My Bad Ass Dad - Part 1 "The Academic Story"

You never really appreciate your parents until you become one.  The unquestionable love you have for your children is one of the most powerful sources of energy on Earth.  This unshakable bond, created without conditions has the force to move mountains... in my parent's case... it made them move continents.

I remember being 17 years old and whining to my dad that he MUST buy me a remote starter for my car because I didn't want to walk out into the cold rain to start my car.  I'll never forget the look on my dad's face.  If he was dead, he would have crawled back out of his grave, find the biggest whipping stick he can and would have unflinchingly thwacked me upside my head.  But he wasn't dead... but he probably wished he was.  He gave me one of those soul bearing looks of grave disappointment.  You know the one.  The kind that brings so much disgrace to your family that it even dishonors your cow.  Glaring deep within the pits of my soul, he carefully chose these words, "If you can't even walk 10 steps in the rain then you should just end your misery and die."  Ya... my dad is a bad ass.  He is not the type to hug you and tell you you're beautiful.  He shows his love by telling you to stop being a pussy or for the sake of humanity just end it already.  Growing up, my dad loved to tell me all these crazy stories.  As a kid, you eagerly listened but it never really made any sense.  As an adult, the stories started to string together in fluidity creating what actually ended up being a truth.  My dad is an amazing story teller and I have to thank him for my gift.  These childhood stories were so outrageous that I always fondly filed them under the "Nguyen Legacy X-Files."  Filled with plot line twists, perseverance, sacrifice, inner strength and the spirit world, they definitely caught my imagination but were so dramatic that I thought for sure they must have been made up to keep us in line.  It turns out that these stories were actually OUR family story.  In 1999, I had to submit yet another effin essay for a Geography class.  Bored of writing about Native people and salmon (which I wrote ad nauseam for five years) I decided to investigate our own immigration story.  I was mind blown.  I sat on the information for a week and then hit up the library and hauled out piles of books and went batty reading micro-fiches (I know, I'm dating myself here.  Do the kids these days even know what a micro-fiche is)?  As I started lining up the information this new found respect for my dad overwhelmed me so much that when I finished writing my essay I bawled.  Not because the damn paper was finally over, but because I never knew how brave he was... and still is.  

As this was an academic paper I had to postulate the slant to fulfill certain criteria so I had to leave out the really awesome stuff like the time my dad pretended to peacefully surrender so he can enter the re-training camps with the goal of stealing ammunition, supplies and tapping the travel routes.   But, justice will be done and the "untold" story will finally be written in the next post.   

“I remember the days as if they were yesterday’s nightmare.  Our boat sailed like a wounded snake in a tremendous sea, miles off the land.” (Hawthorne 1982, p.231)

One of the fundamental techniques successful species use to survive within their dynamic environment is migration.  Change is the only thing constant in this “survival of the fittest” competition and so how species react or embrace this aspect becomes the deciding factor in which species will persevere and which species will expire.  Humans are no different in that we migrate and change our settlement patterns when circumstances, from political to economic, changes, and our equilibrium in relation to our environment becomes misaligned.  Within my own family, we have migrated, on all scales of movement, several times throughout my lifetime in response to varying push and pull factors.  In this essay, I will analyze and discuss the migration movements that occurred within my immediate family accounting back from 1979 until the very present.  The bulk of the information presented within this discussion was gathered from several interviews from my mother, my father and my aunt whom I believe have accurately provided me with reliable data.  The remainder of the information, mainly statistics and historical overview, have been supplemented through academic resources. 

THE INTERCONTINENTAL MIGRATION

The fall of Saigon on April 30 of 1975 marked the end of  thirty years of civil war between the two opposite economies and lifestyles of North and South Vietnam.  The communist government announced its objective of rebuilding Vietnam as a nation by gradually introducing communist policy.  Domestic and economic tensions finally peaked and exploded by the summer of 1975.  Although counseled by the government in the North to be “tactful and respectful of rights in the newly liberated areas” many of the Communist cadres exploited their positions and eventually influenced the new regime through corrupted force (Hawthorne 1982, p.121).  

