A Vietnamese Refugee's Journey of Survival and Resilience
Profilers: Huey Thompson, Sean Li, Ryan Cahalan, Phoebe Chalupsky, Clare Lee
Part 1: Disruption
Question:
So if we’re going to start, if it’s okay, some questions about before and during the war and some childhood questions. The first one is, what are some of your earliest memories from your childhood in Wangyuan even as the war was going on around you.
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah, I should clarify. I was born in Longswing, but I actually grew up in Saigon. So my mother took me out of Longxing when I was like three months old. A fairly privileged childhood. My family was considered wealthy in Vietnam. We had you know, maid chauffeur Cook. That was prior to 1975. And after 1975, a lot of things changed. Our money was taken from us in terms of currency conversions. So, you know, all bank accounts were confiscated after 1975. So if you had, you know, however much in bank accounts, those accounts were all seized by the government, um, and if you had the foresight to take your money out of bank accounts and hid them in your mattress. They would flush that out by doing currency conversion.
So, for example, your currency would become unusable or useless in three months because they’ll…put in this cycle of currency conversion. So you had to buy You know, one dong the new currency with 50 dong of the old currency And your old currency ceased to be in circulation after like, I think it was three months. So they did, I remember, you know, we were scrambling to do that after, you know.
I think it was at least… two or three times. And for those people who don’t run a business or a retail outlet, right? They’ll question you why you have all this cash. So, you know, you probably get searched and, you know, it’d be, uh, subject to various subjects interrogations of where do you get all this money? so money was practically useless after all that, right? You invest in gold, right? The Vietnamese currency became worthless. During that period a lot of economies or external forces just didn’t do business with Vietnam.
I’ll give you some examples where goods that were previously available in Vietnam. you know, like Blue jeans or soaps made by, you know, brands that you’re used to here like Procter & Gamble and You know, I remember my mom and her mom siblings or sisters would value a bar of soap. I remember the brand was Came Soap. As if it was made of gold, right? Because those items just weren’t available anymore. You have to use soap that is not scented and doesn’t smell very nice. You know, blue jeans and just items that typically were available were no longer available. So you’d get them through black market and you’d have to probably pay for them. Pretty expensive prices. Now, you know, when you make major purchases Vietnamese currency would not be accepted. Big purchases you have to buy in gold so the currency exchange became gold.
Question:
Thank you. And I want to ask a follow up on that when The government began seizing accounts and assets. Was there a lot of communication around that? Did a lot of people have the foresight maybe to move into gold and have their assets retain some value or did it happen too quickly for that to occur?
Ty Nguyen:
It would not come with a lot of notification, right? The intent is to catch people off guard. And if you were…privileged, educated, well-informed, you’d have a better opportunity to react to those things. But no, they’re typically not intended to notify and provide advance warning.
Question:
Okay. I’m going to move on to the next question here. In the paragraph you submitted us, you mentioned your father passed away when you were very young.
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah, that’s a correction. My mother’s husband passed away. That’s not my father. My brother’s father passed away three months after he was born. My biological father was someone that my mother, you know, left. When I was born. I didn’t really know him, to be honest with you. And obviously my brother as well, because he died, you know, within a few months of my brother being born. Um I think he was…probably the love of my mother’s life. What ended up happening was he had an exception and because he was a university student. He was not conscripted to go to war. And when he was expelled from university. He was sent to the front lines. And the front line being, you know, in Da Nang, where the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam was. And he was killed in action and my mother had to go identify her husband’s body in Da Nang.
Question:
I’m sorry. Then I’ll move back towards as a child, just sort of the environment around the war starting. You mentioned sort of the financial seizures. Were there… any particular moments or changes around you outside of the finances through the war started?
Ty Nguyen:
I don’t know if it’s within the context of what you’re looking for, but I can certainly attest to a lot of change that I felt, right? If you think about it, 1975 I was only four years old, right? But I was educated in French. French was my first language. My grandfather worked for the French government. And my family was privileged because of our association with the French government. So my mother and her siblings were all educated in French at the Marie Curie School. So obviously when I started preschool and various schooling shortly after 1975, I was still attending French schools.
