Thomas Quach

Thomas Quach Oral History

Thomas Quach:

My name is Thomas G Quach and I am an obstetrician in Gynecology. I work in Little Saigon, Westminster. I have been in private practice since 1999 and I’m a Vietnamese refugee. My parents came to the United States in 1975. We were the first wave of Vietnamese that left the country shortly right before the fall Saigon. We left in April 1975 and initially we were sponsored by relatives that were already living in the US and we went through the camps. We were fortunate enough to stay with our family and then initially in Connecticut then in Nebraska and then eventually settled in Southern California in 1978.

Question: Being born and having your early childhood take place in the midst of the Vietnam war, how aware were you of the realities of the conflict?

Thomas Quach:

I left Vietnam in 1975 so I was about 10 and half years old at the time finishing up my what I think was my third grade and at that time I had enough memory of life in Vietnam to remember the war in such that there were always military personnel friends and families who were either in the olive fatigue uniforms and there were two incidences that I can distinctly remember that war was close is… at nighttime we would hear in the distance explosions and during these times everyone sort of know what they are they’re mortar fire or cannon fire and we can hear them in the distance on the outskirts of town. I lived in Can Tho and Can Tho is now and was the second largest city in the south of Vietnam and usually we’ll hear them at night and during the daytime things were back to normal. I do remember a memory where I was told that it was 1968 which would make me only about 2 years old but I think it may be a been later on that I was walking with my mother to a market in Saigon we had gone to Saigon to visit my paternal family and we were caught in a people were throwing tear gas and I think there was a something was happening nearby and I remember how the tear gas stung my eye and everyone had already closed up their shops and closed up their door because unrest was happening in the streets or something and my mother had to knock on someone’s door of a shop and asked for water to put in my eyes is because it was my eyes were stinging couldn’t see there was tears coming down my eyes and so that was my exposure. And then of course 1975 came around and I remember that day my parents… I just decided to go over to my grandmother’s house which is up the road from where we lived and then I saw my mother, our family van drove past and then shortly afterwards came up and I was and to pick me and my grandmother and my aunt and so that day they they shuttered their Pharmacy and we went directly to  Saigon. And in Saigon we were only there at my paternal family’s house for a short time but I can see around the luggages already been packed.The backpacks that my grandmother had been put together two months before around February when we heard President Thieu resigned from his presidency and gave up the presidency to his vice president. Already at home my father had received calls from his American advisers that we should be preparing to leave Vietnam and so I remember my grandmother would come over and they would have bought thick fabric and the fabric was supposed to be to sew up these backpacks and on that day when we were leaving Saigon I saw that the backpacks had been put together and one was placed on my back. I noticed that there was a jacket that I had and in the jacket there were little pieces of metal in it and I was told that uh be careful with it because there are little gold leaves. So they had prepared to leave with sewing things and putting things together like backpacks. My little jacket had little sleeves in there that they inserted gold leaflets to take, to leave. So that was the I that was the memory of how we had left Vietnam. On that day I never got to go back to get my clothes or get my books or anything. I just had flip flops on and I left Vietnam with those flip-flops which unfortunately had broken and so I remember my cousin giving me his uh flip-flops and so I used those to go to the United States and my cousin and and my aunt decided to stay behind. You know for reasons I can describe later but apparently it’s a common occurrence where some families would leave and others would stay behind to only eventually leave later to escape by boats. So my family was separated from… my mom was separated from her sister for about five or six years but that was my recollection and impact on how the war affected me.

Question: What did you think or feel about the war at such a young age?

Thomas Quach:

I think for most Elementary School level kids we were somewhat sheltered from the reality of war other than knowing that there are certain places in our city that our parents would say “oh look over there in the rural area or in the jungle area of town” that we would say “oh there’s a lot of North vietnamese surgeons staying there” like we would say “oh that area.” We usually try not to go because there’s Viet Cong that are in that area and these areas were areas that we lived in. Although they’re in the rural area, they would be there and so we’re told that you know there’s certain places that it’s not safe to go if you are driving in a government vehicle. My father in 1968 had been appointed to be the director of medical assistance. So if you know about how the US was supplying the war they did it through the medical assistant, the MACV. It’s MACV. And they do that. In his capacity he was responsible for distributing medical supplies because he was a pharmacist in Vietnam. And so during those years the government had divided South Vietnam which starts at the 17th the parallel DMZ and they are divided into four regions. Those four regions were considered military regions that is governed by troops and also it’s for administrative reasons where they would divide up the task of governing these towns and the cities and also controlling the distribution of medicines and weapons and so forth. So my father was responsible for the distribution of medical supplies to the fourth region which is the furthest south of where we call it Ming Dai which is from Saigon south of Saigon to the tip of Ca Mau which is the most southern tip of Vietnam.

