Farewell, Vietnam : One Family Overcomes 15 Years of Hardship, Persecution to Emigrate to U.S.

As the aging Vietnam Airlines jet banks sharply and begins its descent, nearly all 86 passengers press their faces against the tiny round windows to glimpse the urban sprawl that swims out of Bangkok’s mist.

Pointing out high-rise office towers and highways jammed with cars, these are not simply curious travelers from the hinterlands of Vietnam making their first visit to a developed country. Instead, they are people who have fear and uncertainty etched in their faces, families who have decided to abandon their homeland.

Seated in the first three rows of the aircraft are six members of the Luong family, headed to the unfamiliar world of El Toro, in Orange County. Luong Huu Loc, the 49-year-old patriarch, had been a police captain in the South Vietnamese government. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he served seven years in a “re-education camp,” a combination penal colony and political indoctrination center.

Accompanying Loc is his 47-year-old wife, Vo Thi Hon, who a month earlier suffered a stroke and now is paralyzed on her right side. She is propped up by a pile of airline pillows.

With the couple are their four daughters--Dung, Trang, Tranh and My Hien. Each wears her best ao dai, the elegant silk trouser-suit that for centuries has been the Vietnamese woman’s garment of choice for special occasions.

As the Vietnamese plane touches down at the Bangkok airport, an eerie silence falls over the passengers: no applause or laughter, no cheers. One daughter daubs makeup on the face of Vo Thi Hon, who, because of her stroke, has difficulty speaking.

Tears cascade down the mother’s cheeks.

On this day, the Vietnamese plane has been chartered by the International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based refugee assistance group. All passengers, apart from two Western journalists, are emigrating from Vietnam to the United States, Australia or Canada.

Although overshadowed by the human tide known as the “boat people,” who have fled Vietnam against daunting odds, tens of thousands of Vietnamese are now leaving legally under a plan called the Orderly Departure Program. Starting with a trickle in the early 1980s, the program has grown to a flood of emigrants, with nearly 4,000 leaving for the United States each month--more than any other ethnic group.

The stroke that incapacitated Hon--like all Vietnamese, she is known by her third name--was only the latest in a run of bad fortune that had dogged the Luong family’s efforts to get out of Vietnam.

As with many South Vietnamese, their story really began in April, 1975, when American troops pulled out of Vietnam and the Communists came to power. Loc decided to stay, worried how the new regime would treat his elderly mother.

“My wife wanted to go at that time, but she stayed with me,” Loc recalled in an interview at his scuffed wooden dining table in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. “If only we had left at that time. . . . We are both full of regrets.”

Almost immediately, Loc was arrested and shipped to the re-education camp. In 1980, while he was still there, the family applied to emigrate to Canada, but the Canadians turned them down.

Five years later, in August, 1985, the couple’s two sons--Trung, now 23, and Duy, 17--escaped by boat and made their way to a refugee camp in Indonesia. Eventually they emigrated to the United States and found a home with Hon’s sister in Orange County.

When they knew the young men had reached safety, the remaining family tried to escape by paying $1,000 each to smugglers. They were arrested by police on the eve of their departure.

Loc was sent to prison camp again, this time for 22 months.

Then two things changed to help the family’s struggle: First, in 1987, the Vietnamese government began cooperating with U.S. authorities to draw up lists of people wanting to leave the country, after previously following a policy of dragging its feet.

The second development came in 1989, when Washington and Hanoi reached a historic understanding: The United States agreed to receive as refugees any former South Vietnamese officials who had served at least three years in a re-education camp, as well as their wives and children. Hanoi simply agreed to let these former enemies go.

Three main categories of Vietnamese now qualify for the Orderly Departure Program. First are Amerasians, the offspring of U.S. servicemen, whose “face is their passport,” in the words of one official. More than 14,000 have left in 1990 alone.

Next are family reunification cases involving relatives of Vietnamese who have already moved to the United States. Finally are those accepted as refugees, such as the re-education cases, who don’t require relatives in the United States to qualify but who must have a “well-founded fear of persecution.”