But when the war ended and the government took over, brandished all foreign languages, you know, books and literature as propaganda. So they burned it and destroyed it and obviously French schools were outlawed and I was switched from a French school to a Vietnamese school and it was a.. I still remember it was a bit of a change. I wasn’t used to you know being around, I guess, so many Vietnamese and Chinese speaking Kids. I always… mostly around, you know, French-speaking kids at school where my aunt, my mother’s younger sister was a teacher. I went to school with her every day. And then one day I was told that you know we’re switching schools and it’s actually not that far. It’s within walking distance and the school curriculum had no French in it. And, you know, just to give you a bit more context, right? So any foreign language taught in schools prior to 1975 was no longer allowed, right? So English, French. Any foreign language except Chinese and Russian were allowed.
Question:
Just to follow up on that. When you switched into the Vietnamese school. There had to be a lot of other people from the French school maybe moving to that system. Was there a similar feeling around that?
Ty Nguyen:
I’m certain it was an adjustment. I myself don’t remember it. You know, I remember, taking courses that I or being in classroom environment that I just wasn’t accustomed to. It was a change, I remember, but I was so young I don’t think it…really impacted me in terms of the material I was being taught.
Part 2: Escape
Question:
Okay, thank you. I’m going to move on to our second part, which is in the post-war period. Moving towards after 1975, when the new government came to power, how did you and your family feel different under the communist regime compared to before? Was there a government ideology change that was spread amongst people?
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah. So my mother, having been a French teacher, had to go to what they call a re-education camp. And she was told that everything she was teaching was wrong and it was propaganda and incorrect. And I think a lot of people felt that the freedoms that they previously enjoyed, you know, like freedom to read books that you know, or…written in French, English, German authors were no longer available. So you know a lot of that became impossible to get your hands on.
The flow of information wasn’t as, I guess, wasn’t as free. And then people’s movements were restricted. You couldn’t come and go as you please, right? You couldn’t get on an airplane or go to an airport and you know buy a ticket to leave the country that just didn’t happen or you weren’t allowed. I’m sure all of you have seen the images of the escape from Saigon, right? On April 30th, 1975. Helicopters atop the U.S. Embassy were you know trying to get people out and those affiliated with the US Armed Forces or the US military or the French military were actually put in jails or camps. There aren’t really jails, they’re basically…Field facilities that are prisons but you don’t get fed. You just have, you know, barbed wire fence around and you’re, you know put in those places and may defend for yourself, right?
I’ll give you an example of my stepdad, who’s now my mother’s husband. He and his father were caught trying to escape on a boat and they were put in a prison. And he told me stories of having to catch field mice and cook and eat those things. Because they don’t provide you food. They don’t care if you survive or not in these camps. So freedom of movement wasn’t available. So if you tried to escape they’ll put you in prison. If you are associated with the prior regime, you’d be jailed and re-educated to reform and swear allegiance to the new government.
Question:
That’s super interesting, thank you. I want to touch on again the time when your mother was sent to the reeducation camp. Was she away for that period? Did you see her much? What was that like for you while she was away?
Ty Nguyen:
Well I was raised quite a bit by my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and my aunt who is my mother’s younger sister. So I guess because my mother had me when she was very young, she had me when she was 20 and she needed to resume her university studies to try to put her life back together. She left me in the care of my grandmother and my aunt to begin with so that she could go to university so I was for the most part in those early days up until 1975-76, I was raised a lot by my grandmother and aunt. So, me missing my mother wasn’t something that was impactful to me because I was raised by my other maternal figures.
Question:
Thanks. I want to move on to the years following the war. Your family decided to escape Vietnam. And what do you remember about the conditions or the events that led your family to make that decision? And was there maybe a specific incident or a growing feeling over time that convinced your family? That it was no longer safe to stay?
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah, I think as we watch what was happening between 1975 to 1979 when we ultimately left or escaped. You see the change in the regime, the change in the people’s rights and freedoms and access to information and freedom of movement. I’ll give you a few things that stick out of my memory. So I used to go to the market with my aunt or my grandmother and we buy groceries due to refrigeration appliances that we didn’t have. People went shopping everyday to buy groceries and fruits and vegetables and stuff and we had money.
