To escape communist Vietnam, my wife Lien and about 50 others spent 22 days in an open boat without food. The engine of the boat failed after about the first hour at sea. The only fresh water available to the drifting refugees was rainwater collected in little cups. Four people died in that boat before reached safety.
After reaching the Philippines, my wife, who by now was mixed into a horde of other Vietnamese refugees, witnessed the agents of the overwhelmed Philippine government. The Philippine government built small huts in a kind of "stalag" to house the refugees behind tightly guarded barbed wire. Lien lived on Palowan Island, the Philippines, for 10 years. Fifty or so people, men and women, young and old, lived together in a room the size of your TV room or den. Saigon fell and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1975. My wife made it to safety in the United States in 1998.
and her bond to an American pilot shot down over Viet Nam...and being buried today.
