Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  In early 1975 the VC were moving south, and I left Pleiku for Saigon, bringing the orphans with me. Minh was only a few days old. The climate in Saigon was too hot. The children were itching, and the town was dangerous. I did not want to stay. I sent the boys to an orphanage at Cau Hang in Bien Hoa province and brought the girls to Bao Loc near Dalat. The climate is fresh and cool there.

  When Saigon fell, we were in Bao Loc, and the Communists came and took four or five of the kids in my care. They wanted to give them to others to raise. Many of these children didn’t like their new families and eventually ran away. I suffered because there was nothing I could do to stop the government from harassing us. I divided the rest of the orphans into two groups; one went with another nun and one went with me. My group had three Amerasians and five or six Vietnamese orphans. I cut off all their hair, so no one would know who was Amerasian, and we fled to Bau Cat in Cuu Long Province, very far away. We settled on a farm and supported ourselves by selling soy bean curd and soy milk.

  In 1982 I heard that Amerasians would be allowed to go to America, but I felt mine were still too young. In 1984, I sent them to Saigon with another nun, so they could attend English classes at night and learn to read and write the language of their father’s country.

  The children who were taken from me by the Communists, they couldn’t live with their new parents. Some came back to me, and some went to the other nun. In 1987 we all applied to come to America, but these kids have no household registration, so they were not accepted. And three of the Amerasians were not accepted because of a mix-up with their documents. They are real Amerasians, even though they look Vietnamese. So these children are in Vietnam, neglected, homeless, and miserable, and I am sure that they are falling into bad situations, these orphans I have helped bring up since they were babies.

  Minh as a baby in Vietnam (courtesy Nguyen Ngoc Minh)

  I cannot sleep at night, worrying about my orphans. I expect the U.S. government to look into their cases and allow them to come to America, and I hope you, sir, can help rescue my beloved orphans.

  Nguyen Ngoc Minh: I lived in Tinh Xa Ngoc Temple in Saigon. I don’t know anything about how I got there. I think my mother left me outside, and my auntie take me. I got no mother, no father, only auntie, but she loves me very much, just like a mother.

  There were many orphans, maybe a hundred, living in the temple. About half were Amerasians. When I was young, my auntie sent me to school. After school I work in temple, cleaning and sweeping. In the evening I go to my friend’s house outside the temple to study about English, or I go to the temple and pray.

  “Auntie” Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tuyen and Minh in the PRPC; Tuyen is holding a picture of orphans she raised in Vietnam.

  Many of the orphans became nuns, but for me, I don’t want to, because I want to marry. I see many people become nuns, and after a few years, they go out to marry, and no more nun. I don’t like that. I am Buddhist, but I have a boyfriend in Vietnam, so forget nun for me. My auntie was very angry about that boy, she says that I am too young, I must wait till I am twenty-five, then I can do what I want. Now I am very sad because two months after I left Vietnam my boyfriend got married to another girl.

  When I was about nine years old, I go to school and the teacher asks, “You Amerasian?” I do not know, that’s the first time I heard that. So I ask one Vietnamese if I am American, and he tells me yes. But I have no problem in Vietnam, I studied the same as a Vietnamese. I live in Vietnam since I was baby, and I am good. Many people half–Vietnamese and half–American are no good, but me, I’m not like that.

  I liked Vietnam, but I want to help all my sisters go to America. We are all orphans, no mom or dad, and I am the only one who speaks English. We will stay together, just like in Vietnam. Our sponsor is a Buddhist nun in California.

  I also go to America to look for my father. I don’t know his name, but I want to find him. And I want to continue high school. I’d like to be a doctor because there are many people in Vietnam who are very poor, they can’t have a doctor. I’d like to go back to Vietnam to visit my friends, to visit many poor people, and to visit the temple and the nuns. Maybe I can give money to people in the temple. I don’t want to live there again, I just go back to visit one or two months, then I go back to America.

