Peter Tranlong’s
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
June 8, 1928 Born at Phatdiem-Ninhbinh in North Vietnam
1935-1946 Elementary and secondary education by Christian brothers and Catholic priests
1946-1949 Education interrupted by the war between Vietnamese and French troops
1950-1955 Spent eight months in France and over five years in the United States
1950-1954 B.S. in Industrial Administration, University of Portland, Oregon, June 1954
1954-1955 M.A. in Economics and Finance, Syracuse University, New York, January 1956
1956-1975 Returned to Saigon and spent nineteen years in South Vietnam
1956-1956 Managing Editor, The Times of Vietnam weekly newsmagazine
1957-1961 PR Manager, Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, Vietnam-Cambodia Division
1961-1963 Reserve Officer, Training Division, Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces
1964-1970 Dean, School of Government and Business, Dalat University
1970-1975 General Administrator, Dalat University Foundation
April 29, 1975 Evacuated from Saigon to the United States with wife Danielle and eight children
1975-1976 Instructor in Economics, Portland Community College
1976-1993 Senior Auditor, Far West Federal Savings and Loan Association
1993-1996 Audit Officer, Washington Mutual Savings Bank
June 8, 1996 Stopped gainful employment to have more time spent with family and friends.
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show another human being, let me do it now and not defer it. For I shall not pass this way again." (Anonymous)
EVACUEES
Those were the last desperate days and hours of April 1975, before Saigon fell into communist hands. Of the nine-member Board of Directors of the Vietnamese-American Association (VAA), only two Vietnamese and two Americans attended the April meeting, scheduled for the last Thursday of the month. Not enough for a quorum. So we turned to talking about the current hopeless situation. Alan Carter, a VAA Director and Chief of the United States Information Agency (USIA), told me that I was on his list of those people recommended to be evacuated. Any American official could propose such a list to the United States Embassy.
A few days earlier, John Bennett, Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), advised me that I was also on his list of potential evacuees.
Two weeks earlier, we had met for the last time with Andy Andrews, Director of the Asia Foundation in Saigon, who also advised me that I was on his list. It turned out later that these lists were of no consequence.
At that meeting with Andy, my wife Danielle gave him a handbag of her jewelry, gold and diamonds, for safekeeping, with the understanding that he would return it to her whenever we had a chance to meet again in the United States or he would turn it over to some charity organization of his choice after ten years without hearing from us or knowing of our whereabouts.
Andy also handed us two short telegrams he had received from our friend Dr. Easton Rothwell, a board member of the Asia Foundation in San Francisco, showing that Easton and Ginny Rothwell were willing to help us, that is, Peter and Danielle’s family, to emigrate to the United States.
During those days, when I tried to dial my friends and acquaintances at their homes, most of the time I got only busy signals. When I was lucky enough to get through to two of my friends, I learned that their families had already left.
In the early afternoon of Sunday, April 27, I visited my parents at their residence in Phunhuan township, north of Saigon. I told my 74-year-old father and my 71-year-old mother that the chance for my family’s escape looked very bleak, and that I had not heard anything from any American official, though three of my American friends had placed me on their lists of would-be evacuees. I embraced my parents and bade them a tearful good-bye in anticipation of an eventual escape for my family.
On April 28, we watched on TV the eerie presentation of Duong van Minh’s makeshift government. Little did I know that these same governmental dignitaries had to present themselves a few days later to the conquering communists, who did not accept their resignation, but insisted on a complete surrender. One of the first acts of this makeshift government was to demand the departure of all Americans within 48 hours. It also announced a 24-hour curfew throughout Saigon.
Before noon on April 29, I walked the two blocks from our 26 Gialong apartment to my office and found no one but Fr. Le van Ly, President of Dalat University. He asked about my future plans. I replied that I had no plans, but if there was a chance, I would get out with my family. I bade him a hypothetical good-bye and went back to our second-floor apartment. Though Saigon was under curfew I saw on my way back several acts of looting, with people carrying TV sets, appliances and pieces of furniture. I met one of my nephews and one old acquaintance, both U.S. university graduates. They were also looking for a chance to get out. All three of us despaired of our chances.
At our apartment the children were in their pajamas and some were playing chess, oblivious to the turmoil outside. About four p.m. we heard sporadic whirring sounds of helicopters nearby. Danielle and I went down to the street and ran into our friend Tran chanh Thanh, a former foreign minister and professor of political science at Dalat University. He told me that one way to get out was to go to the Saigon seaport area and board one of those ships still anchored there. I said that I was not familiar with that port area and, anyway, our eight young children would most likely be trampled to death trying to board any of those ships. When asked about his own plans, he told me that he had a special arrangement which he was told not to divulge. While still standing on the pavement, we saw a U.S. Marine Huey helicopter landing on the rooftop of the building next to ours.
