Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  When I went to Balanga, I thought about why I was here. And I thought that since I arrived in the PRPC, the security had a bad impression of me, because I’m with the Amerasian group. Security was trying to create a big deal over the Duc case, make it seem like I’m a criminal. They don’t like me, so they convinced Duc to complain against me.

  So I have been here more than a year, and it has been a waste of time. I want to go to America and study and make a future. While I stay here, there is always the temptation to get into trouble. Because of my problem with Duc, people think I’m a tough guy. I’m afraid somebody might want to fight me to show he is tougher than me. If I am attacked, I might not be able to be patient, I have to defend myself.

  Postscript: Tuan Den finally left the PRPC in April of 1992 for Dallas, Texas. His last few months in the PRPC did not go completely smoothly. He was involved in a brawl with Charlie, his former close friend and cellmate in Balanga. Out of anguish from this incident, Charlie sliced off the tip of his own pinky.

  Shortly before Tuan Den left, his friendship with Raymond—his former close friend, cellmate, and teacher, as well as the interpreter for this interview—went sour. Tuan Den had suspected Raymond of double-crossing him and threatened him several times. Raymond, correctly believing that he was on the verge of going to America, was very uneasy about this, not wanting to get into any trouble that might delay him.

  Raymond and Tuan Den finally received their call to go to America, within days of each other. A few days before his departure, I visited Raymond at his billet. To my surprise, Tuan Den and Charlie were there too, and all three were once again the best of friends. Also surprising was the improvement in Tuan Den’s English. He was doing his best to communicate without Vietnamese translation. The times Raymond did have to translate, Tuan Den listened with extreme attention, trying to pick out the new words and phrases.

  Tuan Den told me that he was through with getting in trouble, and he wanted to learn English and make a new life for himself in Texas.

  Shortly after getting settled in Dallas, Tuan Den received a visit from the Dallas police, who somehow had heard of his troubles in the PRPC. It was a checkup visit. They wanted to meet him and to let Tuan Den know that they knew about him.

  Tuan Den was shocked by the number of homeless on the streets and resolved to stay out of trouble and not wind up like them. He found work and housing in Dallas, but soon moved on to New York, and finally to Pennsylvania, where he is learning to be a tailor.

  Tung Joe Nguyen and Julie Nguyen

  “I consider Vietnamese as my family, as my people too, but they don’t think of me the same way. They always think of me as a stranger, uneducated, with an uneducated mother . . . all stereotypes.”

  While I was in Misawa, Japan, writing this book from the data I collected in the Philippines, Captain Nguyen, an American of Vietnamese descent stationed at the nearby American air force base, was kind enough to check my work and correct my spelling of Vietnamese words. At our first meeting, he asked me if I would be interested in interviewing two more Amerasians. “Sure,” I said, “but where?” “One works with me in Supply,” was his response, “and his wife is also Amerasian.” He gave me the number of Joe and Julie Nguyen (no relation to Captain Nguyen). I called them that same evening and made an appointment to meet them the next day. They would be the only Amerasians I interviewed outside of the Philippine Refugee Processing Center.

  Joe Nguyen peruses my map of Ho Chi Minh City with amazement. “Oh, they even have maps now,” he laughs. “When I lived there they recycled the paper so many times it was brown. You could barely see the pencil marks on it when you wrote.”

  The oldest of the three children of an American businessman and a Vietnamese woman, Joe stayed behind with his mother when the Seventh Day Adventists slipped his younger brother and sister out of Vietnam just weeks before the fall of Saigon. Joe’s father had left Vietnam years before, remarried, and started a new family. Although he was advised by Joe’s aunt that two of his children had come to the States, he made no attempt to contact them.

  Joe and his mother, weary of the prejudice and discrimination accorded Amerasians and their mothers in Vietnam, thought only of getting out. Joe remembers, “We thought about leaving Vietnam constantly. My mom dreamed about it almost every night, dreaming that she was in the States with me, and then waking up in tears, realizing that we were still in Vietnam, with not enough to eat.”

