 Just to talk to some of the individuals here who served in the in the armed forces It's it's always important to me to reconnect with some of my roots because the best graduate school I ever went to was the US Army And I'm sure people could say that about the US Navy the Marine Corps, whatever they served in Today I'm going to talk to you about a perspective that is different than many of us have this is a perspective about Somebody from South Vietnam not an American We've seen the Ken Burns special and a lot of the Stories about Vietnam the tragedy Vietnam the courage that was exhibited in Vietnam in the lessons that were learned This is a story that Came to me came to me as a gift. It was kind of a divine gift if you want to look at it that way So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about See if I can make it works The world looked away Vietnam after the war And it really is quack foams story Now you won't recognize this guy right here. This is me with hair Okay, my wife doesn't even recognize me with hair. It's up here only to tell you that I was in the army How many veterans do we have in the room? Just we're there's a lot more than I have on Cape Cod Okay, and how many Vietnam veterans a Lot I served Vietnam era I would never presume to call myself a Vietnam veteran I was commissioned in 74 the Vietnam era supposedly ended in 75. I don't Call myself a Vietnam veteran I'm proud of the fact that I served in the armed forces, but prouder to have known people that served in Vietnam and Many didn't make it back and many got wounded and many Brought brought those psychic wounds back with them. So I want to make that crystal clear I never presumed to to call myself other than maybe a little bit more knowledgeable about the military Then than others because I served in the military for three and a half years and then ten years in the garden that reserves I was looking out at the boats today. Well, I guess you call them ships in the Navy a lot of Navy people here Just a few I gather. Okay. I was looking out and I said to my wife as we're having coffee I said, you know, I could write a book about what I don't know about ships And she said well, you actually did write a book about what you don't know about ships Because I had to learn a lot as a landlubber and as a aviator And somebody who served in the in the ground in the army, but this is truly not about me. It's not about you It's about Kwak Fahm Kwak Fahm whose arc of his life Parallel the arc of what we saw Throughout the French war the American war and the post-war period in Vietnam Kwak Fahm and his family lived in Vietnam that was South then it became all Vietnam and We as Americans oftentimes have an existential view perhaps human beings do when we walk out of the room It ceases to exist Well rooms don't cease to exist when we walk out of the room Rooms are back there, but we just don't know what's happening to them Why did I come to write this book? I'm gonna tell you just a short story. I was on active duty Of course one Vietnam fell April 29th 1975 happened to be April 30th on the other side of the international date line I Was in an officer's club in Fort Wachuka, Arizona And I saw the photos on that flickering those old-fashioned flickering TVs that nobody remembers anymore And I saw those flickering photos of the fall of Vietnam and the young lieutenants that I was with we were 22 We were just drinking beer and having dinner and we looked across and there were some captains and majors and At that point at that point they were ancient to me. They were perhaps 35 And I looked at look there and I saw a look in their Eyes as they watch those flickering screens and there was this thousand miles thousand yards stair There was this trying to make meaning out of something that Americans hadn't experienced before They were struggling with making meaning you could see it in their eyes. They didn't say the words And I I stored that in the back of my mind, but I forgot it and I went on with my active duty career and I served with people that had learned so much in Vietnam General Gordon Sullivan was a lieutenant colonel that I worked worked for Gordon Sullivan became the chief of staff of the army four-star and He brought the lessons he learned from Vietnam to create a new army and so we moved forward into the future and I moved forward with my career and I saw that my gaze was averted from Vietnam Vietnam was over whoo We don't have all these riots anymore. We don't have people protesting anymore We can go on with our lives And we didn't go on with our lives and we averted our gaze But then one day this good-looking guy in the left Captain Tom Bushey The captain of the Maritime Academy ship Kennedy Called me up. He's my twin brother. He's the older twin. He's 22 minutes older than me And he called me up and he says I've got a story for you. I said well, that's great I Tell me your story. He says well, I want it. I want to send it over to you It's a story about somebody who escaped from Vietnam And I said well, you know send it over to me. It was a PDF. I promptly lost it I didn't I didn't brothers do that to each other. I promptly lost it but the story was about a Man named Kwak Pham and on the left you see Hung Pham Hung Pham was a ship's officer and still is on the training ship Kennedy for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy He's a graduate of Massachusetts Maritime Academy And he was nine years old when he escaped with his father nine years old when he escaped out to sea and made it to safety and In one time and I've learned that maritime guys are no different than army guys it was over a beer that the story came out and they talked about that escape and Tom listened to the story my brother Tom listened to the story and said your father has to tell the story because it was more Than an escape by sea It was what happened as the lights went out in South Vietnam What happened is they went to reeducation camps as they went to war with China as they went to war with Cambodia and As they tried to make their way out of the country So Tom sent it over to me and he called me up a month later and said did you read it? I promptly found it opened it up and read it said boy. This is pretty compelling story He said I need you to meet a man named Kwak Pham Hung Pham's father have lunch with him just have lunch with him So he came over to Iannis he would he lives in California now and there was visiting his son he came to Iannis and We sat down and had lunch in a place called Mike's Pizza for about