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Viet Refugees Rally, Relive First Days in U.S.

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Times Staff Writer

By the thousands, former South Vietnamese war refugees gathered here Saturday to show off children, meet old friends and pay tribute to the U.S. Marines who took care of them in a massive tent city evacuation center 10 years ago.

Old men in suits, ties and hats, teen-agers in designer clothes and grandchildren in their Sunday best roamed around the site of what once was a sea of 1,000 tents where more than 50,000 confused and frightened war refugees began a new life in the spring and summer of 1975.

On Saturday they returned to their halfway home for a sort of combination freedom rally, carnival and swap meet. Patriotic American and South Vietnamese songs were played by the Marine Corps Band.

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Inside the same huge tents where they once whiled away the days in wait for American sponsors, housewives sold barbecued pork and beef on a stick, ethnic dishes and cold beer. Hawkers enticed kids to pitch dimes onto glass plates for prizes. And vendors sold rugs, purses, tape cassettes featuring Vietnamese singers and miniature American and South Vietnamese flags. (The Vietnamese flags were selling more briskly than the American ones, one salesman conceded.)

Young Vietnamese-American children born in this country--and some who were born on this very site 10 years ago--were taken around by parents eager to show where they spent their first weeks and months in the United States. And old women sat in groups on the ground and pored over 10-year-old photographs, trying to recall the names of the people in the pictures.

This was the first chance for many of them to gather en masse since 1975 and, under a blue sky, the turnout far exceeded expectations.

Organizers anticipated that 5,000 refugees would show up, but military police estimated the crowd at more than 30,000.

“This is really beautiful, isn’t it?” beamed Maj. Gen. Robert E. Haebel, commanding officer of Camp Pendleton, as he looked over a sea of colorful helium balloons, American flags and the wafting smoke of barbecues.

Bien Le, president of the Santa Ana-based Vietnamese American Mutual Assn., which coordinated the day’s activities, said he was ecstatic.

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“This makes me so happy. Ten years ago, we could not speak (English), we had no cars, we didn’t know where we would go. This was a different culture. So we wanted to come back today to find our tent neighbors and show how we can speak English.”

In a speech opening the commemoration ceremony, Le said the Vietnamese refugees a decade ago may have been less than thankful for the hospitality extended to them by the United States.

“Ten years ago, we Vietnamese came to this Marine Corps camp and to this new land with no more hope in our hearts for the future, and with our past only a residue of bitter ashes on the pyre of our vanquished dreams.

“Ours was a lost cause and we were lost souls squatting in the dust of our despair, among those who had shared our battles. In our humiliation at taking flight . . . it was difficult for us to be grateful to those who gave us refuge.

“We come on the occasion of this 10th commemoration of our true freedom to pay our most humble and profound respect and gratitude to the memory of all those brave and unselfish Americans who gave up their lives in an attempt to keep the torch of their beloved liberty aflame in our land as they kept it alive in our hearts.”

When the U.S. National Anthem was played, many in the crowd held their hands over their hearts. And, when the South Vietnam National Anthem was performed next, someone in the crowd released the South Vietnam flag, which was carried aloft and out of sight by helium balloons riding on the sea breeze.

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Bittersweet Moment

The sight of the flag evoked tears. “This is probably the last time many Vietnamese will salute that flag,” said one man who said he had served in the South Vietnamese army. “Many of us fought for that flag.”

“Today is a day of mixed emotions for us,” said Van Hung Truong, a onetime air traffic controller at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon. He is now a computer engineer living in Garden Grove.

“Today causes us to remember the day we left Vietnam. We think of lots of people who are still over there. We are a lot happier and luckier than them. We still want the government there changed, because we cannot stand the tyranny there.

“And I worry about the future of my children in this country,” Truong said. “In 1950, the United States was an exporter of freedom to other countries. Now, we are defending freedom and we are surrounded by communism. Who is to say what will happen in the next 30, 50 or 100 years in this country?”

Steve Nguyen, a 28-year-old graduate engineering student attending California State University, Long Beach, said he, too, had mixed feelings about the commemoration.

“It was a time when my country was lost, and I left behind relatives,” he said. “But it was a chance to enjoy total freedom and have contact with American people. They have let me taste freedom. Now, I am proud of being part of America.”

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Tao Ngo and his wife, Mai, drove to Camp Pendleton all the way from Phoenix to participate in Saturday’s reunion. Their three small children--each born in this country, the oldest at the camp--enjoyed ice cream cones as their father related a tale of escape hours before Saigon fell to the communists.

Mai Ngo worked for the ITT Corp. and Tau Ngo was with the South Vietnam army’s signal corps. With their identification, they were admitted inside the U.S. Embassy at 8 a.m. on April 29, 1975, to be helicoptered off the roof and onto a ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet.

Their helicopter evacuation did not come until 1 a.m. April 30; the couple was among the last of the South Vietnamese to be evacuated by the United States before the embassy itself was abandoned a few hours later.

“We waited all day and all night, in the embassy stairwell, to get out,” Tao Ngo said. “When we finally left, I could not hold back my tears. I knew it would be the last time I would see my country.”

The couple returned to Camp Pendleton on Saturday “because I want to show the children that we lived in tents, not in a house. I hope they can appreciate that,” he said.

It was Andrew who first saw America from Camp Pendleton, where he was born. He was named Andrew for the U.S. Navy ship Andrew, the 7th Fleet vessel which helped deliver them to freedom.

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