Witness Disputes Captain’s Story on Refugees Left Adrift

A Vietnamese-American sailor testified Monday that he was angered by Capt. Alexander G. Balian’s decision not to rescue Vietnamese refugees adrift in a junk in the South China Sea last June, and he contradicted several elements of Balian’s defense.

However, on one key point, his testimony appeared to bolster the captain’s position.

Balian, who has been relieved of command of the amphibious transport Dubuque, is being court-martialed on charges of dereliction of duty and disobeying orders for failing to rescue the refugees. After the encounter with the Dubuque last June 9, the scores of refugees drifted for another 19 days before being rescued by Philippine fishermen. By then, survivors said, they had run out of food and resorted to cannibalism.

Balian has blamed the sailor, Petty Officer Hiep Duy Pham, and other members of the Dubuque’s crew for giving him inaccurate information that led him to believe that the refugees could reach land on their own.

Pham, 26, served as interpreter during the encounter. He committed a crucial error, according to Balian, when he told the refugees that a rescue ship had been summoned. As a result, the refugees--believing that rescue was close at hand--squandered the food and water given them by the Dubuque and made no effort to reach land.

Pham conceded Monday that he told the refugees that the Dubuque was on a dangerous mission and that another ship was coming for them. He said he believed the statements to be true but conceded that he was never told this explicitly. He said he did not advise his superiors that he had told the refugees about another ship.

However, Pham contradicted Balian’s contention and the testimony of the Dubuque’s executive officer that everything possible was done to assess the situation of the refugees.

Balian sent his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Stanley F. Halter, together with Pham and five other crew members to interview the refugees and determine whether they needed help.

‘Kids Were Crying’

Pham, his voice barely audible in the small courtroom, faced the six Navy captains who will decide the case and said that when the launch approached the refugees, “I saw a small boat with a ragged sail. They were really happy to see us. At first there was lots of noise. Kids were crying.”

He said that one of the refugees shouted that there were more than 100 people on board the refugee vessel, a junk, and that more than 20 had died.

“I did not count them but I saw lots of children,” Pham said. He said the refugees told him they had been at sea “for a long time” and had had no food or water for more than seven days.

He said he told Halter, the executive officer, that one of the refugees had told him: “The water’s coming in again. The boat is sinking. We are all going to die.”

Pham said that Halter relayed all this information by radio to Balian on the bridge of the Dubuque.

Halter did not ask him, he said, to inquire about the junk’s engine or whether anyone on board needed medical attention.

Halter testified earlier in the day that he had told Pham repeatedly to ask whether the junk had an engine. He said that Pham complied, responding each time that the refugees said the junk had no engine. As a result, Balian has said, he believed that the junk had traveled the 250 miles from Vietnam using its small sail and that it was capable of sailing another 250 miles to the nearest land.

In fact, the junk had an engine, but it had broken down three days into the journey.

Halter also testified that Pham said there were no injured or ailing people on board the junk and that the refugees had been at sea for seven days--not that they had been without food for seven days. Halter said he asked all the men on the launch to estimate the number of refugees on the junk, and that the consensus was 55 to 60.

Pham, who fled Vietnam in 1975 with his mother, an employee of the American Embassy in Saigon, said he was dismayed at Balian’s decision not to take the refugees aboard.

“I was angry at the time, sir,” he said in response to a question by Balian’s lawyer, Dan Donato. And he said he is still angry.

Pham was questioned by the court-martial judge, Capt. James A. Freyer, who asked why he had given the refugees a navigational chart with directions to the nearest land if he believed they were to be picked up.

“Sir, at the time I got lots of things on my mind,” Pham responded. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Asked whether he now thinks it would have been a good idea to inform the refugees that no help was coming, Pham said quietly, “Yes, sir.”

In his opening argument Monday, the Navy prosecutor, Lt. Cmdr. Raymond H. Carlson, said: “The bottom line is that USS Dubuque and Capt. Balian on the ninth of June discovered these refugees in a life-threatening situation and left them in a life-threatening situation.”

Of the 110 refugees who left Ben Tre in southern Vietnam last May 22, only 52 survived.