Leslie Nguyen |
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Escape Processes Brent: During your time in Viet Nam, who were you with or who did—in terms of family—whose support did you have? Leslie: At that time I was married and with two young children. My daughter was four years old and my son was eight—no, six months old. And that’s when we escaped—with the baby. But we formed escaping right from the beginning of the fall of Saigon and it took six years for it to come…To become reality. Ze Khai: How did you guys figure out how to escape? How did that work? Leslie: It took a long time. Like I was saying, it was six years because they had to study very carefully. Every wrong move could be life and death matter. So it took a long time. They—I’m sure the organizer had connections to work with people who lived low to the sea that owned the boat and then they would, you know, share the news with family members, and then family members would, in turn, share with close friends—very, very trusted friends. We were lucky that we get to know one of the members in the family. So they trusted us. And then, negotiations—how many ounces of gold for gold for each member—each person to reserve a spot in the boat. So that was planned very carefully and they would give us instructions to disguise ourselves. I remember at that time my husband disguised himself into a farmer. And of course, we probably didn’t do a good job. I mean, you see a farmer look different than a doctor or a blue collar or white collar workers, right? But we did the best we could. And most of the time people would either use the very, very bad timing at sea because that is when the coast guard would not pay much attention, or the time when the big holiday that everybody was kind of more relaxing or not paying attention to you. And so we picked the second occasion which was Lunar New Year. I was disguised into like a street vendor—wear very simple clothes—old—pretty much like rag. And the children would pretty—kind of like poor people. And I carried the baby, and with one hand hold hands with the four year old one. And then my husband would carry stuff like a farmer—dry fruits or vegetables. Something like that. And we boarded a boat—um, not a boat, but a bus. Like a charter bus—to go to very small village next to a river of the south side. Very, very deep south side that is close to Cambodia ’cause you want to take a short boat ride—as short as possible—to go to the next country. So we stayed there and I remember when we got off the bus we were instructed to look across street by the telephone pole—at that time was no telephone but electric pole. We saw a man who was standing there dressed in a certain type of clothes, wearing a hat that tilted down a little bit. So when we saw that—what we were supposed to do—we either tilted the hat or, you know, we made a signal to let him know that we’re the one that he’s waiting for. And, in turn, he would do something to signal us—That I’m the one to pick you up. So imagine that—it was so tense! It seemed like children get more mature when they were growing up in that situation. My four year old one was very, very smart. She knew we were doing something, so she was very well-behaved. She did not cry or question anything.
Object Description
Profile of | Leslie Nguyen |
Title | Escape from the Fall |
Profile bio | Leslie Nguyen was born on July 2, 1955 in Dong Ha of South Vietnam. She comes from a Vietnamese Chinese cultural background and believes in Buddhism. During the Vietnam War, Leslie spent most of her time in Saigon, South Vietnam until the end of 1980. She was still going to school at that time. In early 1981, Leslie along with her husband and their two young children (1 & 4 years old) escaped Vietnam as boatpersons. They arrived to a refugee camp in Pulau Bidong, Malaysia where they stayed for about 8 months. After months of struggling and starvation at the refugee camp, Leslie’s family made it to the United States in late August of 1981. She is now living in California and works as a secretary of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Leslie currently lives in Glendale, California. 2 of her 3 children are now married with their own children. |
Profiler bio | Brent Robbins is a junior majoring in International Relations- Global Business at USC. He was born and raised in Yokohama, Japan until the age of 18. Ze Khai Wong is junior majoring in Business at USC. He was born in Malaysia. Wan-Ching Wu is a senior majoring in Biological Science. She was born and raised in Taiwan until the age 18. |
Subject | Boat people, Civilian, Communism, Fall of Saigon, Profile, Refugee, Saigon, Viet Nam, Vietnamese |
Profiled by | Robbins, Brent |
Profile date | 2011-04-11 |
Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Dong H; Saigon; Ho Chi Minh City; Los Angeles |
Geographic subject (county) | Los Angeles |
Geographic subject (state) | California |
Geographic subject (country) | Vietnam; Malaysia; Indonesia; USA |
Coverage date | 1955; 1980 |
Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/leslie-nguyen/ |
Type |
images video |
Format | 1 image; 6 video files (00:27:10); 6 transcripts |
Language | English |
Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
Part of collection | An Other War Memorial -- Memories of the American War in Viet Nam |
Filename | nguyenleslie |
Description
Profile of | Leslie Nguyen |
Title | Escape Processes |
Format | 1 transcript, 2p. |
Filename | nguyenleslie-vid1_tr1.pdf |
Full text | Escape Processes Brent: During your time in Viet Nam, who were you with or who did—in terms of family—whose support did you have? Leslie: At that time I was married and with two young children. My daughter was four years old and my son was eight—no, six months old. And that’s when we escaped—with the baby. But we formed escaping right from the beginning of the fall of Saigon and it took six years for it to come…To become reality. Ze Khai: How did you guys figure out how to escape? How did that work? Leslie: It took a long time. Like I was saying, it was six years because they had to study very carefully. Every wrong move could be life and death matter. So it took a long time. They—I’m sure the organizer had connections to work with people who lived low to the sea that owned the boat and then they would, you know, share the news with family members, and then family members would, in turn, share with close friends—very, very trusted friends. We were lucky that we get to know one of the members in the family. So they trusted us. And then, negotiations—how many ounces of gold for gold for each member—each person to reserve a spot in the boat. So that was planned very carefully and they would give us instructions to disguise ourselves. I remember at that time my husband disguised himself into a farmer. And of course, we probably didn’t do a good job. I mean, you see a farmer look different than a doctor or a blue collar or white collar workers, right? But we did the best we could. And most of the time people would either use the very, very bad timing at sea because that is when the coast guard would not pay much attention, or the time when the big holiday that everybody was kind of more relaxing or not paying attention to you. And so we picked the second occasion which was Lunar New Year. I was disguised into like a street vendor—wear very simple clothes—old—pretty much like rag. And the children would pretty—kind of like poor people. And I carried the baby, and with one hand hold hands with the four year old one. And then my husband would carry stuff like a farmer—dry fruits or vegetables. Something like that. And we boarded a boat—um, not a boat, but a bus. Like a charter bus—to go to very small village next to a river of the south side. Very, very deep south side that is close to Cambodia ’cause you want to take a short boat ride—as short as possible—to go to the next country. So we stayed there and I remember when we got off the bus we were instructed to look across street by the telephone pole—at that time was no telephone but electric pole. We saw a man who was standing there dressed in a certain type of clothes, wearing a hat that tilted down a little bit. So when we saw that—what we were supposed to do—we either tilted the hat or, you know, we made a signal to let him know that we’re the one that he’s waiting for. And, in turn, he would do something to signal us—That I’m the one to pick you up. So imagine that—it was so tense! It seemed like children get more mature when they were growing up in that situation. My four year old one was very, very smart. She knew we were doing something, so she was very well-behaved. She did not cry or question anything. |
Archival file | Volume4/nguyenleslie-vid1_tr1.pdf |