Children of the Enemy Page 3

  A man from Saigon came to see me and said he had a family that wanted to go to America with me. He said they would give my family some gold. So I said okay, and they gave my family enough to build this new house.

  Recently, a new scam has surfaced. Amerasians and their families go through the application process, and once they are approved and ready to go, noneligible Vietnamese take their place at the airport. In this way, an Amerasian, changing his name and using easily obtainable falsified documents, can sell himself many times and realize a tidy profit. A number of these stand-ins have been caught recently at Tan Son Nhut airport in Ho Chi Minh City, and in the PRPC.

  RESETTLEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

  More than 70,000 Amerasians and family members have left Vietnam and resettled in America; about 21,000 are themselves Amerasians, the rest are accompanying relatives.6 It is estimated that only a few thousand bona fide Amerasians remain in Vietnam.

  A 1989 study indicates that Amerasians with limited schooling, those arriving in the United States without their mothers or accompanying family members, and those fathered by African-Americans are especially at risk for problems in adaptation.7 Indeed, for many Amerasians, particularly those who fall into these categories, resettlement has not been easy. Most Amerasians come as “free cases,” having no relatives to welcome them in the United States. These free cases are resettled in “cluster sites,” selected cities that have social service providers experienced in dealing with Amer-asians and that can potentially provide adequate support. With strained budgets and increasing caseloads, this is not always the reality.

  The majority of the new arrivals, like most refugees and immigrants, wind up where apartments are available and rent is cheapest, in run-down inner-city neighborhoods. Unlike most other refugee groups, Amerasians rarely have strong family or community support to rely on. Most of the Amerasians I spoke with in the PRPC were quite adamant in their avowal not to live with Vietnamese in the United States. Once here, however, their options are limited by language, finances, and a lack of familiarity with American culture. Many find themselves in the ironic predicament of having left Vietnam to escape life on the fringe of Vietnamese society, only to find themselves in the same situation in one of the various little Saigons around the United States.

  Amerasians who have developed unrealistically optimistic expectations about their futures in America are often disappointed. Those who grew up in Vietnam reviled as Americans and as a result identified themselves with the United States find out quickly that culturally, linguistically, in all ways but appearance, they are Vietnamese. For those who banked on easy acceptance and integration into American society, this can be a shattering realization, confusing already fragile identities.

  Given general backgrounds of limited education, poverty, parental loss, and discrimination, the hurdles these Amerasians face are formidable. Not surprisingly, in the United States, as in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, many find it difficult to deal with the structured environment of school, as well as the intricacies of the English language. Few U.S. high schools are set up to deal with non-English-speaking students who lack even minimal academic backgrounds. Dropout rates are high. A large number of the Amerasians coming over now are too old for the public school system, but are eligible for adult English-as-a-Second-Language Programs. A case worker formerly working in Virginia reports difficulty in motivating her Amerasian clients to attend. “Many worked in Chinese restaurants owned by Vietnamese,” she says, “and had only Vietnamese-speaking friends. They never had to learn English.” She also lists low self-esteem and fear of failure as deterrents.

  Blacks, who often bore the heaviest load of discrimination in Vietnam, can face special adjustment difficulties. Having grown up with their race the object of scorn, many have internalized negative racial stereotypes about people of color. This has sometimes made attempts at matching black Amerasians with black American sponsors or black Big Brothers/Big Sisters problematic.

  Mothers of Amerasians face their own set of problems. Many are unmarried and must meet the challenges of single motherhood in an un-familiar land at the same time they make the difficult transition to American life. A large number have limited education and few marketable job skills. Some find themselves isolated in the Vietnamese community in America, as they were in Vietnam, by virtue of having had Amerasian children. Support groups for these women have formed in several cities, venues where they can find empathy and assistance.

  The search for long-gone fathers and husbands, often described by the Amerasians and their mothers in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center as a priority, is usually put on hold while they adjust to American life, look for jobs, and settle in. Many come with far too little information on which to base a search. For others, fear of rejection probably plays a role in their reticence. A significant number, however, do pursue the father search, generally through the American Red Cross. If the father is located, he is apprised of the situation, and the decision to contact the Amerasian or to supply his address or phone number is left up to him. The men who lived and fathered children with Vietnamese women during the war have gone on with their lives, often remarrying and raising families. The appearance of a child and spouse from twenty years past is not always welcome. Only about 2 percent of the father searches end positively.

  Anita Menghetti, a consultant for Amerasian resettlement with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in Washington, D.C., describes disenfranchisement in Vietnam as the root of the Amerasians’ difficulties. “They were denied legitimacy as Vietnamese persons,” Menghetti states. “Hope has been bludgeoned out of them. [Bringing the Amer-asians to America is] just like taking any group of disenfranchised people from the United States and plopping them in a foreign culture and asking them to adapt.”