This often hostile environment coupled with the constant threat of New Economic Zones, drafts, re-education camps, and political prosecution for being a former South Vietnamese soldier created formidable motivations for 130,000 Vietnamese, mostly ethnic Chinese, to flee their own homeland that summer of 1975 in conjunction with the American withdrawal.  Depending on the different kinds of refugees and their specific push factors, the waves of exodus took three general routes: migration was either legal, semi-sanctioned, or illegal (Gilad 1990, p.60).  For most ethnic Chinese, the migration process was generally legal to semi-sanctioned since Hanoi, the capital city, wanted to expel the Chinese people anyway.  As a result most ethnic Chinese experienced very little trouble leaving and usually escaped utilizing the route overland or through organized, quiet exits through the Orderly Departure Programme.  In stark contrast, the Vietnamese that wished to leave were left to secrecy and semi-illegal tactics as there was a substantial amount of obstacles and deterrents enforced by police.  As a result, the only route of escape was by sea and these attempts were severely penalized through imprisonment, torture, and even execution should one be caught by the officials and was unable to bribe one’s way free.  For those Vietnamese that had the financial power to semi-formally register to leave through the indirect organization of the Communist government, they still faced the dangers of the open sea and pirates  (Gilad 1990, p.61). 

            My father had been enlisted in the South Vietnamese military force that fought the civil war between the North and South.  After the fall of Saigon he quickly hid in the refuge of an isolated island near his island village of Binh Ba in Cam Ranh province in fear of being sent to re-education camp, re-drafted or politically prosecuted for being a former soldier of the old regime.  My mother stayed in Binh Ba during this period and communicated with my father about twice a month through relatives.  In the beginning of 1976, the security patrols in the waters around my father’s hide-out island relaxed, enabling my father to emerge from his hide-out and cautiously re-join my mother in Binh Ba.  Massive horror stories of failed attempts to escape by boat were told nightly in the village and my father took articulated notes on each mistake so that he could avoid mishap.  In his heart, he knew he had to leave his beloved country if the political and economic situation worsened, but for the time being, he would endure the painful transformation of Vietnam. 

At the end of 1977, Vietnam was catapulted into a deeper pit of problems as she unavoidably went to war with Kampuchea.  This announcement instigated another well organized, sizable exodus of people which was facilitated by the corrupted base of the government pyramid (Hawthorne 1982, p.123).  This guerrilla war, and the announcement of my conception by my mother, became the catalyst my father needed to finally concede that Vietnam was definitely not the country he wanted to bring up a family.  Through his stack of notes he had collected from others failed attempts, my father organized a well executed plan that took one year to prepare and three months to rehearse the execution.

In June of 1979 my family finally escaped the oppression and war-torn country of Vietnam with eighteen relatives and approximately forty others.  The people on the boat were all under twenty-five years of age and comprised mostly of extended families.  This statistic is consistent with the profiles of Vietnamese immigrants in the book Vietnam to America and suggests that the power of extended family and strength in the youthful age profile aided in the number of successful escapes (Kelly 1977, p.41).  On the six day at sea we were found by the Americans in Philippines waters barely alive.   Even though we were navigating our course using only the sun as a guide and dying of dehydration, we were grateful that we did not become one of the twenty-five to fifty percent of people escaping Vietnam who died before reaching landfall (Hawthorne 1982, p.227). 

Because Vietnamese, Kampucheans, and Laotians were fleeing in unprecedented masses from their Communist regimes in response to the defeat of American arms in Vietnam, a humanitarian appeal from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), was sent out around the world to help these refugees (Whitaker 1987, p.261).  Various bases, located on the shores of neighboring countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Philippines, were established as asylums and in total absorbed approximately 199,000 Vietnamese refugees in 1979 - the highest record year for Vietnamese departures.  The group on our boat was sent to the Subic Bay base refugee camp in the Philippines where they had to endure grim living conditions in cramp corridors for six months. 

