The Star Bulletin writes how a wooden boat which brought Vietnamese refugees to a beach in the Philippines more than 26 years ago is coming to Hawaii as part of an exhibition.
“The vessel, which has traveled to 48 states, will be displayed at Kewalo Basin Park this weekend as part of a “Freedom Boat” exhibition. It will celebrate the journeys of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who fled their country’s communist rule by venturing into the Pacific Ocean on unsafe boats in the wake of the Vietnam War. Not all who tried to escape from Vietnam were as fortunate, and it is estimated that as many as half a million people drowned or were killed by pirates in the South China Sea, according to Madalenna Lai, a Vietnamese who spent four days in 1975 in a vessel at sea with her four children before they were found by an American ship and taken to Guam.”
A Vietnamese priest who visits at the local parish described in a sermon how he literally took his last steps into one of those boats in an act of faith as a child. As he tells it, the boat in which he was to escape was waiting some yards offshore when he heard shouts indicating the pursuit had arrived behind them. The boat was bobbing in water above his head and he didn’t know how to swim but he kept walking. He kept going somehow until someone pulled him into the boat. They spent the next few days dodging pirates until they found safety. You could hear a pin drop after he told the story. The Star Bulletin’s story continues:
“We saw one boat with 42 people out there,” Solywoda said. “How many boats do I fathom were out there that were never seen?”
There is a boat adrift in the ocean of memory which has not yet come home to port. It is the story of those whose who wished, not for Washington’s reasons, but for their own, not to live under Communism. Vietnam is more than Chicago and the Caucasus more than Denver.
Tip Jar.
I’ve told this story before at Belmont Club but I’ll repeat it because it’s on topic.
Years ago, I was on a ferry boat from Korfu Island to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. While on the boat, I met a ship’s engineer (a Yugoslav) who had worked on a supertanker travelling through the South China Sea during the boat people crisis. The ship’s engineer told me that the sea was black with people floating on little boats and rafts. He said that his ship’s captain did the right thing and took on board as many people as he could until the entire deck of the supertanker was packed with people. The captain then reset course for Hong Kong. My eye witness told me that as the supertanker passed through the mass of floating rafts and boats, they were capsized and their occupants pitched into the ocean. Unfortunately there was nothing the ship’s captain could do because he had already taken on-board as many as he could carry and needed to get them to Hong Kong as soon as possible.
I’m reminded that the biggest technical problem the Nazis had during the Holocaust was disposing of the bodies. With this other holocaust, the North Vietnamese showed themselves to be smarter than Nazis.
As I recall John Kerry for example still denies to this day that any of this ever happened.
That’s why he will burn in hell, if there is a hell.
Well, yes. I guess it’s wonderful.
But how is this different now than North Africans swarming into Spain and Italy and Europe where they are either tipped over and drowned accidently, not-welcomed, or rounded up and shipped back home?
It *is* an act of faith on the part of the boatee, but surely the person at the other end should hve a say in whether or not that boat is welcome, and whether or not the people in the boat will make good hard-working citizens or are more likely to be religious fanatics, or polygamists wanting to live on the dole, or are just mere crooks looking to escape justice and for greener pastures where there are new and richer rubes to fleece.
Unfortunately, there have been so many million of these people seeking “asylum” for the past few decades that it’s becoming more and more difficult to muster up any sympathy or empathy for them.
Like, if they spent half the energy on reworking where they came from as they do escaping from it, wouldn’t *that* be interesting?
I’ve encountered this blindspot before too. In college in the late 80s, I was trying to back up my claim that it was right to oppose communist takeover in Vietnam. Asked to support my assertion that things weren’t all rosy happy national liberation, I said “well who do you think the boat people were?”
My very liberal classmate, who was extremely well-educated and informed, claimed they were Cambodians, and not Vietnamese!
NahnCee: “Like, if they spent half the energy on reworking where they came from as they do escaping from it, wouldn’t *that* be interesting?”
What a cruel and stupid comment. Just what do you expect unarmed peaceful people to do when they have a gun pointed at their head and know what’s coming? My parents both survived the Holocaust by some miracle. They would have left Poland after Hitler invaded if there had been an opportunity. They certainly were in no position to fight back. Do you think it was any different for the Vietnamese who ran away? How about the half million dead in mass graves that we uncovered in Iraq? Was it their fault too? What about the thirty million who died in Stalin’s Gulags? Or the uncounted millions that were killed in Mao’s purges and Great Leap Forward? If only…
You have no idea what the rest of the world is like because the US is heaven on earth. If you want some practice in “re-working” maybe you should learn Spanish. Then go to Cuba and loudly criticize the government in a public square. With luck they’ll only throw you out of the country. See if any of the locals are willing to stand there and support you.
