Chapter 2 – The Fall of Saigon
In the days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of the land of slavery.’ Exodus 13:14
In the days leading up to the collapse of South Vietnam, my father’s extended family from the South gathered at the family home. The house stood a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy and about a mile from the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace. It resembled a modern estate instead of the typical straw huts seen in footage about Vietnam. Whatever the house looked like from the outside, it now served as the family “bunker.”
My father, an officer in the South Vietnamese Air Force, had stockpiled an arsenal of small firearms in anticipation of the fall. It was time to hand them out. Men and boys, fourteen to forty, all received a gun. Most had never shot one. None would have to. There was no point.
Every crackling radio broadcast from the frontlines brought the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) closer to our doorstep. “Charlie” was no longer in some distant jungle. He was now within reach of our home, our way of life. There was no stopping him. Not anymore.
It was the morning of April 30, 1975, when my father, mother, and oldest brother, Tuan, first saw the North Vietnamese tanks roll through the streets of Saigon. Perched on the third floor of our house, their eyes followed the tanks as they passed by. It left large parallel divot tracks from armored vehicles never meant to conquer these streets. Within minutes, the tanks crashed through the front gates of the Presidential Palace. The South Vietnamese flag, yellow with three bright horizontal red lines, flew officially for the last time.
Back at the house, no one spoke. Silence made more sense than words. The life my parents had known came to an end. Any hope of raising their children in a free, stable, democratic society vanished that day. Tuan, just seventeen, was too young to grasp the full weight of losing a nation—but old enough to weep for its loss. Years later, he would still remember standing on the balcony, crying quietly. He also remembered our father turning to him, leaning in close, and whispering words meant for him alone.
“We have to get out of here.”
As much as I try, I’ll never truly grasp the urgency or desperation that drove my parents to escape Vietnam. I can imagine it, but only through the lens of my reality. For me, “losing everything” means losing a job, burning through savings, and defaulting on the jumbo loan for the dream home. It means trading in two cars for one, switching from twenty-dollar designer hair gel to the five-dollar generic kind. Maybe even crashing in someone’s basement. And if it all falls apart, there’s still food stamps and government cheese.
It’s a blessing that my worst-case scenario doesn’t come close to what my parents faced when Saigon fell. I’m grateful I’ll never have to walk in their shoes. To know what it feels like to have everything—home, country, future—vanish overnight. To live through a moment so dark it feels like the sun may never rise again. But even if I can’t feel it the way they did, I understand.
From where I stand now, I see that the risk they took, the hardship they endured—it was worth it. More than money or education, they fought for the chance to reach America so that my siblings and I would never know hopelessness. Here, in the land of promise, everything would be possible.
* * *
Within a few days after the war officially ended, the Communist government abolished the South Vietnamese monetary system. Bank accounts vanished. The new government rendered titles, deeds, and any other instruments denoting ownership useless. Currency people tucked away lost all value. You own what you physically possess until someone comes and takes it away.
We had to register with the local authorities, declare what we own, and turn in our money. In exchange, each citizen received new currency. My parents received 200 dongs (equivalent to $50) for a family of eight. It’s a cruel game of communist Monopoly where everyone receives $200 to start the game regardless of their talent or effort. But unlike the American board game, whatever you earned belonged to the Communist Party. No one but the government gets to own Park Place.
The Party also seized homes, cars (the few that had them), businesses, and any other types of property to their liking. Authorities came to your house to see if the living space was suitable for one, two, or three additional families to move in. Our house got a lot of attention. Soldiers came by, pounded on our doors, demanding their share of the real estate. My parents managed to keep the squatters at bay by insisting that our family from the North, high-ranking Party officials, would soon arrive to stake their share. (This was the first of several occasions where my father’s older siblings, heroes of the French War, made life more bearable).
Aside from your belongings, even your skills now belong to the Party. For years, my mother ran a small tailoring shop out of our home. After decades of war, the rubber plantation business on my father’s side had withered away, and though we lived in a comfortable house, her work helped supplement my father’s modest military income.
One day, a North Vietnamese soldier noticed the sign for her tailoring service and stopped by with a bundle of clothes to be mended. When my mother quoted him the price, he bristled and insisted the work be done for free. A true Socialist, this guy. He explained that everything she had—her home, her tools, her labor—now belonged to the people. To him. How dare she, he lectured, exploit the common man with her capitalist thinking?