So his job was when the medical supplies would come then he would put them in the warehouse in Can Tho and then he would go out to the provinces, the small cities, the hospitals out that are run by the local municipalities as well as intimately the military is connected with the civilian sector. And so he would go out there and his job was to look to see what their needs are then he would go back to the supplies and then he would send the supplies out and distribute them equally. So that was his job in ‘68 so therefore he was working closely with the US advisers and so it was the advisers who had who told him that he should leave. And then riding around in military vehicles you become a target for the liberation front which is sort of like the… they’re not the regular North Vietnamese Army that has uniforms but they are…it’s a gorilla type of fight so they would infiltrate and be part of people in the South. They would live in the rural area and they would attack military vehicles and so you know we as a child you would go with your family to do a normal thing then we would look around and we be very careful about certain places. So yeah that was the way we would go on picnics but the places we choose for picnics had to be uh cleared meaning that it would be safe to go. We usually would do those things in the daytime and we would still go to movies. You know we have groups. My parents would have groups of friends that would get together and we’d go to movies but there’s always this concern if there is a friend of ours that is a colonel or a captain. They usually would post someone outside just to keep watch for us so that we can be safe where we’ll, you know, having normal friends get together. Of course on occasion we’d have visitors from my parents, cousins that would come and visit. Some of them were soldiers that are on leave and as a curious boy I would always check out their equipment.

They would come with their helmets and their  backpacks and their gun and I always and they leave it at the front before entering the house and you know I would go and look at him and check it out. On the medical logistic depot you could see all these connections which are sort of like the large metal containers that when the US would send supplies, they would send them in these large containers and the containers after unloading them some of the workers would use them to sleep in at night. I thought it was always neat to touch the metal and we were surrounded and things that come from America had a certain different smell to them so it was neat. When you are a child growing up, you see the fun. Our parents tried to make it normal for us but then you know sometimes we would be driving and there’ll be roadblocks and then there’ll be US military Jeeps with soldiers and so yeah so that’s our exposure to the war and that’s how we knew that there was something going on.

Question: As a student in Vietnam during the war, what did your education look like?

Thomas Quach:

I went to school up to the third grade and the school that I had attended was a Catholic nun-run School in Can Tho. Most of the schools that had some value in education, or that people can afford to send their kids to, would be these private Catholic schools. And, so, we did the normal learning: memorization of history. We learn a lot of history: about Vietnam prehistory, the history of the Hung Kings and the Dynasty. The way that it’s taught…it’s sort of like a French system, so there’s a lot of memorization. We did a lot of math, learned addition and subtraction early in the first grade. I think in second grade we were doing multiplications already and in third grade we were doing division. It’s typical reading and writing and then because it’s a Catholic denomination we would have a church we would know you don’t have to be Catholic to go to these schools and so the Catholics supported schools usually were the best you know. We learned I learned piano. We had music classes. We all wore uniforms but we were just being normal kids, you know, playing in the school yard and getting bullied the same thing and it is with my kids here.

Question: What effect did the war have on your father’s businesses? 

Thomas Quach:

Yeah, he was a pharmacist in Vietnam. When you have the [pharmacist] license, you can open private business and so my father being the oldest in his family… My grandfather worked for the government in the sort of equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service and so he was what would be considered a civil servant. So he wasn’t making very much money so my father’s family was relatively middle class, below middle class so when he was able to get his pharmacy license he was able to open a pharmacy so that my grandmother could run while he worked as a basically a civil servant for the government as the medical director of medical logistics. So you know he was sent to Okinawa to study Logistics from the US government Army and then he brought the how to U Warehouse medications and how to categorize them.