“That helicopter is our only chance,” Danielle whispered into my ear. We bade good-bye to our friend and hurried back to our apartment.
Once inside our apartment we told our children to get dressed, which some of them did. Danielle got out her bag of identity papers and some 24-carat gold leaves, each leaf weighing a little more than one ounce. All ten of us reached the next building through the interior courtyard and climbed the six flights of stairs to the rooftop. On that flat roof we saw about thirty persons, with another five already standing on the rungs of a makeshift wooden ladder leaned against the brick elevator construction, a ten-by-ten-foot platform. We lined ourselves right below those five persons without anybody protesting. After a while the Huey helicopter came back and landed on the platform. A marine stepped out and pulled in the five persons ahead of us. Fully loaded, the helicopter took off, leaving me on the top rung with our eight children in between and Danielle at the bottom of the improvised ladder.
After more than one hour the helicopter came back already half-loaded. Without asking for documentation, the marine pulled me and four children (the eldest and the three youngest) into the aircraft, then signaled for take-off. He told me not to worry since he would be back many more times to pick up the rest of my family and as many others as possible.
The helicopter landed near the entrance of a large military compound north of Saigon. We were led inside the compound along a long dimly lit hallway. I recognized a number of acquaintances, among whom was Nguyen ngoc Huy, another professor of Dalat University. After almost two hours, which seemed like an eternity, all ten of us were reunited in this long hallway.
We saw discarded against the hallway walls all kinds of garments, shoes, suitcases, and bundles of Vietnamese currency. The single line of people kept moving slowly toward the end of the hallway to be loaded onto Chinook troop-transport helicopters. We worried about not having proper documents.
A marine, not requesting any papers, just counted 75 persons as a full load for a Chinook helicopter with all 50 seats already removed. When I realized that three of our children and I were the last four of the 75-person batch, I asked four persons behind our family to step up so that we could stay together as the first ten persons of the next batch. I learned later that several families had been split up because of this loading system.
Our Chinook helicopter finally took off around ten p.m. It went almost straight up and very high. We could see several fighter planes flying below, perhaps for our protection. We heard explosions and saw conflagrations at many spots down below in the Saigon metropolitan area. High above, our helicopter flew away.
Less than an hour later we started seeing the lights of the big ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Then we landed on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier. The heavy load of the last several days was lifted from my chest. I felt elated.
In that state of elation I spent the night on the deck of that flattop almost without sleep. I was too excited and too preoccupied with keeping the family together. On the top deck I saw a small plane being pushed into the sea. Human lives were more valuable than expensive aircraft, I surmised.
The next morning we were moved from the aircraft carrier onto a destroyer. On this ship we met an old friend and his wife. Lam le Trinh was a former ambassador and also a professor of Dalat University. Through him we learned that the two-day government of Saigon had surrendered to the communists. At ten a.m. we were given a meal. It tasted delicious, perhaps because we were so hungry. Later the dinner was also very good, though I don’t quite remember what it was that I ate.
On the morning of May 1, after breakfast, we were told to get ready to be transferred to a troopship. I was asked by our fellow evacuees to express in English our appreciation to the ship commander and crew members. Rounds of applause followed my words of thanks and the commanding officer’s reply over the loudspeakers. Then cans of food and C-rations were given out before we were moved onto a barge and towed to the USS Kimbro troopship.
On the high seas the barge approached alongside the troopship and we had to walk up an unsteady gangplank to board the ship. It was quite dangerous, especially for our two-, three- and five-year-olds. We lost all our cans and C-rations in the process.
This troopship, designed to hold perhaps one thousand soldiers, already contained over two thousand evacuees. Our family was assigned an area about nine feet square on the open deck. We received a number of blankets to use as mats, bedding, covers, windbreaks, or sunshades. For the next five days we were rationed to two meals a day, consisting of rice boiled in seawater and canned tuna fish. We stood in line to receive our limited portions. Our youngest daughters Tina and Vera seemed to enjoy their rice-fish (com-ca) meals; at the next two refugee camps on Guam and in Arkansas, they often asked for this com-ca combination. This food rationing turned out to be a wise policy due to the limited toilet facilities. The outhouses were wooden structures, precariously attached outboard, alongside the open deck. Enough said.
