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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- T W O From Vietnam to Germany to the United States The author’s parents owned a photography studio in Saigon and had a booming business during the war as they had a contract with the U.S. Army. His family failed in their first attempt to escape from Vietnam in 1978, but his mother and two of his brothers succeeded in a second try in 1979 and made their way to Germany. The author, his sister, and his father finally managed to escape in 1982 when he was thirteen years old. The two brothers who had gone to Germany first then moved to the United States and later sponsored the rest of the family for entry. This account, writtenin1991,containsavividdescriptionofthefamily’sfirstescapewhentheywere caught and imprisoned. The narrator, his mother, and his siblings were released after several weeks but his father was kept for another year and a half. However, because the father was in a prison camp, and not a re-education camp, his family could visit him every three weeks and he was allowed to keep the food they brought. The wardens finally released the man when they realized the family had no more money to offer bribes—another indication of the corruption in the post-1975 government. This account is notable for its description of how kindly the West German government, as well as the German people, treated Vietnamese refugees during a period when Germany had relatively few nonwhite immigrants. I was born in Saigon and have three brothers and one sister. I am the third child. My parents owned a photography studio. During the Vietnam War, business boomed because my parents had a contract with the U.S. military. So, we were a rather affluent family. Unlike many Vietnamese, my parents did not like to store gold and jewelry at home. Instead, they spent most of the money they earned on us, the children. They wanted us to have a good life and fulfilled all our wishes. My father did put aside a large portion of his earnings, however, so that he could design and build a very large house in Saigon. Every month, we closed the photo shop for a few days and 208 Chapter Twenty-Two went to Vung Tao to visit my grandparents. Life in those days was peaceful and remarkably beautiful. My parents sent my brothers, sister, and me to the best private schools, hoping that we would accomplish things that they themselves never could. They asked for nothing in return for all the love and care they showered on us except that we study hard and respect them. Before I entered the first grade, my mother spent several hours a day teaching us arithmetic, reading, writing, and French. It was a terrible experience because my mother has a very hot temper and at that time I was too young (about four) to understand how important an education would be. Every day, she evaluated how much each of us had learned. If we were negligent in our studies, she punished us in painful ways. Thus, by the time I entered elementary school, I already knew how to multiply and divide as the multiplication table had been forced into my brain. Unlike my classmates, I could also read and write fairly well, so there was not much for me to learn at school. Before 1975, every year we had a grand family reunion during the Tet festival. All my relatives gathered at my grandparents’ house and we spent several days celebrating New Year. It was on those occasions that I had a chance to meet many relatives from far away. No matter where they lived—in Vietnam or in another country—they all came to the reunion. The women cooked delicious dishes, while the men washed the dishes and helped in various other ways. The children were not asked to do anything, so we just ran around the village and played with one another until we were called to lunch or dinner. There was not enough room in my grandparents’ house to sleep some two hundred people. The children slept in the available beds and the adults slept on the floor. Although sleeping on the floor was not very comfortable, a feeling of warmth, love, and unity filled the air. Adults talked about their lives and offered to help those who needed it. Everybody took care of everyone...

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