Without missing a beat, my mother handed him a list of household chores that needed doing—also without pay. He left. The war was officially over, but the Cold War played out daily in these hand-to-hand skirmishes.
Simple things we once took for granted suddenly became precious. We could no longer shop freely at the local market—everything was rationed by the government: meat, bread, rice, and even cooking oil. Each morning, families gathered at the distribution center as Party officials handed out tightly controlled portions. Some days, there was barely anything to fight over.
Tim, the fourth oldest in our family, was just eleven years old when he got a new job. Tuesday was meat day, and it became his duty to push his way to the front of the crowd to claim whatever scraps of pork or duck were available that week. Even now, decades later, I think of him every time I walk past the meat section at the grocery store, with its endless display of neatly packaged, choice cuts. I think of Tim elbowing past grown men and women, jostling and bargaining for what Americans might dismiss as Grade D leftovers. A simple packet of pork cutlets or a 16-ounce ribeye holds more meaning for me than the price tag ever could.
Losing life’s routines, struggling to meet basic needs—those things are hard, but they can be endured. They may even build resilience. But when a family is torn apart, the will to endure collapses. And that’s exactly what the Party did through Hoc Tap—the so-called “reeducation” camps. The fall of Saigon marked not just the end of a war, but the beginning of something far more devastating: the slow unraveling of countless families across the South.
Chapter 3 – Hoc Tap (Re-Education Camp)
In June 1975, my father received orders to report for Hoc Tap, part of the Communist regime’s sweeping campaign to consolidate power and eliminate internal threats following the fall of Saigon. Officially, the program aimed to “reform” former enemies of the state and transform them into productive, loyal citizens of the new socialist order. His former rank in the South Vietnamese Air Force determined the length of his detention. According to the Communist government, rank-and-file soldiers would be held for three days to a week, while senior officers could expect up to a month. In reality, everyone stayed much longer.
The regime also targeted religious leaders, scholars, politicians, and anyone who had worked for the U. S. or the former South Vietnamese government. To the Party, these individuals posed the greatest threat to unifying Vietnam under communist rule. By removing them from society, the regime believed it could eliminate the possibility of resistance for both the current and future generations.
Officials avoided calling these sites “prison camps” or referring to the detainees as “prisoners”—language that might attract international scrutiny over their treatment of former military personnel and political dissidents. By labeling the detentions as “re-education,” the government circumvented any need for sentencing guidelines or a defined timetable. They could hold detainees for as long as it took to consider them “reeducated.”
None of this held up to scrutiny, had anyone bothered to look. But by then, the world had turned away. The U. S. had pulled out, and Vietnam became irrelevant again.
The so-called “re-education” curriculum emphasized Marxist-Leninist ideology, denounced the evils of capitalism, and extolled the virtues of manual labor. Detainees were compelled to confess their supposed crimes against the people and endured childish exercises such as learning revolutionary songs and memorizing Communist Party slogans.
In truth, these camps were forced labor prisons, where the victors exacted revenge, imposed punishment, and extinguished dissenting political thought. Though the guns had fallen silent, a new war had begun—a war for control over memory, belief, and identity. The former leaders of the South were left to wither in obscurity, stripped of power and voice, consigned to be insignificant. Forgotten.
Worse than the physical mistreatment was the forced separation from family. The reeducation camps left behind countless South Vietnamese children who grew up without fathers. For the fortunate few whose fathers returned after ten or fifteen years, the reunion was often with a stranger known only through faded photographs. Entire lives had unfolded in their absence. Many families never recovered.
The way my father talked about the “re-education” camp, it sounded like the experience added to his character. It provided another layer of invincibility. To him, everything in life came down to mind over matter. My father talked about not knowing a man’s true character until starved to the brink of delirium. How much would you grovel for a bowl of rice? Does a person know his inner will, or lack of it, until he’s on his hands and knees begging for scraps? As a child of privilege, my father had never been put to this test. He had never once been deprived of a meal. In the camps, he marveled at the fragility of life. He saw his days go from eating the finest foods to nursing half a bowl of rice for an entire day to keep the hunger at bay. When my father starved, he longed for meals my mother once prepared. Yet, when hunger pushed out his ribs and hollowed his cheeks, my father never groveled.
He talked about being covered from head to toe with sores and lesions that drove men nearly insane. Yet, my father willed himself not to rip at his scabs. He disciplined himself to lie still and drift off to sleep. Not so he could rest, but to keep insanity away for another day. Ointment provided temporary relief; true comfort rested in the only thing he still had under control – his mind.