The troopship kept plying the open sea for the next few days until, according to rumor, it was overfilled with five thousand people. Then it headed eastward and at noontime on May 5 the Philippine landscape loomed on the horizon. The ship docked at Subic Bay in the early afternoon. In the last two days our five-year-old son Luke had developed a fever. He and I had lost our sandals or thongs, and the steel deck of the ship was very hot, almost burning our feet. I scavenged some strings and manila paper bags to create makeshift boots for Luke and myself. We were among the last people to disembark in the late afternoon.
Among the first persons to greet us at the Subic Bay refugee camp was Au ngoc Ho, a former minister of economy and professor at Hue University, whom I had known back in my student days in the early fifties when we were officers of the Vietnamese Students Association in North America. He showed me recent issues of Newsweek and Time magazines, with the cover photos depicting the Huey helicopter hovering over the pick-up point at the rooftop where our family and some other people were given an incredible chance to start a new life in a new country. We appeared like matchsticks in these cover photos. We learned from these magazines that, of the first wave of almost two hundred thousand refugees, only about five thousand had been plucked from various pick-up points, brought to the assembly point near the airport north of Saigon, and then ferried out by Chinook helicopters to the Seventh Fleet warships. Indeed, we were among the lucky few. Forever since, I have been thankful, and not just on Thanksgiving Day each year.
At the Subic Bay refugee camp, we had an early dinner. Though quite hungry, I lost my appetite upon learning that my friend, the former foreign minister, had committed suicide in Saigon. For some reason his special arrangement did not work out and he was left behind in a hopeless situation. Rather than submitting himself to communist atrocities, he had chosen to take poison to end his life at the prime age of fifty-eight. How sad, how regrettable. May he rest in peace.
After dinner we were told to get ready to move on. About six p.m. of the same day a C-130 transport airplane took us from Subic Bay to the Guam refugee camp. We were moving farther and farther away from Vietnam, our birth country, and closer and closer toward the United States, our adoptive land.
1935-1946 Elementary and secondary education by Christian brothers and Catholic priests
1946-1949 Education interrupted by the war between Vietnamese and French troops
1950-1955 Spent eight months in France and over five years in the United States
1950-1954 B.S. in Industrial Administration, University of Portland, Oregon, June 1954
1954-1955 M.A. in Economics and Finance, Syracuse University, New York, January 1956
1956-1975 Returned to Saigon and spent nineteen years in South Vietnam
1956-1956 Managing Editor, The Times of Vietnam weekly newsmagazine
1957-1961 PR Manager, Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, Vietnam-Cambodia Division
1961-1963 Reserve Officer, Training Division, Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces
1964-1970 Dean, School of Government and Business, Dalat University
1970-1975 General Administrator, Dalat University Foundation
April 29, 1975 Evacuated from Saigon to the United States with wife Danielle and eight children
1975-1976 Instructor in Economics, Portland Community College
1976-1993 Senior Auditor, Far West Federal Savings and Loan Association
1993-1996 Audit Officer, Washington Mutual Savings Bank
June 8, 1996 Stopped gainful employment to have more time spent with family and friends.
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show another human being, let me do it now and not defer it. For I shall not pass this way again." (Anonymous)
EVACUEES
Those were the last desperate days and hours of April 1975, before Saigon fell into communist hands. Of the nine-member Board of Directors of the Vietnamese-American Association (VAA), only two Vietnamese and two Americans attended the April meeting, scheduled for the last Thursday of the month. Not enough for a quorum. So we turned to talking about the current hopeless situation. Alan Carter, a VAA Director and Chief of the United States Information Agency (USIA), told me that I was on his list of those people recommended to be evacuated. Any American official could propose such a list to the United States Embassy.
A few days earlier, John Bennett, Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), advised me that I was also on his list of potential evacuees.
Two weeks earlier, we had met for the last time with Andy Andrews, Director of the Asia Foundation in Saigon, who also advised me that I was on his list. It turned out later that these lists were of no consequence.
At that meeting with Andy, my wife Danielle gave him a handbag of her jewelry, gold and diamonds, for safekeeping, with the understanding that he would return it to her whenever we had a chance to meet again in the United States or he would turn it over to some charity organization of his choice after ten years without hearing from us or knowing of our whereabouts.
Andy also handed us two short telegrams he had received from our friend Dr. Easton Rothwell, a board member of the Asia Foundation in San Francisco, showing that Easton and Ginny Rothwell were willing to help us, that is, Peter and Danielle’s family, to emigrate to the United States.
During those days, when I tried to dial my friends and acquaintances at their homes, most of the time I got only busy signals. When I was lucky enough to get through to two of my friends, I learned that their families had already left.
