APRIL 1975
Yến Bạch Nguyễn was 12 years old when her mother, Tý Thị — keenly aware of the southward advance of North Vietnamese troops toward their village near Saigon — traveled with Yến and her four siblings to the waterfront home of their grandmother in Sao Mai, Vung Tau to be safe from the increased shelling.
A shopkeeper of household goods, Tý Thị, kept an ear tuned to BBC News radio broadcasts and learned that American cargo ships waited in the international waters of the China Sea to evacuate South Vietnamese refugees.
“She knew that if we had to leave that it would be by the sea,” Yến said. “All our uncles, aunts, and their families lived there in Sao Mai. My father joined us after his army base had been invaded by the Communists,” she added.
“On a Sunday late in April the bombing was really heavy and the decision was made after Mass that we were leaving, that we would take my uncle’s boat to one of the cargo ships. There was a debate about whether only the men would go and the women and children would follow, but the women put their foot down. We would all go, except my maternal grandmother, who said she had lost her country once before when Vietnam was divided into North and South,” she said.
The group traveled to the ship on her uncle’s fishing boat, which was in tow by a neighbor’s boat. They encountered other refugees who had come by sampans, rafts, fishing boats, and any craft that would float. “Boarding the ship was chaotic. People trying to climb on board were falling into the water. There was a lot of screaming and panic. We were told that the ship was filled to capacity, but my father put my brothers and me into a cargo net and then jumped in himself. We were lifted onto the deck,” she remembered.
“My mother and my baby sister Chí did not make it onto that ship. They stayed behind with my uncle’s family. When the merchant ship pulled anchor and moved away from the smaller boats, I stood at the rail trying to see my mother. We did not know we would be reunited in Guam, but for now we were in the care of our father, whom we had known as a once a month visitor because he had been in the military. We missed our mother and sister, and we were frightened that they had been left behind, that we might never see them again,” Yến recalled.
For the duration of the 2,500 mile trip to Guam — about two weeks — Yến and her younger brothers — An, 8, and Phúóng, 3 — lived on the square of a blanket in the hold of the ship. Her older brother Toàn and her father routinely scouted the deck to find food for the children below. She recalled the scarcity of provisions and the precious gift of a meal of four oranges.
Yến and brother Toàn.
Unknown to Yến, she and her family were part of the historic exodus and diaspora of 130,000 souls who had left South Vietnam as refugees by air and sea for Wake Island and Guam and eventually the United States. “The grownups knew that once they had set foot on an American ship that we would end up in the United States,” she said.
The Nguyễns, minus Tý Thị and infant sister Chí disembarked in Guam at one of 13 refugee camps set up by the U.S. Navy, stepping into the unknown realm of a tent city filled with thousands unsure of the new circumstances of their lives. “The fences of the camp were filled with messages written on paper plates by earlier arrivals trying to find their family members. First we found my grandmother — she came after all — and my aunt, uncle, and cousins, but not my mother and sister. For several weeks after we had been there, my Dad and Toàn would go to the pier to look at who was coming off the arriving ships. That is how we found my mother,” she said, the relief of that 43-year-old reunion still vivid.
The family left Guam by military plane for Eglin Air Force Base in western Florida, one of four bases designated for the resettlement of South Vietnamese refugees. The other three bases that were part of the federal government’s investment in resettlement were Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; Camp Pendleton, California; and Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.
United States Attorney General Edward Hirsch Levi granted parole status to 130,000 Vietnamese refugees, which allowed them to enter the country and remain permanently.
The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), which was created by President Gerald Ford on April 18, 1975, established a General Resettlement Plan. Participating agencies included the departments of State; Defense; Justice; Health, Education, and Welfare; Interior; Housing and Urban Development; and Labor and the CIA and the USIA.
An April 29, 1975 memo in the papers of Theodore Marrs, special assistant to President Ford, called the plan “our urgent blueprint for action” and stated an objective “throughout these agonizing days to deal honorably with the tragedy of the moment.”
And honorably the government did act, passing a month later the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act which funded $305 million to the State Department and $100 million to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for transportation, processing, resettlement, and financial assistance.
President Ford called for the teamwork of immigration agencies to help in resettlement, including the U.S. Catholic Conference, Church World Services, the International Rescue Commission, the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, the American Council for Nationalities Services, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.
Sponsoring churches and other entities welcomed entire families into their homes and communities.
For the Nguyễn family it was the congregation of St. Paul Lutheran Church of Atlantic, Iowa.
“We first lived in the home of Mary Ann Swisher, a widow, and her young daughter. Congregation members took us to Mass on Sunday at St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church and to our CCD classes. Never was there an attempt to convert us to become Lutherans. They were so respectful,” Yến recounted.
“Life was great for us. We had learned a little bit of English at Eglin, so now in broken English we were interpreters for Mom and Dad for basic exchanges. We were not fluent, but we were young and unafraid to speak. The minister’s wife taught my mother how to sew, quilt, garden, and shop. My father worked for a butane delivery company,” she said.
The Nguyễns attended ESL classes on Saturdays, celebrated Mass on Sundays, and became acquainted with the other Vietnamese family in Atlantic, the Trans, and those who lived in nearby towns. Those visits and shared meals, Yến noted, were important ties to their culture, customs, and language.
“We had a lot of help with our education. The school hired one teacher to help six of us with our homework. In junior high and high school we were paired with another student who mentored us. Much effort was made to help us succeed academically,” she said.