My father also talked about being almost persuaded. When he neared his breaking point, my father saw the power of faith demonstrated in a feeble Catholic priest. On Christmas Eve, he looked on as the diminutive priest lifted the spirits of broken men and bore the weight of their despair on the strength of his faith in God. In a re-education camp, my father came close to surrendering himself to a life of faith. But when the guards took away the priest, my father went back to the life he knew. A life of self-will. He looked to himself for inspiration. He relied on himself for salvation. Almost persuaded.
But when recounting Hoc Tap, my father is careful to remind himself that the stories would be different had the internment lasted for ten to fifteen years. In the men who lost decades, my father finds his humility. He also finds gratitude for his siblings from the North. Particularly the one, Bac Ba, who worked the hardest to get him out of Hoc Tap. The same brother whom my father had blamed for taking away his dream of becoming a fighter pilot.
Just days before being selected for flight school, several South Vietnamese pilots with family connections in the North defected. They took multi-million dollar aircraft loaned from the United States to the other side. When a background check revealed that my father had siblings fighting for the North, the South Vietnamese government put an end to his aviation career before it began. The same brothers responsible for taking away my father’s wings, in the end, gave him something better in return. His life. Everyone needs help once in a while. Even my father.
We were lucky compared to other families. My father’s internment lasted only eight months once Bac Ba procured his freedom. Under the terms of his release, my father had to remain under government supervision indefinitely. He could not leave Saigon and could never hold a job of any responsibility. Even in release, the Communist Party still wanted my father to become forgotten, sentencing him to a lifetime of obscurity.
My uncle may have negotiated my father’s release, but it was my grandmother who pressed the issue. Once it became clear that the Party had deceived everyone about the nature of the “reeducation” camps, she turned her anger on her children from the North. She believed they had known the truth about Hoc Tap all along—and could have kept her youngest son out.
As the story goes, she put it to them bluntly:
“If you don’t get your brother out of Hoc Tap, you have lost a mother.”
And with that ultimatum, my father came home.
But his freedom was only the beginning. Now, he and my mother would have to find a way to get all of us out. It wouldn’t be easy. Party officials were everywhere—watching, listening, monitoring every move and word. But my father had something on his side: a capable son, an unlikely hero. A son who would one day carry out his plan of escape.
Chapter 4 – The Plan
My father began planning our escape while toiling in Hoc Tap. The idea of fleeing by boat came months earlier from a friend, long before the collapse. That friend had purchased a small fishing trawler and docked it discreetly on the Saigon River. He hired a crew to stand by—ready to sail if an official evacuation failed.
When he didn’t make it onto the U. S. evacuation list, he gathered his family and rushed to the river. But by then, his Plan B had become the crew’s Plan A. The boat—and the men hired to operate it—had departed days earlier, beginning their journey to America.
Stories of South Vietnamese fleeing across the South China Sea soon trickled back to those left behind. Some escapees were rescued by passing freighters in international waters. Others made it to Malaysia, Thailand, or the Philippines' shores. But there were also darker accounts: boats lost at sea, passengers robbed or killed by pirates. Even worse were the betrayals—fake smuggling rings that promised safe passage in exchange for everything a family had left, only to disappear. In the most horrifying cases, passengers were handed over to Communist authorities—or thrown overboard—once the smugglers had their money.
But those things don’t happen to my father.
Somehow, he always manages to hold the handle, never the blade. Not like his friend, who put his fate in the hands of strangers. Our escape would be different. It would be a family affair—under my father’s watch, on his terms. No outside help. No hired crew. Everything is done from within.
The first part of the Plan involves becoming a fishing family and finding a boat to buy. Fishermen had access to the sea. They sailed in and around coastal waters with little suspicion from the government. And when no one was watching, that’s when we would escape.
City people looking to buy a boat after the war meant one thing: trying to escape. A fishing family buying a boat raises no eyebrows. To get the Party to look the other way – take the heat off my father – will take time. We can’t just pretend to be a fishing family. We had to become one. It will require an Oscar-worthy performance. Not just reading lines from a script, but method acting and improvisation. The audience, watching ever closely, had to believe. They must see what we want them to see. The first two actors cast: the family’s oldest sons, Tuan and Tu. Mere teenagers. One seventeen, the other sixteen.
The opening scene begins with my two brothers going to find work in the small fishing village of Go Cong. They had to eat, live, and learn from the locals. Get up early every morning to cast nets alongside seasoned fishermen. When evening fell, return with the day’s catch, and do it again the next day. Learn to fish, learn to navigate, learn who is watching and who is not. Blend in.