And we’d want to go to the market and I’ll use the example of rice. We wanted to buy rice. But the race that vendors had to sell was not rice. It was rice that was mixed with barley. And as someone who eats rice every day, I don’t know, maybe some of you can relate. Eating something that is a substitute for rice to fill your belly wasn’t all that pleasant right? I hated barley at the time when I was eating it. And then the same with shrimp.We’d look to buy shrimp and we couldn’t. We could only buy the heads of shrimp and then I told you about soap and scented soaps and shampoo and things that were previously available and they’re just not available. So as an adult I reflect back on what does that mean?
It just meant that there were embargoes against Vietnam by Western countries and Vietnam needed hundreds of billions of dollars to fight wars that they didn’t have money for so they had to take help from Russia and from China in order to repay all these debts. They didn’t have money to pay them back, so they paid them with exports. So rice, one of Vietnam’s biggest exports, was being shipped to Russia and China to repay war debts, same with fish and shrimp. The heads of shrimp was what remained – the body of the shrimp, which is worth something, got shipped off to repay war debts. And also when you see these things happening and you see the restrictions, you start to worry that this is something that we can be imprisoned for speaking out against because your freedom of speech is not you know available anymore. Makes you think that things can only get worse.
And our lifestyle was no longer what it was, so my mother was determined to leave and risked our lives. So she set out to look for smugglers. And there are smugglers, but the problem is how do you find a trustworthy smuggler? I know that’s an oxymoron. These words are in conflict. So you kind of had to take the faith that this is someone you are going to worth with and then you’re going to hand them a pretty big amount of gold because money wasn’t accepted unless you’ve got US dollars which weren’t easy to get. And you had to find a smuggler who was reputable and trustworthy otherwise they could just take your gold and then turn you over to the authorities and put you in jail. You take months, weeks, whatever it takes to find and you do all this through word of mouth. Then you find someone willing to smuggle you out and they give you a plan and they tell you where to be and hopefully they fill their end of the bargain.
Question:
Can you describe how the day you were smuggled out of Vietnam played out and how you in particular were prepared to escape?
Ty Nguyen:
Ok. I’m going to say this so you can appreciate it right? So remember, I was eight years old or eight and a half. In 1979, my little brother was six years old, and we were told in the middle of the night: “ Get up, let’s go,” by my mother. And my mother had her younger brother with her. And her boyfriend at the time. We were snuck out of the city to a seaside town called Rachgia. Remember, we’re city folk. Think of us as city kids. We have no idea what camping and living in a jungle would mean.
When we got to Rachgia, we were smuggled onto a canoe and we were told to get down low, and hide. The canoe proceeded to take us to an island called Hontrea. That island is basically an uninhabited jungle island with a big hill and we were told not to light any fires because smoke would draw attention and get authorities alerted. We were asked to wait until dark and then at 8 pm come down the hill, wait on the shore and if after an hour we didn’t see a boat we should go run back into the jungle and hide. For me as an 8-year-old, I didn’t have to go to school, I was like jungle boy, playing in the jungle, so I was fine. But my mother, you have to put yourself in her shoes and I think she must have been dying inside, thinking what have I done, what am i doing with my two young boys and risking our lives like this? I remember we didn’t pack many supplies. We didn’t know what to expect. Other families brought dehydrated rice to cook and eat. Some people even brought mosquito nets. If you don’t have mosquito nets in the jungle, you’re going to get eaten alive. So my mother would stay up all night fanning us with a banana leaf so mosquitoes didn’t bite me or my brother.
My mother told us stories where she not sleep at all at night because she’d be fanning us with a banana leaf. So that, you know, mosquitoes don’t bite me and my brother. And during the day, we go play, you know wherever in the jungle and, you know, she tried to get some sleep and we didn’t have, you know, a mattress or anything, so we slept on a banana leaf or a bunch of banana leaves. And every night we’d do that for, I think, I want to say it was around the 14th night that a boat actually came. And… First, the boat came, and there were like, I remember there were 30 some odd people that we are camping with or hiding out in this jungle with. And as soon as the boat came, you know, a lot of people were pushing and shoving to get on this boat because 14 days later, you’d think the darn thing would never come. But yeah, everyone was pushing and shoving, and my mom and uncle couldn’t really push and shove because they had little kids in their hands. You couldn’t really do that. So we didn’t get on the first boat. And the first boat started, you know, pulling away, and another boat came by and we got on.