an hour and a half and I sat and talked to this man a gentle soul a Wonderful soul and an unbelievably bright soul There was a depth there that I detected But I also saw a look that I had not seen since April 29th 1975 I saw a thousand yard stare Trying to make meaning of what happened to him and what happened to his country and he needed to work through that And he wanted somebody to tell his story He looked at me with the gentlest eyes and the kindest Expression that he could and he said will you write my story and I said I can only try And so we set out to try to write his story to tell what happened after Vietnam after we left Vietnam after the country fell So I had an approach. I have studied neuroscience believe it or not I do study things like that even though I'm an army guy You're supposed to laugh the Navy guys are supposed to laugh at the army And I will only use monosyllabic words for the army guys in the back of the word but back of the room But I have studied neuroscience and memories are the frailest things we can have we don't really recollect You're going to walk out of this room and hear different things at this talk today Each one of yous have a different recollection. That's how memories work and each time we access a memory We change it a little bit. It's fascinating how our brains work So I had to say look quack you can tell me what happened But I'm going to have to check it out and he would often laugh when I would check it out and he was proven true Verify facts were necessary and then ultimately don't accept anything at face value And sometimes I had to do my own analysis because there's a lot of stuff out there that might Necessarily be based in fact. It's based on somebody else's recollection So the research took quite a bit of time We spent FaceTime God bless technology every two weeks for an hour to an hour and a half Reading somebody's emotions Reading their words and hearing their heart That's one of the most difficult things But one of the one of the most wonderful things I've ever been able to do Sometimes I had to give quack three or four minutes as he would collect his emotions When he talked about what happened to him What happened to his family? What happened to people that didn't make it out of the camps? I did a lot of research at libraries and finally I used a commercial search engine The Boston Public Library is a great resource, but if you go to search engine You can go through 70,000 periodicals in about a second and you can do a lot more Keyword research and then I spent a lot of time with the captain of the maritime ship who taught me What's a bar? I know that's a dumb thing for an army guy to say but what's a bar? I didn't know what a bar was so he had to explain that to me I said how do you how do you on a certain sea state? How do you approach? Waves he had to teach me that But he also had to let me go on the ship I spent two different short cruises on the training ship Kennedy statue of limitations is over and my brother is retired So I was able to go through the Cape Cod Canal on a foggy day in the training ship Kennedy And I got to join the pilot and climb a Jacobs ladder you all know what a Jacobs ladder was I had no idea what was what it was what it is a Jacobs ladder is perhaps one of the most Inelegant things I've ever climbed. It's very difficult to climb a Jacobs ladder, especially when it's dark and it's wet But it taught me so much and then I got to talk to Navy Navy experts One of the one of my dearest friends now that is an expert is Admiral Jean Connard somebody might know him I guess he was a two-star In in the Navy and I got in contact with him through Air Force General that I used to know that I used to work for and I got to talk to a four-star admiral and For a former Army captain talking to a four-star admiral is pretty darn impressive Admiral Jerry Johnson And he freely gave of his time and talked about the actual rescue And then I got to deal with the the archives people the archives people I didn't have to go to Washington. You can do it online now and I was able to find the deck logs from the USS San Jose and I was able to find photos and I was able a been able to get help in taking pictures of the photos to get the DPI requirement for publication the writing process If you ever want to write a book You have to want to write a book you have to have it in your heart. You have to have it in your gut I didn't know I was going to write a book until I was about six months into it And then I knew I had to write a book I had to write a man's story and a story that I felt needed to be told A lot of rewrites 12 beta readers 11 returned them 11 returned completely marked up I had seven military people that did the reviews air Air Force two Air Force officers a Marine Colonel who had done an air tour and a ground tour in Vietnam Ground tour first and an air tour second four naval officers and of course the maritime community they all did those reviews for me and Didn't didn't cut me any slack and I'm glad they didn't and then finally I had a very very tough Editor named Kendra Burgess who found the man is found a book in my manuscript So let's talk a little bit about the history of Vietnam now most of you probably know a lot of the history of Vietnam Does everybody want me to skip this part? We don't really know that much about the history of Vietnam and for those of you that are experts in Asian history I apologize because I'll probably gloss over and miss some of the details But I think I've I've I've worked hard enough to understand it So I beat could be contextual in my understanding with quack It was not to write a book about the history of Vietnam, but it was to understand it So Vietnam is that this long-standing? enmity between Vietnam and China For a couple millennia they haven't gotten along Vietnam wasn't always Vietnam. It's been bounded by the same Geographical boundaries. I mean you've got the highlands and the mountains in the west and you've got the ocean in the east That's kind of immutable But Vietnam only extended down to what what we sort of view is Vietnam Extended only down to Wei and Da Nang and to the south of there was people called it the Chom people Cham and if I mispronounce that I apologize if people are experts in the pronunciation But so they were they were a different tribe than the people in the north But over the course of the years they they had their conflicts with China They lost some they won some but in 938 the win ruling family the win Empire defeated the Chinese In 938 