  In 1983, that dream became a reality when they exited Vietnam via the Orderly Departure Program and settled in Rochester, New York. Seven years later, after mastering a new language and completing high school, Joe married, joined the U.S. Air Force, and was stationed on Misawa airbase in northern Japan. His bride, Julie, also a Vietnamese Amerasian, joined Joe in Misawa. Now, three years later, Airman E-4 Nguyen and his family are weeks away from transferring to a base on Okinawa, in southern Japan. “In Vietnam I always thought about going to the States,” Joe, now twenty-four, reflects with irony, “And now, by the time I finish my tour in Okinawa, I will have spent more time in Japan than in America.”

  At about five feet, ten inches and slimly built, the Western features which marked Joe as an outsider in the land of his birth predominate. Julie, with a bit more of Asia in her appearance, is a blend of East and West. We are in their tiny apartment, outside the gate of Misawa airbase in Japan. Kimberly, their eighteen-month-old daughter, toddles around the place as I speak to her mom and dad, occasionally stopping to fiddle with my tape recorder or bounce on the knee of one of her parents.

  Joe: My father was a civilian. My mom says that he was the chairman of a company over there in Vietnam. I forget the company, but they were dealing with refrigerators, freezers, fans, stuff like that. He is from California.

  From what my mom told me, her and my dad were getting the paperwork done so they could get married. Before it could get finished, he had to go back to the United States, so the papers never became official. When me and my brother and sister were born, we all have American names, but they’re not in our birth certificates because my mom and dad were not legally married. My dad left Vietnam in ’72 or ’73, and he never contacted us again, nothing at all.

  My mom says she was seventeen when they met, that must be in 1967, and I was born in 1968. I have only vague memories of him. In ’75, my mom had all these pictures, but we had no idea at the time what the Viet Cong would do. A lot of rumor was going on. If they find out that you married to an American and have American born kids, they would kill you, kill the kids, and all that. My mom took out everything, all the paperwork, all the pictures of us and him together, and burned it all, so no one would find out.

  Right before the VC came, my mom’s church said that they could take some kids to the United States. It was a very big church, the Seventh Day Adventists, and they also had a big hospital next to it. They took my brother and sister as “patients.” I talked to them about it [ten years later in the States]. My brother was too young at the time, but my sister remembers that they wrapped both of them up like mummies, claiming that they were burn victims and that they had to be evacuated to the States to be treated. That’s how they escaped to the United States. My mother lost touch with them, but afterwards she still went to the church and asked them to contact the States to find where her son and daughter were at. They told her a little bit, but they didn’t want to tell her everything. They said that they are still alive, they live with foster parents, and that’s about it. I have no idea why they would not tell her more.

  I have an aunt, she went to the States before 1975. Her husband and my dad were good friends. My mom contacted her, trying to find out about my brother and sister. My aunt finally wrote back and said, “I have knowledge of your husband. He lives in California, he has a wife and kids.” My aunt asked her husband to tell my dad about my brother and sister being in America. My dad said, “I know that they are over here now, but there is nothing I can do for them. I have my own family to take care of now.” A
nd that was the end of that.

  When Saigon fell, there was chaos. I remember outside, there were a bunch of houses next to my mother’s, and we all had painted flags on our doors, the old flag, the yellow one with four red stripes. As soon as they [the North Vietnamese] came in, I remember looking out the door, and I see them runnin’ into the next house across the street from us, guns and everything. This scared me, and my mom told me to stay inside the house, not to go out. They ordered us to paint over our flags, and a couple of days later I go out in the street and I see tanks and VC coming through and people waving at them, all that. Not too long after that they ordered us to move out of the house. All the houses, they were taking them all.

  They say that we no longer could stay at those houses, and they gave us two choices. They would give us land, and we could become part of a group, and we would live together, and work the land [in one of the New Economic Zones], or we could go ahead and sell our house, buy our land, and work it on our own. So my mother went ahead and sold the house, took the money, and bought land in another place, in Long Thanh. It’s basically jungle. We went there with my mom’s boyfriend. He had been in the South Vietnamese army before.