Again, we were told to get down below. So, you know, we couldn’t be seen above. Pretty cramped quarters and all of a sudden, you know, the other boat that left came back because I guess they had mechanical issues, so we had more people come in. This small boat, maybe it was around 3 or 4 meters long, had 30-some-odd people crammed into the deck below. Yeah, so… you asked what was that like? So that’s what that was like. So the next chapter is really about floating at sea. All right, so, the engine on this boat died. I don’t know, both. Few hours into the trip. And this is in the middle of the night. So the men, you know, there were probably two or three men at a time who were at the top of the deck, and they were masquerading as fishermen. Everyone else, women, children, were not allowed to be seen, and everyone else was down below. Pretty rancid situation you know there’s urine, there’s vomit, feces, whatever you know is down there and theres oil and there’s stuff like that. One of my fondest memories was once we were so far off of shore because the current took us, you know, pretty far out. Couldn’t see land anymore. Occasionally, they’d let us stick our head out to breathe fresh air. That was one of the sweetest memories I have of that ordeal. But we floated at sea for, I want to say 3 days. No working motor and someone put a blanket so that it would act as a sail and the current took us northbound. At this point, we were a little worried we might end up, you know, running ashore in Cambodia.
We were hearing stories and maybe there were rumors that, you know, that there were cannibals and you know, people who kill you in Cambodia. So we pray to god we didn’t end up in Cambodia. But the seas turned rough on one day and the waves started, you know, getting pretty high. After, I think the third day, I remember my mom saying that they were praying for land, and land, even if it was Cambodia. And we’re willing to, you know, just be imprisoned or taken back to Vietnam. But thank God the seas didn’t capsize our boat and didn’t break our boat. And… we spotted a boat, fishing boat, and it was small, about the same size as ours, and it came up to us and said: “Do you have any gold, any jewelry that you can give us?” And, you know, the people who had any valuables gave it to them, and this boat threw us a rope and towed us for a few hours. They towed us in one direction. I can’t remember which direction they were towing us, but then around sunset, maybe around 5 or 6 pm, they cut the rope and took off. We were mortified why that happened.
But when we looked behind us, there was a much bigger boat, much bigger fishing boat with downriggers, another Thai boat. And they also came up and asked: “Do you have any gold or jewelry or binoculars, whatever of value?” And we told them that boat had taken everything. So this big boat had, you know, mercy on us and uh they led us on their boat. It was big enough that it could handle 30 people on their boat. And they showed mercy, and they fed us, they gave us fresh drinking water and actual drinkable water. And then they towed us to an island and they told us to swim ashore, or a few men to swim ashore and on that shore in this island there was a lady who had a telegraph. And she telegraphed for the local police to come and they called the Navy. So the Thai Navy came. And the Thai Navy came a day later, and I remember this big monster Navy ship came and towed our boat behind us and took us to a refugee camp. The refugee camp is called Lam Singh. And there it was a makeshift United Nations commission of high commission refugees created a refugee camp for Vietnamese boat people. And you know, it was very heartwarming that the international community created this refugee camp in Thailand for us to seek asylum. They fed us, you know, I think they gave us enough rations for one meal a day at the refugee camp. We lived in a bamboo hut, and… it’s interesting, Vietnamese people make money off each other, right? Even though there have been people who’ve been in the refugee camp for longer than us, they were leaving, but they were selling their makeshift house or their makeshift supplies.
So my parents somehow found money, and I think my dad, now stepdad, you know, was hiding a ring that he had swallowed. And, you know, pawned it and got some money to buy some of these supplies so that my mother could make a breakfast dish, which is sweet rice that she’d sell at the market. And we survived at the refugee camp for six months. My mother was a translator for the various international delegations that came to interview refugees. So my mother spoke English and French, so she did translation for Vietnamese people who didn’t speak Vietnamese uh sorry, didn’t speak French or English. So we were in the refugee camp for 6 months, and for us, that was a long time, but for most refugees, that was short. And the reason why we are only in the refugee camp for 6 months is because my mother was part of the translation delegation. So we were sponsored by a church group in Canada, to go to Canada.
