Suong-Hong Nguyen-Thi Won't Return

Would you discuss your family background and where the members of your family are now?

My family was originally from Hue. They moved to Saigon in 1956 to buy a pharmaceutical company owned by a Frenchman. It was one of the largest companies in South Vietnam, with about 600 employees. It is nationalized now.

My mother is in Camp Pendleton with two of my sisters. She says things are pretty organized there, certainly better than Guam. They were some of the last people to leave Saigon. They flew to Bangkok and there some relatives in the government helped them get out of the country. My mother wanted to go to Paris, but the decided at the last minute to come to the U.S., because she was afraid the French might return them to Vietnam. She's one of the first people they would kill. She was active in politics, a sort of link between officials on almost every level of government, and she was important in business. She ran the company since my father died three years ago.

My mother and sisters have a sponsor, but they will stay in the camp until their papers are processed. I don't know where they will go; my mother has a fatalistic attitude, she will wait and see. All of my six brothers were already in the U.S. Five are studying and the youngest, who is six, is living with me. He was sent over last September when it became too dangerous for him to stay in Vietnam. I also have three sisters studying in Paris.

My father was a Communist once--almost every Vietnamese was at one time or another in the last 25 years. He disagreed with the way they applied the system, methods of coercion used, and gradually he became more nationalist instead of communist. He fought as a communist in the guerilla war against the French. When he came back from fighting in the jungle in 1954, he was imprisoned by the South Vietnamese. They weren't sure whether he was a spy or not. He never talked to us about conditions in the prison. Most people didn't. The guerilla war was a bad period. Almost everyone in my father's generation fought in the guerilla war. Initially they fought the French under Ho Chi Minh. He was a mild Communist in those days, until he asked the U.S. for help and the U.S. came in on the side of the French. Ho then changed his attitudes, and went to extremes to attract people to his movement.

My mother left without papers. She had a permanent visa because she worked with an international company, but after the fall of Da Nang all visas were declared illegal and everyone was forbidden to leave Vietnam. Those who could, however, did, regardless of papers. The situation was desperate because so many wanted to get out. Many people who should have gotten out didn't. I heard of someone who had worked for the CIA for ten years and he couldn't get out, but prostitutes and other people who didn't have to flee to save their lives got out because they knew the right people.

The real tragedy to me is the people who are completely trapped. I was one of the most privileged. I didn't suffer with the others, and I felt bad because of it, like I was less Vietnamese than the others. Americans look at Thieu and Ky and believe the whole country is corrupt because they are. But there were people who really believed in democracy and freedom. For 30 years people in the South have been building up new values, learning to believe in democracy. Every family had sons killed in the war, and people built up hatred for the communists. It is unfair to give people those ideals, then sit back and hand then over to the communists. I really think it was inevitable though. Everyone knows that South Vietnam is the result of U.S. action.

You returned to Saigon last summer. What was the city like then, how were people reacting to the strain of war?

I was born with the war, so Vietnam would look very strange to me without barbed wires, tanks and shells. You get used to the want though. I tell people here about the time we lived in a bunker for a week, and they don't know how we stood it. But the killing was so random that you never really expected anything to happen. You could sleep and be blown up and never know it.

It's strange, but in Saigon had a greater sense of security than I do here. There is a fear in the streets here that you don't have in Saigon. They have a higher almost-philosophical harmony which is missing in this society. There is an insecurity here. People just run around, nearly killing themselves to make money. There is no time to live, the competition is so hard. In Vietnam, even during the war we try to take time to live and be with our families.

Our life in Saigon was very much integrated with the war. You heard helicopters circling the city all the time. Once last summer I went into a handicrafts center to buy gifts for friends in the States, and the people were selling beautiful carved copper vases made out of bullet coverings, the part that remains after the shell is fired. Life was so closely tied to the war that works of art were made from weapons.

Now that Vietnam is unified, do you think your nationalist hopes of working for Vietnam will influence you to return there?

I have always longed for a unified Vietnam. It was always a dream. But I don't know about communist life. As long as I can remember, I haven't trusted the communists. We always see Images of North Vietnam attacking South Vietnam. I'm a capitalist sort. I want freedom and I1