In the early afternoon of Sunday, April 27, I visited my parents at their residence in Phunhuan township, north of Saigon. I told my 74-year-old father and my 71-year-old mother that the chance for my family’s escape looked very bleak, and that I had not heard anything from any American official, though three of my American friends had placed me on their lists of would-be evacuees. I embraced my parents and bade them a tearful good-bye in anticipation of an eventual escape for my family.
On April 28, we watched on TV the eerie presentation of Duong van Minh’s makeshift government. Little did I know that these same governmental dignitaries had to present themselves a few days later to the conquering communists, who did not accept their resignation, but insisted on a complete surrender. One of the first acts of this makeshift government was to demand the departure of all Americans within 48 hours. It also announced a 24-hour curfew throughout Saigon.
Before noon on April 29, I walked the two blocks from our 26 Gialong apartment to my office and found no one but Fr. Le van Ly, President of Dalat University. He asked about my future plans. I replied that I had no plans, but if there was a chance, I would get out with my family. I bade him a hypothetical good-bye and went back to our second-floor apartment. Though Saigon was under curfew I saw on my way back several acts of looting, with people carrying TV sets, appliances and pieces of furniture. I met one of my nephews and one old acquaintance, both U.S. university graduates. They were also looking for a chance to get out. All three of us despaired of our chances.
At our apartment the children were in their pajamas and some were playing chess, oblivious to the turmoil outside. About four p.m. we heard sporadic whirring sounds of helicopters nearby. Danielle and I went down to the street and ran into our friend Tran chanh Thanh, a former foreign minister and professor of political science at Dalat University. He told me that one way to get out was to go to the Saigon seaport area and board one of those ships still anchored there. I said that I was not familiar with that port area and, anyway, our eight young children would most likely be trampled to death trying to board any of those ships. When asked about his own plans, he told me that he had a special arrangement which he was told not to divulge. While still standing on the pavement, we saw a U.S. Marine Huey helicopter landing on the rooftop of the building next to ours.
“That helicopter is our only chance,” Danielle whispered into my ear. We bade good-bye to our friend and hurried back to our apartment.
Once inside our apartment we told our children to get dressed, which some of them did. Danielle got out her bag of identity papers and some 24-carat gold leaves, each leaf weighing a little more than one ounce. All ten of us reached the next building through the interior courtyard and climbed the six flights of stairs to the rooftop. On that flat roof we saw about thirty persons, with another five already standing on the rungs of a makeshift wooden ladder leaned against the brick elevator construction, a ten-by-ten-foot platform. We lined ourselves right below those five persons without anybody protesting. After a while the Huey helicopter came back and landed on the platform. A marine stepped out and pulled in the five persons ahead of us. Fully loaded, the helicopter took off, leaving me on the top rung with our eight children in between and Danielle at the bottom of the improvised ladder.
After more than one hour the helicopter came back already half-loaded. Without asking for documentation, the marine pulled me and four children (the eldest and the three youngest) into the aircraft, then signaled for take-off. He told me not to worry since he would be back many more times to pick up the rest of my family and as many others as possible.
The helicopter landed near the entrance of a large military compound north of Saigon. We were led inside the compound along a long dimly lit hallway. I recognized a number of acquaintances, among whom was Nguyen ngoc Huy, another professor of Dalat University. After almost two hours, which seemed like an eternity, all ten of us were reunited in this long hallway.
We saw discarded against the hallway walls all kinds of garments, shoes, suitcases, and bundles of Vietnamese currency. The single line of people kept moving slowly toward the end of the hallway to be loaded onto Chinook troop-transport helicopters. We worried about not having proper documents.
A marine, not requesting any papers, just counted 75 persons as a full load for a Chinook helicopter with all 50 seats already removed. When I realized that three of our children and I were the last four of the 75-person batch, I asked four persons behind our family to step up so that we could stay together as the first ten persons of the next batch. I learned later that several families had been split up because of this loading system.
Our Chinook helicopter finally took off around ten p.m. It went almost straight up and very high. We could see several fighter planes flying below, perhaps for our protection. We heard explosions and saw conflagrations at many spots down below in the Saigon metropolitan area. High above, our helicopter flew away.
Less than an hour later we started seeing the lights of the big ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Then we landed on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier. The heavy load of the last several days was lifted from my chest. I felt elated.
In that state of elation I spent the night on the deck of that flattop almost without sleep. I was too excited and too preoccupied with keeping the family together. On the top deck I saw a small plane being pushed into the sea. Human lives were more valuable than expensive aircraft, I surmised.