it's a long time ago And then of course there was conflict after that and that conflict is something to remember because even to this day if you ask somebody Doesn't matter where they were born north or south Vietnam and you call it the South China Sea You will be gently corrected and say please say east sea because they don't call it the South China Sea and To this day there's still arguments over the Paracels Islands and of course the Spratly Islands to a lesser degree for the Vietnamese but the Paracels on the 16th parallel are very very important to the Vietnamese But we Europeans we made it out there We sent missionaries out there and then as when the missionaries weren't accepted the French missionaries We said we're gonna have to send some send some troops in and at that point in the in the 19th century the French had one of the best armies in the world as you know and they sent the French Into Vietnam the troops and they basically said we're gonna in we're gonna put France's civilization I think that's pronounced right into Vietnam and they established Their hegemony over Vietnam that occurred in the late 19th century that extended through 1945 with ups and downs and one of the if you if you think about it rubber was not came out of South America and then it was Exported to Asia and of course a great place to grow it was in in all the rubber plantations in Vietnam along with other Other crops that that came that that were used that were harvested like rice. It was a great rice producer But in 1941 well earlier than 1941 France fell France fell to the Germans if you remember there was a conflict. It was called the Vichy French in one the south southern part of France and the rest of they were they were complicit in some respects with the Germans and They were the ones that administered Indochina French Indochina for the Japanese Throughout most of the war till about 44 45 That's something that I didn't understand until I started reading a lot of books about Vietnam And that really kind of changed the tenor of what? What happened in the post-colonial world if FDR had lived a lot of things might have changed FDR told Churchill? I don't want I want you to get out of your Your colonies this this whole colonial outlook has got to change he never was able to convince the call the gall of much and After the as the war ended around 44 or 45 there was a huge amount of conflict the Chinese came in at one point the Japanese of course left and A guy named Ho Chi men and around 1945 said we're going to Start fighting the French because you're not coming back the French did come back and There was a period in which We call the French war French war was about ten-year period and It involved a Tragedy of major proportions with a famine that occurred in Vietnam with close to four million people that died in 46 and 47 and Nothing was very nothing's ever been real easy in history Nothing's been ever clean and clear cut and it wasn't clear cut there But the French fought the vietnam and the vietnam were a nationalist group. They weren't communists They were a nationalist group With communist leadership predominantly, but a lot of different nationalist facts factions throughout all of north and south Vietnam quacks father soon Fought for the vietnam in what is what was south vietnam? And he was imprisoned by the vietnammen because he wasn't a communist He was imprisoned because the communists eventually took over the vietnammen and What happened of course? We all know dmbn foo. I tell you the best book I've read on dmbn foo is valley of death called by Ted Morgan. I'd highly recommend it because it gives you just this Wonderful background and and and how the French paratroopers really fought very hard and very well But the vietnammen fought even better, of course being in a valley is not a great place of defensive position So all that's to tell you the background that's all to tell you the background some people grew up in the shadow of that war Here's a young man born in 1946 quackfarm One of nine children His father is a successful merchant mariner He was a chief engineer on a commercial vessel his mother vo was the matriarch of the family that war Didn't really emerge for him until 1959 That's this is what we there's sections in the book to talk about this where war came home to him War came home to him when he was a young man when his grandmother's village was burnt down and the vietcong emerged as the nlf in 1960 and If you if you remember in 1954 and the Geneva Accords the 800,000 people from the north came south maybe close to a million numbers are hard to Totally recollect in a hundred thousand went north and they were mostly vietnamans who later became part of the nva Reminds you when you graduated from high school, doesn't it? We all had fun Your life went on even though things were happening to you There's a young man a bright future all ahead of him just just laughing and having fun quacks on the bottom and When I was in school if you had a Harley or you had any kind of motorcycle you were pretty hot stuff and Of course, this is the most ubiquitous form of transportation in Vietnam There's I think we were told when we're over there 12 million motorbikes In Saigon and and as you know anybody here been to Vietnam other than when you served over there, but lately as a tourist December you don't cross the you don't cross the street in In Vietnam, it's a matter of fact. They told us if you really have to cross the street take a cab Put your blinders on so so quack farm He grew up and he he when he graduated from high school He went to work for the u.s. Air Force and he was actually out as a translator He's very proficient in English even then he went out and helped set up bases for the u.s. Air Force, but he said he got tired of getting shot at when he was out in the countryside So he came to back to work in the u.s. Army for the u.s. Army and logistics in Saigon Then he said there's no future here. I'm gonna go to work I'm gonna go do what my dad did and I'm gonna become a ships officer at the maritime Academy And he went to the Futo University and it was a maritime program two-year program very much like the mass maritime program There he learned navigation. He learned navigation like we don't teach navigation nowadays He was an expert in celestial nav absolutely lives and breathes navigation You don't you don't even have to hesitate to know what point of the cusp compass you are you're on with Kwak Fahm He also learned things Do we have deck officers on board here? Any any