A Journey For Freedom

A Journey for Freedom

By Vincent Triêm Vũ, O.P.

On April 30, 1975, the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces lost to the Ha Noi Armed Forces. Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, fell to the Vietnamese Communist. Rejecting the iron power of the dictatorial Communist rule and its total control over the people, more than a half a million Vietnamese people risked their lives fleeing Vietnam in order to avoid Communist authorities. After experiencing 6 years in Communist hard labor concentration camps in Vietnam, in 1989, I took risks in a dangerous journey traveling the seas for freedom. I might have been arrested by Vietnamese Communist authorities and been sentenced for treason, or encounter pirates and my life might have been lost on the high seas as well. Even I recognized the risks and lack of fresh water and food, from my faith in God, I took courage to pursue the illegal journey overseas.

Once Communist forces took over the South, they issued an edict forcing every South Vietnam officer to report to them. The Communists took me captive on May 15, 1975 after they entered my home in Saigon. My relatives and neighbors feared for my life, but one of the Communists who took me told my relatives that “bullets cost money and would not be wasted on him.” They also explained to my relatives that “he would report to a reeducation camp where he would stay for ten days,” and they believed them. They brought me to a Communist military base that was near my hometown. After the procedure of interrogating and registration, they immediately whisked me away from the base in a van carrying as many as sixty other supporters of the South Vietnamese Government. In the dark of the night, we were driven to a hard labor concentration camp that was located in the jungle between south and central Vietnam. During the first 3 months in the camp, inmates were subjected to a brainwashing process by the intensive political indoctrination. Another feature that was applied, which continued throughout imprisonment, was the confession of alleged “misdeeds” in the past. All inmates were required to write confessions.

In the camp, the Communists enforced a regulation upon the inmates that was placed on productive labor. According to the new authorities, hard labor was necessary for reeducation. The labor was mostly hard physical work, some of it was very dangerous, such as mine field sweeping. No technical equipment was provided for this extremely risky work, and as a result, many prisoners were killed or wounded in mine field explosions. Other kinds of work included cutting trees, planting corn and root crops, clearing the jungle, digging wells, latrine and garbage pits, and constructing barracks within the camp and fences around it.

The inmates were generally organized into platoons and work units, where they were forced to compete with each other for better records and work achievements. This often pushed inmates to exhaustion and nervousness with each person and group striving to surpass or at least fulfill the norms set by camp authorities, so they would not be classified as “lazy” and ordered to do “compensation work” on Sundays. Sometimes prisoners who missed their quota were shackled and placed in solitary confinement cells. The authorities sought to maintain strict control over the thoughts of the prisoners, and forbade them from keeping and reading religious materials, books or magazines of the former regime, reminiscing in conversations about "imperialism and the puppet south," singing old love songs that were composed in the former South Vietnam regime, discussing political questions (outside authorized discussions), or harboring "reactionary" thoughts or possessing "superstitious" beliefs.

The government in Hà Nội acknowledged that violence was directed against the prisoners, although it maintained that those were isolated cases and not indicative of general camp policy. Prisoners, on the other hand, reported frequent beatings for minor infractions, such as missing work because of illness. Violations of rules led to various forms of punishment, including being tied up in contorted positions, shackled in dark cells, being forced to work extra hours or receiving reduced food rations. In communist hard labor concentration camps, prisoners not only lost their freedom, but also were insulted, tortured, and starved.

After many attempts, on the evening of May 19, 1989, I began my escape. I took a train from Saigon to North Vietnam, at about 7: 30 pm, the train started to move. After three days and four nights, the train brought me to Ha-Noi. One of my friends – a fisherman who I got to know through teaching English underground – accompanied me on my way there. Next, I would be taken covertly to a home that belonged to the man’s friend. My adventure became a circuitous journey in an effort to avoid being captured. No direct path existed out of Vietnam. I stayed covertly in Ha-Noi where I hid from local authorities for about a week. I then was brought further north to Ha Long Bay approaching the Chinese coastline. While there, I sailed around the coastline disguised as a tourist. Lest the Communist Police forces there became suspicious, my protectors had to house me in a dark room of a remote old cottage made of mud bricks with a thatch roof. On June 09, 1989, from Quang Ninh wharf, our tiny boat set off for the China Sea.

The 28 feet long wooden fishing boat, that was only safe for near-shore fishing, was not built for the open waters. It sheltered seventeen escapees including children, adults, and three former officers of the Republic of South Vietnam government. Preserved food and fresh water were stored at the bottom of the boat. A bamboo roof covered the middle portion of it. The boat sailed very far to the high seas, the waters darkened, signifying to me how deep they were becoming. Under a stormy sky, the boat then entered Chinese waters as it approached the Chinese island territory of Hainam. When the boat passed Hainam at 2:30 in the morning, a typhoon hit. The wind blew powerful gusts and the boat swayed. Water flooded into the boat. Everybody prayed, I said the Rosary. A few of the escapees were Buddhists and they prayed to Buddha. We placed our trip in the hands of God and we prayed together.

The first breakfast overseas was prepared in joy and fatigue. We were joyful because we no longer had to worry about being arrested by the Communist authorities; we were fatigued due to the storm the night before. Under great risk, we traveled the high seas and left Vietnam, our native country, for the sovereign right to worship God, for freedom and the dignity of the human being. On Tuesday, July 4, 1989, our boat entered the territorial waters of Hong Kong. There, the illegal and dangerous journey came to an end.

I took a flight from Hong Kong, westward bound. I had been on military transport planes before, but this was a big, big plane. The size of the plane was rather symbolic because big things awaited me in a rather big land, a land of freedom and opportunity – The United States of America.

Via Tokyo International Airport, in the morning of July 12, 1992, the plane landed in Los Angeles International Airport. I reached the “Promised Land”. Suddenly, to be moved by a thought, “In a war using foreigners’ weapons, the Vietnamese of the North and the South killed one another; three million Vietnamese lives were lost. I was separated from my ancestral land, where forty-four years ago, I was born and grew up. I left my mother and relatives behind. It was a sorrowful separation!” In the treasure of almost five thousand year’s literature, the Vietnamese have a saying that I learned by heart when I was in the elementary school: “A single drop of blood is more precious than a pond of water.” (Một giọt máu đào hơn ao nước lã.) I will never accept the Communist regime; I had to leave Vietnam, but I will always have a deep empathy for all Vietnamese people, who are living under the inhumane, dictatorial Communist regime.

I believed that nothing happens by accident. My spiritual journey began in my childhood in a countryside village of North Vietnam, where I drank my mother’s milk and where my father’s bones were buried. Over the course of my life, I have realized that God knows – better than I do – what is necessary for my happiness. My life has been interwoven with enjoyment and suffering, success and failure, imprisonment and freedom. In addition, in every instance, I can clearly see God’s hand working on my behalf.

Then until now, what I lament most about losing is a land that has been my home of my childhood. The sight of bamboo clusters, the flute sound from the kites flying in the sky, the scent of rice wafting in the air, the closeness I experienced with my mother in my native village, could not be found anywhere else. I always keep a place in my heart for Vietnam. I love Vietnam; I always have and always will.”

The Communists still rule Vietnam, but they never rule my heart. They could not; they tortured me and made me almost blind, they separated me from my mother, wife and children, and they killed all that I held dearly. Yet I triumphed, not only by escaping them, but also and more importantly by persevering over them.