  Nguyen by mural of the Buddha in the PRPC

  Inside Tuyen and Minh’s billet in the PRPC; left to right: Le Thi Thu (interpreter), a young nun, Minh, and “Auntie” Tuyen.

  Here in the refugee camp I am sad, because I miss people in Vietnam. When I go to school I be shy. All my friends in the classroom, they say, “You have no father, you have no mother,” and I feel very embarrassed. I’d like to have a mother and father, then I would be very happy.

  Postscript: Tuyen, Minh, and the other seven women who accompanied them from Vietnam were resettled in California in July of 1992.

  Nguyen Thi Van and Phat

  “The first time the VC call me it was a crisis ... but later I was just bored.”

  As we settle down to conversation, Van pulls out a sheaf of photos and papers, documentation of a life lost. “When I show ODP my photos, they be suspicious,” she laughs, recalling her interview in Ho Chi Minh City with the American Orderly Departure Program. “They ask how did I keep all these photos when the VC come? I just do this . . .” Van laughs again and makes a digging motion with her hands. Most women with photos or documents linking them to Americans burned the evidence as North Vietnam marched south. Some, like Van, buried their pasts in gardens or fields and dug them up years later.

  There are plenty of shots of her American husband, Air Force Captain Ken F. Eckman, Jr. In several he is holding their baby son, Phat. There are a few photos of Eckman on a field telephone on maneuvers in Thailand and some of Van, a stunning twenty-year-old in a traditional flowing white ao dai, having dinner with her husband. A few photos are snapshots of their wedding. In a large white file folder is a series of 8 × 10 black and white glossies of Ken’s father, Air Force Colonel Ken F. Eckman, Sr., and his family at a banquet in his honor. Ken Jr. appears in some of the pictures with his two sisters, both married to air force captains. The occasion is Ken Sr.’s retirement from his post at the Technical School at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. Although the date is not listed, from the clothes and hairstyles, I would place it in the early seventies.

  I spoke with Van on numerous occasions in the summer of 1992, generally in her tidy billet. She spoke in competent English, without the aid of an interpreter. Van is a petite woman with short black hair who appears to be in her early forties. Her English, learned from her husband and from the Hoc Chuc My [American school] in Saigon, where her husband sent her, was clear and often colloquial. She occasionally broke into GI jargon, referring to the Viet Cong as Charlie.

  As the overwhelming heat of June lapsed into the monsoon rains of July, Van’s moods turned melancholy. She worried and wondered what her life would be like in America. Van had married Ken Eckman in 1972, and he left Vietnam that same year as part of the pullout of U. S. forces. Van completed the paperwork which would enable her to accompany her husband to America, but when the time came, her mother asked her not to go, and she compliantly remained in Vietnam. In 1973, Eckman returned to Vietnam for the birth of their baby son Phat. It was the last time Van would see him, and the only time Eckman would see his son. With the fall of Saigon in 1975, all communication between Van and her husband was cut. Now, twenty years later, Van and Phat are on their way to the United States. Van says that all she hopes for is that her son can see his father at least one time. She has written to her husband’s 1973 Mississippi address but received no reply. One day she showed me an envelope addressed to Eckman. Why had she not mailed it? “I think about him, maybe he’s married already, so I feel very jealous, I get very angry. I take the letter and I throw it away. I don’t need him, I can take care of my son.”

  Van: I was born in Cholon, but when I was seven, we moved to Long An. My father was a cycl
o driver in Cholon, and my mother sold fruit in the market, but in Long An my family became farmers. I went to school for five years, but my father, he got sick and died when I was still young, and my family moved to Ap Truong in Lai Thieu district, Binh Duong province. We lived right in the market, where my mother sold food. There was no school there then, so I couldn’t study. Anyway, we were very poor, I had no time for school. I helped my mother make money at the market.