And, you know, in my profile on almost everything I say I am saved by kindness of strangers right? So kindness of strangers from those boats that told us you know my amp of forest, you know was gang raped by similar boats um all the women in these ships or these boats that try to escape encountered a lot of that where, you know, these men were killed, women were raped, and that happened to my aunt and she ended up you know escaping but being rescued and to go to France. A year before or a few months before us. And when we got into Thailand with the help of a former American soldier. He was a pastor who helped us connect with people who could help us in the outside world. My mother wrote letters to professors who were her French professors who are now in France. And you know, this man, the pastor who used to be an American soldier, would help us send these letters. And of course, he helped us send a letter to my Aunt in France and people would send us money and with the help of the money, we were able to buy some additional clothes, some supplies needed. So yeah, a lot of strangers bestowed kindness on us to survive at sea and in the refugee camp.
Part 3: Resettlement
Question:
Thank you. That was incredible. Thank you. Such a vivid telling of that period. I want to ask kind of during that period and as you moved from Lem Singh and towards Canada, what was the hope or the plan moving forward or was it really just planning for as much of a better life as was possible?
Ty Nguyen:
Well, you know, I think that we didn’t know what to expect, to be honest, right? This is a plan and a clandestine plan that you didn’t know what to expect. You didn’t know what was on the other end. You just need to leave or you knew you needed to leave and what to expect was impossible. However, you know, my mother had heard that her sister escaped and had safely arrived in France. So my mother applied to go to France. That’s her first choice, of course, being, you know, affiliated with the French for many years prior to that, that was the first choice.
And we got accepted. My family was accepted to be sponsored to France by my aunt. It just so happened that my mother learned about Canada and there was French heritage. French spoken in Canada and a French province in Canada. So she applied to go to Canada as well. And fate would have it that the plane coming Tulaim Singh taking us to Canada arrived two weeks prior to the plane taking us to France. So I’ll answer your question to say that I think our dream was to be in France to be reunited with my aunt. My mom’s sister who escaped a few months before us. But it turned out that God’s will had us going to a small town and Ontario, Canada and we were sponsored by a church group and we would start life anew, right?
We start a new life. Everything we had known previously was, you know, no longer available. But we are very grateful to the strangers who offered to give us a fresh start. They housed us. The agreement was that they would house us you know for a year in a farmhouse, help us find jobs, help us integrate into Canadian society. You know, my brother, myself, my dad, stepdad and my uncle. We didn’t speak any English. My mother did. So thank goodness she was able to help us integrate and we arrived in Canada in June of 1980. We arrived at the refugee camp in December of 1979. And we left the refugee camp in June of 1980.
Question:
And when you got to Canada what do you remember about arriving there and your first impressions and maybe some challenges you faced immediately as you were accustomed to that life in Canada?
Ty Nguyen:
I’ll be honest, the thing that I was really taken back about Canada was it was June and it didn’t get dark until 9pm. I thought, what in the world is going on here? When we grew up living near the equator, it got dark every day at 6 pm. Right around that same time every day. But in Canada in June, the sun was still up by like 8:30 pm. We understand how that worked. And I met people speaking a language I didn’t understand but they were so nice, so kind. We were eating food that we had never encountered before. That was, you know, certainly a good change. We arrived in June and it wasn’t so cold. But later on in November, it was snowing. We ran outside in our pajamas. To touch the snow, but it was darn cold, think living in canada living in Canada was for an ideal childhood. I loved it.
I immersed myself in Canadian culture, you know, learn to play hockey. You know go sledding, go tobogganing, become a fully you know immersed Canadian in unlike some people who had more Vietnamese culture around them. I didn’t have much Vietnamese culture and I gave up pretty much Vietnamese language at that point you know. My mother would even continue to speak to us in Vietnamese, but we knew that she could speak English, so we’d respond to her in English. So my brother and I even though I am 54 years old this year, I speak Vietnamese as if I’m a child. I cannot understand much of it and I do not speak it very well. That is due to the fact that we were pretty I guess intent on being Canadian culture and life. And I look back on it. I have some regrets that I have lost my ability to speak and read and write Vietnamese but I am grateful that I am grateful you know. I am pretty good with my English.
Question:
Your English is very good. This interview has been made very easy by having you communicate with us. I’ll ask the next question. You kind of mentioned that people helped you. They housed you in a farmhouse for a year, but were there any other people who helped your family adjust during that time? And how important was the support of the local community helping your family build a new life?
