The End of a Dream: From Vietnamese Prison to L.A.

Ten days out of prison and nearly three days without sleep, the Rev. Cuong Huu Nguyen stepped through a door into Los Angeles International Airport and was captured in the arms of a stranger.

Strobe lights popped. Cheers broke out from a crowd of about 100 well-wishers. Video cameras whirred.

Nguyen stood motionless in the embrace for several seconds. Then he realized that the stranger in his arms was the brother he had not seen in 15 years.

He closed his eyes and hugged back.

It was the first of what is expected to be thousands of reunions in coming months between former Vietnamese political prisoners and their relatives in Southern California. As many as 7,000 political detainees and their families may resettle in the United States by September under a special accord between Hanoi and Washington.

Some of the refugees are former South Vietnamese military officers who have spent a decade in “re-education camps.” Others were bureaucrats in the American-backed South Vietnamese regime. Still others, like Nguyen and his cellmate, the Rev. Ha Hieu Ho, are clergymen whose claims of political neutrality were rejected by the communist government.

Some of the first 13 emigres who arrived in Southern California on Friday had waited, saved and risked imprisonment in order to leave Vietnam.

“We’re overjoyed that we’ve escaped a desolate country,” said Hoang Huy Nguyen, 30, who traveled with four sisters and a niece. “Our only regret is that our parents have died and could not come with us.”

But the Nguyens would not leave their parents’ remains behind. Their scanty luggage included a plastic shopping bag containing their parents’ ashes in urns.

“Our family has gone through so much hell in Vietnam, there is nothing left to hold us there,” said one of the four sisters, Kim Chi Nguyen. She said her father died in a prison camp in 1978 and her mother died last April while waiting for permission to emigrate.

The Nguyens plan to join two brothers in Glendale. Hoang Huy Nguyen said he wants to become an auto mechanic. He said he is prepared to work hard.

“My sisters and I are not young dreamers,” he said. “Anywhere we go, we know we have to work hard. We want to create our own future.”

Unlike the Nguyens, however, the two ministers said they were reluctant to leave their Evangelical Church of Vietnam congregations behind. The pastors said they had served only six years of their eight-year sentence for “counterrevolutionary propaganda” when they were told they would be put on a plane for the United States.

“It was either leave the country or finish the sentence,” Rev. Nguyen said. “We chose to leave.”

Rev. Ho said that Vietnamese officials first insisted that they sign a pledge never to return to Vietnam, but that they refused. In the end, they signed an agreement not to return without government permission.

During the flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, Ho looked around the dark cabin at the sleeping figures of his family and friends.

“I didn’t want to leave Vietnam,” Ho said. “I feel a large responsibility to the congregation. All the years I was in prison, the flock supported my family. And I couldn’t bear to leave them. That’s why I am both happy and sad.”

Prison conditions were harsh. Ho said they subsisted on two bowls of rice and a bowl of soup a day, slept on a bare floor until their family managed to get them blankets, and did a stint of punishing manual labor. But the clergymen were not beaten or singled out for punishment, he said, and even managed to secretly convert about 200 fellow prisoners to Christianity.

Ho spoke slowly of his difficulties with the government, weighing each word.

“If I say anything against the communists, it’ll make it harder to go back. I truly hope that in about seven years I’ll be able to return,” he said.

Asked how he arrived at the seven-year figure, Ho grinned.

“To give Hanoi and Washington time to work out the arrangements,” he joked.

Just before the United Air Lines flight touched down in Los Angeles, the ministers’ wives donned ao dai, the traditional Vietnamese long silk blouse worn over flowing pants. They were greeted in the airport lobby by clergymen and parishioners from 11 Orange County and Riverside County Vietnamese churches, along with friends they had not seen in 15 years.

Some relatives examined their loved ones for signs of change, remarking on the gray hair, signs of prison fatigue, and even middle-age spread.

“Hoang thought he was fat until he saw you,” said Kim Chi Nguyen, comparing her Americanized oldest brother to her newly arrived younger one.

Meanwhile, Cuong The Trang stared with amazement at the 7-year-old daughter he had never seen. Trang had fled Vietnam for Australia by boat in 1981, and was forced to leave his pregnant wife behind. He had flown to Los Angeles from Australia to greet them and was still in a daze.

Trang looked from mother to child and back again. And again.

“I have a grown daughter!” he marveled.

A second flight later in the day brought another batch of refugees, who had made an intermediate stop in Seattle.

Tu Manh Dao, 56, of Los Angeles, hugged his brother, Hung Anh Dao, 48, and vowed, “We’ll never be separated again.”

Steve Dao, 35, a computer programmer from West Covina, looked at the uncle he had not seen in 15 years. “For our family,” he said, “the war ends right here.”

Times staff writer Ashley Dunn contributed to this report.