here so the nautical almanac? I don't know if they taught you how to interpolate the nautical almanac So you can look at a nautical almanac and convert it to another year Now my brother doesn't teach that and doesn't know that Kwak learned that So you could take an old nautical almanac and turn it into a new nautical almanac with a lot of interpolate I guess it's interpolation of the data There he is at age 20 and He served in 1969 as a ships officer and a 500 ton tanker not tanker a cargo freighter Just coastal and he became a proficient Pilot he got signed off as a pilot on the Saigon River And I and I do respect the fact that the Saigon River is more than one river But there's there's different routes down the Saigon River But for the purposes of here we'll just call it the Saigon River Which is essentially what what the large ships take smaller ships can take other tributaries down But 1970 looms and he gets called up and drafted he gets drafted as a as a naval officer and he spends Nine months in training and this is with his sister Lan And it's the only picture we have of him in uniform because at the end of the war His mother destroyed all of his uniforms Destroyed all the pictures that would identify him and she just happened it didn't see this not see this so That that the enormity of trying to erase that part of history is huge But this is a photo of him and after nine months he got assigned as As an officer on an LST Which is not a very elegant way to travel I guess but it was used as a freighter and they actually supported the Cambodian operation Going over to Nguyen Pen But then he wrangled at birth on The largest ship in the Vietnamese Navy which was called a frigate Now this frigate that he served on the Tron Quang Khai Had a rich history. It was a seaplane tender for the US Navy during World War two Then after the World War two the the coast guard said we'll take it and Turned it into a coast guard cutter and called it the Bering Strait and it was a W HEC There's three types of cutters, but the high endurance cutter apparently has good range and it's got a good five inch gun on it And it's got great utility So quack served as the the head of the Department for Navigation and honed his skills even further as a navigator That's that's in the Coast Guard colors as the Bering Strait and as the the the Quang Khai He served on that until about March of 1975 That's a key date And there's a picture. We're not sure exactly which frigate they're boarding, but we're told that that's a frigate that they boarded Now what happens when the matriarch of the family looks at you and says These words I'll let you read them So what's mom saying? What's vows saying? I got a girl for you. I Got a girl for you an arranged marriage an arranged marriage which is not uncommon and You grew up with her she was a kid when you were a little bit older She was a kid and you're gonna marry her because you're gonna carry on the FAM name. I Don't want to I don't yeah, you're going to So the marriage occurred and it was the luckiest moment of his life. I Could say that about my own marriage the luckiest moment of my own in my life This this dear dear woman Has her name's Zhuang Zhuang tea Kim kong we call her Kim kong It means diamond. It means diamond in Vietnam and She was a diamond She was an absolute diamond a gem of a human being I've never met her and I love her like a sister my wife is never met her and love her like a sister She is the hero of this story like so many other stories in history. It's the woman That has the not just the intellect but the intuition That tells you what needs to be done and she was there for him throughout his time Arranged marriage or not. They had a deep and abiding love Now in in our cultures, we don't do this But when a man gets married his wife moves into his family's house I'm not sure that would have gone over real big in my marriage Maybe maybe not yours either, but that's vo on the left quacks wife and that Little infant between them is the ship's officer. You saw on the training ship Kennedy That is Hong Fong when he was less than two years old sitting next to his mother. Can you see okay Bob? Sorry Sitting next to his mother Kim kong So April 1975 looms We know that the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 73 right and then congressional action Prohibited explicitly prohibited any military action on our part on on 15 August It was a church amendment. I think it was called case church amendment in 15 August 1975 so we were proscribed from being involved in conflict there were obviously military people there They're attached to the embassy and support and advisors, but not not fighting You all remember Watergate not everybody here remembers Watergate some people probably weren't born during Watergate, but Watergate changed history When we make dumb mistakes as politicians and as human beings it can change history Nixon who kind of had a good handle I believe on on foreign policy whether we agree or disagree with how he approached the Vietnam War He saw a chess game that very few people have been able to see in the past but Watergate emerged so he became weaker and weaker and weaker and in 1974 August in 1974 if memory serves he resigned Well, he had made an implicit promise Perhaps explicit to two to force him to sign the Paris Peace Accords Something happens. The North comes south. I'm here to defend you. We'll get fighters. We'll get bombers. We'll stop them well Ford was Toothless he couldn't he didn't have any power President Ford and so in January of 1975 the North Vietnamese go Let's start. Let's try it and they start heading south and The South Vietnamese don't have a lot of fuel and ammunition because they're not getting resupplied to the extent that they want and We can argue whether they were great fighters or they were poor fighters I happen to think that there's always good fighters in any group of Human beings we have we've had great fighters in our past and we've had not so great fighters But the support wasn't there and the Vietnamese North Vietnamese just inexorably marched south to pulled people out of the provinces and By April early April of 1975 the die was almost cast the die was almost cast and they were they were knocking on the door of South Vietnam Now there were three different paths people could take you could escape You could stay or you could escape and then decide to come back And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that So we think numbers are hard to find in Vietnam We know precisely how many people served in Vietnam from the American Armed Forces Sadly, we know precisely how many died We don't know how many people died on both sides in Vietnam. We think it was around three million Around three million people on both sides on a base of 17 million people in in South Vietnam But we think around 120 to 140,000 people left now a lot of these people obviously were high-ranking people and paid their way out And some people were corrupt no doubt, but they left They left of those 120 to 40,000 20 to 30,000 left on the Navy ships 30 Navy ships South Vietnamese naval ships in the Saigon Saigon River on April 28th They steamed out of out of Saigon Quoc saw them so it went there that morning and saw that they had left and I'll tell you a little bit about that in a second And of course April 30th. It was mayhem Now some stayed obviously they had to stay 17 million people couldn't escape the country But there was this mixed feeling. