This Time Their Tears Were for Joy

The two brothers embraced for more than a minute, both approaching tears, while cameras clicked and television lights glared as a 15-year separation that began with the fall of Saigon came to an end.

In the middle of Arrival Area B at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday morning, Tuoi Nguyen of Oceanside was reunited with his brother, Cuong Huu Nguyen, who had just been released from a Vietnamese “re-education camp” after serving 6 1/2 years of an eight-year sentence.

About 100 friends and relatives were on hand to greet Cuong Nguyen and Ha Hieu Ho, Christian ministers and cellmates in Vietnam, and their families.

Among the well-wishers were 30 Vietnamese ministers from the West Coast and Canada, including representatives of four of the five Vietnamese churches in San Diego.

“I really didn’t expect this many people,” Cuong Nguyen said through tears.

Nguyen, who will live with a nephew in Poway, and Ho were the first former Vietnamese political prisoners allowed to emigrate to the United States under an accord reached in July between Washington and Hanoi after seven years of negotiations. About 700 former prisoners from Vietnam are expected to arrive in the United States by the end of January, according to the State Department, many of them in San Diego County.

Yet neither Nguyen nor Ho wanted to leave his country. Each would have preferred to take his ministry to the Vietnamese people.

“Persecution as a Christian minister is a matter of fact in a communist country. I was prepared for that,” said Nguyen, 49, whose Saigon church was shut down when he was arrested in 1983. “I feel happy about being persecuted for my faith. It is a blessing.

“The arrest of ministers has strengthened the faith of the church members because they come closer to God, and through their faith and their prayers, God has been working.”

Nguyen, who said he was not mistreated in prison, said he and Ho quietly converted more than 200 people to Christianity while in the camps.

Since 1975, Christianity has been oppressed in Vietnam, and Christians meeting in private homes rely on tourists to smuggle in Bibles. Nguyen does not see that oppression ending.

He and Ho were the only two ministers in the first wave of 300 freed political prisoners who will come to the United States in the next week. Mechanical problems with the airplane that was to take the 300 to Tokyo prevented all but Nguyen, Ho and their families from making the Friday flight. Another flight had 15 open seats, and Nguyen and Ho were among the lucky ones to get on.

One welcomer who served three years in the prison camps and then escaped the country in 1980 recalled some of his experiences with Nguyen as a Christian in Vietnam.

“We had a lot of hard times together after the fall of Saigon,” said Luc Nguyen, who, with Cuong Nguyen, had led a Christian youth group that flourished during that country’s civil war. Luc, no relation, now lives in Garden Grove and operates a construction firm. “We got together after I got out of camp just to fellowship together, and the communist government nearly put me back into the camps.”

To some, the release of Nguyen and Ho was a surprise, although those who had been working closely with the State Department said it had been expected for more than a year.

But Sinh Nguyen, Cuong Nguyen’s nephew, said he had stopped listening to promises of a release from the Vietnam government.

“They have been promising for so long now,” Sinh Nguyen said. “I did not believe it until he got to Bangkok.”

For brother Tuoi Nguyen, the anticipation of Cuong’s arrival was nerve-wracking.

Friday started at 4 a.m. for Tuoi, 57. He couldn’t sleep. He knew the flight wasn’t to arrive until 5 1/2 hours later and that immigration would take at least another hour.

But, with the moon still high in the sky and the colors of sunrise making only a faint impression, he and his wife left their Oceanside house to start the two-hour trip.

After a stop in Westminster to pick up his daughter, Bich Loan, and her family, they were back on Interstate 405. The heavy traffic made Tuoi Nguyen visibly anxious as he wrung his hands and frequently checked his watch. “Will we be late?” he asked, despite the early hour.

A picture published in The Times of his brother and Ho at the Tokyo airport only whetted his appetite.

“He looks good. He looks very good,” Tuoi Nguyen said, although he could not tell for certain whether his brother had lost weight, noting only that his face looked a little thinner.

“He’s thin and skinny, but he’s smiling,” said Tuoi’s sister Nga Nguyen Do, who had flown from Seattle to greet her brother. Do also had not seen Nguyen since 1975, when she fled Vietnam.

Nephews, nieces and grandchildren too young to know Nguyen but old enough to understand what he has accomplished nodded reverently at the picture.

When Do saw him in person, her eyes filled with tears as they hugged.

And Nguyen, despite his reservations about leaving Vietnam, said he is glad to have found a new home.

“I just want to express my appreciation for the people who have been working for my release and bringing me to the United States,” he said, “and my appreciation to the American people that they will receive me here.”