The family moved to Palacios, Texas in 1979, joining Yến’s grandmother and other relatives who had relocated there from Michigan and Ohio.
“There was work in the fisheries and there was work building the South Texas Nuclear Power Plant. I finished my freshman year in Palacios. The school district had summer classes for the Vietnamese kids to keep up. I was in a work program as an interpreter and a tutor.” She also worked in the administrative office, and at times before school she worked at the Elliot crab factory early in the morning, earning $1 a pound for removing crab meat from the shell. She added that she had also worked at Dairy Queen as a cook and at Wagner General Hospital as an office clerk.
Yến kept up with her schoolwork at Palacios High School despite working at part time jobs. An essay she wrote, in which she compared her experiences in school in Vietnam with her experiences in an American school, was published in The Palacios Beacon and was posted on the school bulletin board.
Asked if she had faced discrimination in Palacios, Yến said that battle had been fought by the first Vietnamese immigrants who had arrived before her family. She recounted that the only discrimination she had experienced in her new home had come, not from the townspeople, but instead from other Vietnamese students who had scrawled “Mỹ hoá” across her essay, accusing her of being Americanized and trying to be white.
She became engaged in 1980 to Thủc Vặn Trẫn (Bryan), the son of the other Vietnamese family in Atlantic, Iowa. Bryan found construction work at the nuclear power plant. Yến graduated from high school in May of 1981, and they were married on September 5, 1981.
She worked as a teacher aide at the elementary school. The school’s migrant program offered her a four-year college scholarship, which she declined.
In 1983 she and Bryan had the first of three daughters, Jennifer Thúy Vi. It was the year Yến began work on an associates degree at Wharton County Junior College.
“It took me nine years to complete my teaching degree from the University of Houston-Victoria,” she recalled, adding that in that time, the Tran family had grown by two with the birth of Tiffany Thảo Vi and Kimberly Huyễn Vi.
Jennifer, a graduate of Austin College in Sherman, Texas and graduate studies at Indiana University, is a nurse in Victoria; Tiffany, a graduate of Texas A&M University-College Station, is a civil engineer in Chicago; and Kimberly, a graduate of UT-Austin, is a human resources administrator in Houston. Yến and Bryan have two grandchildren — Gavin López, 15, and Grayson López, 7.
As Yến wrapped up a distinguished 24-year teaching career at Palacios Junior High, she and Bryan bought a business called The Point just off the waterfront, reconfiguring the space into a restaurant featuring Mexican and Vietnamese food, a convenience store, and a well-stocked tackle shop. The store is open daily from daybreak to 10 p.m.
The Point had once been owned by Yến’s oldest brother Tony, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011.
The Trans are parishioners of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.
Yến speaks lovingly of having made her home in Palacios. “I am blessed to be here, as are many of the thousand Vietnamese who live here and who have developed opportunities into successful commercial businesses and careers.”
Among them, she said, are the owners of shrimp boats and restaurants, a sport boat manufacturer, contractors, and service companies. “We are also educators. We are hard-working in the fisheries and servicing the fisheries. We are good employees of the chemical plants. We are city and state employees who serve the public, ” she said.
Yến and Bryan became American citizens in 1991.
Alfred Beck
Yến Trẫn at The Point
“We are very proud to be Americans and to have had opportunities that changed our lives. Education opened many doors for us and for our daughters. When I look back I understand what we escaped as we left and what Vietnam would become under Communist rule. I value the freedom of expression and the freedom to live our lives as we want,” Yến said, adding, “I have gratitude that I learned my faith through the kind acts of others — the first people who were part of our journey to Guam and the United States; the congregation and the pastor in Atlantic, Iowa; the educators who believed in me; the people of Palacios who encourage us and support us.”
Of the immigration debacle this nation faces today, Yến reflected on her own experience as an immigrant.
“If hope had not met kindness, I would not be here.”
SIDEBAR
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, a Republican, whose response to the plight of the people of South Vietnam was humane and just.
It is impossible not to contrast President Ford’s policies with the hateful, racially charged rhetoric of the sitting 45th president whose no-immigration policy includes concertina wire along the banks of the Río Grande and its international bridges, troops at the border, threats to close the border if he does not get his wall that will cleave in two longstanding familial, cultural, and historic ties; international trade — the lifeblood of the borderlands; and the rich, wild riparian ecosystem.
President Ford was not alone in 1975. Many in his administration, like Theodore Marrs, were compassionate individuals who viewed humane refugee assistance as a response to the failure of American military engagement in an undeclared war in Vietnam, the fall of Saigon, and the end of the war.
While some Republicans in Congress argued that the South Vietnamese should face the hell of their abandonment alone under the retribution of Communist rule and that refugees would never assimilate into American culture and would detract from American values, Democratic leaders of refugee advocacy like Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Liz Holtzman worked assiduously to form coalitions for housing and jobs.
More than 50 percent of Vietnamese-Americans reside in Texas and California.
Assimilate indeed they have.
Detract from American values? Not Yến Tran’s family.
– MEG
We are very happy that you’ll are here, you are a great asset to our little town.
I would like to say though, that our president is not against all immigration, he just believes it should be done legally. Not all immigrants have the same work ethics and good intentions. Even your wonderful family does.
We love eating at The Point
Bonnie
We bought property near Palacios for a retirement home and stopped by The Point to eat because it had been part of a Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown episode. There you will see hispanic guys eating pho with chopsticks. Yen took time to coach me on using the chopsticks myself. I was impressed with her kindness. Great people.