Leslie Nguyen |
Save page Remove page | Previous | 13 of 13 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max) if available
medium (500x500 max) if available
Large (1000x1000 max) if available
Extra Large
Full Resolution
Archival Image
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
|
Like, you know, just like right there! Right at that wall. That close! In between the wall there would be a…what do you call it? It’s not a lake but they dug the line to let the water go through…yes, just like that. I can jump over that. What do you call it? That’s a lake or brook? And then I could go to the cemetery right there. And one night, no actually almost every night there were people escaping and they arrived in the middle of the night, or people who lived there for so long they did not have any family members to sponsor them. There were many different reasons they stayed there for quite long. Over a year or two years. So they started to find a way to make a living. And what they did was go fishing—to get fish and then sell it to make a living. And of course, they didn’t have proper equipment for fishing. So oftentimes, they get killed. They get sunk, and then killed. And then three days later the body floated up. And that’s when, at night, the coast guard guarding the area find those bodies, bring them up. In that case, they would call people who were in carpentry profession to come up to build coffins and bury them. The way they set up there was the people who have a special skill would be requested to dedicate their skill to serve the community. So, in the middle of the night, when you here the paging system call so-and-so: “Please, someone [go] to the office.” And they called many times. Nobody dared to come up. The reason why? Because by the time they pulled the body in the body would look so horrible. I was so scared to see it. You know, either part of this gets eaten by fish, or an eye get pulled out. It’s too scary to face that! So they don’t dare to show up—until they say “One more time if you don’t come up we’re gonna call your name. And if you don’t show up, your name will be off the list to be qualified to go to third world country”. Right? This is the third country. The country we arrived was second country. The original country was from Viet Nam. At that time people had to report themselves. So that’s the kind of life that I lived for eight months. And one time, one mother escaped with six children. Her husband was in the death camp. She knew that she could not wait for him to come home. She would not know when. Because the length in the death camp—they don’t tell you how long. But people sort of know, based on how you’re involved in military at that time—if you were holding a low rank, you very much have a hope that you can get out in [a] certain year. But if you hold like a high rank in military, God help you. So she realized that and she took her young children to escape with her. But she was raped so badly, that when she got to the camp, she died. And she left six children. The youngest one was so young. She needed a mother at night. So the baby would cry all night. [She] would say “Mother, where are you?” And nobody could speak. It pierced through your heart. And I lived like that for eight months. My youngest daughter started to have like a pin worm because it was so unsanitized. The food was so terrible! It seemed like they gave bad food—overdue food or something like that. But of course nobody dares complain. We knew we just had to be patient and we won’t have to stay there forever. Just be patient and wait till the day that we get out. And the time came. We were able to come to the United States and that was August 25th, 1981. So we get to heaven.
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 | Interview Transcription |
Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
Filename | nguyenleslie-vid6_tr6.pdf |
Full text | Like, you know, just like right there! Right at that wall. That close! In between the wall there would be a…what do you call it? It’s not a lake but they dug the line to let the water go through…yes, just like that. I can jump over that. What do you call it? That’s a lake or brook? And then I could go to the cemetery right there. And one night, no actually almost every night there were people escaping and they arrived in the middle of the night, or people who lived there for so long they did not have any family members to sponsor them. There were many different reasons they stayed there for quite long. Over a year or two years. So they started to find a way to make a living. And what they did was go fishing—to get fish and then sell it to make a living. And of course, they didn’t have proper equipment for fishing. So oftentimes, they get killed. They get sunk, and then killed. And then three days later the body floated up. And that’s when, at night, the coast guard guarding the area find those bodies, bring them up. In that case, they would call people who were in carpentry profession to come up to build coffins and bury them. The way they set up there was the people who have a special skill would be requested to dedicate their skill to serve the community. So, in the middle of the night, when you here the paging system call so-and-so: “Please, someone [go] to the office.” And they called many times. Nobody dared to come up. The reason why? Because by the time they pulled the body in the body would look so horrible. I was so scared to see it. You know, either part of this gets eaten by fish, or an eye get pulled out. It’s too scary to face that! So they don’t dare to show up—until they say “One more time if you don’t come up we’re gonna call your name. And if you don’t show up, your name will be off the list to be qualified to go to third world country”. Right? This is the third country. The country we arrived was second country. The original country was from Viet Nam. At that time people had to report themselves. So that’s the kind of life that I lived for eight months. And one time, one mother escaped with six children. Her husband was in the death camp. She knew that she could not wait for him to come home. She would not know when. Because the length in the death camp—they don’t tell you how long. But people sort of know, based on how you’re involved in military at that time—if you were holding a low rank, you very much have a hope that you can get out in [a] certain year. But if you hold like a high rank in military, God help you. So she realized that and she took her young children to escape with her. But she was raped so badly, that when she got to the camp, she died. And she left six children. The youngest one was so young. She needed a mother at night. So the baby would cry all night. [She] would say “Mother, where are you?” And nobody could speak. It pierced through your heart. And I lived like that for eight months. My youngest daughter started to have like a pin worm because it was so unsanitized. The food was so terrible! It seemed like they gave bad food—overdue food or something like that. But of course nobody dares complain. We knew we just had to be patient and we won’t have to stay there forever. Just be patient and wait till the day that we get out. And the time came. We were able to come to the United States and that was August 25th, 1981. So we get to heaven. |
Archival file | Volume4/nguyenleslie-vid6_tr6.pdf |