The People Who Ran Away

Hannah Huynh

July 5, 2016

ESL 5

Essay #1

The People Who Ran Away

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, many Vietnamese people have run away from the communist since they did not want to live under the control of a dictator government.  Among over 1.5 million of the Vietnamese who were forced to leave their country by any means between 1975 and 1995, there were more than 800,000 refugees fled Vietnam by boats and ships.  Even though most of these boat people had successfully arrived and relocated in new countries, many of them failed to survive the passages.  Such forced relocation has caused these refugees a lot of negative emotions and difficulties through their journey to find a land of freedom as they had to face danger and hardship from the pirates, suffered from starvation, and struggled to adapt to a new culture once they safely arrived in another country.  

The first negative emotion they faced on their way of crossing the border was the fear of pirates.  Most of the evacuees from the Fall of Saigon in 1975 were resettled in the United States.  Nonetheless, before they could reach the border of the U.S., they had been through several other destinations across the ocean where pirates were always ready to show up and destroyed these miserable refugees’ hope of approaching their dreamland.  The pirates would hijack the boat, stole all the possessions, killed the men and raped the women whom they could also kidnap and resold to others as slaves.  A real story has been told by a woman who survived her journey to the U.S. that her small boat was attacked by Thai pirates.  All the men on the boat were sanguinary killed, while the women including her mother and her 13 years-old sister were barbarian raped to death.  She was the only survivor because at the moment the pirates attacked, her mother pushed her out of the boat. Fortunately, she was entangled in the fishing net and was hung on the side of the ship.  Thus, she was safe and finally rescued by a freighter.  Telling this story, the fear from what happened that day was vividly shown on her terrified face as she could still hear the screaming, smell the blood, and feel the salty taste of the seawater.  Until now, if being asked, a former boatman would say pirates were the most dreadful fear he or she faced on his or her way of seeking a second home.

Besides the fear of pirates, the people who were running away also suffered from starvation.  Back in the old days, the ship owners only allowed a very limited amount of carry on luggage for boat people in order to lessen the weight of the ships, and to make more room for more people so that the owners could earn more money.  Therefore, food and water were not enough to be supplied throughout the long trip as the priority item that most of the boat men carried with them was gold since they knew money was primary necessary for them to restart their life in a different country.  Soon enough the victuals they brought along were out, and the miserable escapees suffered from catastrophic hunger and thirst.  K.D. Le was one of the boat people fled Vietnam during that time.  She is a counselor and a professor now at De Anza College.  Le mentioned in the article titled “Remembering the Fall of Saigon With Those Who Lived It” reported by Adrian Discipulo that her family ran out of water during ten days of floating on the ocean.  In her words,  her mother had to mix sugar with seawater for her, but she could not drink it.  She also said some of the refugees on their boat had to drink children's urine to survive the thirst.  According to Le, this life experience was like a spiritual awaken for her, and “ If I survived that, there’s nothing in this world that I could not handle.”  Starvation, as a consequence, was one of the biggest frighten that the people who ran away during that time had to face.