There are 700,000 pending family reunification cases and the waiting list in that category is more than eight years long. But the re-education camp cases have been accorded special status by both sides. Already, the Vietnamese have provided 60,000 names to the Americans and these have received top priority to leave.

“The only restrictions now are set by the receiving countries,” said Luu Van Tanh, deputy director of Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry. “This is the big obstacle.”

Earlier this year, The Times sent a reporter and photographer to Vietnam to follow a family through the process of leaving. It took two separate trips lasting nearly three weeks totally to follow them through the maze of bureaucracy to get out.

On April 11, the Luongs interviewed with an officer of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Ho Chi Minh City.

Clutching the family’s documents in a brown plastic satchel, Loc sits on a long wooden bench with his wife and daughters. When a Vietnamese translator mentions that some American journalists are looking for a family going to Orange County, Loc leaps up like a schoolboy.

“It touches your heartstrings in a lot of cases,” says Mike Gosslin, an INS agent interviewing former re-education camp inmates. “You come out in gooseflesh when the families tell you what they have lived through and how they have managed to stay together for these 15 years.”

After a 12-minute private interview, the Luongs are cleared to leave for the United States. Two days later, they report to Cho Ray hospital, where all have blood tests to show that they do not have AIDS or syphilis, as well as blood pressure checks and X-rays to test for tuberculosis. The Luongs leave expectantly to await their results.

Loc and his family live in a two-story concrete building in central Ho Chi Minh City. By Southern California standards, the house would be regarded as too small to call an attached garage. But in Vietnam, it is almost palatial.

The large downstairs room is halved by a drape hung under a electric statue of Jesus, which radiates colored light when plugged in--a tribute to Hon’s unshaken faith in Roman Catholicism. In front is the living room. In the rear is the kitchen, consisting of a cold-water tap and a small charcoal brazier, and the bathroom--a cold-water tap and a hole in the floor. Upstairs is a small, windowless sleeping room.

“We do all the housework, such as laundry, by hand,” says Trang, the couple’s 21-year-old daughter. “We have no modern conveniences here.”

In the living room sits a Chinese-made pedestal sewing machine, the sole source of the family’s income--apart from gifts from relatives abroad--in the months before they finally leave Vietnam. Dung (pronounced Yung), the couple’s 23-year-old daughter, apprenticed as a seamstress for nearly a year and with the other girls made shirts and blouses with custom embroidery.

Now, Loc seems vague about how he will manage to feed his family in the United States. Although he had held the title of police captain, he was in reality a bureaucrat, stamping visas for foreigners in Saigon. He has no skills.

“I know I have nothing now,” Loc says. “I’ll have to start again. I can’t imagine what the situation is there or what kind of job I’ll get.”

He is counting on Hon’s sister, who adopted the Western name Christine and started a small company in Orange County, to provide work. Until now, she has sent him $200 a month.

Financially, life in Vietnam has grown increasingly difficult for the Luongs. At one point they owned a perfume stall, but the official taxes were so high that it was hardly worthwhile. Because of his police background, Loc charges, the Communist authorities would not let him hold a regular job. (Overall, there are more than 1 million unemployed in Vietnam, about 20% of the work force, according to International Labor Organization estimates.)

Indeed, since the end of the war, Vietnam has suffered the twin plagues of a U.S.-led economic embargo and 15 years of Communist inefficiency. To help remove the U.S. embargo, Vietnam withdrew militarily from Cambodia in 1989 and started cooperating with Washington on bilateral issues, which finally led to a diplomatic opening between the two countries earlier this year.

Hanoi has tried to introduce economic reforms, a variant of the Soviet Union’s perestroika policy known as doi moi. The reforms were an initial success: Western goods, such as television sets and Marlboro cigarettes, flooded in after a long consumer drought; Vietnam produced rice in such quantities that it became the world’s third-largest exporter.

But while reforms reduced the annual inflation rate from 1,100% to 2% in just one year, it had rebounded to nearly 50% by late this year. Vietnamese were spending money on consumer items, not investing in factories.