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen when the the north makes it here? First of all, they maybe they won't make it here We've been had our back against the wall so many times in the past The we've got paratroopers here. They're gonna hold Saigon because they were good fighters But most people felt this is inevitable. This is going to happen to us Maybe there won't be retribution Maybe there is a future for us, but they didn't know and then some people actually did escape and then they decided to return Now there's the iconic photograph People tell you it's the US Embassy. It's not it's Actually at 22 John Long Street, which is about a half mile from the Embassy Air America helicopter And they left by helicopter left a lot lot by the Marine helicopters that which carried a lot more There's a picture night April 1975 they were fleeing by boat down the river and Out to sea and in any boat that they could find then the USS Kirk so April 28th the South Vietnamese naval fleet leaves and they they're they're supposed to meet up with the US fleet and To be escorted to wherever they might be able to go So it was called Operation Frequent Wind and Admiral Donald Whitmire got word three words We forgot them We forgot them is what's recorded in history. We forgot this South Vietnamese Navy. So Whitmire Gets ahold of a three tour Naval officer who is now civilian. I think working for the CIA. I can't tell you for sure The CIA won't answer my calls Richard Armitage who later became famous for a lot of different reasons, but he was a deputy Deputy He worked for the State Department as one of the deputies there He he ends up landing by helicopter and he says to the the captain Paul Jacobs. I'm in charge And we're going to pick up the South Vietnamese Navy Now the captain didn't take too well to the civilian orders, but I guess he didn't have much choice We don't know to this day whether Armitage had approval or not And maybe some of you can tell me afterwards whether you had approval or not he on his own said we're going to civic bay They didn't have the range. I guess they didn't have the fuel on board So civic bay was the best option. So they headed to civic bay and they led 20 to 30,000 people to rescue and and why the number numbers vary so much I can't tell you but that's what the history is and they got the civic bay and and that that Frigate that quark served on 100 miles out of civic bay raised the American flag and it was given to the Philippine Navy once it got there Then this is the most tragic story in that that particular time in that month and those months afterwards The people that went to civic bay or the people that escaped and got to Guam and Guam was one of the prime places that people went to some of them were crew members on the on the Naval ships Some of them got there and and said wait a second my family didn't get out They're stuck back in Vietnam and some of them had second thoughts So they went on hunger strikes and they protested to the American Navy and finally the Americans Relented and said take one of the cargo ships the Vietnam tongue tin and Head back to Vietnam 1500 people Now captain true was the second captain of quarks LST he was and and True captained the ship long voyage back from Guam I don't know why it took two weeks, but it took him two weeks when they got the Vung Tao They were all imprisoned They look pretty happy here, but they weren't happy happy when they landed 1500 people got imprisoned the captain was in reeducation camps prison camps concentration camps for 14 years Until he got released through the humanitarian operation when 70,000 people got released in 1988 1999 so There there are three different categories escape stay or go back None of them was a good choice I think I Told you to begin with that the arc of this story is quack and the arc of Vietnam this is some of the people that are captured in Da Nang and This is the Decisions that quack had to make he went back to his family's house in the end of April and he sat with 14 Family members and he said do I leave or do I stay and If you bear with me, I'm going to read just a short section 14 family members struggling with a decision you and I will never have to make Some people in their this room their their families had to make a decision whether to leave Germany After World War one because there was such a depression there Nobody most people Americans have never considered this do I leave my country? Finally only quack and Kim Koon struggle with the decision they had to make hugging their sleeping children as if this were their last day together The couple ran the many options over and over in conversation and in times of quiet reflection in their own minds Sweetheart, I can't leave you and non, but quack if you stay the communists will punish you They would be stupid to do it quack take home with you get to America or Australia or wherever you can I'll be safe here with my family until you can send for me But I can't live without you and if you stay, you know might not be with me anyway That morning occasional explosions sounded in the distance they came from mortars and heavy artillery Fired from both sides. They struck both military and civilian targets often in neighborhoods filled with innocent citizens But to the communists no one was innocent in Saigon They didn't know it yet, but the citizens were all considered war criminals and most especially those who wore the uniform of South Vietnam So they decided quack and his wife decided He would leave with young home and he would get on the Navy ship He could go on the