‘Am I dreaming? I’m here in America?’

Sarah Wong, 20, became an American citizen last year. A graduate of Canoga Park High School, she now works in a Studio City beauty salon and lives in Reseda with her parents. Wong arrived in the United States in 1980 at the end of a long journey.

I’m pure Chinese. My dad was born in China. Because of the war with the Japanese, he moved to Vietnam when he was a young boy. My mother’s parents were Chinese.

I was born in Saigon in 1967. I remember the war. One night my mom was at work and she rushed back. The whole family was in this dark house, and we all lay on the ground. We could hear the bombing in the city. I was around 8 or 9, but I knew it was war. That’s one of my bad memories.

My dad wanted to find a way to escape the country, so he bought a boat with a friend and worked for the Vietnamese government as a fisherman. The only chance to leave the country was for my dad to get to know the sea and the way to get out without getting caught.

One day he planned it. I was sleeping, and my mom woke me up real early in the morning, and she said, ‘Let’s leave.’ I didn’t even know where I was going.

My dad told us to meet him about 1 o’clock in the morning, right in the middle of the sea. We rented a little boat and went out there and waited for him until about 2 o’clock in the morning. Then we learned he had been caught. So we headed for shore. The navy was behind us in a fast boat, and they were shooting at us. I could see the bullets over my head through the sugar cane we were hiding under. I was so scared, I was sweating. Luckily we got away.

We landed in a graveyard. We had no shoes--we left everything in the boat. We walked through the graves; there were rats, and it was dark. It was scary. Finally we got to the bus stop and got back to Saigon. We got news that my dad was in jail. We lost the boat and all the money.

Finally we got out of Vietnam in a big boat. When we left Saigon, it was my birthday. I was 13. The first night at sea, my dad said, ‘When we get to America, I’m going to buy you lots of presents.’

Then we got robbed by pirates. They took everything, the map and the compass. We were just floating, and finally we landed on a small island in Indonesia called Kuku.

We bought leaves and wood from the Indonesian people to build houses. We had such a hard time. A lot of old people and little children died because of the water. My brother was about 3 or 4, and he had diarrhea. He was like skin and bones. I thought he was going to die.

I was like a man in the family. I was the oldest. I would help my dad go up all the way to the mountain to get wood for fire and carry water. The owner of the boat we came in opened a bread shop. I would go buy from him and go sell it. I was a little salesgirl, 13 years old, but I was making lots of money.

They had an embassy office and a list of names when you could get to leave. One day my mom went to a temple they built up the hill, and she was praying. I said, ‘OK, mom, I’m going to leave now and take a look at the list.’ I was going through the crowd to see if our name was on the list. This guy turned around and lifted me up and I saw our names, and I ran back up the hill and told my mom. We were crying all the way home and told my dad. We lived on Kuku almost a year.

They put us in a boat, and we went to Singapore to a refugee camp. We had to sleep on the street for three days. Then they took us to the airport, and the next thing you know I was in California at LAX. I thought, ‘Ah, I’m here in America, but what am I going to do? How is my life going to be? I don’t know.’

When I mention about old times I want to cry because of all the things I’ve been through. I think I’m safe here in America. This is a good country to be in. You do what you like to do. You have control of your life, not the government. So I have no fear. Sometimes I pinch myself. ‘Am I dreaming? I’m here in America?’ I feel that way still.