The war did not affect his business in a negative way. I think we were there too, for a short time. He finished the pharmacy program in 1965 and then he opened his own pharmacy shortly after that. But all pharmacists in Vietnam have to register with the government and so there is a list where I found um names, his name and my mother’s name and my other grandpa, my maternal grandfather’s name, they were pharmacists too. All the pharmacists were listed and they had to do civil service in addition to their private business. They have to do work for the government. It did not affect him in a negative way because it sort of worked well together. He would buy and sell medication separately outside and he would go, because my mother’s also a pharmacist, so my mother and my father and my grandmother ran the private business where my father would have his day job working for the government. But it was only for short period of time if you can imagine the perspective of 1968 to 1975 that wasn’t very many years before we had to close up everything and leave. His business did thrive during those years. I remember um our home was getting remodeled and things were getting better. We had newer things. But he wasn’t, you know in April 1975, when it came to being someone who had built up his business, he didn’t hesitate to drop them all and leave without anything.

So, I think him being a southerner, he was never really directly affected by the communist. He knows, he has some friends who were affected by 1954 if you know about the timeline of the Vietnam War, in 1954 that’s when they divided the country in two with the Communists being in the North and the republics being in the South. There were northerners who did not want to live under communism so they fled to the South and so they would speak with a different dialect. This Northern dialect, those people had already run from communist rule once and so many of his friends who are Northerners knew what it was like to live under communism, the the fear of living under communism. So they were the ones who would be, the higher percentage of those people were able to escape Vietnam before the end of the war and did not suffer the loss of their homes, didn’t suffer from having to escape through by boats which is extremely dangerous. They did not get put in concentration reeducation camps. Those re-education camps that the communist instituted were really meant to strip these people of their wealth. You know if you had worked for the prior government, the government of South Vietnam. If you were military you would get put in these re-education camps that initially they said “oh pack your bags bring a few things that you’re only going to be here at this camp for a week or two.” A week becomes years and some people stayed in the camp for 17 years. It’s essentially a prison and so what happens when you are the man of the house and get put into these places, your family’s home starts to get stripped away  and that’s what prompted a lot of the people to awaken to the fact that because they were connected with the South Vietnamese army or government, their future is is not is not guaranteed. So that’s why a lot of people had left and yeah his business affected by the war is that he had to leave all of it in 1975.

Question: Did the war affect the relationship you had with your father?

Thomas Quach:

No. Because we were children, you know, we were small. Coming here I think if you were to say if as a family, because of the war, because of us having to leave everything back in Vietnam and my father having to start his life over again, having to go back to pharmacy school, spending hours learning science and pharmacy again in a new language that he spent a lot of time with his schooling. So living as children of a relatively affluent family in Vietnam with helpers, that we would wake up and you know helpers would get us dressed and get us to school a month later coming to the US with no help, both my parents had to scramble to be professionals back in Vietnam. Let’s say in April they were running their businesses and then at the end of April, starting May and June they had no money and so both my parents went to work in a laundry mat cleaning you know dust and soap residue from the laundry mat. That’s hard on them and so many times I could hear my mother crying. Then my sister and I were there. There were only two of us at the time, you know we would just stay in our room knowing that our parents were stressed out about that. Fortunately when we came here we did get to stay with my aunt who was here previously in 1968. She took us in, but you know, living in a small household was… it became a stress on the sibling.

My mother and my father would have arguments with my aunt and so we eventually moved out for the sake of you know the family. So we would have to borrow money and use whatever money we were we had left that we took with us to rent places and so parents having to scramble the family stress of having to make a living and I think that in a way the war direct indirectly affected us in that way is that it broke up the family dynamics. My sister and I became latchkey kids; latchkey kids is a term that we used in the 70s and 80s I’m not sure that you know your generation still remember that but we would basically hang our house key on yarn and we would put on our shirts and we would walk to school by ourselves and when we come back, we use those keys to open the door. We’d go in and then as fourth graders and fifth graders we would help our parents, do the dishes, do the laundry, clean up the house and sometimes being kids we didn’t do that. Our parents would come home from school and they were tired and if they saw the dishes that’s unwashed or the trash not taken out then they would be upset with us. So in a way, yes, the war did affect our family dynamics in that way because we had to suddenly go from being pampered to shortly three months later living in a strange country not understanding the language. If you don’t understand the language you can imagine when you travel to a place where everyone speaks a different language, you feel kind of lost. Well I went to school, we were in Nebraska and I was the only one with dark skin. All my classmates were white Caucasians and then there was one other girl in the class and she was Indian. I remember and so everyone thought I was a pony Indian because I had brown skin or yellow skin and looked different than them. But  I may not have understood any of the class work but I understood math so I excelled in math numbers. You don’t need to learn a new language to learn numbers, but the war affected families in different ways.

