arms to civilians in rural districts. Battles between the two warring sides rose in intensity. The people in Sai Gon were subjected to greater dangers and more suffering, with murders and sexual assaults becoming more and more commonplace in and around the city. Those with powerful government or overseas connections, or with enough money, could leave the country legally. Others tried to escape as ‘boat people’, risking piracy and death. Hundreds of thousands of refugees would become witnesses to violence and horrors; and the world’s media, and the files of the UNHCR would be filled with accounts of their tragedies.
* * *
In 1969, the United States began secret negotiations in Paris with North Viet Nam and the National Liberation Front. President Thieu put pressure on the Americans to exclude the NLF from these talks. His efforts failed. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, an NLF representative, was under attack by the ARVN regime. Thieu claimed that he controlled at least eighty percent of the land in South Viet Nam and that the NLF represented only themselves. When a journalist confronted Madame Binh and requested to know exactly what territory she really represented, she replied, “Anywhere in the South that the Americans have dropped their bombs is my territory.”
The Paris Peace Agreement was signed in January 1973. However, intensive fighting continued between the ARVN and the NLF. Public appeals for peace organized by women and students continued to take place throughout the South. Few men took part. As mentioned earlier, tens of thousands of men had ended up in graves. Those who were still living had been drafted into the ARVN, or had joined the NLF, or they had been incarcerated in the Southern regime’s crowded prisons.
After the Agreement, American troops did, for the most part, withdraw from combat zones. Fighting was handed over to the ARVN. But American weapons and poisons continued to rain down. Aunt Di Nam and Dai’s children witnessed the destruction caused by US made fragmentation bombs, known in Viet Nam as “mother bombs”. That day she had taken the grandchildren to Thanh Chau by sampan to escape an ARVN raid. While Di Nam paddled, she saw four giant “fish” circling in the cloudy sky above. One of the children said to Di Nam, “Grandma, none of the fish seems to mark its target for bombing this time. But I’m still scared.” Di Nam tried to calm the boy and his little sister, “We will be all right, son! We will have enough time to get into the water.” She steered the sampan closer to the edge of the palm jungle. Suddenly they saw eight long silver tubes released by the four fish. The tubes tumbled down at all angles and in all directions. Each tube released hundreds of smaller pieces like black dots. It was as if someone had thrown a bunch of black pepper corns into the air and let them fall to the ground.
“Bombi! Bombi!” The shouting came from passengers on other sampans also on their way to Thanh Chau. Di Nam dropped the paddle, grabbed the two children and held them in her arms. They covered their faces and ears, in terror. There was a series of explosions followed by powerful blasts of wind. One of the gusts hit her copper tray of betel leaves and areca nuts. It flew up into the trees before splashing into the river. The air was thick with burning and the stench of chemicals. Di Nam told the children to dip their heads in the water to clear their noses and lungs. The little girl refused. All the children were crying hysterically but the deafening noises drowned out their voices. Di Nam tried to scuttle the sampan but it wouldn’t sink. In a panic, she tried to scoop water into the sampan. Then using all their strength, she and the boy finally managed to push it below the water. They hid among the water pa
lm leaves, their heads just above the water.
When silence returned, Di Nam and the children gazed at their surroundings in astonishment. Nearly all the greenery had disappeared. The sky suddenly seemed higher. They waited patiently until evening, the children shivering in their damp clothes. Di Nam and the boy were able to re-float her sampan. Afraid to return to Truong An because of its occupation by ARVN troops, they headed toward the village of Vinh Vien, where they found members of the NLF assisting the wounded civilians.
Each of those eight silver tubes had released three hundred “black peppers” – the bomblets, known to the Vietnamese as “bombi”. Each bomblet had the appearance of a huge marble, about ten centimetres in diameter, which in turn sprayed hundreds of steel pellets. An individual pellet was too small to damage concrete, but it could ricochet and do severe damage to a human eye, heart or flesh. The general pattern with fragmentation bombs was to use them right after a heavy ‘normal’ bombing raid when people were struggling to move about and looking for wounded loved ones. The grapefruit-sized bomblets were set to explode unpredictably. Hundreds of them over a wide area could inflict damage on people already in torment. Conventions about allowing time to recover the wounded, or about attacking civilian targets were ignored. ***
While the rural communities remained the main targets of large scale destruction by the ARVN regime with their American weapons, the Nationalist forces continued to gain more and more territory in the South. By the end of 1974 their victory seemed almost certain and revolutionary songs such as the following would be heard in remote villages.
The Liberation Soldier
Nine months out of the year, I lived in the tunnels
My skin was jaundiced, my face was unshaven
A short night stretching my body over masses of reed
Quietly I moved onto the pineapple fields
Then to the underground shelter near the peasants’ hut