This year marks 50 years since the start of the migration of the Vietnamese Boat People following the fall of Saigon.
It’s one of the darkest chapters of post-Vietnam War history, but few know the story of the dangerous journey hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees dared to take.
Soon Hagerty’s family was among those knowing they’d eventually need to get out of the country after the fall of Saigon.
“My dad fought for the South Vietnamese, and after many years of fighting, communism won and took over. And so what happens when you’re on the losing side of something so big, is you really have to assimilate to the North, and you have to become a communist, or you would be entered into what they would call a reeducation camp. As you can imagine, there’s no education happening. They really force the ideology on you,” said Hagerty.
In another part of the country, Phillip Nguyen, orphaned before the end of the war, saw communism taking hold. He was forced to relocate to a so-called ‘new economic zone’ in 1977.
“I went there, lived with my Aunt, for about two years and in those two years I’ve never seen so many people died of starvation and sickness, because if you ask any U.S. Marine, they go to the Khe Sahn, they’re not afraid of bullets, they’re afraid of mosquitos. After those two years there, I went back to my fishing village and I finally got a chance to get out,” said Nguyen.
The only feasible way out of the country was on small, rickety fishing boats. Those who got on faced a journey filled with incredible danger and immense unknowns.
“I looked back at my village and the boat is slowly, slowly moving and there’s the last little green thing, a palm tree by the beach, and I said that’s the last time I’ll see my home. think of your boat as a little spoon, right, and the wave is like a bowl, and we’d ride that wave for hours and I remember the guy go pray to Jesus, pray to Buddha, pray to your ancestors, everyone pray. And I remember, I said f*** it, sink and die, I don’t want to deal with this no more,” said Nguyen.
“My sister tells me a very vivid story of the reason why we took a long time to get to another island is because we left with two boats. We were on one boat, and then there was another boat that left at the same time. And what happened is our captain saw that boat get attacked by pirates because it was a little bit in advance of us. So he took a bit of a different route to get us to safety,” said Hagerty.
Those lucky enough to survive the journey, like Phillip and Soon, made it to islands outside Vietnam before continuing on to refugee camps.
“Each family had their own little corner. Imagine it’s like a big dome. And you had, like, cement floors, but you had, like, a little area and you’d get a little stove where you can cook stuff for your family,” recalled Hagerty.
That’s where they waited for months or sometimes years for sponsors to bring them to the ultimate destination: the United States and freedom.
“When I was in Hong Kong, one part of it was my cousin who lived in America already, he lived in New Jersey, he go like, don’t go anywhere else, you wait long enough, you’ll go to America, so I banked on it,” said Nguyen.
“I think until you don’t have anything, you don’t realize how important basic things are. You know, freedom, a sense of security, a future that you can define. I think until you feel like those things are stripped away, you realize how important they are. I think there are a lot of people living in communism. There are a lot of people living in oppression. And so, we were the lucky ones,” said Hagerty.