  At the same time, Menghetti stresses that too much publicity has been given to the problems Amerasians have encountered and very little has been written about the numerous success stories. Many Amerasians have gone to Job Corps or skills training programs and are successfully holding down steady jobs. A number have graduated from high school, some with honors, and have gone on to college. One black Amerasian, despite only five years of schooling in Vietnam, graduated in the top ten of her high school class, no mean feat. Joe Nguyen, whose narrative appears in this book, received hardly any education in Vietnam, but in America he graduated from high school, went through a year of college, and eventually joined the U.S. Air Force. Joe came to America at fifteen with his mother and had the good fortune of being befriended by a concerned American who patiently acted as his mentor. In general, those Amerasians who, like Joe, come to America with the person who was their primary caregiver in Vietnam, find the transition easier. Those who hook up with American mentors often thrive. These mentors may be found through Big Brother/ Big Sister type programs, through churches or schools, or through foster families in the case of Amerasians under eighteen.

  Dr. Julie Macdonald, program director of Children’s Services at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in New York City, succinctly summarizes the Amerasian plight. “Amerasians have had a rougher time [than most Vietnamese], lacking family acceptance, and community acceptance. When they come here, they find that their fantasies that they are American are untrue. They have a lot to get over. We do a disservice to refugees if we believe that all we have to do is to get them into the country, and that no other help is needed.”

  Amerasians and their mothers have walked a long road to get to this country. They are survivors and will persevere here as they did in Vietnam. The spirit of the “Homecoming Act,” by its very name, is one of providing comfort and nurture. With adequate support from resettlement agencies, from community groups, from concerned individuals, Vietnamese Amer-asians can adapt and prosper. Without it, for those lacking in education and family support, survival may be all that the country of their fathers can offer.

  MAKING CHILDREN OF THE ENEMY

  The idea for Children of
the Enemy grew out of a project in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center aimed at providing English reading material for mothers of Amerasians. I interviewed fourteen women, and the resultant oral histories were transcribed for use in their classrooms. Although the literacy project was completed in a few months, my own interest was piqued, and I continued the interviews, expanding them to include the Amerasians themselves. Between January of 1991 and August of 1992, I conducted over a hundred such taped interviews in the refugee center. In May of 1993, I interviewed Tung Joe Nguyen and his wife Julie Nguyen, a Vietnamese Amerasian couple living outside the gate of Misawa air-base in Japan, where Joe was serving in the U.S. Air Force. They were the only interviews I conducted outside the refugee camp, and Joe and Julie were the only interviewees who had already been through resettlement in America.

  The Philippine Refugee Processing Center is divided into ten neighborhoods, each containing refugee quarters, rudimentary classrooms, and a tiny clinic. It was in the refugee housing, referred to as billets, that the majority of the interviews took place. These narrow two-story asbestos and wood units, laid out in rows of ten, house up to twelve refugees in less space than a American might devote to storing his automobile. Ads and articles from old American and Filipino magazines are taped to the bare asbestos walls; Time magazine accounts of Iran-Contra, Playtex bra advertisements, cutouts of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fidelity mutual fund advertisements. None of these are intelligible to the Vietnamese-speaking occupants; their function is decorative, to provide a shot of color in the drab surroundings.

  Another venue for interviews was the PRPC jail, generally called the “Monkey House,” a generic term used by the refugees to refer to any type of detention facility. Refugees who run afoul of the often capricious PRPC regulations do time here, as do those arrested for criminal offenses. In the PRPC, arrest equals conviction; there is no judicial process. Several of the Amerasians whose oral histories appear here were interviewed, at least in part, while they were detainees at the PRPC jail.

  Despite the immense heat, the hectic daily schedules of five hours study and two hours of mandatory “volunteer” work, and the June 15, 1991, eruption of nearby Mt. Pinatubo, which blanketed the refugee camp in six inches of sand and ash, turning lush tropical land into instant moonscape, people were generally eager to tell their stories. Twice, however, after agreeing to be interviewed, mothers of Amerasians declined once I arrived at their billets. Despite my assurances of complete anonymity, they feared that the repercussions of what they might say would endanger their relatives still in Vietnam. They were not alone in their fears; a number of interviewees voiced this concern, even as they agreed to speak. One who assented to tell her story but later backed out explained, “Even if you change my name, the VC will know, they know everything.” I was to hear similar statements many times, eerie testimonials to the government of Vietnam’s success in controlling the lives of its citizens.

  The decision of whether or not to use real names in the oral histories was left up to the interviewee. A number indicated that they preferred not to be referred to by name, or simply to be called by their given names, which in Vietnam are generally the last. There were those who asked to be referred to by specific pseudonyms or nicknames. Some former bar girls had aliases for work, some Amerasians had changed their names when they were “bought” by Vietnamese who claimed them as kin to get out of Vietnam, some mothers of Amerasians had pet names which their American husbands called them. There were those too who requested that their real names appear, sometimes in the hope that a long-gone husband or father might read their narratives and recognize them. Even when permission to use a real name was given, if potentially embarrassing or sensitive disclosures had been made, I changed the name. An oral history headed by a single name indicates either that the narrator’s name has been changed or that only the given name is being used. The use of pseudonyms or nicknames is mentioned in the introduction of the oral histories in which they appear.