Navy ship remember the Navy ships 20 to 30,000 people leaving but quack had second thoughts He sent his wife off to live with to be with her family and he had second thoughts and he changed his mind He changed his mind. I can't say that I blame him. He couldn't leave his wife Is is two children at that point and his extended family? Several days later after the fall of Vietnam up This is what happens Kim could Kim kung stood there yelling at him You're so stupid quack. Why didn't you leave when you had a chance? Don't you know what will happen to you? I did it for you. I did it for us I did it for my family. How could you do this quack? We had a plan Now what do you think will happen, but aren't you happy? I'm here. Don't you love me? I would be happier if you were safe my love now I'm afraid for you and And she had every right to be afraid of her the curtain came down over South Vietnam a Dome came over South Vietnam where people's radios were confiscated Broadcasts ended and loudspeakers were set up on street corners throughout Saigon and They blasted Ho Chi men's truth. They blasted you're going to report to re-education Anybody that served in the in the in the four armed forces or the government officials you're going to go to re-education and They made a decision quack changed it and Kim kung knew that it was the wrong decision, but she supported him I Was I was I spoke to a group in New York and said The New Yorkers said I I think I would have been angrier than Kim kung if she used some rather good New York terms So the re-education camps what a great sounding term To this day the the Vietnamese Government will tell you perhaps 20 to 30,000 people served in the camps of Re-education camps they were there for a short period of time and received a re-education and were released That's the official line Now we don't know how many people got sent to the re-education camps, but we know that they were there was a bait and switch The Chinese had taught them well Send send people that you think are going to rise against you that are educated Similar to Paul pot Paul pot anybody that wore glasses Was killed in Cambodia why they presumed they could read in South Vietnam it was more pernicious send them to the re-education camps So he was sent to that they were sent to re-education camps now elegantly done All the enlisted people you go to camps camp for three days You're just going to learn Ho Chi Minh's law. It was very very much Ho Chi Minh oriented as you can imagine even though He had died in 69 Ho Chi Minh's law and we're going to release you Perhaps 1.5 million people went to camps over the course of May April a May and early June 1975 and true to their word three days later The enlisted people came back and they said that wasn't that bad They just rang us about Ho Chi Minh and told us we had to confess to our crimes and and that was it So the next group to go were the junior officers So the junior officers heard the loudspeakers and they had to report now if they didn't report they were going to get captured by the NVA because they knew where they were and people were Extensively, I guess ratting them out So he reported to a camp He reported to a high school. I should say 2,000 people in a high in a high school and to show you sometimes a strange Situation he prepared for 10 days he brought some money and when he got to the high school They did they weren't prepared in any way and they had to send out for Chinese food So there are some funny aspects to this but three days later they were sent to Tainan it was a 10 12-hour convoy and 30 people in the back of a truck designed for for 12 or 15 and they spent three months in Tainan quark weighed 115 pounds when he first entered the camps They got to Tainan. There was no food. They had to forage do whatever they could And he weighed 85 pounds three years later. He went from Tainan. He went to a series of camps at one camp there was an ammunition dump and Why the ammunition dump was sitting there and what lit it off? But the ammunition dump lit off and you can read about it in the book I've books for sale in the back if you want after the after the After the talk But one lit off and 300 people estimated to have died as all the rounds cooked off and quark found God that night When he prayed that he would be spared and he was spared and he's a very devout Eclectic religious person with a strong Catholic and Buddhist faith Which I so admire Then the senior officers were sent to 30 days some of them spent 17 years in camps quarks brother Spent 13 years in camps and those people that were released ended up They weren't very healthy and quarks brother died a couple years after he got out because you don't go through that level of malnutrition This is what quark was told by his wife wife's uncle who was they'd learned Was vietcong? You will be a prisoner until your children have children Can't be it can't be quark said just what I said who took said just what I said and Who took by by the way later on was was treated very poorly Because the NBA came down and they pushed the vietcong aside and administered the country from the north people What where do you come up with numbers that range from three to five hundred thousand? You go through a lot of sources and you see a lot of Citations and that the numbers vary that much so I did my own analysis And I figured how many people served in the Vietnamese armed forces how many people were likely to have been governmental officials What percentage of people were officers what percentage were people are high-ranking government officials and try to do an Analysis and it and it sort of correlated to the low end Perhaps 350,000 were sent to the camps for a long period of time Can't tell you for sure, but I'd worked really hard on that analysis, and I didn't take it face value anything But there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it was even more than 350,000 and a hundred thousand At least died in the camps Some to malnutrition some to getting shot some people who chose to commit suicide Rather than stay in the camps hundred thousand people died. That's 40,000 more people and died Americans that died It was horrible, and we didn't we don't know that I didn't know that 1975 to 85 is still called the ten dark years after a war it becomes an economic depression It's made even worse if you'd instill in Soviet style economic planning methods by that time the Chinese weren't real allies and the Russians were were more of the in their sphere and It became a very dark time This is