Ex-Prisoners Celebrate : Resettlement: Focus is on the future for hundreds at a gathering of former detainees in political ‘re-education’ camps in Vietnam.

Father Que Dinh Ngoc is no stranger to tragedy.

During the Vietnam War, he ministered to South Vietnamese soldiers fighting alongside U.S. forces. As the chief chaplain of the Saigon military district, Ngoc was held in high regard by his countrymen.

That changed in 1975, the year the Communists took over Vietnam.

Suddenly a Catholic priest was an enemy of the people. Thrown into a “re-education” camp in the northern province of Hoang Lien Son, Ngoc endured 13 years of hard labor--hammering boulders into bricks and hiking miles on end to find a sturdy bamboo pole. He wore the same clothes for months at a time.

For all of his efforts, Ngoc said he was fed two fistfuls of rice and corn a day until his release in 1988.

On Sunday--just a month after landing in the United States--Ngoc donned a newly pressed cleric’s shirt and collar and greeted hundreds of former political prisoners and their families who gathered at Golden West College to celebrate their recent arrival in the United States.

“I’m happy to see freedom,” Ngoc, 67, said through an interpreter.

The United States and Vietnam in 1989 signed an agreement allowing prisoners released from Communist re-education camps to leave for resettlement in the United States.

Sunday’s celebration was hosted by the Viet Nam Political Detainees Mutual Assn., a Westminster-based group that has helped resettle 1,070 political detainees and their families in this country in the last few years.

Some 2,337 detainees are still in refugee camps in Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Malaysia, according to the association.

The former political prisoners were treated Sunday to an eclectic mix of Americana and Vietnamese customs. Hands over their hearts, the detainees listened to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then broke into the anthem of the former South Vietnam, “Quoc Ca Viel Nam”.

Former officials in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam--most of them detained in the re-education camps--stood to applause as their names were called out. Those now in the United States were asked to donate money and resources to help prisoners still in Vietnam or in refugee camps.

“Please do not forget the ones we left behind,” pleaded one speaker.

In a brief speech, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) criticized the idea of normalizing relations with the Communist government in Vietnam.

“We should not be normalizing relations with liars and despots,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher was just one of hundreds of people who focused on the future. Nguyen Hoy Hung, 63, said Sunday that he came to the United States for the sake of the next generation--his nine children.

Formerly the chief editor of Tien Tuyen Daily News--a newspaper that was read by South Vietnamese forces--Nguyen was detained in re-education camps scattered throughout Vietnam from 1975 to 1988.

During his incarceration, Nguyen said, he once had a 104-degree fever and was given half his tiny ration of food because he wasn’t able to work.

“I thought I would die and never see my wife and children,” Nguyen said through an interpreter.

Nguyen, a slim man with wire-rimmed glasses and a tiny goatee, said his nine children would never have been able to attend a university in Vietnam or get a decent job there because of his pro-South Vietnamese activities.

“I’m glad to get to the United States and build a new life,” Nguyen said.