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465 - Why Should You Care About Guam? - Guam Kimbo Marines & Nam C Kim · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: One of welcome everyone to the Vietnamese podcast on my co-host today is Namsi Kim who has been on the podcast many times and we are actual partners with the other projects outside of the Vietnamese podcast.
0:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Today we have two guests very special guests.
0:17
[SPEAKER_02]: John Irwin and Robbie Parsley, both US Marines that served during this really interesting time as we'll get into a period in Guam caught operation new life.
0:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So welcome to the Vietnamese podcast, everyone.
0:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
0:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
0:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you.
0:38
[SPEAKER_02]: They were going to kind of like get snapshots and stories of Operation New Life.
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And what that period was like when the Vietnamese people were being uplifted or were transferred out of Vietnam into Guam.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd love to get everybody's sort of initial
1:00
[SPEAKER_02]: stories on how they ended up, you know, on this ship called the USS Kimbro, correct?
1:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: John, you're the youngest man on this podcast, so I think we should start with you.
1:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Boy, have you got your date mixed up?
1:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, what I remember, we were stationed at the Camp Pague in Okanawa.
1:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Camp Pague was an old post-World War II camp at the Army declared unfit for human habitation.
1:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Supposedly in 1959, so they gave it to the Marine Corps, we occupied it.
1:52
[SPEAKER_04]: So we could watch the JAPS take off in the morning.
1:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, whatever the, everything started going down, the initial was, uh, Operation Eagle pulled the evacuation of Cambodia.
2:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So renew something was going to happen.
2:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, you could see in the stars, it stripes and listen on the radio, armed forces radio,
2:20
[SPEAKER_04]: service at that time we had no TV.
2:24
[SPEAKER_04]: What was going on in Vietnam, but what we were here in on the radio didn't drive quite with what we were seeing with the jets taken off of cadeta.
2:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what you remember Robbie?
2:45
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... right jeeps and do some halves and i had no clue what was going on till we were called report back to our units but we were watching the fourth marines you know they were dustin all pretty hard and i knew it wasn't uh... you know it wasn't a flow i think there was already a battalion of flow probably nine marines and right and well we just got the order to return to base
3:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And originally General Houghton, which was a commanding general of the Third Marine Division, a designated First Martaian Fourth Marines to be the security forces going out.
3:29
[SPEAKER_04]: We had learned during Ego pool that you needed to have security forces aboard these ships that were taken people out because they wanted to go where they wanted to go.
3:42
[SPEAKER_04]: later General Howton directed that 10 detachment be formed and the detachment that we were on detachment echo was formed from 12th Marines, which was an artillery unit.
3:57
[SPEAKER_04]: If I remember correctly, and Robbie, please jump in.
4:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to hog this, but the majority were from headquarters batteries.
4:07
[SPEAKER_04]: the rest came from various batteries within the regiment, and it followed the eight, yes.
4:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It followed the age-old way of doing things and the military where you send the people, you said you did would, so that's how we originally started.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, John.
4:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I think now I'm had something to say.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to add to what you were both describing and to clarify some date.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So Operation Eagle pulled my understanding, this was mid April, right, of 1975.
4:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to contribute to the background as our story is unfolding.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's complimented by, no, I was a year old, so I don't remember this.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: These are stories told to me by my family, especially my parents.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But right around that point, the writing was sort of on the wall for a lot of people in South Vietnam.
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And even prior to that, in the weeks prior to that, in the areas for the North, many of those cities already were starting to panic and they were seeing encroachment.
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And by that point in April, a lot of folks suspected that the North was coming to Saigon.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was sort of the last stand.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Those weeks of April towards the end, my parents were trying to figure out if they were leaving or not.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And my father had the opportunity because he was a Korean national at the time and had credentials.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: He was working
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have evacuated all of us, the three of us, with the only child at the time.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The three of us with that embassy.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But because my mother wasn't sure she wanted to leave and leave parents or siblings and all family members behind, she was kind of dragging her feet and didn't make a decision about it.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we missed that chance.
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: and by the time they wanted to leave they were trying to go to the airport and all these other locations towards the end of April and were stopped they were turned away at gunpoint all kinds of things were preventing them from leaving.
6:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Until they got to the USA compound, and that's where people were not allowed in through the gates, but because of my dad's credentials, the three of us were able to enter the compound.
6:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how we got to the operation frequent wind airlift.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the pre-cursor to what ends up happening out at sea where all of us meet, but we don't meet, but we are pads crossed.
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We we evacuate by helicopter.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a Huey off the top of that building.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Get out to the airport.
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, we're waiting in darkness in the passageways as there's artillery and rockets coming in and hitting the airport.
7:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we board a larger helicopter that took us out to the coast and we landed on the USS Midway.
7:09
[SPEAKER_00]: from there, I'm not sure how long we're on the midway, but we are then transferred to the USS Truman Kim Pro.