My father gave Tuan a small sum of cash and instructed him to pack lightly for the trip to Go Cong. Bring only a few changes of clothes and a mosquito net. Tu’s one instruction was to follow his brother. Watch his back. A small straw hut with dirt floors and a square cut-out opening for a window awaited them. It was one of several huts that dotted the Go Cong riverbanks with rice paddies in between, separating the fishermen from the farmers. Once settled into their new home, go find work, fish, and learn the waterways. If money ran out, improvise. Live off the land as the locals do. Hang on until further instructions from home. The Plan would never be fully revealed to the players. Just pages at a time.
***
Go Cong is not unfamiliar to my family. It’s where my grandmother came from. Tuan and Tu visited before when they were young boys. But to live and survive on their own will be a test of endurance. By the 1970s, Saigon had evolved into a modern city with an infrastructure equal to other developed metropolises in Southeast Asia. The same couldn’t be said for Go Cong. It lacked basic features of modern living. There was no indoor plumbing or sewage system. Not even outhouses. Public bathrooms – anywhere you want. If you desire privacy, find a patch of tall grass, squat, and do what needs to be done. Drinking water came from bins set outside people’s homes. A passing rain shower meant a day full of drinking water.
The village had no electricity. Residents lived by candlelight. The more affluent had kerosene lamps. The nights proved dark and disconcerting. A moonless night brought on an uneasy sense of claustrophobia across the land. Eyes strain for hints of light as hands reach out for imaginary guard rails to guide the way. It’s not a fun or safe place for an evening stroll. Best to stay inside and wait for the morning dawn.
There were no paved roads in Go Cong. Only a network of dirt paths that turns to mud trails from a heavy downpour. The fastest way to get around is on bare feet. Shoes and sandals are swallowed whole by thick globs of mud. You can tell a native from an outsider by the way he navigates the terrain. The locals show no hesitancy or disdain for the mud. They jump right in. Let the cool globs squish through their toes.
The villagers lived without luxury—no deodorant, no shampoo, not even a toothbrush in sight. But who needed to brush their teeth when most had only a few left? Beyond farming, fishing, and trading basic goods, life in Go Cong offered little in the way of leisure or entertainment. If forced to declare a favorite pastime, it would be drinking and eating disgusting food. Rice wine (Go Cong’s moonshine) paired with pig entrails, pig’s ears, pig’s blood, cow tripe, and other disgusting animal organs that only drunks can stomach.
My brothers needed to grow up fast to play their roles. Toughen their stomachs and maintain sobriety. There was no other choice.
***
Back home in Saigon, my mother landed the role of finding a boat and getting the word out. There were no boat shows or newspaper ads in Vietnam. Everything was bought and sold on the black market. This required having the right contacts with the right people. My mother told friends and family about starting up a simple fishing operation. That my father had been reeducated. Western capitalism failed. It was better now to become a working-class family. And if our conversion made its way back to Party officials, that was part of the Plan.
A boat was hard to find. Owners held on to them to earn a living fishing or smuggling. Supply for boats couldn’t keep up with demand. But after several months with ears close to the ground, my mother found a lead. She located a distant relative who worked as a fisherman in Binh Dai. He didn’t have a boat for sale, but heard of someone in another fishing village who did. My mother promised the relative a job with our fishing operation if he could set up the buy. He held up his end. We could never keep ours.
The “Khim Ngan” was a broken-down, tired fishing boat, about 13 meters long. Chipped, peeling paint coated the exterior. Barnacles covered the lower part of the bow like a goatee. The Kimmy’s engine puttered instead of humming, while the steering device gave up its age. Newer boats had a steering wheel. Like the kind in Popeye cartoons. The Kimmy didn’t. She had a 6-foot-long rusted metal pole, lying horizontally in the rear of the boat, slotted into a protruding foot-long vertical pole that connected to the rudder. Push the pole portside, the Kimmy turned Starboard. Push Starboard, she turned Port.
Despite the warts, the Kimmy had two things going for her. She floated and could cram up to twelve people in her cabin—enough room to fit our family and supplies for at least a week at sea.
With my father’s movement restricted under the terms of his release, he could not leave Saigon to go see the boat. He had to rely on reports of the Kimmy’s condition from our contact. But without ever laying eyes on the vessel, he knew she had one unforgivable flaw. The Kimmy’s engine could not survive a week’s journey. If she died on the ocean, we likely die on the ocean.