It separated some; I remember my parents would try to contact their relatives. My mother was frantic because her sister and her brother had stayed behind, her mom had stayed behind, my maternal grandmother would stay behind in Vietnam. They wouldn’t leave and then we didn’t have any communication with them for at least six months to a year. When finally they were able to contact them, phone calls at that time was very expensive but you know my mother I would try to find out their number and try to call Vietnam and even that the calls were only a minute because it would cost like you know $111 per minute. I remember it was very expensive money in the 1970s with inflation. Gas prices were like 5 to 10 cents back then so you can see the relative amount but my mother would try to call just to hear my grandmother’s voice on the phone so that we know that she’s okay. Ao right after the end of 1975 the Iron Curtain went up you know we weren’t allowed to communicate. We would get letters and the letters would be interestingly very vague because the government, the new government, would read people’s mail to see what’s written. So they learn how to write in code to let their relatives know they’re okay but if they’re missing something like food or clothing or money because every day money can. You imagine your parents going to work so every day there’s income coming in but when the new government comes in, everything shuts down. All the people from the South if they were connected to the government or and at that time everyone who could make money was connected to the government. The people that probably benefited and weren’t as affected initially were the fishermen, the farmers, the poor but then eventually the fishermen left. They left by boat because they had the boats to leave and so there’s a group of fishermen that were the initial group that were able to leave and they settled in Louisiana in the fishing industry in South Texas. They were able to rekindle, restart their business again, rejoining the fishing industry but at that time you know they were facing a lot of racism. People would burn their boats and stuff especially if you look back at the history, looking at the shrimp book people, they were discriminated against because you know the Americans in the fishing industry back in those days, they didn’t like these other people coming in. Not maybe not knowing all the rules but would work really long hours, and they were taking all their shrimp.

Question: Can you describe what happened in your life from about March to May of 1975? 

Thomas Quach:

I briefly touched on that earlier in March. I remember it was good times. I was old enough to be more comfortable and had more memory of my days at school. I was just a regular kid—had my comic books, my friends—and I could ask my parents if I could visit my grandmother and aunt down the street. Back then, parents didn’t always let kids go out because they worried about kidnappings, especially if they worked in the government. Sometimes kidnappers would use that to blackmail. I remember we were able to go out more, and I had more freedom. By March, as a country, I could sense the anxiety among adults. In February 1975, it was really the beginning of the end of the war. Some historians say it started in 1973, when the U.S. stopped sending military assistance to Vietnam. Tanks had no fuel, cannons had no bullets. The U.S. had signed a peace accord in 1973, basically handing the fight to South Vietnam without U.S. military support. The South didn’t have the resources to continue, while the North kept getting help from Communist China and Russia. So the North broke the treaty, crossed the 17th parallel, and invaded. By February, the South Vietnamese president sent a letter to the U.S. listing reasons why he might step down and asking the U.S. to return and help push the North back. In March, the whole country was anxious. My dad called his friends, and they had group discussions, convincing one another to leave, especially those with government ties. They tried to get affidavits and letters from the U.S. Embassy to buy tickets. Those with French citizenship left early—my mom’s family had some, and they bought plane tickets. The rest had to find other ways. My aunt in the U.S. went to the consulate to put my parents, grandmother, and aunt on a list. I saw a copy recently—an affidavit stating she’d sponsor them. My dad wasn’t working much in March; he was always in Saigon trying to find U.S. advisor friends, get papers, and figure out how to leave. But the U.S. Embassy was beginning to evacuate quietly. If there were no workers, submitted paperwork wouldn’t help. Eventually, everyone tried to find ways to get to the airport. The U.S. started Operation Frequent Wind—you’ve probably seen the photo of people running to a rooftop to board a helicopter. Before that, they used C-130 transport planes. From early to late April, the North came south to the middle regions. People from cities like Danang and Hue were evacuating to Saigon, already displaced. Saigon in March was full of people trying to escape. My dad had a briefcase full of documents—his degrees, proof of working with the U.S., our photos. I recently found those. We had taken passport photos back then—I didn’t remember taking them, but we were all ready to go. The city was filled with fear and urgency. Some believed it wouldn’t be so bad, that the new government wouldn’t change much. My father-in-law had left the military years earlier and ran a used car dealership. He thought it was a business opportunity because diplomats and wealthy people were selling cars cheap. So he stayed. His family didn’t leave until after ’75—by boat. When the new government came, they lost everything. The government devalued the currency. You’d bring in $5 and get $1 in new money. Then they’d do it again. Eventually, you had no money. I have friends who had to sell their books and clothes just to buy food. When that was gone, they had nothing left—and had to leave.

