Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 436 - How Are Guam and Vietnam Connected? Nam C Kim

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436 - How Are Guam and Vietnam Connected? Nam C Kim · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I have Nam See Kim from University of Wisconsin.
0:03
[SPEAKER_02]: He's the director for the Center of Southeast Asian Studies and also a professor of anthropology.
0:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the podcast.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is always a pleasure to be on this podcast with you.
0:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, we're talking about Guam.
0:18
[SPEAKER_02]: As we are coming up on the fifth year, a commemoration, tell me about the work that you have started and we'll be going to Guam soon and to talk about that.
0:28
[SPEAKER_00]: As you mentioned, this is the fifth yearth anniversary for events that took place on Guam.
0:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And it coincides with the end of the conflict and Vietnam, the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So all that, fifty years ago,
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We just marked the fifth anniversary in late April, and subsequent to the fall of Saigon.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right around that time period, we have this massive exodus of refugees who are suddenly stateless.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: South Vietnam is gone, people are fleeing, and Guam ends up being one of these destinations, these places, this little speck of land in the Pacific Ocean.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: that houses that provides safe haven and shelter for many, many people.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you say many, what is that?
1:19
[SPEAKER_02]: A hundred and a thousand?
1:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I've seen different estimates, but the numbers I've seen are somewhere around a hundred and a thousand plus that ultimately get to Guam and are resettled and sent to different places around the United States and elsewhere around the world.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And you've told me that this is probably considered like the Ellis Island for Vietnamese people.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you explain that?
1:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we have obviously Ellis Island, the East Coast.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people say on the West Coast, the counterpart might be somewhere in the Bay Area, like Angel Island.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was back in the early twentieth century.
2:00
[SPEAKER_00]: This was specifically for many of the folks coming out of Southeast Asia and Vietnam.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And due to the numbers, it is quite staggering to think about how many people come through
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And not only come through, but then quite literally, the operation itself was called Operation New Life.
2:21
[SPEAKER_00]: To think about how quite literally it provided that foundation for people to start new lives altogether, coming out of Southeast Asia and then elsewhere.
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: When I think about people like you who do this kind of work, oftentimes there's a deep connection to the subject.
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And why are you pushing to get the research to the commemoration?
2:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you so interested in this topic of Guam and the resettlement of all these Vietnamese refugees?
2:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think, well, for me personally, there's a connection.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's beyond the personal connection that I think that there's a kind of an important part of an identity and history that we all had a record with.
3:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess I'll start with the personal part.
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've said this previously on other episodes with you.
3:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I've shared a little bit about my family history.
3:21
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents and I were part of that exodus.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This was back in April of the nineteen seventy five.
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the day before Saigon Falls.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: On the twenty ninth.
3:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We were in Saigon and my parents I was a year old at times.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember remember this, but I've heard the stories many times.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen photographs of this journey as well because my father had a camera.
3:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're looking for a way to get out of Saigon and ended up evacuating by helicopter off the roof of the USAID compound.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, we get transported out to the airport.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We're waiting in, I think, dark and passageways inside the airport as detonations are happening outside.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There's gunfire.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: There's smoke.
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all kinds of chaos.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And we board a larger helicopter.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Get taken up to the coast over by Wunkno.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then just off the coast, there's the USS Bitway Aircraft carrier.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We end up landing on that.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We're there.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We're welcomed.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: by the US military.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Shortly thereafter, we're transferred to a different vessel.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: This is over the years.
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I pieced all this together, by the way.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the USS Kimbro.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And that ship was then joined by, I want to say at least
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: a few thousand people.
4:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a cargo commercial vessel that was designed to hold me and be a crew and some folks have maybe about dozens of people.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're talking about thousands of people on this ship, transport it then to the Philippines.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, we disembark, we're put on a plane, we fly to Guam.
5:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're part of what's known as Operation New Life.
5:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So that evacuation process for many people, you might know the history that was called Operation Frequent Wind.
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: There was Baby Lift Frequent Wind.
5:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And the new life was the resettlement part.
5:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That operation started very hastily.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think originally the resettlement centers were going to be in the Philippines, but at the kind of last minute, Marcos president decided he didn't want it in the Philippines.
5:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were last minute pippets and everything shifted to Guam.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So within just days and hours, really, as people were starting to come in in April, in nineteen seventy five to go on, the people of Guam, the military, local community members, all kinds of folks, the officials, started to throw some of these makeshift camps together.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we mentioned, ultimately, you're looking at about one hundred ten thousand people that come through there.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And this takes us to the other part of why I think this is important.
6:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the largest episodes of migration that we know of in modern history, in a kind of single event.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the largest humanitarian efforts that we know of.
6:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And this comes in the heels of this conflict that takes place over so many years, so many people lose their families, their homes, their lives, and are affected by the conflicts in Vietnam.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So to see this playing out as the kind of climax to all that, and what I find interesting is not that many people know about this history.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I went through there by Paris went through there, and they have these memories, but even I didn't know all that much about the history, the larger scope of it until more recently.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And that got me thinking, well, this is not only an important part of history for
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: for Vietnam, for Vietnamese Americans, and the diaspora.