I teach part time as an Adjunct Professor at a small community college in Florida. You can always tell what the main immigrant cohorts are because they’ll show up in your classes. :Lately a lot of south Americans, before 9/11 a fair amount of Muslem (oddly, mainly women). Eastern Europeans and Russians after the wall came down. Before them the Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese were by far the poorest of all the immigrant groups. You could tell by the threadbare clothes they wore. A lot of them barely spoke English. They pretty much put their own support groups together and struggled through the classes in the strange land. How they did it I’ll never know.
I few years ago I noticed another wave of Vietnamese on the campus. Only they were taller, well fed and well dressed. They acted like regular goofy American teens. The Melting Pot in action. I wonder if they ever understood just what it was their parents went through for them?
As for the poster above who begrudges them their flight. I don’t.
Thanks for this post. This is memory-hole material for far too many Americans.
Certainly, it’s not the type of thing to use in a heavy-handed or cheap, moralizing manner. But there is a very real, multi-faceted poignancy in the story, the stories, of those post-April, 1975 refugees.
Futility –noble as noble can be, dead as dead can be–civilians against armies.
33¾ years ago I was a freshman and I remember the incoming class guide book (the “pig” book) had photos of each member of the class and their secondary school. A few of them were from L’ecole Marie Louise in Saigon. The terror they faced as their country collapsed and the smug assumption of the American leftists that the Vietnamese would go home to build the revoloution I will not forget seeing. Some years later the Vietnamese girlfriend I had who was adopted by an American officer convinced me of the infinite goodness and welcome that is at the heart of this country.
Why was that different than people coming now from Mexico or Algeria? Partly because of what they are fleeing and partly because of what they bring. The refugees from Communism or Nazism obviously brought themselves. They were Germans or Hungarians or Chinese or Vietnamese but at their core they all came to America and did not believe they were bringing their homes with them. The current economic refugees, and even when they are coming from dictatorships in dar as Islam, their motivations are fundamentally economic, are not seeking to shed the culture of authoritarianism to join the West.
Photoshopping history
Nomenklatura:
“As I recall John Kerry for example still denies to this day that any of this ever happened.”
———-
Please provide an objective source for this recollection of yours, which seems to exist only in your own mind.
Wretchard, your article’s first sentence is missing a verb.
Major Mike Sylwester:
Did you get a chance to look at buddy larsen’s link?
At 1:28 “Everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There was not a bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps …”
Could you also explain how you voted eight times in the last seven elections?
They only let my cat vote once per election, and only if he registers in the precinct ableman’s party.
OldJew – you need to look up Godwin’s Law.
You lose.
There was a Major Major Major in “Catch 22″. His parents, Mr. & Mrs. Major, had peculiar senses of humor and gave their son the first name Major. When Major Major joined the Army, he rose to the rank of Major. Bob Newhart played him in the film version of the book.
Our presence in VN brought about a cultural
transformation. That is why there were so many boat people.
My last hurrah for Uncle Sam was playing interpreter in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania
in 1975. In those first groups of people, one could see the reasons for the later exodus.
If The Good Lord Is Willing And The Crick
Don’t Rise, another cultural transformation is under way in Iraq, and will spread to other mideastern nations as well. That will be a victory of unprecedented proportions,
if our new friends are not sold out too.
A lot riding on J McCains chances.
Buddy Larsen: In that refugee camp, the
linguist contingent were known far and wide as the most cunning people there.
We were the cunning linguists.
May I have a drum roll, please?
lol –and the difference between a setting hen and a country lawyer? A setting hen clucks defiance.
What is the difference between a dead skunk in the middle of the road and a dead lawyer in the middle of the road?
Answer: Skid marks in front of the skunk.
Also: Why do sharks never eat lawyers?
Professional courtesy.
heh –don’t forget the best lawyer of all: Obama & Biden!
one for the nightcap; I gotta get some sleep:
What is the difference between a girl in church and a girl in the bathtub?
The girl in church has hope in her soul.
Remind me to spout off about Boone Pickens wind farm, would you. Got some far out thoughts on this stuff.
okay –when u read this tomorry, you’re reminded!
Buddy: There was a Major Major Major in “Catch 22″.