On a pivotal day in December of 1979 my family finally entered the interview room where representatives from Australia, Canada, and the United States interviewed my parents to determine where they would be most successfully resettled.  Although my parents were not selected as candidates to reside in America, even though that was their preference and the rest of the relatives were allowed admittance, they were immediately offered a place in Canada with private sponsorships from a church group.  Reluctantly, my father, mother, aunt and I were separated from our other eighteen aunts and uncles in January of 1980 to migrate to Whitecourt Alberta in Canada by plane.  In terms of absolute numbers over a period of a decade, America took in approximate 389,000 of the Indo-Chinese exodus, followed by 250,000 immigrants for China,  66,000 immigrants by France and 60,000 Vietnamese immigrants by Canada - “the single most generous record of any major country in proportion to its population” (Whitaker 1987, p.262).

PROVINCIAL MIGRATION

The place we came to know as home from 1980 until 1987 was the manifestation of everything my father wished for in his new life of freedom.  Whitecourt, Alberta in Canada, allowed us to have the freedom to discuss and criticize, to worship as we please, to earn a decent living, all under the nurturing umbrella of a just and fair government.  However, once again circumstances changed in our environment, although not as drastically as Vietnam did, but imposing enough push factors to motivate a secondary migration. 

Being a small, rural town located in the isolated parts of northern Alberta, Whitecourt did not offer enough resources and opportunities for the children and my aunt to acquire post-secondary education or be more involved and exposed to our Vietnamese culture.  In addition to this, my father, the primary income earner of the family did not want to spend the rest of his career life “rotting” in a sawmill.  In Vietnam, my father grew up beside the sea and loved the freedom and adrenaline rush that the fishing industry offered.  He ached to return once again to the “calling of the saltwater that coursed through his veins”.  British Columbia had the most alluring pull factors with its natural coastline that boasted a varied and prosperous fishing industry (please keep in mind it was 1987), a strong Asian community that catered to the cultural needs of the Vietnamese people in greater Vancouver and many educational opportunities ranging from technical institutions to three universities.  In addition to these vital infrastructures, the migration to British Columbia was not that far in distance and costs, and its natural beauty and temperate climate conjured nostalgic images of Vietnam.

In 1987 our family once again uprooted themselves and moved to the Greater Vancouver Area in British Columbia.  According to Canada statistics from the 1991 census the majority of Vietnamese people reside in one of the four largest provinces: 45% in Ontario, 18% in Quebec, 17% in Alberta and 13% in British Columbia.  Within these large provinces, a substantial amount of the Vietnamese community have become highly urbanized.  Like most Canadians in this present day, Vietnamese people have migrated from rural to urban areas in masses for more economic and educational resources and opportunities.  Not only are the cities an agglomeration for labor but also for ethnic cultures as well.  For this reason, it is not a surprise that in 1991, 93% of all immigrants from Vietnam lived within a Census Metropolitan Area in comparison to 84% of  all immigrants.  The attraction of minority clustering for Vietnamese people in urban areas can be seen with statistics: 32% of Vietnamese reside in Toronto, 16% in Montreal and 11% in Vancouver (Statistics Canada 1991). 

METROPOLITAN MIGRATION

In 1987 we called Richmond home, but were forced to make a tertiary migration to Vancouver in 1988, because my parents could not afford the high inflation rate of the suite we were renting along with the cost of living for a growing family.  For two years we endured the high traffic, noise polluted streets of Vancouver, however the lull of suburban Richmond drew us back to the less hectic lifestyle my family needed to prosper.  Presently, my family consisting of my father, mother, and my siblings, have contentedly resided in the south eastern quarter of Richmond.  My aunt has started a family of her own, consisting of her husband and two children who also live in Richmond. 

Although for the past decade we have not made any moves besides the odd change of address in Richmond, I believe the migrating story for this vertical slice of the ancestral line will continue.  The degree of how much this migration will continue is dependent upon the individual’s definition of what constitutes “home” in relation to what the immediate environment, with all its political, cultural, economic and social institutions, offers.  In life, if the only constant condition one can count on is change in the “survival of the fittest” competition, then migration for all species is inevitable.