7:14
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very important part of American history and even global history, right?
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's part of the inspiration for my colleagues and I will, we're going this kind of work.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: this commemoration of Guam and a hundred and ten thousand people roughly coming through the timing of this today in the political climate I just have to talk about it because I think about the Afghanistan situation a few years ago where all of the people that were working for the US had to be evacuated and I'm not sure how many people that came out of there but I think recently
7:52
[SPEAKER_02]: The Trump administration revoked their green cards.
7:56
[SPEAKER_02]: All of them.
7:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And are sending them all back.
7:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't imagine what would have happened in, in, nineteen, seventy nine, nineteen, seventy eight, three or four years after we left Vietnam.
8:12
[SPEAKER_02]: We got our green cards all revoked and we are heading back to Vietnam to face the communists.
8:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to for me to understand.
8:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Every time I hear about Guam,
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: these days, I think about the situation, how quickly governments or the US government can change their, well, you know, as I bring this up, I know why I'm bringing it up, but the very conscious of why I'm bringing it up, because I think about the work that you do with Guam, and I'm thinking, why did the US
8:47
[SPEAKER_02]: have to do this.
8:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And why didn't they after a few years return us all back when things stabilize and Vietnam, right?
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they're doing now.
8:54
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing that with the people from Afghanistan.
8:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't think it's settled in Afghanistan that whoever's running it is going to chop off heads when these people return.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it is a very telling comparison.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have answers for why, right?
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we see this very contrasting situation?
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess I would point out we had such a massive role to play in the conflicts that occurred in Southeast Asia.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: If we consider the Cold War, we consider our foreign policies of containment when it came to the domino theory about communism.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: If we contemplate the kinds of impacts that our foreign policies had, our military presence had, in Vietnam, I think that that probably played a major role in influencing and shaping the decision to help.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: because we had been allies and working very closely with the South Vietnamese.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when that collapse happens, there is this feeling of obligation.
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, we see the evidence of that.
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: How many people, how many thousands of of service personnel, how many resources, all of that being devoted to this humanitarian effort?
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: to make sure that those families are now in jeopardy, those that helped that served on the side of the United States and the conflict, that they were given this opportunity to reach safety.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens afterward?
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're saying maybe a few years later, how come those the shifting winds of politics within American society didn't move these folks back or revoke their status?
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that points to some political moments that we're living through.
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it points to changes that we've seen in American society in politics in recent years.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have answers for why.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I would point out is, I think our lesson is that we can learn.
11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: As we marked this fifty-year point of this commemoration, as we look back, part of the reason that I think it's important to raise the awareness is so that we see this history, it's important for the diaspora in the United States to know this history because many of us have ties to Guam, whether we realize it or not.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: but also to raise awareness within American society in general.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the kinds of lessons we can take from all that goodwill, all that effort that was conducted?
11:41
[SPEAKER_02]: The lessons that we learned is that we get let in and we shut the door and locked the key and throw the key away and not let anybody else in.
11:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the lesson we've learned so far, Nam.
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm being facetious to have a realist.
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's funny because I haven't mentioned this yet, but you've intimated.
12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: There is work that we're doing, my colleagues and I. We are not only researching this episode of History on Guam.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of this is to kind of acknowledge and thank and show our appreciation to the people of Guam.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And the United States military, all the service personnel, and also all of the aid workers, the relief workers, the volunteers, there are so many people.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And the more I look into this, the more I realize just how vast this is.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But the purpose of this is to acknowledge all of their efforts.
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of that project then, we're having commemoration events that are taking place in about a month on Guam.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: For listeners out there, if this gets on air before the end of July, if you have the resources to be in Guam, you'd be welcome.
12:53
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these events are open to the public.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But part of the project also is to collect materials and stories.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are holding oral history interviews with anyone who has any kind of connection to these events, who has memories, who might have artifacts or heirlooms, who have points of different points of view.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just restricted to former refugees and their descendants and their families.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about anyone.
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: who was on the island, or who was part of the journey towards the island.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bring this up because I've conducted some of these interviews already, and I've talked to some folks who are veterans.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They served in the conflict, or they served just in the aftermath conflict.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were parts of this Exodus for many refugees.
13:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll share with you.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Recently, I had a conversation with a few Marines who were actually on one of the ships that my parents had I wrong.
13:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I found them by accident, just searching the internet one day, I came across some photographs on the ship, this ship was called the U.S.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Kimbro.
14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the commercial one that I mentioned earlier, over the results of thousands.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And what was fascinating is that when I looked at the photos that were online, they were almost identical to the photos that my father took.
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: with his camera.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew right away that this person who had these photographs was on the same ship.
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did some more research.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I figured out that the photos came from a museum.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They came from an autobiography that he wrote.
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I found out where he was.
14:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I contacted him and then we got on a call.
14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We started talking.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He actually invited some of the other Marines that were under his command at the time.
14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were in their early twenties, late teens, right?
14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He's American Marines that were there on the ship and they'd never been trained to do something like this before.
14:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was all new for them.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But this one call
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: was powerful for us.
15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they were telling me, well, first of all, they were talking about all kinds of stories, things that they witnessed that they will never forget.
15:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But then they were talking about how they don't talk about this anymore.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: People don't ask them about these stories.
15:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They've gone on and done other things in their careers in their lives.
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But the chance to go back and to relive these moments, to talk amongst themselves, to re-re-enighted.
15:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But then to talk to me,
15:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We were brought to tears during this conversation.
15:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They were telling me very poignantly, thank you.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thanking them, right?
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thanking them for their service and helping us, but they were thanking me and saying thank you for proving that what we did was right, that what we did was worth it, to see
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: all the folks that came through that we helped to see them start this new life and to thrive in their lives in the U.S.
16:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That was very powerful for all of us.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that speaks to what you were saying.
16:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, about.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder why we as a nation have changed our tone as it relates to immigration.
16:15
[SPEAKER_02]: How did we get so weirdly twisted with this political situation?
16:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not asking you to answer that because that's not part of the program today about warm.
16:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a question that I put out to the audience about the way we
16:30
[SPEAKER_02]: give these Marines that you're talking about, gave, and they helped, and we in turn, um, fifty years later, somebody like you, a descendant of these people, or the experience, uh, wants to make sure that the stories, uh, that they were part of, live on and, uh, you know, put out into the world.
16:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm not alone in my desire to see these stories recorded and put into posterity for future generations to access.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And to remember, right?
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, there are many of us in this community, especially in the diaspora that feel that this is important as a part of our heritage and our history for this to be, to remember young.
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Like those marines, they also agree that this history needs to be known and remembered.
17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why they agreed to participate in the oral history project.
17:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have this kind of shared objective in trying to raise awareness and to record as much as possible.
17:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because as they pointed out to me, they're getting up there in years.
17:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, my parents are getting up there in years.
17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: These memories are not going to last.
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to fade and they're going to be gone.
17:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So unless we do something to record them,
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: to memorialize them somehow.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't have access to them.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as an archaeologist, I think about this all the time because I dig up the remains of pesticides and I wish I wish I could interview the people that made it.
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: These are next.
17:59
[SPEAKER_02]: When you have an idea like this, you know, a few years back, you're like, I wonder what Guam in the history of Guam was like, can you walk me through how you start to reach out to the government or to politicians or city mayors?
18:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, country, how do you reach out to people that you want to say, hey, I want to do this commemoration in Guam, where do you start?
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
18:27
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been a long journey.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I started on this journey, I had no idea that it was going to get to this point.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been researching our family stories, our family histories for quite some time now.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are many pivotal moments in episodes.
18:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've shared with you my father.
18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He's Korean, my mother is Vietnamese, but my father lived through the Korean War and she lived through all kinds of conflict in Vietnam.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they were both refugees as kids fleeing from home lands.
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after they meet, they'll refugees once again.
19:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's this complicated history that goes back.
19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the process of reading about their histories and learning from them about their life stories, I realize that Guam was this pivotal episode.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started thinking about, and this was during COVID, this was during the pandemic.
19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, things were on hold.
19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: My field work in Vietnam was on hold.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't go to Vietnam.
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just started to research.
19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was doing this research, I came across a book by an author by the name of Nia Baw.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote this book.
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He's written many, many books.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote it.
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Christine, that's why I was a father.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
19:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So shout out.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Shout out.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like Vietnam.
19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a Vietnam man.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
19:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So he wrote this book a couple years ago.
19:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam War FG is in war.
19:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a story about Operation New Life.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started reading it and I almost fascinated.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there were so many details, it was meticulously researched.
20:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were so many details in there that helped me.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents had always told me, we were on a ship after the big way.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We think it was called the Bikimbalk.
20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was looking all over the internet and the archive, I could not find any ship in the Kimball.
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And they dawned on me that maybe they only said Kimball because that was one of the first streets we lived on when we moved to Chicago and like back in nineteen seventy-eight, for us newcomers.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But the name of the ship was Kimbro and I only figured that out because of the Neo-Valves book.
20:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He had a table, all of the different ships that participated and I figured that out from there.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I was able to get in touch with him.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And I let him know that I'm interested in learning more about new life.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything he can do.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, OK, besides my book, here's some folks you should talk to.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them was Professor Evan, they spared to Gandhi at UCLA.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I spoke with her.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: That was when I first got in touch with her, met her.
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been doing work related to Guam and Operation New Life at that point for maybe a year or two.
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she then put me in touch with some folks on Guam.
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This includes one of my main collaborators on this project, Max Rankillo.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the president of the Guam Philharmonic Foundation on Guam.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, things started to snowball.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: They said, you know, the folks in Guam, including Max said, if you want to come out here and visit, we've welcome you.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: This was sort of the how things started at Tenkel Law in Vietnam.
21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I just started researching, I ingratiate it myself by emailing people and then all of a sudden people said, okay, why don't you just come out here?
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's meet a person.
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I did.
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I booked the flight and I went to Guam a couple of years ago and started meeting all kinds of wonderful people.
21:55
[SPEAKER_00]: who then I realized shared a lot of the kinds of objectives that I had, and not only learning about this history of operation in life, but making sure that it is part of our awareness, our imagination.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is how things get started.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started to think about how there might be ways to combine my profession as an anthropologist, as an archaeologist, with this personal quest that I was on.