Question: You mentioned a feeling of anxiety with the bustling of everything going on, how did you personally feel, and were you also anxious?

Thomas Quach:

Anxious as a 10 year old would be, you know, knowing that there’s something going on. I would imagine there were times when I would go and sit in front of our house early in the morning, and I was not a early riser type, but I remember during those months, I think as a subconscious reaction to anxiety, I would wake up early in the morning and just sit in the street and watch. You know, people waking up and coming out. I remember feeling at peace, but at the same time, knowing in the background that something is up. So, you know, as children, as young people, you always know what’s up. Maybe you might not be able to articulate [what’s up], you might not be able to, but you manifest that in your actions. Yeah, so, I believe that how I responded to that was trying to get some control over things that I could control as a 10-year-old.

Question: How did you adapt to living in the United States, and how did people treat Vietnamese refugees? 

Thomas Quach:

It was certainly easier as children. We weren’t teens—maybe tweens. My sister was a year younger than me. We went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska. Being new, my parents would take me to the school, and someone from the principal’s office would walk us to the classroom. I remember it being exciting. Classrooms in the U.S. were more colorful. In the corner, there’d be artwork and paint. We didn’t have much of that—mostly just lined paper for writing. I had terrible handwriting and would always get punished for writing outside the lines. So leaving that kind of classroom for one filled with crayons and art was exciting. I remember smelling the crayons—we didn’t have those in my old school, at least not in my class. The kids spoke words I didn’t understand. It was just noise. The teacher would rotate us through groups: purple group to language, orange group to art, blue to math, yellow to English. I only liked math because it made sense. There’s always one kind kid in every class. Most said things I didn’t understand, then ran off laughing. But one boy, Bernie Cruz, was nice. He lived with his mom and brother in an old house. He invited me over once. There was no food—his mom worked late. We ate cereal with water. I realized even though we were refugees, we weren’t as poor as they were. But he was kind to me.

There was also a quiet Indian girl in class. People thought I was Indian too. Outside, we played, and as kids, we eventually adapted. Adults were kind, maybe because they knew about the Vietnam War ending. Some church communities sponsored refugee families. They may not have met any before, but looking back, I think they were aware. I imagine it’s similar to Afghan families arriving in the U.S. now. Not everyone knew about us—we were only around 100,000 spread across the U.S.—but we felt welcomed. We stayed in Lincoln for a year while my dad finished his first year of classes. Then we moved to Omaha for pharmacy school. In Omaha, a kind older lady noticed us playing outside. She had heard about another Vietnamese family nearby. She asked our parents if she could take me and my sister to church on Sundays. She had two other girls from that family, and we’d all go together. Before church, they always had sugar donuts and coffee. If you’ve ever smelled sugar donuts, coffee, and old wood pews in the morning—it’s a lasting memory. I loved going to church. Mrs. Nelson was her name. She’d introduce us to her friends, and they’d all come over to meet us. We’d sit through the service, then she’d take us home or out for ice cream. I felt welcomed. At the end of fourth grade, I was picked to work in the principal’s office. My job was to ring the bell for class changes, and I got extra lunch. After two years, I picked up the language faster than my parents. After six months, I could understand my friends. This was during desegregation. My sister, being younger, was in a class that got bused across town. We’d walk to school, and she’d take a bus to another school. Kids from across town were bused to ours. It helped me because I wasn’t the darkest kid in class anymore. We assimilated well. I had a job raising the flag every morning. I had to come early, unfold it, run it up, and take it down at the end of the day. I felt proud of that responsibility. I didn’t feel different. This was in the Midwest, where there weren’t many Asians. When we moved to Huntington Beach in 1978, both my parents had finished pharmacy school. I started middle school in sixth grade and saw a lot more Vietnamese kids. By then, I spoke English well, but my Vietnamese had gotten poor. These new kids, who arrived in ’77 or ’78, spoke Vietnamese to each other. I made some friends, but I ended up closer to my white friends because I could speak English better.The Vietnamese kids hung out together in a group. I think I went more mainstream. I didn’t hang out with the Vietnamese kids at school. I felt more welcome when I was in a place where there weren’t many Asians. But when I was around other Asian kids, I felt more normal—less special.