  When she saved a little cash, my mother built a small house. Later, when I got married, my husband gave me the money to build a big house for my family in Lai Thieu. My husband liked my town. I took him around. We went to the market, they have many foods he loves. Lai Thieu is famous for its porcelain bowls. My son knows how to make those. He went to school four months before he came here and learned.

  When I be about eighteen, I see my mother is still very poor, she doesn’t have money to live, so I go to Long Hai, you know Long Hai, near Vung Tau. There is a big base there, B-36, and I went to work there. I was a laundress, I worked for Major Lang.

  I worked at B-36 maybe two weeks, and one lunchtime my friend takes me to a restaurant. Eckman, he comes, he sees me, and he tries to talk Vietnamese with me. I have many friends, but he doesn’t like them, he wants to talk to me. He says he wants to go dancing with me in the nighttime, and I say okay. So, many times he takes me out. We go around, walk, talk, look. One night he says, “I love you, I want to marry you.” I say, “Okay, I love you, too.” He loves me, but that time, I don’t really think I love him. I say okay, because I need money; my mother is very poor. He wants to find a house to let me stay with him, and I say all right. Only later, after me and him stay together a long time, four or five months, I fall in love with him for sure.

  Nguyen Thi Van, circa 1971 (courtesy of Nguyen Thi Van)

  I meet him in ’71, and we get married in ’72. I get married, and I think it will be easy to make paper to go to United States, you know . . . but later I change my mind, because I see my mother is very sad. She don’t want me to go.

  We stay in Long Hai one year, then he go to Saigon to work at Tan Son Nhut airport, and I go with him. We stay together until he goes to the United States in ’72. He wanted me to come with him, but I cannot go. I cannot leave my mother. Before he goes, I tell him I’m pregnant, three or four months already. So he knows when I will have the baby, and he comes back to Vietnam to see me in 1973 when the baby is born. He stayed with me one month. My mother was old, very sad, nobody to take care of her. My sister was still too young, so I could not go with him to America. Every month he sends me money, writes me a letter. Before Charlie [the Viet Gong] came, my husband writes me, he tells me that the VC are coming . . . but I don’t think so. I think never the VC come. He tells me, sure. He says, “Please honey, take my baby, come to America. Charlie will come kill you.” I don’t believe him but in 1975 Charlie comes. My husband cannot write me anymore, and I feel very stupid. I feel crazy that I didn’t listen to him.

  April 1975, one morning, very early, the VC come. I was living in Lai Thieu. Everybody, especially mothers of GI babies, were very scared, don’t go outside. If you had an American baby, you wouldn’t be scared? If you go outside, maybe Charlie will kill you. So, I stay inside three hours, four hours, then I go out. The [South Vietnamese] army, they took off their clothes, they only wear shorts. ’Cause if the VC see [them in their uniforms], maybe they kill them. So in the street there are many guns, many clothes, many grenades. Many, many, I cannot count. I be very scared, too scared to count. I have an American baby, and I am afraid Charlie will kill my baby.

  Where I live have many VC, but before Charlie come, they don’t let us know they be VC. In 1975, when Charlie come, many stand up and say, “Oh, I am VC, I am VC.” So I feel very scared. I think, “Before they don’t say nothing, but now they say they are VC.” I don’t know what to do, who I can trust. When Charlie comes, the VC that live in Lai Thieu, they say, “Oh, Miss Van, before she married an American.” So, Charlie calls me to go to the monkey house [jail].

  Charlie gave me many troubles. He says, “Why you marry with an American?” He makes me go to [reeducation] school, many things I cannot say now because I cannot speak very well English. He don’t like my family because I married an American. He brought me to monkey house for one month. Every month I go to police and study politics. They say, “VC very good, only you don’t know what they do [for you].” You know, the first time the VC call me it was a crisis . . . but later I was just bored. They say, “VC very good, Americans very bad,” every day, every week, every month. “VC very good, Ho Chi Minh very good, Americans not good.” If I say that the Americans are good, he Chac ca dao me [cut off my head] and throw it away. After one month, school is finished, but he say if he don’t like me, he will come back and make me go to school again. And he do that. Sometimes he calls me again, makes me go once a week, sometimes twice a week, sometimes every day.

