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C H A P T E R T W E LV E A Journey Called Freedom The author left Saigon with her family on April 28, 1975, in a U.S. cargo plane when she was seven years old. Unlike many of the urbanites evacuated as Saigon was about to fall, the narrator and her family came from rural origins. Her parents were farmers and the family was Catholic. However, after Americans became involved in the war in Vietnam, her father found a job as a security guard at the American consulate in a city in the northern part of South Vietnam. While he worked in the city, the author, her mother, and siblings moved to a village situated in a forest when the South Vietnamese government allocated small plots of land to those willing to till the soil there. South Vietnam’s leaders believed that placing a significant number of inhabitants in the area would make it more difficult for Communist troops to capture it. As an employee of the U.S. government, the author’s father and his family qualified for evacuation. They left because they believed that a Communist government would persecute Catholics. This account paints a memorable picture of village life. Also notable is how religion and the small size of the Oregon town in which the author’s family resettled helped ease their adjustment after they arrived in the United States. This essay was written in 1988. Why? Why Vietnam? I asked the world as I recalled the history of Vietnam and the sadness that spread over the land with the fall of Saigon. Vietnam has a history of being oppressed by a succession of conquerors. Living in a country that rarely had its own rulers, Vietnamese watched the fall of Saigon with the same emotions as their ancestors had felt when the country was passed from one foreign ruler to the next. Is the Communist victory going to be any different from Chinese imperial rule, French colonialism, or Japanese occupation? Growing up in Vietnam, my birthplace and homeland, the fall of Saigon affected me very deeply just as it affected the rest of the people in South Vietnam. Despite the fact that I left Vietnam when I was only A Journey Called Freedom 117 seven and have lived in the United States for almost thirteen years, I still consider Vietnam as my home. Memories of my country still have an effect on my life, as shown in the way I speak, act, and feel. It has been very hard to adjust to life in America because I came from a small village in Vietnam. As I sit on my couch staring at the inside of an average American house, I remember a time when television was a treat and carpeted floors did not exist. Even though my memories of Vietnam grow fainter with each passing day, I can still remember its beauty and pain. Before the fall of Saigon, life in the rural area where I lived was peaceful and untouched by modern technology. Although I was born in a city, my most memorable days were spent in the countryside where I lived during the latter half of my childhood. My earliest memory goes back to the place where I was born, a city located in the northern part of South Vietnam. My father was a security guard at the American consulate there. Sometimes he took me along when he went to work, gave me a shower, and put me to sleep while he worked. When I was three years old, I encountered an American for the first time. I remember my father taking his bicycle, which was parked outside our house, as he got ready to go to work. He allowed me to ride on the back. Holding tightly on to the seat, I looked up and saw the afternoon sun shining brightly through the trees lining both sides of the street, which was paved with tar—an indication we were in a city. Coming to the downtown area, the hustle and bustle of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians surrounded my father and me. There were shops everywhere, selling clothing, shoes, jewelry, household utensils, meat, and vegetables. I saw many merchants with their wares, mothers bargaining for the lowest prices, and children running between everybody’s legs. It was a normal, noisy city except for the bombings that could be heard once in a while. Yet, that too was common...

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