I met him in ’67 at Ramstein. He’d changed his name by then, but was still a Major. Came to and left his office by a window to avoid the folks lined up at the Base Housing Office counter. Milo Minderbinder had fallen on hard times by then, but was still trading…Army field jackets and coffee for Air Force bomb dolly running gear. All put to good use. The stories I could tell. And most folks thought Heller wrote fiction.
America cannot host everyone in the world. The solution to every problem in the world is not “move to America”. At some point, the oppressed in other lands really must solve their own problems, even if that means marching en masse and empty-handed into the machine gun fire to attack the oppressors.
America, the life-boat, really is full; though you may not notice it for another generation. Even in America, there is something called “the carrying capacity of the land”. In two-thirds of America, that limiting factor is water.
Why be concerned about the Mexicans who are over-running this country? It used to be, when you came to the New World, you put off the things of the Old. But Mexico is so close, the Mexican Government encourages dual citizenship and absentee voting and remittances, and there’s Spanish-language media in every town… Mexicans don’t assimilate. And their “Old World” teaches them at every turn to hate the Gringos.
theOldJew:
NahnCee: “Like, if they spent half the energy on reworking where they came from as they do escaping from it, wouldn’t *that* be interesting?”
What a cruel and stupid comment. Just what do you expect unarmed peaceful people to do when they have a gun pointed at their head and know what’s coming?
Most “refugees” we take in since WWII have a choice – fight for their own countries or bail after losing or – like so many well-off Vietnamese in the wealthier and more populated South – sit on the sidelines.
We have warped the decision even further because with the Open Borders Emmanuel Cellar and his cabal created in 1965, why the hell would anyone want to fight to moderately improve a homeland shithole when they can triple or increase their standard of living up to a factor of 12 by fleeing without a fight? And saying they are one of the 2 billion “freedom-loving refugees” demanding admittance to the US?
Most are wannabe economic refugees, even if they claim it’s all politics and persecution.
That includes the “persecuted Soviet Jews”, who fled claiming they wished Aliya to Israel even if they were part of the Soviet Elite – then as soon as they got to Israel, tried to get “refugee upgrade” to a better land. Then when there were bucks to be made in the former Soviet Union, started to move back.
The same pattern is found in “noble freedom lovers” from repressive African and Arab countries. Somehow, it isn’t enough to make it to a tolerant Muslim land like Morocco or Turkey. Next step is Southern Europen. But that isn’t good enough even though they are not “persecuted”. Not when an “Upgrade” to the UK, the Netherlands, Scandanavia, or USA/Canada is possible.
Australia wonders openly how the hell “noble oppressed Lebanese, Afghans manage to transit through 5-6 tolerant Muslim countries before “blessing” Down Under with radical Islamist communities and high crime.
yeh –heard he instructed his staff to always tell visitors he wasn’t in. They wanted to know when they could ever let visitors know that he was in. “Whenever I’m out” he answered.
I can’t believe all of these refugees fled Vietnam. Jane Fonda said it was a great place!
In some places holocaust denial is a crime. Not that I am in favor of denying anyone the right to their opinion… I think it was criminal what our congress did turning freedom fighters into refugees…for the lack of a bullet, for the lack of perspective of right and wrong, from an abundance of hubris. There are few things about US history of which I am not proud, the actions that caused the collapse of RVN stands distinctly as on of those that should never be repeated.
Never again.
mark_b:
“Did you get a chance to look at buddy larsen’s link? At 1:28 ‘Everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There was not a bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps …’”
———-
I think you meant the link at 8:32 (in case anyone here else is looking for the link).
I do not think that Kerry’s denial that there was a massive bloodbath constitutes a denial that there was a massive escape in small boats.
You are right that I misstated my votes. I did vote for Bush Sr. when he ran against Dukakis in 1988 but then I voted against him, for Clinton in 1992.
buddy larson:
“There was a Major Major Major in “Catch 22″. His parents, Mr. & Mrs. Major, had peculiar senses of humor and gave their son the first name Major. When Major Major joined the Army, he rose to the rank of Major. Bob Newhart played him in the film version of the book.”
———
When I was in the military, I thought that maybe I should change my name legally to Colonel C. Colonel, to see whether this method might work for me too.
The part of the movie that I remember most is the first 15 seconds, where Paula Prentis was shown full-frontal nude walking on a beach.
Mike Slywester: Got any data on those re-education camps?
Andersonville ran a 35% death rate. That damnyankee camp outside Chicago was at least as high. Chances of surviving either one of those places was approximately double the chances of surviving “reeducation” and the
first few months folowing release.