  Before ’75 it was very easy to go to market and sell something. After ’75 we cannot. I try to sell food, mangoes, coffee, but VC don’t let me. He takes my things and throws them away and makes me go to the monkey house. He says I have no paper [for residing in Lai Thieu]; he makes it very difficult for me.

  In 1977, 1978, it’s very hard for people to work. If you have money, they let you go to the market and sell, but you must give them something. I have no money. How can I give them beer, cigarettes, money? They don’t let me sell at the market, but I do it anyway. I have to take care of my son. I’m not scared of them. If they kill me, I die, okay.

  I feel so sad in Vietnam. I can’t talk to anybody, there are too many VC. Some people they escape by boat, but I never try that. I have no money, so how can I pay? And I’m scared my son might die, so I don’t want to try the boat.

  My son he went to school, but the teacher don’t like Amerasians, only Vietnamese. He stayed in school five years, but many times the children say, “American, American,” and talk bad to him. Finally, he didn’t go anymore.

  We applied in 1990 to ODP to come to America. I paid some money [a bribe]. My friend said she knows how to make the paper, so I gave her money. I don’t know who she paid, but she made the paper, and I left Vietnam. It’s very easy, if you pay them money.

  I wanted to stay in Vietnam and let my son go to America to look for his father, but he didn’t want to go without me, so I had to come too. Better he goes to America than stays in Vietnam, ’cause what can he do in Vietnam? We were very poor. He had a job, but the money was very little. I want my son to go to school in America, to learn English. Later when he speaks English, he can find a job, a very good job, make good money, and later get married. When he gets married, okay, I will feel very good inside.

  My son wants to find his father. He looks at the pictures, the photos, and he says, “Let’s find father quick.” I wrote my husband a letter in ’76, but I don’t know what happened. I didn’t get an answer. I wrote him again from here, but still I haven’t heard from him. [Van shows me a letter addressed to her husband in America. I ask why she didn’t send that one.] Why I don’t send this letter? I think about my husband. I think maybe he’s married already, so I feel jealous, I get very angry. I take the letter and I throw it away. I don’t need him, I can take care of my son myself.

  Phat: I have my father’s picture, and I will find him. I will just knock on the door and when he opens it, I will ask, “Father, do you recognize me?”

  Van: What will I say to my husband if I see him? I will say, “Hello, long time no see. I am very surprised to meet you again. I come because my son wants to see you. I don’t want to make trouble for you if you’re married. That’s the main thing. I don’t want to make trouble for you . . . but you see my son, for a long time he misses you. I just want my baby to see you and call you father.”

  Postscript: Van and Phat were resettled in Newark, New Jersey, in the late fall of 1992. After being temporarily housed in a refugee shelter, they found their own apartment. Within a week of
her resettlement, Van got a job in a box factory. Phat is working as well. Van has written me several times. The following is an excerpt from a letter dated February 1, 1993:

  Nguyen Thi Van and friends in Vietnam, 1971 (courtesy of Nguyen Thi Van)

  I haven’t located my husband yet because no one has been able to help me. My case worker said he was going to help me but he hasn’t done anything to locate him. . . . The United States is a very sad place for me right now. I only know the streets to go to work and to come home. I haven’t learned my way around.

  In December of 1993, I received a short note from Van. The Red Cross had succeeded in locating her husband, but he has declined to contact Van and Phat or to let the Red Cross supply them with his address or phone number.

  Lam Thu Cam Lien and Sophie

  “The Americans, when they want something,

  they just speak straight to you.

  They don’t go from this side to that side.

  But Vietnamese speak far and then come close.”