not a real picture I have a big note to Benny on the bottom, but I only pull that up because we don't have any pictures of quarks camps We went to all the locations where the camps are The whole world has changed. There are no camps there But quarks said this represents what they what they had to build They got to a location and they were given rudimentary tools Sometimes they had to find downed aircraft to make tools and they had to go out into the forest and We call it jungle, but it was a deciduous forest And they had to build all of their own all of their own huts and this is this is kind of what they they lived in and Back in Saigon it wasn't pretty Kim Kung had to feed her infants water to try to fill their bellies had to feed them water to fill their bellies because she didn't have enough milk to give them and They they would just cry and cry and cry and They they could get rations once a month. It was enough to for a family to eat for three or four days They used a black market. They had to sell whatever food stuff they had quarks Father died of diabetes and his mother still thinks he died of a broken heart Broken heart because he argued so much with his communist sympathizer son and when he died He they had to make Hand make the coffin to build to bury him as you know in Vietnam You're buried for a couple years and then they dig up the remains and then put you in an urn But he had to be buried in a handmade coffin But that they just use scrap lumber to do it In the meantime quarks three years in the camp three years in the camp and he finally they finally get some the The families can visit and there's a little bit of loosening because they want people to go to the new economic zone which was Collective farms where people were sent again out of the city so they couldn't rise up against the regime and he was sent to like a and He spent several months there and Kim Kung came over and was very receptive to the Village chief to make sure that she she set the stage that they really liked it and they wanted to stay even though They didn't but one day the district village chief called him in and said I need three volunteers to go to the Cambodian border 1978 and quark was well and told to go to the Cambodian border and after he got there the next morning He was given a bamboo stick with a nail on the end and he became a human mind detector And they lined them up and they proceeded to try to to find the minds quark estimates that 15% of the people died every day 15% But quark pretty smart guy. I won't do a complete spoiler, but he used toothpaste to escape He used toothpaste to escape because toothpaste made by the Chinese every army needs toothpaste It needs everything toothpaste used by the Chinese has diglyceride compounds in it that if you eat too much you'll be paralyzed or die and Actually, we used it in all of our elixirs until the 1930s and that's what caused the FDA to be formed quark knew that Went to the district communist chief said I'm gonna be your consiglio or a that's the word I use with quark. I said is there a word for consiglio or in Vietnamese and quark laughed He says no, but I know what you mean So he used that and they sold that with little little ounces of gold that people were able to bring into the camps from the new economics zone and they would get so debilitated that the that the chief would sign their parole papers to go back home and quark did that and earned the trust of the chief and Kim Koon knew that and Kim Koon devised an escape plan and She is kind of devised an escape plan. So they used 15 different cutouts they used water buffalos they used buses they walked and 15 different cutouts nobody could follow them and they got back to the streets of Saigon quark did not live with his family during the day He lived on the streets after dark He would go back to his home and before sunrise and many times he was had to scrap go up to the roof to be not be captured by the local police and Then the boat people now the boat people are two distinct groups the Wa Sino-Vietnamese The Vietnamese did not particularly like the Chinese the Chinese Vietnamese Sino-Vietnamese so they best basically let them by their way out of Vietnam and Thousands left Vietnam until it reached crisis proportions in late 1978 and 79 and The UN said you're gonna cut you got to figure this out guys And they came up with the orderly departure program Which really lessened the number of boat people and they started leaving by commercial air and boat and That that helped the the Sino-Vietnamese the Chinese Vietnamese leave but in the meantime people that were Convicts on the lamb like quark. He still had to get out of town. He still had to leave he got hired First on a hundred foot vessel that they were going to convert for seed going duty those of you that oops So those of you that know boats probably can tell you that's not a seagoing vessel He was he was modifying it and once the ODP came around the orderly departure program The the communists pulled off target and tried to arrest him and he escaped Just minutes before he was going to be arrested But then he got hired to take a 37 foot boat which had as subterfuge To work for the the Vietnamese government to bring workers down to Vung Tau And that is a picture taken while we're on the research trip because quack said to me as we're sitting there on a high-speed hydrofoil Going down the river. He says that's my boat. That's my boat. And that's the only shot I could get so I blew that up He says that's what my boat looked like it's gonna had about a 15 cylinder diesel It sounded like it would if you've heard those and that's similar to we found that His son found that when when a rescue took place. It was a German freighter that picked up people And it was a boat like that now 37 feet You're all mariners. I'm not 37 feet 10 foot beam Any guess on how many people were on that boat? Well, 50 about 51 51 people and then they were boarded by militia and the militia had a lottery to get on the boat and They ended up with 55 people they ended up heading into the East Sea into a storm Because if you're an American and you want to escape you go into a storm and you have confidence in your own abilities He he used gold that he got from the guy that organized the escape And he went to a stevedor and said I need it need a Sexton and the guy says I don't know what this sexton is So he sketched it out and that night met him and paid him in gold and the stevedor said it's amazing What you can find on the bridge of a Russian ship And so