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is what took me to this project.
22:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I started researching it, raising funding for it.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to acknowledge the Henry loose foundation for funding this current project that we have, which is a multi-year project that involves not only these sorts of events that are part of community engagement, but historical reconstruction, involving oral histories, and hopefully at some point involving archeology as well.
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But that I'm sorry for the long-winded response.
22:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the path that I was on.
22:55
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think that's important here.
22:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also think it's important to think about, I think you and I we talk about this all the time.
23:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are we so stubbornly
23:06
[SPEAKER_02]: attacking these subjects.
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you and I share this common DNA, we are stubborn about getting to the root of what happened to our families and recreating that.
23:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just so ingrained in our systems that we have to get to the bottom of every detail.
23:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's fascinating to watch you approach these subjects.
23:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I will make an answer that so many different ways.
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose the most basic answers is humans were very, very curious.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to know things.
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And we also want to belong in some way and think about identity.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where do I come from?
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: What's my, what's my, my tribe?
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What's my community?
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And as part of that, identities wrapped up in that in very complicated ways.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Who can explain exactly why?
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe psychologists can explain this, but
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: As anthropologists, we see that.
24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: We see in the material record, we see through studies of current modern-day communities and societies, we see how people kind of bind themselves through cultural identity and practices.
24:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And from that standpoint, the history, where it all comes from,
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do these ideas, these identities, and these practices, and these beliefs, these norms and values?
24:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do they all come from?
24:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That's at the heart of that.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, this project, or this kind of project, or this exploration, the kinds of questions you and I have been tossing around when we get together and we talk about what it means to be Vietnamese, or what it means to be Vietnamese-American.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the, I think, is part of human nature.
25:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So what will be happening when you arrive to Guam?
25:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think on the nineteenth of July.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm getting out there right before what's known as Liberation Bay.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're looking at local Guamanian events.
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Guam has a very complex history.
25:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's indigenous communities that were there for thousands of years.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The descendants are the Chamorro communities on the island.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we have Spanish occupation.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We have Japanese occupation.
25:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We have American interventions and occupation and liberation.
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: For some it's viewed as liberation.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Liberation Day is officially on the twentieth or twenty first of this month.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting in just before that.
26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And a few days after that, and we intentionally scheduled our events to occur that week because there would be a lot of people that are going to be on the island that typically come back.
26:20
[SPEAKER_00]: They have ties to Guam.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have meetings and ceremonies and workshops and gatherings occurring across several days at different parts of the island.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We have an exhibit that has been set up at one of the locations at the Micronesia Mall on Glam.
26:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a massive staff that's been working powerlessly for weeks.
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: They've gathered all these materials.
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of it actually is related to some of the work that Max Rankillo had already done with Professor Gandhi.
26:52
[SPEAKER_00]: As Evan Lee, his perspective, Gandhi, of UCLA.
26:54
[SPEAKER_00]: They had produced an exhibit called Remembering Saigon a couple of years back.
27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: There's still a website that's out by the way commemorating those events.
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But this exhibit now is up and running.
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's open to the public.
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We have planned various site visits to some of the former camera locations.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go there now to some of these former campsites, there's nothing.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: All you see are empty fields.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: overgrown foliage or empty fields.
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They're in various parts of the island.
27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They're controlled by different entities, the United States Navy, the Air Force, the National Park Service, some on private land, but there's really nothing.
27:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we know is that there were, there were camps here.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so many people who are coming back, and we have folks from the island that are going to be part of this, but we also have folks from areas in the US, other areas of US that are coming out to go on to participate.
27:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're gonna get on buses.
28:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna go visit these locations.
28:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna get out.
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna look around.
28:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna share our thoughts and our memories and how being this in these spaces.
28:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what does that mean for us, especially for some people to have been here in fifty years?
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They have their memories from when they were there.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're gonna have opportunities to share these thoughts and to talk about it.
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And to think about what it means to market at fifty years and what it means moving forward.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So getting back to some of the things you and I were talking about a few minutes ago, why should we care?
28:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
28:34
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the connections for us?
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about my kids and I think about their future children and future generations of the diaspora.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they start asking questions about, well, our first stops, like our ancestors, our first stops into American society, for instance, where were we?
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm as a pivotal part of that experience.
28:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you go to visit now, what do you see?
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you even go?
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, as I discovered, there wasn't anything that was clear to me.
29:04
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got to Guam, if I wanted to learn about that history, where would I even go?
29:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not all that much physically to see, except you have to do the research and figure out, well, these empty plots of land, that's where the history is.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I hope we can do is to make some of these sorts of exhibits and memorials more permanent.
29:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some memorialization on Guam, there's the Lone Sailor statue at the Governor's Complex, but there's not a ton.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And we hope to be able to put much more of that physically on the landscape to record and to commemorate, but also maybe digitally as well.
29:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm thinking about some of the people that are just going as visitors and friends of your work, such as my food and Cynthia that we spoke about, two ladies that I know that are friends and I can't imagine how special it is going to be for them because the recreation of the days that they were there as young women, young girls, fifty years ago,
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: and how far they've gone and come.
30:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Both of them are medical people.
30:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Sindh is a doctor and no.
30:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Sindh is a dentist, my food is a doctor.
30:28
[SPEAKER_02]: They have gone so far in their lives since the days of being processed in Guam.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would add to that another colleague, Kathy Lam, who's also coming out there, who was there as a child as well.
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And believe she was maybe a young teenager.
30:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's going to be special for me to, as they're looking at the landscapes, as they're taking that all in, because they were there, fifty years ago.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, I'm sure they have certain, they have all kinds of feelings about that and memories.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be looking at them.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be watching their reactions, right?
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm going to, through those reactions, I'm reliving my parents' experience.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish to bring my parents, I can't, it's too difficult for them to travel all the way out there.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I were bringing them out there, well, and if I were to take them to Asyn Beach or to tent, the remains of tent city at a roadie point,
31:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to see, as they were looking at the landscape, recognizing landmarks or the beach or different areas, they would say, if I remember walking along this shoreline, I remember walking up and down this hill or this vantage point, to see that and to feel what they were feeling, that would be incredible.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very excited to invite and to join these folks that are coming back and to experience that with them.
32:03
[SPEAKER_02]: to young people that are interested in learning more about Guam and there's all these different camps that help people as they love the country of Vietnam.
32:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I think growing up, I always heard Guam and I always related it back to Camp Pendleton or Fort Indian Town Gap or Fort Chaffey or Eglon.
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a distinction here that we're talking about.
32:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Guam was a receiving base
32:37
[SPEAKER_02]: because it just for me just to clarify.
32:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Guam was a transitory stop between like Malaysia, Thailand that people when they left Vietnam they would hit local ports like Malaysia or Thailand or Philippines.
32:55
[SPEAKER_02]: They would land there and then eventually get to Guam to process before moving on to the four major
33:04
[SPEAKER_02]: camps.
33:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that right?
33:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Gualemusions with the process in the center, just like Ellis Island was perhaps.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That's absolutely right.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the stopping point, the major stuff.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the doorway, the entryway.
33:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And people got processed there.
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: People were screened medically.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: People were probably vaccinated.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then
33:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you waited your turn.
33:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You waited your turn.
33:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You figured out where you were going to end up.
33:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And so those four locations on the Continental US were the major destinations after that.
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're all related as part of this larger program.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: In Guam, just, I mean, you hear about it, right?
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't really, you know, the number.
33:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I always hear a hundred and thirty thousand people left in that first wave, roughly, hundred, thirty, hundred, fifty, whatever, right?
33:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But a hundred and ten roughly went through Guam.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So an overwhelming majority had to go through Guam to get processed and hang out for a bit and then processed onto the four camps.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: In Guam.
34:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if everyone listening those and I didn't know exactly where it was.
34:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew it was in Pacific.
34:12
[SPEAKER_00]: but just to give everybody some some context and numbers.
34:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an island that I have the numbers written down here.
34:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about, um, sixteen hundred miles east of Manila.
34:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about five to eight hundred miles west of San Francisco.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the Pacific, right?
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The South Pacific.
34:31
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the southernmost and the largest of the Marianas Islands.
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's just this little spec.
34:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Ted his with thirty miles in length, twelve miles wide, four to twelve miles wide.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're looking at two hundred square miles or so.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: To put it into context, LA itself is, I think, five hundred or so square miles.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is less than half its footprint.
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And the population, if I remember correctly, of Guam and seventy five before the operation, was maybe just under a hundred thousand.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But by the time the folks start coming in at the peak, we're looking at almost double till you can think about all the strain on the resources and all that.
35:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And people welcomed the refugees, right?
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We've heard stories about how there were some local community members who gomanians, who befriended refugees, sponsored them,
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: lived with them, many refugees end up staying in Guam.
35:38
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot leave.
35:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe you're being Guam now?
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
35:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Vietnamese community in Guam as I know it, right?
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of this, some of it's the research, some of it's anecdotally.
35:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Some came later, not the first wave.
35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Some came with the first wave and stayed.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Some came with the first wave and left the came back.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: They came back to Guang and they live there now.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a thriving community that's there.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting to think about because for many folks, I think it's, it is the first stop and it's, why would I leave?
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think a lot of us feel a certain way about it.
36:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I know my parents do.
36:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a feeling of indebtedness.
36:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I first went to Guam, I was asked to give kind of an overview or a lecture or presentation and introduce myself in my family's story.
36:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked my parents about what they wanted to see, something like that, they were living very careously through me, because they couldn't go.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember my mother was very adamant about this.
36:51
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, I want you to tell these stories, these memories that I have.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to do so in doing so, thank the people that were there.
37:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember specific individuals, specific encounters that I had, conversations that I had or experiences, I will never forget those encounters.
37:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And we think about the trauma and the chaos and the turmoil of leaving.
37:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam, leaving your family behind, leaving everything behind, not knowing what was going to happen to them, and then not knowing what's going to happen to you in the future.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The one was this kind of limbo that you're ending up there.