The next morning we were moved from the aircraft carrier onto a destroyer. On this ship we met an old friend and his wife. Lam le Trinh was a former ambassador and also a professor of Dalat University. Through him we learned that the two-day government of Saigon had surrendered to the communists. At ten a.m. we were given a meal. It tasted delicious, perhaps because we were so hungry. Later the dinner was also very good, though I don’t quite remember what it was that I ate.
On the morning of May 1, after breakfast, we were told to get ready to be transferred to a troopship. I was asked by our fellow evacuees to express in English our appreciation to the ship commander and crew members. Rounds of applause followed my words of thanks and the commanding officer’s reply over the loudspeakers. Then cans of food and C-rations were given out before we were moved onto a barge and towed to the USS Kimbro troopship.
On the high seas the barge approached alongside the troopship and we had to walk up an unsteady gangplank to board the ship. It was quite dangerous, especially for our two-, three- and five-year-olds. We lost all our cans and C-rations in the process.
This troopship, designed to hold perhaps one thousand soldiers, already contained over two thousand evacuees. Our family was assigned an area about nine feet square on the open deck. We received a number of blankets to use as mats, bedding, covers, windbreaks, or sunshades. For the next five days we were rationed to two meals a day, consisting of rice boiled in seawater and canned tuna fish. We stood in line to receive our limited portions. Our youngest daughters Tina and Vera seemed to enjoy their rice-fish (com-ca) meals; at the next two refugee camps on Guam and in Arkansas, they often asked for this com-ca combination. This food rationing turned out to be a wise policy due to the limited toilet facilities. The outhouses were wooden structures, precariously attached outboard, alongside the open deck. Enough said.
The troopship kept plying the open sea for the next few days until, according to rumor, it was overfilled with five thousand people. Then it headed eastward and at noontime on May 5 the Philippine landscape loomed on the horizon. The ship docked at Subic Bay in the early afternoon. In the last two days our five-year-old son Luke had developed a fever. He and I had lost our sandals or thongs, and the steel deck of the ship was very hot, almost burning our feet. I scavenged some strings and manila paper bags to create makeshift boots for Luke and myself. We were among the last people to disembark in the late afternoon.
Among the first persons to greet us at the Subic Bay refugee camp was Au ngoc Ho, a former minister of economy and professor at Hue University, whom I had known back in my student days in the early fifties when we were officers of the Vietnamese Students Association in North America. He showed me recent issues of Newsweek and Time magazines, with the cover photos depicting the Huey helicopter hovering over the pick-up point at the rooftop where our family and some other people were given an incredible chance to start a new life in a new country. We appeared like matchsticks in these cover photos. We learned from these magazines that, of the first wave of almost two hundred thousand refugees, only about five thousand had been plucked from various pick-up points, brought to the assembly point near the airport north of Saigon, and then ferried out by Chinook helicopters to the Seventh Fleet warships. Indeed, we were among the lucky few. Forever since, I have been thankful, and not just on Thanksgiving Day each year.
At the Subic Bay refugee camp, we had an early dinner. Though quite hungry, I lost my appetite upon learning that my friend, the former foreign minister, had committed suicide in Saigon. For some reason his special arrangement did not work out and he was left behind in a hopeless situation. Rather than submitting himself to communist atrocities, he had chosen to take poison to end his life at the prime age of fifty-eight. How sad, how regrettable. May he rest in peace.
After dinner we were told to get ready to move on. About six p.m. of the same day a C-130 transport airplane took us from Subic Bay to the Guam refugee camp. We were moving farther and farther away from Vietnam, our birth country, and closer and closer toward the United States, our adoptive land.
1. Bio-Sketch, Evacuees - February 1997
2. Refugees, Parolees - March 1997 3. Names, Goals - April 1997 4. Homes, Addresses - April 1997 5. Birthdays, Angels - May 1997 6. Tongues, Spirits - May 1997 7. Scoops, Phoenix - September 1997 * Encounter of a kind 8. Charmer, Anthill - September 1997 9. Sand Crabs, Children, Sons-in-law - October 1997 10. Careers, Idealism, Titles - October 1997 11. Calendars, Customs - November 1997 12. Notables, Jobs, Missions - December 1997 |
13. [University of Dalat] Politics, Professors, Group Study… - December 1997
14 - Family, Parents - Sibling, Roots 15. Money, Cars, Drivers 16 - Controls - Grand-Children, Generations - Bananas 17 - Ancestors, Turtledoves - Transients, Ashes, Immortals - Migrants, Nature, Colors 18 - Nuts, Guts, Offices, Stones - November, Talents, Journeys 19. Eulogy to Yvonne |