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah, absolutely, you know there was an elderly couple. We call them church elders that I actually called grandma and grandpa. When you have a church group come together to sponsor you. Some people are more giving of their time and their commitment than others. I’ll refer to thema s grandma and grandpa hill to you. They are Canadian farmers. And they are farmers who live next door to the house they lived in. And they took us in as if, you know, we were their adopted family. And I will never forget, I am going to grab a hill. They have passed away since then, but tey treated my mom and dad and uncle as if they were, you know, their own kids. And we receive so much guidance from them about living a new life in Canada, learning how to drive a car you know for my mom and that was something that they’d never done, my mom and dad. Buying a car, driving a car because they needed a car because it was a farm community. So, you know, to find odd jobs, you know, we relied on people to drive my parents here and there. My brother and I went to school on buses, So the community really rallied to help us. But I will share with you that grandma and grandpa hill Canadais who open their hearts and you know that gave us so much of themselves.
They were probably at least a handful of other families who were very close to us and they helped us communicate and, you know, integrate into the community. So my mother and dad and others got odd jobs. You know, I remember my dad and uncle getting odd jobs to pick rocks in Lake Huron. It was a close by lake that is one of the Great Lakes up in Canada. They would pick rocks to put into a wire mesh thing to build a barge or a pier. Odd jobs just to earn money. My mother, because of her skills in English and French, was able to find a job as a secretary and I remember she was talking to the lady who I guess she was doing secretary work for. And the lady said your English is pretty good. What did you do before? And my mom said: “I was a French teacher.” And this lady encouraged my mom to resume her teaching career. And you know grandma and grandpa hill are sponsoring it. Family said I think you are being ambitious. I would just think about administrative jobs and not think about returning to teaching, But my mother’s pretty determined and ambitious and she said she wanted to see what that was all about. So she applied to become a teacher again.
And they said, well you would need to get certified and your degree from Vietnam needs to be accredited and so my mother looked into that and low and behold. In Ontario at that time, they had this weird law. They said, well you’re missing one year. Everywhere else in the world, you don’t have to do. You only have to go from grade one to grade 12 and then go to university. But for some reason in Ontario, Canada at the time and I had to do this myself when I graduated. You had to do grade 13. And grade 13 was the missing piece. And my mother said fine. I’ll do grade 13 and do whatever courses I need at the university level so my mother did resume her career after she got her bachelor’s degree equivalent in Ontario, Canada. And then she said, why not? I’m so used to going to school and working and raising a family. She did her master’s degree at the same time. So, you know, she was able to find a job as a teacher after getting a job after her degree recognized. So again, a lot of help from strangers.
Question:
I can see that the premature and Grandpa Hill were crucial in that process. Can I just ask how old were you by the time you sort of had settled in Canada?
Ty Nguyen:
So I arrived, I turned nine in July of 1980. So I was nine years old when we first arrived in Canada and we lived in that farming community if you look up Huron County. A city London, Ontario is the closest epicenter metro area. My mother was a teacher in that community at a school called Godrich High School until high school until she wanted to wait until I finished grade eight. In a community called Exeter Ontario and when I finished elementary school grade eight my mother had the foresight to want to move to a big city. Whether it be London or Toronto, where I guess her…her reasoning was I had no choice. My brother and I had no choice but to go to university and make something of ourselves. So we moved to Toronto in 1986. And the summer of 1986, we arrived in Toronto and we, you know. Started uh, I guess, our city life in Toronto.
Question:
You described yourself as city people much when you were much younger. Were there parallels between the new city life and the old? I know it was a different situation but maybe some comfort in returning to the city.
Ty Nguyen:
I think I say the city dweller comment mostly because when we were marooned on an island. We were a fish out of water. Right? We didn’t know we needed, You know, to be capable of camping, like starting a fire, cooking your own food on an open fire You know, surviving in the elements. We didn’t know how to do any of that and we didn’t have supplies. Imagine yourself going on a hike or going on a camping trip. And you have no supplies. To handle the hike be forged for your own food. And then building a shelter and being able to, you know, keep the morning dew off you so that, you know, so cold City people, you know, we didn’t know how to deal with any of that stuff. To answer your question about, you know, city life in one place versus another, we were just used to having all the amenities of being able to go to a store and buying what we needed, not having to raise it. Farm it, grow it ourselves.
Question:
Thank you. I’m going to move on to the last part of this interview, which is sort of looking back set of questions. Looking back on all of your experiences, how, how have all the events you’ve shared with me shaped, shaped the person you are today.