Question: Coming from the Midwest to California, did people’s treatment differ from state to state?

Thomas Quach:

I think it’s a transition—when there are only a few Vietnamese or Asians, you’re treated better. When there are more, the mainstream community feels a little threatened. I grew up in what is now Little Saigon. My father opened a business when we came here. My mother was going to Riverside to work as a pharmacist, but my father reconnected with a friend from Can Tho. His friend had finished his medical licensing and opened a doctor’s office. He told my father there was already quite a Vietnamese population in the area. By 1978, many had come out of Camp Pendleton near San Diego. There were several refugee camps—Camp Pendleton, Fort Chaffee, Indiantown Gap Air Force Base—but most refugees were processed at Camp Pendleton. Many churches around California sponsored families coming out of the camps. So when we arrived in 1978, a few Vietnamese-owned restaurants were already open on Bolsa Street. My dad’s friend had an office across from Westminster Mall, but there was already a pharmacy there. One issue was that many Vietnamese couldn’t read English, so they preferred to get medication instructions in Vietnamese.

My dad decided to open a pharmacy. In Orange County, there’s a street called Bolsa. He drove along Bolsa looking for a spot, and about a thousand yards past Magnolia, he found an empty office space. He didn’t want to be too far from the doctor, so patients could find him, but also didn’t want to open too close to other pharmacies. He chose that spot. From there, the Vietnamese American community began to grow. There was a time when the City of Westminster stopped wanting to grant business licenses to Vietnamese-owned businesses. The neighborhood was seeing more Vietnamese markets, pharmacies, and shops pop up. The surrounding community started to feel threatened. What was once welcoming became hostile. People noticed all the Vietnamese drivers on Bolsa, shops with no English names. There was a movement within the city council and local business community to stop granting licenses to Vietnamese business owners. That prompted a man named Tony Lam to act. He owned a restaurant in town. When the news broke, the Vietnamese community realized their welcome mat had been pulled out. Tony Lam ran for city council. With the growing number of Vietnamese residents in Westminster, he got enough votes to win. He became the first Vietnamese elected official in the city. That opened the door for more political involvement. The Vietnamese realized that to be respected and have a voice, they needed to get involved. That was the beginning. Now, if you visit Little Saigon, you’ll see it’s home to many Vietnamese-owned shops. In the late 1980s, the area was officially designated as a business district and named Little Saigon. You can see the signs along the freeway and streets. The U.S. is a melting pot, but it’s more like a stew. There are enclaves. Over the years, our culture has contributed—at least to the culinary culture. The old tacos of the past now sit next to bánh mì and phở. Vietnamese food is even in the Webster dictionary. The Vietnamese community has become part of the fabric of America.

Question: Given this opportunity to share your Vietnam War oral history, what is the most important lesson that you want people to learn from you?

Thomas Quach:

I think the old saying is, you should not forget your roots. As a Vietnamese American, knowing where you come from—knowing the stories of your parents and grandparents—their narrative, their story is part of your DNA, literally and figuratively. Aside from their genes, it’s part of you. You should know their story and where they came from. History always repeats itself. The mistakes of government leaders get rehashed, and if we don’t know where we come from or the origins of how we ended up here based on certain decisions, we can make the same mistakes again. Having an understanding of where your parents come from is one way to respect your elders. In the Asian community, respecting your elders is very important. But it’s also about knowing where they’ve been, what they had to do for your direction in life. The vector of the decisions they made is what brought you to where you are now. In my case, if my dad had decided not to leave, not to drop everything he had built—if he didn’t have the courage to say, “All this doesn’t matter, the safety of my family comes first”—if he had stayed and held on to his wealth or his work, our trajectory would be very different. As you both are learning history, that’s the foundation future generations need to have: remember your past.