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ESCAPE
FROM VIETNAM Page 4 Realizing
that the Chinese-Vietnamese were hiding their wealth, the local
Communist officials often conduct search and seize operations.
More than once, I had heard
and seen Communist soldiers suddenly came into the houses of people whom they
suspected were hiding money and search everything in their houses.
The soldiers came equipped
with ax, shovel, and used these to dig up the living rooms and backyards for the "hidden treasures". They
took away any money they could find. The
Communists justified this
daylight robbery as "taking
back the money that the capitalists made on the
blood and sweats of the working people".
However, people quickly became better at hiding their money. Some hid money in the houses of their
less wealthy relative. Some just
found secret spots to bury their money. Increasingly,
life was becoming unbearable for most people.
In 1978, the number of
people escaping by boats from Vietnam (many of whom were Chinese-Vietnamese)
increased dramatically. The
city that I was living in, Vung Tau, is a coastal city.
The availability of ports and fishing boats in Vung Tau made it a popular
place for many escape attempts. Despite
the fact that the Communists Coast Guards increased their coastal patrols and
the security forces increased their surveillance of visitors from other cities,
escapes from Vung Tau became more frequent.
Many boat owners and escapees "greased the palms" of the
Coastal patrols and security agents so that they would turn the other way.
Others who didn't or couldn't pay faced a much higher chance of getting
caught or killed before their boats even take off or make it to international
waters. In
early 1978, many of my classmates mysteriously failed to show up for classes
for a long period of time. It
usually took two to three months before I found out that their families had
already escaped from Vietnam. Some
sent letters back to their friends once they made it to refugees camps in
Southeast Asia. For many others, we
never heard from them again. We
never knew whether they survived the dangerous voyages or silently perished in
the South China Sea. In
March 1978, I saw the casualties of an attempted escape for the first time.
A group of Chinese Vietnamese had organized an escape at a beach not too
far from where I was living.
They didn't pay the Communist Coast Guards since they believed that they
could elude the Coastal patrols. Sometimes
after their boat started and made it out to the sea, the Coast guards discovered
the escaping boat and started a pursuit. For
some reasons, the captain of the escaping boat decided to ignore the Coast
guards' warning to stop, choosing
instead to increase speed. Subsequently,
the patrolling boats opened fire on
the escaping boat and blew it to pieces. There
were no survivors. A
few days later, the bloated
bodies of the escapees were washed ashore at the beach.
Out of curiosity, I went to see their bodies.
It was a bad idea. The
sights of the decomposing corpses gave me nightmares
for the next whole month. It
took more than 20 trucks to carry the dead bodies to the morgue. As
the lines of vehicles carrying the dead bodies drove past my neighborhood, I
realized the grim risks of escape. Even
if escapees made it past the coastal patrols, they still had a slim chance of
survival at sea. Most of the
fishing boats that people escaped in were not designed for extended voyages at
sea. Many were built to travel in
rivers only. Often, out of greed,
boat owners put more people on their boats than they could reasonably
accommodate, making the escapees extremely miserable during the voyages and
increasing the chance that the boat would founder at sea. During
all these times, my mother was secretly working hard to get a spot on one
of these escaping boats for me. She
didn't tell me any of her activities for fear that being young and immature, I
could tell my friends about the plans and attract attention and surveillance
from the hated security agents. However,
I quickly sensed that something must be going on from her vague hints and
admonitions. Though I strongly
suspected that my mother was trying to get me out of Vietnam, I decided to keep
quiet and not pressing her for an
answer for fear that I would create additional worry and stresses for her. In
April 1978, my mom was allowed to visit and bring supply to my father in
re-education camps. During the past year, the Communists had moved my father to
at least three different camps. They
just recently moved my father to a camp in Long Khanh, a province about 80 miles
from where we lived, two months ago. My
mother was allowed to visit my father a few times before, when he was placed at
other camps. Unlike previous visits, this time my mother took me along to visit
my father. She spent a large part
of the money she had been saving to buy dried foods and supplies for my father.
Laden with stuff, my mother and I went on a rough three hours bus ride to
the re-education camp. It
was the first time I ever went into a re-education camp.
On the outside, it look like
an army base, fully protected by barbed wire fence and watch towers.
I was told that land mines
were placed at the perimeter of the camp, both to fortify to camp and to prevent
inmates from escaping. The camp was
built at the side of a jungle, about two miles from the closest road. To get to
the camp, we walked and carried our bags of supplies across an open field (it
was a part of the jungle that was cleared by the inmates of the camp).
At the time we arrived at the camp, there were hundreds of other women
and children, each carrying heavy bags of foods and supplies, waiting anxiously
at the gate for their turns to meet their husbands or fathers. |