  My mom hired people to cut trees down, pull up roots, and prepare the land for growing vegetables. My mom’s boyfriend, he started drinking there, every day, constantly. After a while he couldn’t manage anything. We were paying ten or fifteen people by the hour to work the land, but actually, they just came out there to sit there until the day’s over and collect money. My mom has high blood pressure. She was too ill to look after them, and her boyfriend was too busy drinking all day long. The land was on a hill, so any fertilizer and stuff that did get put down, the rain washed away. We stayed there about three years. We lost a lot of money and nothing was growing. Finally, in 1979, we gave up and headed back to Saigon.

  Because we had moved to Long Thanh, we no longer had documents permitting us to legally stay in Saigon. We couldn’t collect any rice or anything from the government. We have to live on our own, and my mother has to go to the government office to beg for permission to stay there. They usually give you a week or two, or maybe a month. Then you have to go back and beg them for more time, or you have to move out of there before they arrest you. So we have to move back and forth, back and forth, all over the place. I can’t go to school because I don’t have the documents for Saigon. We just moved from one place to the next until ’83, when we left Vietnam.

  When we left Long Than, we went over to this house, where the brother of my mom’s boyfriend lived. It’s just a burned-out house, only a few walls left, and they put a little roof over part of it. We begged them to let us stay near there. They said okay, and my mother went out and bought dry coconut leaf, and made a roof using one of walls. Pretty soon, those people ganged up on us. They called my mom a prostitute, a whore, just because she had been with an American guy and had American kids. That’s why Amerasians are called “children of the unwanted.” Even the neighbors said stuff like that, and finally it drove my mom away. My mother’s boyfriend tried to stick up for her, but his brother beat him up and kicked him out. At that time, my mom’s boyfriend was trying to quit drinking, but he became a drug addict instead. My mom tells me he was a very nice guy when they met, but in Long Thanh he started drinking and then in Saigon he got hooked on drugs. From that time, he didn’t stay with us no longer. He just moved around, went anywhere he wanted, didn’t come home. One or two months later he would come back, steal whatever we have in our house and sell it, so he can buy more drugs. This continued even until the day we left Saigon.

  Me and my mom we went over to this church—the church that took my brother and sister to the States in ’75. They told my mom we could stay there and take care of the place. We stayed for a while and left. We kept movin’ back and forth.

  As an Amerasian, I wasn’t being treated very fairly when I was in Saigon. My mom, she cooked stuff for me to sell on the street. I had a little table and chair so I could sit there and sell. Little kids that lived nearby, they would come over and harass me. They would pick on me and throw rocks at me . . . even when I was in my own place, in the church. I remember one time, I was about twelve or thirteen. It was in the afternoon. My mom was out, and I was sittin’ outside in the yard, layin’ under the tree. All of a sudden a big rock fell on my head, and I had blood all over me. I ran all over the place. Those kinds of things always went on. When they saw me walking down the street, they would make fun of me, call me My lai [Amerasian] and throw rocks at me or hit me.

  Tung Joe Nguyen in uniform (courtesy of Joe Nguyen)

  The parents will see their kids abusing Amerasians, and they just stand there and look at it, and nothing will pass their mind. You know, they think that that’s the daughter or son of a hooker, a whore, a prostitute, so it’s right for them to get hit. I remember one time, going to a movie and walking home by myself at night. I was probably thirteen at that time. There was a whole bunch of kids hidden out in the bushes, and they just ran out on the street, beat me up, and took off. I was just standing there, I didn’t know what was going on. They probably knew I would be coming home and were hiding there purposely, waiting for me to get there so they could beat me up. That’s their game, going around, finding us, teasing us, and beating up on us. And the parents don’t do anything about it. That’s how they treat us.

  Before we moved out of Saigon to Long Thanh, I went to school up to fourth grade. When we moved to Long Thanh, I tried to go to school there, but they said, “No, you can’t go, you don’t have any paper work, plus, you’re ‘My lai,’ you’re half—American.” After we moved out of there back to Saigon, my mom went to the school, begging them to let me in. They say, “No, he can’t go to school, he don’t have any paper work, plus he’s too old for school, plus he’s ‘My lai.’” So I had no choice but to work all day, selling food on the street.