37:30
[SPEAKER_00]: All of a sudden now, the fear and the anxiety and the stress trauma for a brief moment, all that drops away as these generous people start to give you things to help you, right?
37:45
[SPEAKER_00]: She remembers that very clearly and she was like, you have to say something.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to tell these stories.
37:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did.
37:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely did.
37:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the things that I've also noticed in many of the interviews that I've been doing.
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked to former refugees.
37:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked to former service personnel and relief workers and volunteers.
38:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've heard stories from them that that are just their heartwarming and their gut wrenching as well.
38:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard about people that have died on their watch because they came in that were sick where they were had issues and were trying to save their lives with limited resources.
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard about conversations that people had with strangers.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a woman that I spoke to recently, who was a teenager.
38:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She's an American.
38:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Her father was part of Anderson Air Force Base serving at the base.
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: She served as a high schooler as a volunteer.
38:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Her mother called her and said, hey, there are these plain loads of, it means refugees coming in.
38:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't take care of all the things that they need.
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We need volunteers.
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So she comes over.
38:47
[SPEAKER_00]: She's helping out through the night as people are offloading.
38:52
[SPEAKER_00]: serving food, figuring out things that they need, helping them with their shelter, stuff like that.
38:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And she says she remembers having a conversation with one of the, the refugees because they both shared this, they were both musicians and shared a love for music.
39:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And they talked for hours.
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden, she says she'll never forget this.
39:12
[SPEAKER_00]: He just turns her and says, what's going to happen to me?
39:15
[SPEAKER_00]: What is my future?
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going to happen to me?
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was very, very deeply concerned about this and had no answer.
39:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe it was a rhetorical question.
39:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But she said that conversation and that moments has stuck with her fifty years.
39:29
[SPEAKER_00]: She's never forgotten it.
39:31
[SPEAKER_00]: She often wonders what has happened to him.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And she would love to be able to reconnect and find out.
39:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is just one example of the kinds of things I've heard and it reinforces for me the importance of retelling these stories to give people some sense of closure as well.
39:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, maybe if there's a way for people to actually get reconnected, they don't know each other's names for instance.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we put those stories out there, maybe online or somewhere, and people read, maybe they get reconnected somehow.
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this reminds me of a deeply psychological thing that human beings have.
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We, in times of crisis, we're dying to know what's gonna happen to us.
40:22
[SPEAKER_02]: We wouldn't know what's next.
40:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is in itself a form of trauma if you think about it, right?
40:31
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are putting a situation where you don't know, you know, Professor Talha, she's a sociology professor out of Oceanside San Diego.
40:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just talking to her last night about all of the deportations, you know, the ISD deportation.
40:50
[SPEAKER_02]: She's heavily involved with working in that community and she brings up this idea constantly of the men and their families wondering what's going to happen next to them.
41:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, what's going to happen next?
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And she has to tell them, look, there's no chance we're staying here.
41:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You are going to be in Vietnam in a few months or weeks or whatever.
41:13
[SPEAKER_02]: That is your destiny.
41:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And as soon as they hear it, the family is the man, you know, they're sitting in some detention center.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as they hear it, their lives become a little bit more settled.
41:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
41:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, what you brought up, that example that you just brought up like,
41:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Where am I going?
41:31
[SPEAKER_02]: How am I going to be in the next year?
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a huge psychological, like blunt force trauma to your brain and your soul when you don't know.
41:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You got scooped up by ice and your detention center and you don't know what's gonna happen.
41:49
[SPEAKER_02]: This is just, I think a basic human need to know that we're gonna be okay.
41:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's why this story for me
41:57
[SPEAKER_02]: resonates because a hundred and ten thousand of us estimated were we were on this island and we didn't know what we did not know what the next fifty years is going to be and the recreation of that now that you're like you're about to leave these people through
42:13
[SPEAKER_02]: is so beautiful because then they can, we too can live Icariously through these stories that are being presented.
42:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's a future, it's future episodes of, you know, men going through detention centers and, you know, the transition of human lives for better or worse in terms of their own thoughts, is it your fault?
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it the government?
42:38
[SPEAKER_02]: All of those things, if we get to hear these stories,
42:42
[SPEAKER_02]: feel more at home and more settled in our soul.
42:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You're absolutely right.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of uncertainty, the murkyness of your future.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a significant cause for anxiety, and significant.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: How you cope with that.
43:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can't prepare, if you can't contemplate, if you can't imagine your future, it's almost like having no future.
43:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, especially if I live life, why work, why do anything?
43:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're paralyzed because how do you plan for how do you act?
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I do right now in this moment?
43:25
[SPEAKER_00]: If I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, if I don't know if I'm going to eat anything where I'm at food, if I'm going to provide shelter for my children, if you don't know these things,
43:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't just go away in the back of mind.
43:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that limbo of being there, as much as it was a relief to finally reach safe haven all of a sudden.
43:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You think about all the harrowing stories, the journeys that people had getting out of Vietnam.
43:56
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents have their story.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And as dramatic as that is, we can think about all the other kinds of experiences people had and leaving undercover of darkness, getting out and to see being exposed to the elements, to predatory folks, to all kinds of dangers of being on the open water, hoping to be picked up, right?
44:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about all that.
44:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about the tragic circumstances that trauma that puts you through.
44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get to a location and you don't know.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be the first time you have relief and safety.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But you might not speak the language, you might not be able to communicate with the people that are helping you, and you have no idea what's coming next.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is this liminal space, this limbo that you're in, and you can't predict anything.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't predict tomorrow.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't predict fifty years from now.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And what does that do for you?
44:53
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that, what kind of mental state does that put you in?
44:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you, how do you protect your family while you're thinking about all that?
45:02
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I think that the work that you do is so fascinating because when we get to recreate, or we get to see the recreation through the records or when you're as an archaeologist is pointing these details out to people.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of live with this sort of certainty that things are going to be all right.
45:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, societies transition, societies evolve.
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: People migrate, people move back and forth, people get pushed out, people come in.
45:32
[SPEAKER_02]: All of these patterns happen.
45:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I think something inside of our nervous system are processing that, wow, no matter what kind of turmoil,
45:44
[SPEAKER_02]: people end up wherever they end up and it's fascinating to see people rebuild like like ant colonies, right?
45:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just yeah.
45:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's adding to see recreations of like records come to life and you can read them in real words or videos and digital content.
46:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You can, you know, kind of allow to process and, you know, like my food and Cynthia just going back fifty years and going, wow, this is amazing where we've landed in our lives and someone else will fortune it.
46:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
46:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
46:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We hear about the full gamut, the range of experiences, the stories that are what we might consider success stories that have happy endings.
46:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And we hear about other stories that are on the complete opposite end of that spectrum.
46:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I find interesting and powerful about this work
46:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's continuing to draw me to it is, I mentioned this earlier, as an archaeologist, you reconstruct in very coarse-grained fashion, the histories and life ways of these communities of the past.
46:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't know exactly the motivations, the intentions, the feelings, the emotions that they were going through.
47:00
[SPEAKER_00]: With something like this, it's analogous.
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think about the historical reconstruction of new life, you and I are throwing these numbers around, hundred, thirty thousand, hundred, ten thousand.
47:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they were probably like twenty thousand military personnel that were helping.
47:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We can think about all the money that was invested.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: These are numbers, right?
47:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you get into the nitty gritty, when you get into the individuals and what they experience, what they remember, what they saw, how they felt about it, the powerful emotions that were coursing through them as they witnessed things.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That to me is also very, very important to kind of fill in those gaps to provide texture to this history.
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: For us to understand it and to think about, you know, humans have been migrating all over the world for millions of years, right?
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And to think about the movements of people, why they move, what motivates them?
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: what kinds of factors push them away from somewhere, but pull them away somewhere else, what they choose to bring with them.
48:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think about even the Pacific Ocean, the colonization of the Pacific, all those communities, all those little specks of land where people reached.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: risking their lives going on these these ships and vessels these canoes to reach these points of land what inspires people to make these decisions to move right is it fear is it hope and to see this episode as an example of all that and to have this database of stories we would
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We would be remiss if we didn't collect as much of this as possible.
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just preserve this history, but to understand more about humanity itself.
48:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think there's a, I can't remember as a Tibetan, what kind of Buddhist sect do the mandalas where you put sand, you make sand patterns, beautiful sand patterns over days and perhaps weeks?
49:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
49:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's temporary.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you put it, you set it up and you, you know, it goes on display for your temple or, you know, it's like a display somewhere in the museum or something.
49:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think about warm, fort Indian town gap for chaffey.
49:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Ogon, all these places are sort of like mandalas that were set up.
49:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I mean, it took a lot of effort to set these things up.
49:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And now they're gone.
49:30
[SPEAKER_02]: They're completely erased from.
49:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you're like recreating the mandala from, you know, what people are describing, you know, you're putting the sand back so we can kind of experience it again.
49:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a cooling allergy.
49:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and if we extend that thought, I mean, these are intricate, beautiful patterns.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and they're, they involve so many people in so many lives.
50:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not all gone in the sense, I mean, physically the verb remains are gone, right?
50:09
[SPEAKER_00]: On Guam, all of those camps are struck by the end of the year, getting into the fall of of seventy-five.
50:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a super typhoon that came in the next year called Pamela wiped away a lot of the infrastructure.
50:25
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, what I understand, everybody was constantly concerned that a typhoon would come during the camp in seventy-five as well.
50:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody was living outside in tents and they'd be exposed.
50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Those physical aspects, that infrastructure is gone, but the memories are still there and all the materials, the remnants of that experience.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still around too.
50:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and I think that's the case, not just for Operation New Life camps on Guam, but some of these bases that you just mentioned, both in the United States, but elsewhere, in parts of Southeast Asia, in Thailand and other parts of the region.
51:07
[SPEAKER_00]: There were other camps as well.
51:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I hope is that this is a kind of entry point, the starting point of foundation for research on if we think about refugee resettlement as a larger umbrella.
51:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we think about this episode with the Vietnam conflict as a kind of starting point, whatever we learn, how we approach it, the methodologies that we use, the lessons that we clean from all this.