he took that that and he took a 1971 almanac a nautical almanac and converted it to 1980 he converted took him months to do that and He got a good compass and he got reflect reflective They put metal a metal structure up for radar and he headed out to sea because he knew if you go out to sea You're not going to get caught by the pirates you're less likely because the pirates hug the coast and he headed out and There I'm running short on time But there's a lot of description of what they what occurred for them But the people were 55 people aboard he actually had to nail the hatches shut and they were stuck in an area this high and people had totally abraded backs, but they were and Fever's home the young boy had a hundred and three fever But they come across I'm sorry the mariner of skills paid off for him because he did all those things that I just talked about And that was their escape route about a hundred and thirty-five magnetic heading Initially to the sea routes. He knew that where the the the routes were And what does he see in the distance? he sees a US naval combat shores Combat stores ship the USS San Jose 600 feet long Coincidentally the same length as the training ship Kennedy he run runs into this well actually it was steaming away from them and he was able to use his Mirror and get their attention and slowly but surely they turned around and they headed towards him That's another shot of the San Jose and that's the captain He was an aviator who took out command of a ship and ended up I think he commanded the Nimitz if if I'm correct. I'm sorry. I can't remember right off the bat later But I interviewed him. He said to this day those rescues. He did two rescues are the most important part of his career They're the most significant part of his career the mariners that I talked to that rescued people always say that and and We're talking about merchant vessels and we're talking about naval vessels and very seldom did a US Navy ship turn and not help One one Navy officer was court-martialed by the way for not providing Help in the early 80s, but that's a completely different story This is an email from Admiral Johnson. What a neat guy is probably 84. I hope I'm not sharp on a 84, but Does anything ever change there's the Spratlys even back then and you know where they were headed They were going from Subic Bay to the Arabian Sea to support desert one The Iranian hostage crisis. It's amazing how all these things flow together He was making his second run there second run on the run back to Subic Bay He got on the first trip. He found it a group of Vietnamese and on the way down and he took him to That must have been the most beautiful ship in the world of a 37-foot boat These are the actual US Navy photos the rescues the rescue And that's the iconic photo That's on the cover. That's Kim kung's uncle in the center. I don't have this on automatic I don't know why it's moving But they were originally going to just drop some food on board and quack brought the pregnant women and the young children up on board and held them up and Johnson said no, we're gonna we're gonna bring them aboard most of them were so debilitated. They had to be brought up in mail nets quack made it up to Jacob's ladder great great photos US Navy and the Navy archives and the US National archives are fantastic people by the way That's them brought on board. They they gave them dungarees and and and just t-shirts They they sequestered them. You always sequestered them on the on the hangar deck and That boy hugging the young boy the boy being hugged on the on the right is hung farm He had a hundred and three fever. He doesn't look too good. I'm sorry. This is moving forward He doesn't look too good, but he got a lot better shortly thereafter the transition The book ends here the second book starts here That'll take about two and a half years But the transition the United Nation High Commissioner on refugees camp in Saigon in Singapore at Hawkins Road and an old British Army base He had two and a half months there And then he made it to Haverhill mass in the middle of a blinding blizzard without a coat And was was brought here and it took nine years Because he was an escaped convict to get his wife and by then three children out of Vietnam nine years and to this day that family Struggles with those nine years in their own way. What happened? Why did dad leave for nine years? His wife couldn't understand How do you understand? How do you make meaning of that? This is his identification at Hawkins Road And there's a wonderful picture of Kim Koon So he finally it was took Chet Atkins a US congressman and first term senator John McCain To go to the Vietnamese delegation at the United Nations and said you got to help us and quack Was reunited with his family? Kim Koon came with the three children three children that he'd never met He'd never met those children. I Mean they were just infants when he left. They didn't know him They didn't know whom That's a picture after they came after they came back and they spent 20 years together But somebody's missing from this picture The hero of the story Kim Koon she died in 2009 From lupus complications from lupus People say stress makes lupus worse She must have lived one of the most stressful lives, but she was the hero. She got him out This is his he met another woman about three years later She's an absolute sweetheart her family had escaped from the north to the south in 1954 and then she escaped in 1976 and her name's Jung Jung Nguyen and she's just a fantastic person There's some acknowledgements. There's Jen gene Connor. I never thought I'd call an admiral by his first name Took me a long time to get used to that. There's gene Connor. There's Admiral Johnson who came to visit quack when we talked in Florida 60 people in the room there wasn't a dry eye in the house as they hugged each other Lieutenant general that I worked for Mac Armstrong who went through the book twice and provided a lot of expertise Colonel Charles tutt who served at ground tours of platoon commander in Vietnam went back to flight school and then went back to fly In Vietnam did two tours in Vietnam and has made five trips to Vietnam and spends a lot of time with North Vietnamese fighter pilots and Has become dear friends with many of them Of course the man I entered the world with Tom bushy, but most importantly My friend quack farm Who gave me the gift to tell him a story and a story that needed to be told because I myself felt I Had looked away. Thank you very much for your time