County’s Vietnamese React With Caution to News of Resettlement

The last time Tung saw his brother, Tam, now 56, was in the final days of April, 1975, before Saigon fell to the Communist armies of North Vietnam.

“I told him I was going to escape and leave Vietnam,” Tung recalled Monday. “I asked him to come with me, but he said he couldn’t go. He was a major in the South Vietnamese army and he said he had a responsibility to remain and ensure the safety of the South Vietnamese people.”

Tung, who preferred not to reveal his real name, fled to safety and now lives in Costa Mesa with his wife and three children.

His brother’s decision to stay behind and the fact that he was a major in the South Vietnamese army resulted in his imprisonment in a re-education camp for five years. Since 1980, Tung has been trying to bring his brother to the United States. But on Monday, he reacted cautiously to news that the Vietnamese government has agreed to the resettlement in the United States of more that 100,000 former prisoners and their families who had been associated with the U.S.-backed government in Saigon.

“I’m afraid that someone might read this story and send it back to someone in the Vietnamese government. We’ve been waiting so long to get my brother out of Vietnam that to have something wrong happen now would be really bad,” he said.

But he and others in Orange County’s Vietnamese community that numbers about 100,000 expressed skepticism Monday about the Vietnamese government’s ability or willingness to allow the resettlement. And some suggested that Vietnam has as an ulterior motive the reopening of diplomatic relations with the United States.

“When I heard that news (of the resettlement agreement),” Tung said, “I was very happy. I think that most people who are Vietnamese are happy about it. But I hope that the Vietnamese government can realize that goal.”

It is estimated that there are between 19,000 and 27,000 Vietnamese such as Tung’s brother, Tam, who are known to have been sent to re-education camps after the fall of Saigon.

All were identified with the former Saigon government, and officials said there may be others on whom the United States does not have records.

But rather than happiness, Vietnamese, like Tung and others, said they felt confused and had misgivings about the newly announced agreement because they believe that it’s a ploy by the Communist regime to establish diplomatic relations with the United States.

“We hope the United States takes the responsibility to bring out all the ‘soldiers’ who were in reeducation camps because they were part of the U.S. effort in Vietnam,” said Tien Nguyen, a former South Vietnamese air force officer who also lives in Costa Mesa.

But Nguyen also said he believes that Vietnam is “using” the re-education prisoners as bargaining chips to help normalize relations with the U.S. government.

“You have to understand that 14 years ago we fought against these people,” the former Vietnamese air force officer said. “It’s very hard for us to believe the Vietnamese government. . . . We want our soldiers back. We want them released and brought here to the U.S. to live with their relatives. But to be part of a pawn between two governments is difficult to accept.”

Still, Vietnamese emigres such as Tung do not give up hope. He believes that someday he, his family and his brother’s family will be reunited.

“It’s been very hard for us because the wait has been so long. But we haven’t given up,” he said.

Fled in Freighter

After fleeing Vietnam in a freighter, Tung went to the Philippines and then was part of the first wave of refugees that arrived at Camp Pendleton in the fall of 1975.

When he arrived in the United States, he said he had “nothing” but his wife and two children, Jackie, then 2, and Julie, 4.

He, too, had been in the military and had served in the South Vietnamese army as a captain in charge of a communications center at the presidential palace in Saigon.

He never forgot his family, especially his older brother, Tam, who would write long letters describing his imprisonment in a special family code to bypass Vietnam’s government censors.

When his brother was released from a re-education camp in 1980, Tung began a nine-year effort to sponsor Tam and his family as refugees in the United States.

The process has been “slow,” Tung said. Yet he added, “We’ve never lost hope. We just keep trying to bring him to the United States. Maybe now with this new agreement, Vietnam will give my brother high priority (for emigration to the United States). I hope so.”

But families such as Tung’s say they fear that hopes of freedom for relatives still in Vietnam will be dashed if the Vietnamese government fails to honor the agreement, reached in three days of talks that ended Saturday.

Family Members, Too

For each former prisoner of the Communists, it is estimated that there are four or five family members who would be eligible to also immigrate to the United States, according to State Department officials.

“My wife is also sponsoring her mother’s immigration to the United States. We started getting documents prepared three years ago. We’re still waiting,” Tung said.

Local emigres note that a year ago, an agreement on resettlement of the former detainees and their families appeared to be near, but Vietnam suspended talks after unfriendly remarks by a former top Reagan Administration official.

But all express hope now that they can be reunited with loved ones soon as a result of the new agreement.

“The one thing my brother wants right now, is freedom,” Tung said. “If he is part of the group allowed to leave Vietnam, we will help him find that freedom here in America.”

Tung, a man who speaks English with a thick accent, added a special message: “I think that most people think that the problem between the United States and Vietnam is only political. It’s not.

“I hope the American people understand that helping Vietnamese people like my brother, and taking responsibility for all freedom fighters, is a separate, humanitarian issue.”

MAIN STORY: Part I, Page 1