  The names of the American boyfriends and husbands, the fathers of the Amerasians, have been changed in the interests of privacy. Three exceptions are those of Henry Higgins and Terry Reynolds, who are deceased, and Lloyd Grow, whose name appears with his permission.

  I note in the individual introduction to each oral history whether the narrator spoke to me in English or in Vietnamese through an interpreter. The interpreters usually were other refugees with good English skills, often those who worked as volunteer translators with one of the agencies in the PRPC. When a narrator did speak in English, I generally edited the resultant narrative as little as was practical in order to retain the color of the account. Therefore, somewhat ironically, the oral histories of those who spoke in English often contain grammatical irregularities and nonstandard usages, while those done through an interpreter have been edited into standard English.

  Saigon is now called Ho Chi Minh City, and a number of provinces and towns have also been renamed since 1975. Old habits die hard, and many still use the former names. In the oral histories, I let the preference of the narrator stand. The Appendix lists the major changes in Vietnamese geographical place names that have occurred since 1975.

  Almost all mothers of Amerasians refer to the American fathers of their children as their husbands, regardless of whether or not they were formally married. This usage is retained in the oral histories.

  The oral histories in this book are divided into three sections. In the first section, the narrators are Amerasians. In the second, they are Amer-asians and their mothers. In the third section, the narrators are mothers of Amerasians. The children of the women in this section were not inter-viewed.

  Some who tell their stories here delivered brief sketches of their lives into my tiny recorder. Others spoke at length, sometimes meeting with me over a period of months. Many became my friends, my frequent companions, and I found myself drawn into the torrent of emotions that the tellings released. Their accounts deal with loss of husbands, of parents, of family, of freedom, of country. Feelings that lie beneath the surface were often dredged up; voices quivered, tears flowed, but the telling went on. Their stories are far from over.

  NOTES

  1. The United States Orderly Departure Program. American Embassy, 1/92.

  2. Home to America, If Not to Daddy, The Economist 19 May 1990: 40.

  3. The United States Orderly Departure Program Statistical Summary. December 1991.

  4. Vietnamese Amerasian Mothers: Psychological Distress and High-Risk Factors. (Washington, D.C.: Office of Refugee Resettlement, 1992) 23.

  5. Leong and Johnson 20.

  6. Amerasian Resettlement. Arlington, Va., lune 25-27, 1992. Washington, D.C.: InterAction Amerasian Resettlement Program under agreement with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 1992. Unpaginated.

  7. Donald A. Ranard, rev. of Vietnamese Amerasians: Practical Implications of Current Research, by Kirk Felsman, Mark C. Johnson, Frederick T.L. Leong, and Irene C. Felsman, In America October 1990: 9.

  AMERASIANS

  Difficult times, some of my brothers

  gone east, some west; wars

  have left fields and gardens desolate;

  families have scattered and refugees

  wander like ghosts or fall like autumn leaves . . .

  Bai Juyi, “Thinking of My Brothers

  and Sister,” Two Hundred Selected Poems

  I will leave my homeland

  as I have lived in it, with nothing,

  but a ticket to my father’s land.

  Laurie Kuntz, Nguyen Van Phuong

  Imagines: Speaking to my American Father

  I consider Vietnamese as my family, as my people too, but they don’t think of me the same way. They always think of me as a stranger, uneducated, with an uneducated mother.

  Airman E-4 Tung Joe Nguyen, Amerasian

  Raymond

  “Singing my father’s song.”

  “When the prisoners are working, most of them like for me to sing American song
s. When I get caught, the guard says, ‘Raymond, what’s the song you singin’?’ I say, ‘I’m singing my father’s song.’ He says, ‘Well, you know that if you singin’ that song, that mean you are the enemy.’“Raymond and I are sitting in an empty conference room in the PRPC. The monsoon rain is pounding against the windows; small rivulets of water form beneath them as Raymond describes life in a Vietnamese reeducation camp. Certainly, singing his father’s song was not done without cost in postwar Vietnam.

  We first met in the billet of one of my Amerasian students. He greeted me with a perfectly fluent, “Hi, how ya doin’?” From his appearance, accent, and gestures, I took him to be a black American, possibly a Vietnam veteran who’d come to the refugee camp to search for a lost son or daughter. Continuing in fluid English, he mentioned that he had recently arrived at the PRPC and was living in neighborhood one. Only then did I realize that I was speaking not to an American, but to an Amerasian refugee.

  Raymond’s speech, gestures, and body language are acquired from the black GI’s who cared for him as he grew up on and around the bases near the coastal town of Vung Tau. His experiences “Americanized” him, and for twelve years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnamese government tried in a series of labor camps to purge him of his Western influence. Raymond, however, would not be changed. “This is my way,” he explains, “I cannot forget it.”