Susan H. |
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Coming to America Part I Us: I want to talk about getting adopted and coming to America… Susan: I was sitting in a corner, they had this lady, she’s uh, drove by and she ask me ‘What’s wrong with me’, and I say ‘I’m sick, I don’t feel good’. She said ‘Are you ok?’ and I said ‘No I’m not’ and she said ‘Well come with me’. And so I get in her car, and she said ‘Well you can come into my house and stay with me, if you wanna help and babysit my kids’. And so I came with her, she’s in a studio and she’s got two small children, one of them is half American and half Vietnamese, the other one is half Korean and half Vietnamese, ‘cause at that time the Korean troops were there in Vietnam also. One of her husbands got killed, the one American got killed, but they weren’t married they just lived together, and her other child was half Korean and half Vietnamese, I guess he was married when he was in Korea but he was a soldier. And so I stayed with her, they had an American gentleman named Ricky who is my brother now, he was a really good friend of hers. He always came to the house and things like that. I hadn’t spoke a word of English at that time, but he spoke Vietnamese. So he would come over and we would become very good friends, and then one day he told me, he say ‘You wanna come to the United States?’ and I say ‘Well I can’t marry you, you’re too old’, and he’s like ‘I don’t want to marry you, my mom and dad are old couple and I have a brother who live in the United States. He’s in college, and my mom wants daughter but she doesn’t want to go through diapers and bottles at night, if you wanna come to the United States I will take you there to meet my parents’. I thought he was just kidding me? Then one day I get a letter from my—from his parents, with picture and everything like that, and then he says ‘I’m gonna go back to the United States and I’ll be back in a couple months’, and I thought he’d never come back. So I never thought anything of that. He left for about 3, 4 months, and then he came back! That’s the first time I met them. He’s a retired Commander in the Navy, my mother was a pediatrician doctor, and they said they wanted to adopt me. They couldn’t get the paperwork done because I lived in so many places, and I mean I was an orphan during this time, and the Vietnamese government was very corrupted, they wanted money. I didn’t have the proper paperwork, like Birth Certificate and things like that, so they wanted money from my parents but my parents refused to pay them. They went back to the States and said ‘Don’t worry, I will come back for you, and I will take you home with me’. So it took them two years to get the paperwork done and everything, and I left Vietnam in 1974. Us: How did you assimilate to the United States? Susan: I remember this funny story, I had never seen a washing machine before, never in my whole life and I still do it the old fashioned way by hand, and he said ‘Honey, you can put the dishes in the washing machine’, and I say OK and I look at him and he put everything in the dishwashing machine and he turned it on. I couldn’t figure out how it washed it! So I kept opening it up and up to see and he said ‘You can’t do that, if you do that it won’t wash them’, but how does it wash them? And he’s like ‘That’s how it works, and I said I wished it had like a window so I could see what’s going on in it cause I had never seen that. The first time I had American food, I had American food and my dad took me to Bob’s Big Boy, I had a burger and a milkshake! Us: How was school? Susan: I remember my high school had only like 200 kids, and I was the only Asian in that school. Us: You were the only one? Susan: I was the only one. Us: How was that, that must’ve been interesting? Susan: It was very difficult because a lot of them had never seen an Asian kid before, they called me gee, they called me nam, and there was this boy, Rodney, he was very nice to me, he was very polite, and I remember he was my first boyfriend!