And would you mind checking out the Saigon ghetto in which former ARVNs and their spouses
and their descendants are forced to live?
No plumbing, electricity, sanitation, health care, etc etc.
I will also point out that what passes for a “VA hospital” or “veterans home” for the NVA boi doi is rather equivalent to the
Japanese-run internment camp at Santo Tomas.
In short, the dinks are a cowardly bunch of slopes pursued by demons of their own making.
They actually behave 30 years afterwards like
yawnforbeskerry falsely accused us of behaving when in mortal danger.
The only saving grace about VN is that what happened there paled next to what happened in Cambodia.
That noble “watergate congress” also dismantled America’s intelligence insitutions.
Just for fun sometime, search “Church Committee” and then think about the fun we’ve had since.
“”"”"”buddy larsen:
That noble “watergate congress” also dismantled America’s intelligence insitutions.
Just for fun sometime, search “Church Committee” and then think about the fun we’ve had since.”"”"”"”
In the end, the Democratic Party lost Vietnam. And yes, the Democratic Party eviscerated the CIA. This was more than 30 years ago, and they’ve only gotten worse. A political party that has raised cowardice to a virtue.
@theOldJew:
Thank you for our sensible and humane retort to “NahnCee”.
@NahnCee:
theOldJew – you need to look up Godwin’s Law.
You lose.
Personally, I agree with “OldJew”. I think that your comment was heartless, demeaning, and appallingly stupid. You also don’t seem to know what Godwin’s Law is, so, “you lose”, or something equally puerile.
Your citation of “Godwin’s Law” is simply DoubleSpeak. No one called anyone the political “N***” word and no one hinted anyone is metaphorically “Adolfo the H”.
Your bile-dripping contempt for refugees attempting to escape from disastrous situations is is beneath contempt. Your inane and hatred filled comments leave me gasping and I really think you do terrible damage to the causes you may imagine you support. You are no kin of mine when I think of “the American Spirit”.
How’s this? “NahnCee: little Miss Stoneyheart with a rock for a head.” Hmmm. too ad hominem, no? Sorry, better to talk to a rock.
yep –when in the moral neighborhood of holocaust, one should opt for keeping one’s mouth shut unless one has a healing word.
John Kerry was on Washington Journal, C-SPAN today with Susan Swain.
Caller from Lubbock, Texas, says, “I remember the horrible killings after Vietnam with the boat people coming over here, and I really hate to go off and leave our allies over in Iraq, and I am concerned about that.”
KERRY: Let me just say to the first part of your question with respect to boat people and killing, everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There was not a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps, and they weren’t pretty and, you know, nobody, you know, likes that kind of outcome. But on the other hand, I’ve met lot of people today who were in those education camps, who are thriving in the Vietnam of today.
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=3274
Major Mike Slywester:
I believe your claim is that there is no evidence to back The Star Bulletin article. In particular the statement:
“The vessel, which has traveled to 48 states, will be displayed at Kewalo Basin Park this weekend as part of a “Freedom Boat” exhibition. It will celebrate the journeys of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who fled their country’s communist rule by venturing into the Pacific Ocean on unsafe boats in the wake of the Vietnam War. Not all who tried to escape from Vietnam were as fortunate, and it is estimated that as many as half a million people drowned or were killed by pirates in the South China Sea, according to Madalenna Lai, a Vietnamese who spent four days in 1975 in a vessel at sea with her four children before they were found by an American ship and taken to Guam.”
Your claim is to deny that their were “boat people” and one half million did not drown.
Is this correct?
Also, do you are agree that Mr. Kerry is mistaken in assertion about the bloodbath.
Or are you just using a false statement to imply that another false statement is true?
F->F=T
Of course the implication is true, but both statements would remain false.
Which works logically, but will probably not fly here.
The first refugee my Father helped to place in our community was Vietnamese, an officer and helicopter pilot in the ARVN. He had flown his family and neighbors out of the fall. He was educated here and was very fluent in English. I drew to duty of driving him around New England to and from corporate job interviews. We discussed what was going on in Cambodia and he told me then that a killing fields scenario would never happen in Viet Nam, that there would be “reeducation camps”, that overwork, poor nutrition and disease would do for the Communists what the killing fields did for the Khmer Rouge, and that the Communists would keep “reeducating” until the people they wanted dead were dead.
Slaughter is slaughter; whether via killing fields or via reeducation camps…that some will not see that is beyond contemptible.
“Why do you not commit suicide?” I ask my patients.