the echo of war

To call it a choice isn’t quite right, because a choice implies empowerment. This was more of a curse that tainted lives and love and left the Tran family with its cruelest memories.

Five years after being cast into separate lives, the Trans remember everything. The parents, now nestled in Southern California suburbia, cannot forget how their older children in Vietnam struggle with hand-to-mouth lives, uprooted identities and hopeless dreams. They remember the block walls of the airport in Ho Chi Minh City, the fluorescent tubes blinking and buzzing as they stood in the portal of the “ticket-holders only” corridor, squeezing each other breathless. Mother Dam Tran cannot forget the moment of separation.

“I will die early,” pleaded the son she was leaving behind. “Please save me.”

She handed over her life savings--50,000 dong, about $3.50--and said, “I don’t know how.” She refused to look back even as he cried out, then fainted on the tile floor.

Conventional wisdom suggests the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, when Communist troops stormed the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon and claimed victory in a “conflict” that claimed more than 3 million lives. The most fortunate South Vietnamese clawed their way onto helicopters, C-130s, rickety fishing boats, anything that looked as if it could fly or float out of the country. That was that: Ugly. Embarrassing. But over.

Actually, less than 10% of Vietnamese immigrants and refugees left immediately after the fall of Saigon. For the rest, it would take 10, 15, 25 years for their torment to play out. That’s the real impact of war. It’s not a wound. It’s an infection. It erupted in the Tran family in 1995, 20 years after it became clear that the war had stained their name.

Shortly after the fall of Saigon, family patriarch Tai Tran, a South Vietnamese infantry officer, was trying to resuscitate his jackfruit trees and chom chom bushes on the Tran homestead in Phuoc Long. Viet Cong troops, convinced he had been a CIA operative, threw him in prison. He remained there for six years without trial, denying the charge, while his overwhelmed wife, Dam Tran, began placing some of their six children with relatives.

In 1978, they realized they were living a Vietnamese version of “The Scarlet Letter” when 7-year-old Tu, a skinny but seemingly healthy son, got very sick. Dam Tran took him to a hospital, but she suspects that doctors were forbidden from treating him because of his father’s past. They still don’t know why he died.

When Tai Tran was released in 1981, the Trans knew they had to get out, but it took another 14 years before they could leave. By the time they were able to act, in 1995, they faced a devil’s choice: to stay in Vietnam, branded as traitors for Tai Tran’s wartime role, or leave behind daughter Be Ba and son Tuan, who had both married, unaware that U.S. law prohibits married children from emigrating with their parents.

So Tai and Dam Tran made a choice that no parent should have to make. They decided to separate in the hope that at least one faction would find freedom, if not happiness.They left behind their oldest children, their children’s spouses and their three grandchildren, stranding them in a country where ancestry is everything.

Today the parents and three youngest children live in Stanton. They struggle financially, but life is becoming a mosaic of frozen pizzas, skateboards and well-kept lawns. Their teenage daughter, who couldn’t count past 10 in English when they arrived, has a 3.8 GPA and wants to be a pediatrician.

The older children left behind make about a dollar a day. At times, they cannot afford salt, much less meat. Be Ba makes rice cakes to sell on a Can Tho city sidewalk. Her brother Tuan tries to maintain the family farm on his own. His tiny 5-year-old daughter has a persistent cough. Her front teeth are black, and no one is sure why. Because of the expense, she probably won’t finish middle school.

“The war did this,” says Be Ba. “I used to hope that we would be able to come to the United States, but it has been a long time. I can’t hope anymore.”

Scott Gold and Mai Tran are staff writers in The Times’ Orange County edition.