Object Description
Profile of | Susan H. |
Title | Orphan in Vietnam |
Profile bio | Susan, who would like to remain anonymous, was born in the French Monte Carlo in the 50s. Her mother was half Chinese and half French, while her father was half Chinese and half Vietnamese. After the death of her mother and abandonment by her father, she moved to Vietnam with an uncle and lived with his family there. Shortly after, when her uncle’s wife became pregnant, she was put in an orphanage and was responsible for taking care of the younger children, running away many times during her time there. She was adopted by an American family and moved to the United States when she was a teenager right before the end of the war, and as the only Asian in her school who barely spoke English, she was often ostracized by her classmates. Her two children are now fully grown and on their own. Susan now resides in San Diego, California with her husband, and her dog |
Profiler bio | Patricia Lee is majoring in Art at University of Southern California.; Nicholas Marano is majoring in Economy at University of Southern California |
Subject |
Civilian Refugee Vietnamese Adoption Death Experience in Vietnam War Language Memory of War Orphanage |
Profiled by | Lee, Patricia; Marano, Nicholas |
Profile date | 2014-03 |
Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Monte Carlo; San Diego |
Geographic subject (county) | San Diego |
Geographic subject (state) | California |
Geographic subject (country) | Monaco; USA |
Coverage date | 1963; 1974 |
Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/susan-h/ |
Type |
images video |
Format | 1 image; 4 video files (00:14:50); 4 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 | hsusan |
Description
Profile of | Susan H. |
Title | Coming to American Part I |
Format | 1 transcript, 2p. |
Filename | hsusan-vid2_tr2.pdf |
Full text | Coming to America Part I Us: I want to talk about getting adopted and coming to America… Susan: I was sitting in a corner, they had this lady, she’s uh, drove by and she ask me ‘What’s wrong with me’, and I say ‘I’m sick, I don’t feel good’. She said ‘Are you ok?’ and I said ‘No I’m not’ and she said ‘Well come with me’. And so I get in her car, and she said ‘Well you can come into my house and stay with me, if you wanna help and babysit my kids’. And so I came with her, she’s in a studio and she’s got two small children, one of them is half American and half Vietnamese, the other one is half Korean and half Vietnamese, ‘cause at that time the Korean troops were there in Vietnam also. One of her husbands got killed, the one American got killed, but they weren’t married they just lived together, and her other child was half Korean and half Vietnamese, I guess he was married when he was in Korea but he was a soldier. And so I stayed with her, they had an American gentleman named Ricky who is my brother now, he was a really good friend of hers. He always came to the house and things like that. I hadn’t spoke a word of English at that time, but he spoke Vietnamese. So he would come over and we would become very good friends, and then one day he told me, he say ‘You wanna come to the United States?’ and I say ‘Well I can’t marry you, you’re too old’, and he’s like ‘I don’t want to marry you, my mom and dad are old couple and I have a brother who live in the United States. He’s in college, and my mom wants daughter but she doesn’t want to go through diapers and bottles at night, if you wanna come to the United States I will take you there to meet my parents’. I thought he was just kidding me? Then one day I get a letter from my—from his parents, with picture and everything like that, and then he says ‘I’m gonna go back to the United States and I’ll be back in a couple months’, and I thought he’d never come back. So I never thought anything of that. He left for about 3, 4 months, and then he came back! That’s the first time I met them. He’s a retired Commander in the Navy, my mother was a pediatrician doctor, and they said they wanted to adopt me. They couldn’t get the paperwork done because I lived in so many places, and I mean I was an orphan during this time, and the Vietnamese government was very corrupted, they wanted money. I didn’t have the proper paperwork, like Birth Certificate and things like that, so they wanted money from my parents but my parents refused to pay them. They went back to the States and said ‘Don’t worry, I will come back for you, and I will take you home with me’. So it took them two years to get the paperwork done and everything, and I left Vietnam in 1974. Us: How did you assimilate to the United States? Susan: I remember this funny story, I had never seen a washing machine before, never in my whole life and I still do it the old fashioned way by hand, and he said ‘Honey, you can put the dishes in the washing machine’, and I say OK and I look at him and he put everything in the dishwashing machine and he turned it on. I couldn’t figure out how it washed it! So I kept opening it up and up to see and he said ‘You can’t do that, if you do that it won’t wash them’, but how does it wash them? And he’s like ‘That’s how it works, and I said I wished it had like a window so I could see what’s going on in it cause I had never seen that. The first time I had American food, I had American food and my dad took me to Bob’s Big Boy, I had a burger and a milkshake! Us: How was school? Susan: I remember my high school had only like 200 kids, and I was the only Asian in that school. Us: You were the only one? Susan: I was the only one. Us: How was that, that must’ve been interesting? Susan: It was very difficult because a lot of them had never seen an Asian kid before, they called me gee, they called me nam, and there was this boy, Rodney, he was very nice to me, he was very polite, and I remember he was my first boyfriend! |
Archival file | Volume5/hsusan-vid2_tr2.pdf |