Vietnam’s reforms also saw the rise of private banks and investor cooperatives that promised savers a return on their money of 10% or more every month. State enterprises, hard-pressed to stay afloat in the new economic climate, invested their money in the banks rather than machinery. In 1990, they all went bankrupt, producing some of the largest public protests since the war’s end.

Among the unfortunate investors, Loc put 38 million Vietnamese dong--then the equivalent of $8,500, a princely sum in Vietnam--in one investment fund. Making matters worse, Loc was so sure of profits that he had borrowed most of the investment from Dung’s boyfriend, Nguyen Van Doan.

“I don’t have any hope of getting the money back,” Loc said in an interview several months after the family received permission to leave Vietnam. “The money is lost. I’ve worried so much, I’ve lost four kilos (almost nine pounds). We even sold the sewing machine.”

The coup de grace came from Ho Chi Minh City housing officials, who noted that anyone who had reached the level of police captain or above under the old regime must surrender his property to the government when leaving the country. The house, valued at $25,000, would have to be given away for the Luongs to get exit permission.

Although the economic side has opened up in the last two years, the future is still bleak. “People are mostly applying (to leave) for economic reasons,” said one Foreign Ministry official, who specializes in the Orderly Departure Program. “They think they will get richer in America.”

Loc adds: “Mainly, I’m concerned about the future of my children. I’m rather old, and I can’t expect anything special for me. But I can do something for my family.”

In July, in a neatly typed letter that arrives at The Times’ Bangkok bureau, Loc writes to say that Hon has been sent to An Binh Hospital with “blood lacking heart disease fully, chills completely and the blood is stuck to circulate up to the brain wholly.” In other words, Hon has suffered a stroke--and Loc wants help in getting her to the United States as soon as possible.

Ironically, the Luong family has been informed that it has passed the medical examination with flying colors. They are scheduled to leave the country Monday, Aug. 13.

Less than a week before the departure from Ho Chi Minh City, Loc appears pinched and drawn, and his previous exuberance about moving to California has nearly evaporated.

“We don’t feel very happy because of the situation of my wife,” he says. After a month, Hon remains in a private hospital room.

Because of her condition, the Luongs ask friends not to come to say goodby. Nonetheless, a steady stream of former re-education camp inmates arrives at the house to sit and chat, as if some of the Luongs’ good fortune will rub off on them.

Indeed, Ho Chi Minh City appears to be bursting with ex-inmates desperate to get out. Not only the Luongs’ neighbors, but also Hon’s doctor, her acupuncturist, even the man at the housing authority who comes to take away the Luongs’ house, have been in re-education and want to leave Vietnam.

“I dream about L.A.,” says the housing man confidentially.

On a Thursday, four days before departure, Loc and two of his daughters take their suitcases to the customs shed at Tan Son Nhut Airport. There, the contents will be examined before permission is granted for export. In jewelry, they may take out no more than a ring of gold each; artworks also are banned.

In the old aircraft hangar that constitutes the customs office, the eldest daughter, Dung, introduces her boyfriend, Doan, whose money Loc had lost. For the first time, the pain of impending separation is evident.

“She has no choice. Her family is going away,” Doan says. “Every separation is sad.” Dung later reveals that she had refused to marry Doan because she felt it might jeopardize the entire family’s chances for emigration. Married children cannot participate in the Orderly Departure Program.

On Saturday, it is time for formal farewells. Loc and his daughters go to say goodby to his mother, who wears a dazzling white ao dai for the occasion.

“I’ll miss him, but I’ll feel happy for my son. He has been waiting 10 years to leave. It’s very difficult to get a job here,” the elderly woman says.

Upstairs in the house is a well-maintained Buddhist shrine, where Loc and his daughters light joss sticks and pray to their ancestors. A photograph of Loc’s father, who was also a policeman under the French, unmistakably shows the family’s Chinese ancestry.

Without tears or hugs, the Luongs are out the door. A government translator says the family probably will return secretly later that night for their final goodbys.