Ty Nguyen:
Yeah, I think for me…I try to be humble. I try to be helpful. Even with strangers. Because I was saved by strangers. I value… a strong, independent, ambitious woman Because I was raised by a strong, ambitious, courageous woman. I’m very lucky to be where I am. I think I…I’m grateful that I am where I am. I know that a lot of things happen because…of the experiences that you go through. And…a lot of what I went through as a child made me realize that I was very, very protected by my mother. As I often look back, people ask me, what do you remember of the escape? What do you remember of being a boat person? And what do you remember? About…you know the refugee camp and I say…It was like a vacation.
I loved it. I didn’t have to go to school for six months. I was playing on the beach in the refugee camp. I learned how to swim. I did all these things because I did all these things because I was so protected by my mother. Right. There was only a few times when we didn’t have enough food to eat. So I’d go look for shellfish or whatever I could find on the beach. But there was very few times like that. Because I was so well insulated and protected by my mother but I put myself in her shoes now as a parent. And the worry that goes through my head would be insurmountable. And I don’t know if I would have given up. I don’t know if I would have survived as my mother would. So I’m, you know, forever grateful. Maybe you heard me choke up when I talked about Grandpa and Grandma Hill because I certainly miss them.
Thank God that, you know, God put people like that on our path. I maybe even choked up when I talked about Pastor Doug Kellum. He’s also someone that I call an angel that God put on our path. He helped us. He sacrificed himself for us who are refugees. And I also say this when I reflect back. My mother and her husband her husband My stepdad, when they arrived in Canada, they sponsored their siblings, their parents in my case, it was just my maternal grandmother. They sponsored their siblings from Vietnam to Canada. And even when comparing what my parents went through, my mom versus what her siblings that they, that she sponsored them out. They don’t know the struggle. They don’t know what it was like. To fear for your life, to have to fend for yourself. To not know what the future holds. So even in my own family. Right? We are the boat people. My mom, my brother, myself, my uncle who’s passed away, and my stepdad. Even their siblings will never know what it’s like. To be on a boat going nowhere And praying that you’ll survive. Journey and then that journey then knowing that on the other side Will people be nice to us will people Be kind to us. Just survive right? So how has it shaped me? I think I can survive anything if you know, my mother did what she did with me in tow. You know that age in her life and me at eight years old at that time. Resilience ambition. And you know, the will to survive are key.
Question:
Thank you, it is incredible the amount of resilience your entire family displayed and from the stories you told, your mother sounds like an incredibly strong woman and was, you know, did a lot of incredible things. We just have one more question. And what does it mean to you to be able to share your story like you have today and how do you think personal stories like yours contribute to understanding of historical events like the war and its aftermath?
Ty Nguyen:
I’ll be honest with you. I’ve had a little bit of reservation to do this call, and I’m assuming you’re recording me. I don’t know if you’re recording the video, A part of me asks that maybe you might mask my name. Or use a pen name for me because I’ve heard stories that… People who speak up against, not speak up but speak about their experience. And the current Vietnamese government finds out that either were were critical of, you know, what happened or that we reveal too much about what was going on during a time when they shut down their environment, their closed communication with the world that we might get labeled. So if I ever wanted to go back to Vietnam, what if they put my name on a list that prevents me from entering Vietnam. I love Vietnam. I’ve been back a few times. And they have a lot more freedom now than they did when we were still there. You know, I was surprised when I first went back to Vietnam in 2002 that, you know, Google wasn’t that badly censored. You know, like, in China, today you hear that there’s a lot of information that isn’t readily available for People in China. They don’t allow you know Youtube or they don’t allow Google search, they do their own you know their own WeChat and other tools so that they control the content And so the material I share with you today I want you to share it with your classmates. And at the same time, I have reservations about my name being revealed, telling some of these stories because I worry that what if I end up on some watch list, right? Where…they view that I’m critical against the current Vietnamese ideology and communist government. So um I know that there are people from Vietnam in my mom’s generation who have been more outspoken and critical of the Vietnamese government especially down in Southern California where they’ve had quite a few debates and ongoing you know, public discourse on these topics. And some of these people have found themselves on the no entry list or not allowed to enter Vietnam. I don’t know to what extent I should worry about that but uh maybe that’s my way of saying I’m sort of torn about being as open as and transparent as some of my thoughts are. On these matters.