Leaving Vietnam
Justin: So how did you leave Vietnam?
Kiphan Kan: I was a teenager and as I mentioned earlier, my father, after Tet Offensive, I think he had concluded that nothing really very good was going to happen as the war marched on and he tried for that reason, very hard, to get us out of that country. I was born in Vietnam and so was my brother who is younger, and 18 [years old] to get conscripted in the Vietnamese army. So my brother was starting to get into his teenage years, and I don’t think my father wanted him to be conscripted at all, because he sort of knew the end was kind of getting close; so we left Vietnam, after much effort on his part.
Justin: Did you leave with just your family, or did anybody else come with you?
Kiphan Kan: No, we just left with my immediate family, so that’s my parents, and my brother, and me.
Justin: What did you bring and what could you not bring?
Kiphan Kan: We just left with very, very common things, like clothes and household items. Taking the luggage with us, I think we did- we were able to send out some things also, through mail or shipping, and- but they were really just ordinary household things.
Justin: Do you know what kind of challenges your father went through to get out of Vietnam?
Kiphan Kan: Yeah, because I was born in Vietnam and my brother was born in Vietnam, although we had parents from China, who were born in China, we were still considered as Vietnamese citizens and so it was very hard for my parents to argue that we were non-Vietnamese. However we were still minor[s], and if my father could make a case that he was leaving Vietnam as a foreigner because he was still a Chinese citizen all these years (he never took the Vietnamese citizenship), so I think he tried very hard to make a case that as he was leaving, then we as minors should be able to leave as well, and it is true that we didn’t have any immediate family in Vietnam, so nobody else could take care of us.
Justin: What were your feelings when you left Vietnam?
Kiphan Kan: It was sort of a relief because I was thinking here I am getting out of this war-torn country and to go to a place that was at peace and where there was no fight and no war–so it was sort of a relief. And because my parents came from China we never considered Vietnam as our own country uh we were part of the Chinese diaspora and so it was not nearly as feeling of “oh we are leaving our country” you know, but on the other hand you leave something that you have known all along and something that you knew and it’s always sort of uncertain and unsettling to leave, leave some place that you known all your life.