On what they believe will be their last day in Vietnam, Loc rents a minivan from a private company and loads his wife and family into the car for the departure check at Cho Ray hospital--normally a mere formality. But the doctor is aghast when he sees Hon. He orders a cardiogram and notes that he is “very worried about her heart.” Loc looks like the bottom has just fallen out of his life.

The family returns to An Binh Hospital in despair. Although their own doctor had assured Hon she is fit to travel, the Cho Ray doctor leaves them with a dilemma: He doesn’t says she can’t leave, but he won’t give the green light either.

Still, after several hours of inquiries, it is determined that a stroke is not a barrier to travel unless it has happened in the last two weeks. They will be allowed to leave after all.

Back at the Luong house, word spreads that the trip is on. Loc’s brother, a former army sergeant, arrives with a cart to carry away remaining furniture.

The youngest daughter, My Hien, a moon-faced 14-year-old, has said nothing for days. But now, as the family puts their two dogs in the cart, she bursts into tears and rushes out of the house.

The Luongs spend the last night camped on the floor around Hon’s hospital bed. Distant cousins come to take pictures and say goodby. Occasionally, Loc slips money into a poor relative’s pocket. But he has just paid a 1.9-million-dong hospital bill (about $350) and has little money left.

The rented van arrives to take the family to the airport at 5 a.m. for a 7:30 flight. Although there is no traffic in Ho Chi Minh City even at midday, customs formalities can be excruciatingly slow.

Loc smiles for the first time in several days and says in halting English: “This plane I don’t want to miss.”

Tan Son Nhut Airport has not improved since the Americans left in 1975. There are no seats inside, and Hon lies on the floor in front of the check-in counters.

A crowd presses on the single entrance, hoping for a final glimpse of a departing relative.

Trang, the 21-year-old daughter, is held passionately by her boyfriend, but the press of the crowd soon forces them apart. Their hands clasp briefly, then are pulled apart. The boyfriend disappears into the crowd like a man going backward over a waterfall.

Dung’s boyfriend Doan, meanwhile, worms his way past the guard. The couple sits with heads lowered, silent.

A brief crisis erupts at customs when a dour-looking woman official decides that the ring on Hon’s finger, with tiny diamonds in a half-moon, is too valuable to export. A pathetic struggle ensues, until customs takes pity on Hon’s paralysis and finally waves her through.

When the flight is finally called, Hon is taken out a baggage door in a wheelchair. Her family heaves her up a flight of stairs onto the aircraft.

Although getting out of Vietnam is the hardest part of the trip, the Luongs’ ordeal is by no means over. Arriving in Bangkok, they are transferred to an immigration holding center until their flight to the United States. Usually, the wait is only three or four days, but the Luongs are told that because of the summer tourist crush, their flight will not come for 10 days.

Conditions in the prison-like holding center are appalling: With no beds or chairs, Hon must lie on a reed mat on a concrete floor; rats and cockroaches are everywhere.

At last the family receives another preflight check. Hon’s illness is discovered and she is moved to a government hospital to await her flight. But there is more bad news: Because she must travel under medical supervision, the departure will be delayed another three weeks.

On Sept. 6, the Luongs finally boarded Northwest Airlines to San Francisco.

Hon was transferred immediately to the UC Irvine Medical Center for tests paid for by the U.S. government.

Like all refugees, the Luongs had to sign a note promising to pay back the U.S. government for the price of their tickets, and Loc still worries about not yet finding a job.

The family now lives in the home of Loc’s nephew, Robert Nguyen, in El Toro. Loc stays home to take care of Hon, who still receives physical treatment at UCI. He is learning to drive and he and his daughters plan to study English as soon as they can get into a class. They also are getting reacquainted with Trung and Duy, whom they hadn’t seen in five years.

“They are very happy here,” says Loc’s niece, Janine Le, of Laguna Niguel.

In December, Loc sent a letter describing his new life in America:

“Everything is so different, most is great, a few things are negative (like the smog, and I can never find enough time to do things that need to be done). But generally speaking, life is better than I have ever thought it could possibly be.”