With a map and a ruler, my father charted two alternate routes of escape. The first route called for sailing southbound into the South China Sea in the direction of Indonesia. Given the cruising speed of a typical fishing trawler, my father expected that within three to four days, we would encounter the first of many merchant ships traveling through the international shipping lanes between Vietnam and Indonesia. The hope was that one of the trading vessels sailing westbound towards Singapore or Malaysia would rescue our family. If not, we would follow the convoy of ships to their destination. This required another three days of sailing on the high seas. Not ideal, but tagging along avoided sailing alone in open waters with merchant ships and cruise liners serving as unwitting escorts. There was also the possibility of arriving at the international shipping lanes and never encountering a single trading vessel due to a long break in the convoy. In that case, my father planned to continue for three more days straight to Indonesia.
The second route minimized sailing in the South China Sea. We stay closer to land, sailing along the southern shores of Vietnam, then straight over to Peninsular Malaysia. Hugging the coastline puts us in calmer waters for longer periods and lessens the odds of engine failure. This option reduced the dangers of sailing in open waters but puts us in closer proximity to Vietnamese coastal patrol and regional pirates.
But no matter the route chosen, the Kimmy’s engine had to endure at least a week’s journey. There was no getting around this. The engine had to be rebuilt or replaced – a task our family could not do on our own. We needed to bring in an outsider. Help Wanted – A Master Boat Mechanic.
***
Life in a fishing village was tough. The long days at sea battered the body and left the mind uneven by evening’s fall. My brothers first just hung on, then they started getting more acclimated with the rhythm of life on the seas. The physical and mental challenges in Go Cong proved no match to the punishment dished out at home. Out from under my father’s physical barrage, Tuan and Tu feared no one. They soon thrived under their newfound freedom. The outside world’s distresses became a welcome respite, a proving ground where they could find success.
Within a few months, Tuan made a name for himself among the villagers. He never tired on long trawling runs. He carried his weight and took on tasks that others feared. When fishing nets tangled or propellers dragged, slowing the boat to a crawl, Tuan was the first in the water. Away from the water, there was alcohol. If Go Cong’s favorite pastime was drinking, he became the local hero. As for Tu, he had less to prove and less to do. With Tuan leading the way, life was good.
My brothers did as told in Go Cong, and it worked according to the Plan. The audience took them in and saw what my father wanted them to see. The time now came for Tuan to see more of the script. He would soon receive two new assignments. Go get our boat and bring it to Go Cong. Then find a mechanic to make the Kimmy stronger, faster, and better than before. The Plan was a family affair, but the critical tasks fell upon the Eldest Son.
Chapter 5 – The Eldest Son
Tuan is our family’s “Eldest Son.” The title in Vietnam denotes additional responsibilities from parents and deference from siblings. None of the brothers and sisters ever questioned Tuan’s pecking order, nor did we want to. He took the beatings on our behalf – or at least softened the blows when it came our turn. Among the siblings, we couldn’t have asked for a better older brother.
My father, though, had plenty of complaints. He didn’t think Tuan was the thinking type. His oldest son relied too much on instincts and bravado. A hot head lit by a short fuse. To him, Tuan didn’t understand the psychology of men and how to use it against them.
My father’s perception of Tuan reminded me of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. How the Don’s eldest son got riddled with bullets at a toll booth when his temper got the better of him. How Barzini outfoxed Santino. For a good part of my life, I feared coming home to my father, saying.
“They got Tuan.”
“They shot my boy like an animal.”
“He should have been more calculating, more like the son I wanted him to be.”
Tuan never got outfoxed or riddled by bullets. He didn’t become a glorified thug like the men portrayed in mob movies. Looking back, it seemed like my brother’s entire life was a series of challenges to prepare him for a more noble role. To help lead our family out of Vietnam.
***
The first hurdle in my brother’s life came before he was born. He was an unplanned child produced by teenage indiscretion. To make matters worse, my parents came from opposite ends of society. My father came from a family that owned much of South Vietnam’s rubber plantations – a lucrative industry in Southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. My mother’s family lived among the bottom rungs of Saigon. She wasn’t born into poverty. A stray bullet to the back of her father’s head put her there. My maternal grandfather was the chief of police for a small town, and for a short period of her life, my mother, along with her mother and two other siblings, lived a happy and stable existence. But after her father’s death, my mother’s family survived on the occasional charity from friends and relatives. It was during a summer when my mother was sent to live with a relative that she met my father. When she became pregnant with Tuan, my mother quickly learned there was no place for a poor teenage girl in my father’s family.