51:37
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe we can apply that elsewhere, maybe we can apply that to other conflicts, other humanitarian efforts, other episodes of massive exodus and resettlement, and to make comparisons, and to see what do we know, what can we take with us so that the next time there is a crisis that occurs somewhere.
51:57
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we set up the infrastructure?
51:59
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the kinds of things that we have to think about?
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the kinds of things that these folks that are undergoing this trauma are experiencing?
52:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do we address that?
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want to really follow up on what you're saying right now because it hits me in a way that is related to modern day immigration patterns from people from all over the world trying to get into the US.
52:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And you hear the refrain, you hear people in our community saying, but we got here legally, but we did it the right way.
52:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, I wonder what the right way is?
52:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder what that even means because we left the wrong way.
52:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The Vietnam, the wrong way.
52:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We left Vietnam, not the right way.
52:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We broke out of there and we scrambled the hell out.
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were no right way to get into the country.
52:52
[SPEAKER_02]: America had to do what it had to do at that time to
52:56
[SPEAKER_02]: to really take us all in.
52:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we think about, like, why?
53:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, that's not to be answered right now.
53:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But I just want to leave that sort of rhetorical question for people who are struggling with immigration policies today and saying, well, we did it the right way.
53:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what does that really even mean?
53:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
53:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a right way?
53:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a wrong way?
53:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all subjective.
53:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's subject to the kinds of perspectives that we have in the given moment.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And political wins.
53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And political wins.
53:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, the moment that we're living in now is very different than fifty years ago.
53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The circumstances are all different as well.
53:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single conflict, every single wave of movement and migration.
53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that, all of that is going to be unique in other themselves, but it is subjective.
54:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if any of us can actually say what is right.
54:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
54:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't think we can come to that a resolution of right and wrong, but I do ask the audience to share this with their families because just shortly before this whole Guam thing,
54:18
[SPEAKER_02]: two, three decades before this was the round up of Japanese people in America.
54:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
54:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you think about these two things of camps,
54:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very different.
54:32
[SPEAKER_02]: One was, how did we, as the Vietnamese community and society benefit so greatly from the policies, the legislation of America, while like a few short decades before this, in Japanese-American society, they were rounded up.
54:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Locked one camps.
54:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, there was no answer to any of this.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We just need to be really, really mindful about
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: the whims of politics and not berating, I think people who are less fortunate than us because of political conditions.
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're right in pointing that out.
55:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't only a couple decades, a few decades before that that we see these camps, these internment incarceration camps for Japanese Americans popping up in parts of the United States.
55:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that policy.
55:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, the political and international kind of situation at that time during World War II was very different.
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to talk about this larger tapestry of Asian American identity,
55:39
[SPEAKER_00]: and the kinds of episodes that we see throughout the twentieth century, the contrast that we see.
55:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this massive range.
55:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of it is very, very unpleasant and ugly.
55:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of it is what we might consider to be beautiful and generous.
56:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is this range and what accounts for the differences and what accounts or are feelings about them as a society and how the government and its military are deployed.
56:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a question we can ask that's ongoing because we still see it happening today.
56:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not going to see it go away.
56:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The kinds of policies that we have are views about outsiders, what constitutes outsiders, foreigners, who gets to become part of American society or who does not, the gatekeeping that we see happening.
56:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Those questions are never going to go away.
56:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of American society.
56:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of any country society.
56:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of any society, really.
56:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see those kinds of questions come up constantly.
56:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So the largest thrust of what we're talking about here is what can we learn about and it's the humanitarian, the human aspects of all this.
56:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we set politics aside for a second, and we just think about people that are in need,
57:01
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we respond to those needs when we are presented with those opportunities?
57:07
[SPEAKER_00]: If we can put our politics aside for a second, if somebody right in front of us is in need.
57:12
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I respond to that?
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I do for this person or this family?
57:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I think those are the bigger questions.
57:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we pick the best parts of our lessons and we apply them.
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about things moving forward.
57:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, thank you so much for the work that you do.
57:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We have just to tease it out there.
57:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You and I have done other episodes that we have not released yet.
57:34
[SPEAKER_02]: about different landmarks in Vietnam.
57:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We have recorded a really cool sub-series about the early days of Vietnam's ancient terrains, the work that you do, and that will be coming out probably later this summer.
57:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But thank you so much for today and sharing with us your journey about Guam.
58:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
58:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It is always an honor and a privilege to be on the podcast with you.
58:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I am thoroughly enjoyed these conversations and I appreciate the work that you do.
58:12
[SPEAKER_00]: in bringing these aspects of our community, these aspects of our heritage and our identity to the public, and in celebrating them.
58:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a platform that I think is very, very significant important for many of us.
58:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we talked about this episode of History for Guam, I mean, this is something that I think, it's not just me, right?
58:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We should all be thinking about it.
58:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We should all be caring about it.
58:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we go back to those numbers, a hundred, ten thousand,
58:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing a lot of folks that are out there listening to this right now, even whether they know it or not, they have some kind of kind of kind of hype.
58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's in the history.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Kevin Bacon.
58:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
58:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Sixty degrees of a Guam, except it's probably just two degrees of Guam.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Could be.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
58:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again.
58:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for the kind words.
59:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.