Family’s Celebrations Are a Lifeline--Lest They Forget

The home of Kim-Nhung Ha and her husband, Vinh Ha, is modest, in need of repairs, near the heart of Little Saigon.

Not long ago they placed iron bars across the windows. They’ve been burglarized twice.

When gang graffiti appears on the outside wall, the one that separates their property from the street, they cover it with white paint.

Although they can’t translate the strange, Cyrillic-like symbols, they understand their meaning. It is trouble. It seems always to return.

Tonight, we, the Has’ guests, are sitting in the living room in chairs and sofas pressed against the walls. It’s Saturday and we have come to have fun--to eat, sing and dance.

“May I have your attention please,” Kim-Nhung, dressed in pink silk finery, is saying into a microphone.

She speaks in English, for my benefit. I am the only one here who does not dream in Vietnamese.

“I asked the police to patrol here tonight,” she goes on. “So if you drink, don’t drive. If you drive, don’t drink.”

These days, this kind of fun needs police protection.

Tonight such thoughts will be tamped down, but still they intrude. Carefree is a feeling that Kim-Nhung has not known for years, although it is not for lack of will.

She plans parties like tonight’s, with family and Vietnamese friends, about once every two months.

The food, with names I can hardly pronounce, is plentiful and good. The music, from a guitar and keyboard, is amplified. A red spotlight is trained on a small, revolving mirrored ball attached to the ceiling, shooting shards of light. The mood, when everything gets under way, is Saigon nightclub.

This is all for fun, to be sure, but a larger, more solemn purpose looms as well. Celebrations connect, nurture and sustain. They are a lifeline.

Here, among themselves, Kim-Nhung and her family and friends give thanks for what they have: each other and their lives. They know of too many who have lost both.

The party tonight is in honor of the 20th birthday of the Has’ oldest child. He was born Ha-Vinh Duy Khang, which means cheerful. In America, they call him Anthony.

Kim-Nhung and Vinh have five other children, four girls and a boy. The youngest, who is 7, was born nearby. She is named after a flower in Kim-Nhung’s garden. Her sister, two years older, first glimpsed the world in a Thai refugee camp. Her name, in Vietnamese, means perfume of God.

All of the children have changed their names--to Tracey, Jonathan, Kim, Jenny and Linda. They picked them out themselves. They are Americans now. They have been since December of 1986.

But Kim-Nhung knows that America can change more than just names. Sometimes, it sets people adrift and they forget who they are. Kim-Nhung will not allow that to happen. Not in her family, not after all that they have been through.

Like so many thousands of Vietnamese refugees, the Has almost did not make it here. When they tried to escape Communist Vietnam by sea, they were caught and jailed. Both Kim-Nhung and Vinh lost their jobs--she as a teacher, he as a civilian South Vietnamese navy employee--and their home.

Two years later, they tried again, over the region’s rough terrain. They walked, mostly, from Saigon across South Vietnam, up through Cambodia and, finally, to the first of four refugee camps in Thailand. The horrific odyssey claimed the lives of many in their group. All were terrorized; many went mad.

Now, like the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust or those who lived through the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, they bear a legacy that will never let them forget.

Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the city the Has had called home. It is her responsibility, Kim-Nhung believes, to tell the world about what she saw.

In the midst of the party, she goes to retrieve a massive loose-leaf binder, which represents six years of work, at nights and on weekends. This, written in neat, Vietnamese script, is the complete story of the Has’ ordeal under Communist rule and their journey to the United States, where they arrived on Oct. 16, 1980.

I cannot understand a word, although earlier I had read bits of it, in English translation, published by San Diego’s Boat People S.O.S. Committee. Other parts have been published, in Vietnamese, by newspapers in Canada, Westminster and Santa Ana. Kim-Nhung is hoping the whole story will come out, in English, but she cannot translate it herself.

We talk about this a little, and some of the other guests join in. The man sitting next to Kim-Nhung, the manager of the real estate office where she works, was a first lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army. He was in a re-education camp for five years after that.

Then the music starts up again, with Kim-Nhung’s husband at the mike. He sings a Vietnamese song, which Kim-Nhung translates as “He Forgot His Heart in Paris.” Another man is recording everything on videocassette. People are eating, having a good time.

“Love You Forever” and “Remember Saigon” are songs belted out next. Even children too young to remember much about their parents’ former lives are singing along heartily.

With celebrations such as these, Kim-Nhung knows it will be harder to forget.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.