Against his parents’ wishes, my father married my mother. But his family would not accept the union or their child. Tuan would have to fight for recognition. He would have to earn his way into my father’s family – a battle that none of the other children later had to fight. Through my mother’s devotion to my father’s family, we all eventually gained acceptance. But there was a mark against Tuan, left by those on my father’s side who never accepted him. It hung over my brother like a dark cloud that wouldn’t lift. It was as if approval from those who rejected him only served to confirm their error.
Tuan never spoke of the rejection, not to me. He wasn’t much of a talker. He didn’t have time to talk. My brother spent half his hours trying to please my father (or avoid getting caught when he didn’t) and the other half taking care of his younger siblings. The first thing he did for any of us was to simply be born. Without him, my parents would never have married. Quite possibly, none of the other siblings – including me - would have been born into this family. A remarkable mark left by a child born into disfavor.
Tuan proved from an early age that he could handle assignments beyond his years. He was seven years old when my parents found themselves running two successful restaurants on top of my father’s active-duty military service. They had moved away from his family in Saigon to prove that they could make it on their own. They settled in the beach town of Nha Trang with four small children in tow: Tuan, Tu, Amy, and the youngest, Tim.
During the day, my father reported to the base, leaving my mother to oversee the restaurants and care for the youngest. The other two became Tuan’s responsibility. He got Tu and Amy up every morning, helped dress, feed, and walked them to school and back. In the afternoons, they all went to the beach for playtime. Tuan, after all, was still just a kid and needed his play time too.
Frolics at the beach typically meant the two boys in the water leaving their six-year-old baby sister alone in the sand. One day, Amy had had enough. She insisted on joining her brothers in the ocean. The problem was that she didn’t know how to swim. Tuan, somehow, somewhere, got his hands on an inflatable raft. The two boys spent hours inflating the raft with their tiny lungs before flinging their baby sister on top and barreling headfirst into the oncoming waves for hours of fun and adventure in the ocean. Imagine the gasp from child protective services stumbling on this day cruise, skippered by an eight-year-old boy and his sidekick, little brother. If only Vietnam had a child protective service.
It wasn’t until years later that Tuan and Tu shared the details of this adventure to the horror of my mother and an equally terrified grown sister, Amy. How fitting that at an early age, Tuan found himself in the ocean clinging to a raft with his brother and sister at his side. Like most adventures with Tuan, the details weren’t pretty, but the outcome was the same. All is well that ends. On that day, so long ago, in a place so far away, they had fun, got scared at times, and came home in one piece with yet another story to tighten their bond.
Aside from shepherding his two siblings to school and play, Tuan was also the “muscle.” He was the shepherd to the two ewe lambs. There were countless fights, including an epic battle with the “Shoeshine Gang”, a band of young hoodlum kids earning spare change on the streets shining shoes for the more fortunate. Learning how to fight from my father and absorbing the frequent backhands to the side of the face, Tuan developed a strong chin and knew how to dish it out with controlled aggression. And he was smart about it, too. My brother knew he could never take on all of them, so he picked the biggest, scariest kid to fight. Once he bested their best, order was restored. The wolves retreated, and the two ewe lambs were left alone to play.
Of all the times that the Eldest Son was called to perform his duty, there was one assignment that even Tuan would fail. The night before my father left for Hoc Tap, he handed Tuan two pistols. A Colt revolver and a Beretta semi-automatic. Each chambering six rounds.
“Tuan, you must defend our family.
If they come to take away your mother, your brothers, or your sisters, kill as many of their soldiers as you can.
But if it comes down to it, spare your family by taking their lives.
Don’t let them be killed or raped by the enemy.
You have six rounds in each gun.
Save the last one for yourself.”
My father, among other things, was a man who knew history. He understood the spoils of victory and the horrors of defeat that played out. Of more recent events, he knew about the wives and daughters of Korean families who became “comfort” women to the conquering Japanese. Are such atrocities worse than death? The answer to this question for my father was yes.
I am not sure whether my father knew if Tuan could carry out this task. My brother never had to endure that decision. No one ever came to kill or rape our family.
After learning about this incident decades later, I asked Tuan whether he could have taken our lives under those circumstances. After a long, tortured silence, he said, “I don’t know.”