  I had only one or two friends. With Amerasians, we don’t have a chance to talk to each other because we are so busy working. Just seeing them, I recognize that they are Amerasian. They have blonde hair and stuff like that, but I have no time to come over and talk, so we never have a chance to become friends. I see plenty of Amerasians walking around, and they also being picked on just like I am. Every day people bothered me. Every time I would see a new kid, someone who didn’t know me, it didn’t matter where it was at, he would be there laughing at me, teasing me, calling me “My lai.” It continued for years, it never stopped. I didn’t like to go near other kids. They just kept calling me that, so I didn’t associate with them at all. A few Vietnamese kids around my neighborhood, first they were teasing me, but then they get to know me and become my friends, and those are the only people I played with, when I had time.

  We thought about leaving Vietnam constantly. My mom dreamed about it almost every night, dreaming that she was in the States with me, and then waking up in tears, realizing that we were still in Vietnam, with not enough to eat, trying to make ends meet. She tried to figure out a way to go, but we had no money. Only rich people could afford to leave by boat, because you have to pay × amount of money to leave, and even then it’s not guaranteed that you gonna go. We knew some people that kept on trying for ten, fifteen times, losing all the money that they had, and they still couldn’t get out. So there was no hope for us, we just sat there, and all she could do is dream that one day we could leave.

  I had two Vietnamese brothers, but they’re both dead now. They were from my mom’s Vietnamese boyfriend. When we lived in that burned-out house, my mom was pregnant. We lived very far from the hospital. When she went into labor, my stepdad was not home, and she asked a neighbor to take her to the hospital. Before she could get there, somebody delivered her right out there on the street, and they used dirty scissors to cut the cord. The baby got infected, and he died at six days old. The other one was born about a year later, in ’77. He died in ’80 or ’81, from drowning.

  About 1983, my mother found out about the Amerasian P
rogram, that if you are Amerasian and you can prove it, there is a chance for you to go to the States. So she filled out applications, and it helped her knowing a lot of English. She was talking to a lot of people, running all over the place, and we finally were accepted. We were, my mom told me, in the second group of Amerasians that left Vietnam.

  My mom’s younger brother had a son, but he couldn’t afford to care for him. He couldn’t feed him and couldn’t send him to school. He tried to give the kid to my grandmother, but she didn’t want him. Now, my mom still had the birth certificate of my drowned brother, so she said, “Here’s a chance, let’s see if it works.” She put in the paperwork for him using my dead brother’s birth certificate. We convinced the Vietnamese that he was my younger brother. There was no way for them to prove that he wasn’t. He’s pure blooded Vietnamese, just like my brother, and he was actually born the same year, 1977. So he came over with us, and he’s in America now, living with my mother and calling her “mom.”

  We came over to America, to Rochester, New York, on April first, April Fools’ Day. The next day, we had a snowstorm, which is very unusual for that area in April. That was my first snow experience. We went outside and played in the snow, the whole family, including my mom, because she never saw snow before either.

  I remember, in Vietnam, when we went to the farm at Long Thanh. At night, I’m sittin’ there with my stepdad, and he’s trying to teach me the times table. That’s the only thing I knew, the times table. I couldn’t do anything else except that until I studied in the States. When we got to there, I was fourteen years old, goin’ on fifteen, and my mom was tryin’ to get me into the school. They say I have to take this test, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. They gave me the basic math like subtraction, addition, multiplication, division. I could do the addition and subtraction, and the multiplication, because I knew the times table, but very basic, like two times four. Anything complicated like four times thirty, I couldn’t do, because I didn’t have the basic knowledge. Division, well, I was clueless on that, I just didn’t know how to do it. So they said, “Well, he’s fourteen, goin’ on fifteen, and he doesn’t know anything about math, we’ll put him in the seventh grade.”