~ Emotions ~
L: Where were your emotions over the war? Angry, sad, confused? Reactions?
D: Of course, you know why. Sometimes, you know, people like to fight… European peoples are people too, they have different ideologies. Sometimes they don’t want to fight, but sometimes we are forced to fight. But sometimes, you feel a bit sorry for them. Between women and women. Sometimes very bad.
L: Is there any particular day that sticks out to you?
H: I remember the excitement of the day and sad too, now that I look bad. My friend, my relative, it was like the last time we see them. The scariest part was when the plane was taking off. You could see the chaos. All these people try get on the plane. But for us because of who we are, was just like nicely taken into the plane and were looking out the window we see all of this. I didn’t understand what’s going on. We’re just on a trip. To me, it was like traveling, but why is there all this chaos. So that was one of the things that I’ll always remember. People trying to run in into the plane. And then like, I never get to see. Before I was very close to my nanny, I never see her again. The loved ones, you don’t see them anymore. Of course, unfortunately, with bombs, and a lot of my friends get hurt or die. This combination, I feel that I’m very lucky, because I mean one of my dear friends, that I grew up with…her father was a general, very good friend of my dad, but was in the marines. He believed in it, even when people abandon him and the country. He still wanted to fight. People needed to control their troops. So she got stuck, so it was very unfortunate for her. And she did made it to United States eventually, through the boat people. So, you know, it was really sad story and she’s very different and now I see she is very different. Very dramatic for her cause of what happened to her, I mean I don’t know if you remember all the stories of all the boat people or not? But it’s a horrible story. She happened to be one of the boat people, it’s hard for everybody, but for her being who she is, because she is a couple years older than me. It was hard for a child to be badly abused like that, on a boat, by the pirates. So it was really rough for her and then her older sister. To observe all that and her mother, you know. And then, people got thrown off the boat and she was a survivor. So, it was really hard, you lose a lot of friends… you know.
L: Did you ever feel scared at all of fighting?
D: Of course, you know. Of course, you’d be scared too right? Sometimes you fly, before you fly, you think. The enemy has the anti-air craft. You fly over there, you take the picture over there. They fire at you, you can’t avoid it, right? You need to fly over and you never if you can be hit, right? You’d be scare too! I had to do what I had to do right? At the Tet offensive right , I had to land to the way, to the way to evacuate some people from the community right? My airplane and I start to shoot them, in very bad weather. The clouds is very low. Right? So I just take of with the full load of the evacuate people. I just take off about 100 feet in the air and I get shot in the back but I picked up, I smelled you know the fuel right? That mean my airplane can caught fire anytime you know right? So you know, so you know whatever by the ten thousand acres the gallons of fuel ready to break out that should be like hell right? So you know so I had to veer my airplane to the sea right then ok it caught fire I had to dive into the water you know, ya, but after that you know, its ok. You build a campfire then I climb up and campfire back to my airplane I land safely. And that’s so I can save a lot of people in my airplane. Sometimes I pray God, you know, that I could be there right?