They Put All Hope in Tiny Boats

By Rachana Rathi

May 1, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

With each paddleboat’s arrival, Phuong Dao’s hopes dimmed. She leaned against the wooden beams of the 27-foot fishing boat and searched for her mother and elder sister among the dwindling stream of people who climbed aboard that November night in 1983.

It would break her father’s heart to leave his wife and daughter behind in Vietnam, but Dao, then 9, knew he wouldn’t turn back.

When the boat carrying Dao, her father and two brothers reached Malaysia three days later, its one-piston Yanmar diesel engine had died; the vessel’s hollow where 47 passengers had huddled reeked of vomit and urine; and after being battered between two large metal pirate ships, the boat had cracked and begun leaking.

Dao, now 30 and a medical researcher at UC Irvine, was among more than 1.5 million people who fled Vietnam by boat between 1975 and 1989. Although many Vietnamese “boat people” had harrowing and often tragic sea voyages, the vessels that took them from their fallen country have lived on as symbols of hope and survival.

So when the “Freedom Boat,” a craft that took 15 Vietnamese refugees to the Philippines in 1981, was on display Friday at a Vietnamese community center in Falls Church, Va., Dao went to see it. The same boat was scheduled to have been paraded through the streets of the nation’s capital Saturday in the Vietnam Freedom March.

For Dao, who has never returned to her homeland, it was more than just an occasion to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the Communists. It was an act of closure.

“The boat represents this bridge between past and present,” said Dao, an Orange resident. “We lived under this severe oppression until our escape. All we had left by the time we left was hope.”

The anniversary of the collapse of South Vietnam has been marked around the world -- a demonstration and reception in Canberra, Australia, a Catholic Charities dinner in Los Angeles and the Vietnam Freedom March.

Mounted on a flatbed truck, the Freedom Boat is 8 1/2 feet wide, 35 1/2 feet long and resembles a large canoe. It has attracted thousands of Vietnamese Americans since its cross-country journey began in Orange County in January, said Madalenna Lai, who is traveling with the boat.

Lai searched for more than nine years before finding the boat in a Philippines museum. Most such boats were burned or sunk immediately after reaching their destination for fear of bacteria and disease. For her, the tour is a chance to thank America.

“Without the United States’ help, we wouldn’t have [had] the chance to have a good life. We would have collapsed,” said Lai, president of the Vietnamese Cultural House in Pomona. “After 30 years, we’re proud that we are a success and we contributed our labor to the country.”

Of the 1.2 million people of Vietnamese descent who live in the United States, more than 900,000 are refugees, according to the U.S. State Department. Most were “boat people.” About 230,000 Vietnamese people reside in Southern California, according to 2000 census figures, the hub being the bustling Little Saigon district in Westminster.

Since the tour began -- 15 states ago -- the Freedom Boat has stirred powerful emotions.

Hoang Nguyen left Vietnam on a plane, but said during a telephone interview that when he saw the boat display at a mall in Raleigh, N.C., last week, it touched him. “I saw how lucky I am to be here. I saw the suffering of the boat people,” said Nguyen, a real estate investor who spent seven years in a re-education camp before coming to the United States in 1990. “We payed our cost to get to this land.”

Ly Minh Tieu has a $35,000 replica of a refugee boat hanging in his Atlanta supermarket. He said the authenticity of the Freedom Boat awoke a deep sense of gratitude and pride. “We lived in a country where there was no freedom. The boat [helped] me and my family leave the country,” said Tieu, who said 5,000 people visited the Freedom Boat while it was showcased in his store’s parking lot for three days last month. Many brought their children.

But the boats don’t hold the same significance for many second-generation Vietnamese Americans.

“The older generation feels gratitude. Whereas the younger generation is more critical,” said Linda Trinh Vo, an Asian American studies professor at UC Irvine. Vo said many second-generation Vietnamese Americans don’t relate to the war experience, and instead see the violence, poverty and language isolation affecting their families in the United States.

Dao says her generation -- she calls it Generation 1.5 -- grasps both perspectives because they are refugees who came of age in America, but can still remember the struggle for freedom from Vietnam.

Dao was born seven months before Saigon fell, and her entire childhood focused on escape. Her family sold every possession, spent months in jail and eventually split up.

After five failed attempts, her three older brothers escaped in May 1983. That November, Dao, her father and two brothers made it to a boat. Her mother and sister didn’t.

“It was sort of a turning point,” Dao said. “We decided to go [without them] and there was no turning back after that decision was made.”

No one on the boat slept that first night. The exhilaration of escape, fear of the unknown and ache for loved ones left behind seized them intermittently. After two nights at sea, Dao and others were suffering from seasickness and dehydration. With sunken eyes, many people began praying. They spoke of dying.

That next morning, they saw the faint outline of an island. They were exuberant until a large ship seized their boat and took it back out to sea. Two other pirate ships soon arrived.

The men aboard were hostile. They looted and beat the men on the boat. And as Dao and the other children were fed calamari and 7-Up by a “kind-hearted” cook aboard the ship, Dao heard the cries of the boat’s women, who were dragged inside the ship’s cabins. She saw others being raped on the deck.

“For the first time, I was grateful my wife and daughter were not with us,” her father, Ngan Dao, wrote in a journal of his travels. “What was a tragedy in my heart was a blessing in disguise.”

About 24 hours later, the pirates cut the vessel loose. The boat drifted to Malaysia’s Pulau Bidong island. Dao and her family spent five months in Malaysian refugee camps and six months in a Philippines refugee camp, where they were prepared for “Western life.”

In a joyous day at the Pulau Bidong camp, Dao’s father got word her mother and sister were safe. They had nearly been caught by authorities on their way to the boat and turned back.

Dao, her father and brothers arrived at LAX on Oct. 10, 1984. They moved into a small Santa Ana apartment with Dao’s older brothers. Her mother and sister joined them five years later.

Dao calls life in the United States “the greatest gift ever,” but said she hadn’t faced her life before America until she saw the Freedom Boat.

“A symbol of what was a stigma -- being a boat person -- now feels like a symbol of hope, perseverance and freedom,” said Dao, who is married to a boat person. “Seeing the boat was cathartic, but I also recognize this isn’t the end of me trying to reconnect with a past and a country that exists in my memory, but no longer exists in the world.”

The Freedom Boat sets out again Monday, going to West Virginia, Delaware and Kentucky, continuing a voyage that taps potent emotions at each stop.