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, I'll let the two of you gentlemen pick up the story from there because that's where we get to the ship and you're already on the ship.
7:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, wait, I wanna say it was the 17th when we flew out of Ocanala.
7:38
[SPEAKER_03]: landed in the Philippines and we were briefed in the Philippines and flown to the Coral Sea, I don't know, or they, I call them cods.
7:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what they went?
7:52
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's, that's a very, yeah, that's an interesting one.
7:57
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be cod.
7:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and over the next, I don't know, it was, it didn't even, when
8:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We were on a Mike boat, almost, in that short amount of time, we didn't get hardly any sleep.
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: But they were just moving us and, you know, the next thing I know, we were, I'm up over the coast of Vietnam, and I was a Lance Corporal.
8:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I was the bottom of the food chain to know what was happening and how it's
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I remember that, you know, just moving from here to here to here as fast as they could get us there, and then we began training.
8:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Kenneth, it may address you, originally, whatever we were formed up, we were on a three-hour notice.
8:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So we had to be kept in a compound all our weapons, everything.
9:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Then it went to a 24 hour standby, almost immediately after that.
9:09
[SPEAKER_04]: The crap hit the fan and we ended up we, they brought in trucks.
9:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We got on the trucks when we got to Cadena Air Force Base.
9:18
[SPEAKER_04]: They already had to see one-thirties with the gate down.
9:21
[SPEAKER_04]: The engines were running.
9:23
[SPEAKER_04]: We got off for trucks onto to see one-thirties.
9:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They taxied out.
9:27
[SPEAKER_04]: We landed exubit bay.
9:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't remember if it was souped Mayor Clark Air Force Base, but as we were taxing in, they lowered the gate and there were trucks following the aircraft.
9:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So we got off the aircraft, onto the trucks, spent tonight at Upper Mile Camp, then went on board the card,
9:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Then they put us on a helicopter to take us to a World War II destroyer that had no helo deck.
10:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So the way that we got on-board that destroyer, the helicopter would hover, we took the horse collar.
10:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Put it around us, put our packs and our weapons in front of us.
10:22
[SPEAKER_04]: They kicked us out and lowered us down on the destroyer.
10:25
[SPEAKER_04]: It's still in 26 knots.
10:28
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what one day.
10:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Hit the deck and laid, up if you hit the deck, you don't try to end up, you just laid down and let go.
10:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the thank you Lord, I made it.
10:38
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's how we got on those destroyer.
10:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Rehead, watch there, John, they're my boat, John, I'm going to interrupt you, I want to probably go through the next hour with more about how you perceived the events.
11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm less interested in the things that happened at this point, but I'm more interested in how you felt like that emotional
11:11
[SPEAKER_02]: when you were going through all of this stuff.
11:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I mean by that is this, when we look back today, we can read about these facts, we can pick up pieces about all of these things, but what we cannot get is the human touch
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: the feelings of the U.S. Marines that were going through the moment.
11:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want this interview to be about that.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, you're going to sprinkle more details about the mission and how things, you know, carried out.
11:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm really interested.
11:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And your point of view today when you look back on those days and how you felt, and this is 50 years later, and I really want to go into your heart and your mind to hear you express how you felt at the time and how you felt today.
12:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Basically, whatever it started, we didn't know what was going to happen because it was so confusing.
12:09
[SPEAKER_04]: We were originally briefed or I was briefed because I was a communications.
12:13
[SPEAKER_04]: They had to keep this up with what was going on.
12:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So we had some idea of what we were going to do.
12:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Originally, we were going to Tonsonoke Airport and provide a security at the receiving station there.
12:28
[SPEAKER_04]: But every Tonsonoke started receiving mortar fire and those last two Marines were killed.
12:35
[SPEAKER_04]: then our mission changed to go into Newport Pier when we were going to provide security as the refugees came in.
12:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So now you look, you're being told or I, I was being told that we're going to go into an airport that's being murdered.
12:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we're going to appear.
12:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was confusing at everything changed.
13:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You didn't have time to really have fear or to think about things because it was so fluid.
13:12
[SPEAKER_04]: After it changed to become an evacuation security force, you want to what's going to happen.
13:20
[SPEAKER_04]: How are we going to get these refugees?
13:22
[SPEAKER_04]: How are we going to feed them?
13:23
[SPEAKER_04]: These are the minutia that we had to go through.
13:30
[SPEAKER_04]: because he could better tell you what he was feeling that I can.
13:35
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I mean, it was just, it was, it was mask and views and it was chaos.
13:41
[SPEAKER_03]: When we got there, we trained.
13:43
[SPEAKER_03]: We had no clue what we were training for, you know, fire suppression, riot control, you know, feeding people.
13:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even hardly remember anything about that even coming up.
13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we had, we were on sea rations because they didn't have enough supplies on the ship to feed us much less water for everybody to shower or drink.
14:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And when it started, 27, 28, I don't remember when it was.
14:16
[SPEAKER_03]: The first boat was snowed, you know, and it was a relatively easy maneuver.
14:23
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it took us a while to figure out
14:28
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, how to sanitize and and search and what was allowed, what wasn't allowed.
14:37
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like John talked about the trash can in the Zoom call, you know, pistols, ammunition, grenades, you know, whatever came out of people's hands, just waiting to trash can and over the side of the ship and, you know, from an emotional standpoint,
14:56
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I was 18 years old.
14:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd never experienced anything like that.
15:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You see the best in the worst of humanity.
15:08
[SPEAKER_03]: All in one, you know, one spot.
15:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we were running away.
15:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I ask you about that best in the worst?
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me stories of the worst and stories of the best?
15:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what do you, what comes up in your mind
15:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, when the people first started coming on, they were more fluid.
15:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you could tell by their dress, their manner.
15:40
[SPEAKER_03]: They were wealthier individuals.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Johnson, one was the mayor of Vuntal.
15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Newspaper editors, you know, journalist.
15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: like when the barge non was on pulled up, it was a shift in everything, you know, and that thing was packed.
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: and we were sitting there looking over the side of that ship like in my god, you know, wait.
16:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So are you saying that when number I've like that was the worst of the bunch.
16:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm a loose lady and I'm out.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I mean, just a conversation.
16:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let them.
16:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, let them tell you that the condition of that barge was, it was horrific.
16:34
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and they are watching on the barge you on a bike boat, right?
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So just to be clear, my parents are watching on the barge.
16:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We witnessed my father took pictures when the barge came and docked with the Kimbro.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is actually, this is part of the reason why we're all here today because that photo
17:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I've seen that since I was a kid, it's tattooed in my head, right?
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: These are one of the few photos we have big on the Kimbro, but as I was doing research to figure out what happened to the Kimbro and it's history, I was online and I found other photos that were very, very similar, but they weren't taken by my dad.
17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They were taken by John.
17:27
[SPEAKER_04]: actually a bill's dribbled to go sell no did okay bill did yeah but they ended up and I found them through your your your book and your memoir and that's how we got connected after we got back to Okinawa bill had his film developed and we got copies of it
17:53
[SPEAKER_04]: book.
17:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, I've spoken with Joshua Newton.
17:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Joshua, was I hope my local man's pronouncing correctly.
18:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I mean, we gave me a article of out of a paper that is uncalled described what was going on in that barge.
18:12
[SPEAKER_04]: They were so packed.
18:15
[SPEAKER_04]: They were on there for two days, no water, no food, no
18:20
[SPEAKER_04]: to sleep, they swatted in place, you, the pictures of the barge showed, I mean, it's unbelievable.
18:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is what we ran into.
18:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And what God us was, there was a thousand people that had been taken off of that barge prior to it coming to us.
18:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And we took off over 3,800 people.
18:51
[SPEAKER_04]: on that board.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine.
18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember Joshua, and this is, that's another reunion story, right, because Joshua saw this picture that my father had taken in, in a lecture that wasn't even about this history, it was about something else.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And he instantly recognized the barge, and he remembered being on that barge, and so he contacted me, and that's how we all got connected.
19:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The moments were in that barge connected and the fence, the outer fence coming down because people were trying to clamor to get off the ship.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It collapsed.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: He remembers this as a child.
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He remembers all of that those events.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I want to ask actually, if I may, of John and Robbie,
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we've talked in previous conversations, those are some of these stories and I'm not to hear you share this with this wider audience.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and before I ask the question, I just want to preface what we were talking about earlier.
19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that it has been described to me by by these gentlemen and my others, it was other chaos, right?
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: This time period, all of the things that were happening.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And we heard from Robbie and John about the training that they received.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: They were trained with fire suppression, train with riot control, train to provide security for the safeguarding and wealth of the well-being and health of everybody.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It was on that ship, including the crew as well as all the refugees.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But what they were never trained to do, especially as 18-year-olds, or 25-year-olds, was, how do you deal with all of these sorts of circumstances?
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you deal with a kind of humanitarian crisis, right?
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want that to be lost, I don't want that to be lost.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That these young men, they had a mission.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to do a specific thing, but the situation and the circumstances called
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: courage, right?
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Under these, I can't even imagine these extraordinary conditions, these circumstances that they faced, but also that all the refugees were facing.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was obviously a language barrier, there were all kinds of cultural barriers, and you're being thrust into this situation to react.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no forward thinking, there's hardly any time to plan, but to just react.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And I am amazed at what was accomplished and how those thousands of souls were rescued and eventually transported to operation life.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we'll get to new life later on and that resettlement process.
21:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But this was an extraordinary, extraordinary set of events.
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess to go back, I mentioned that the outset of this had questions, right?
21:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I recall from our previous conversations what kinds of things they encountered in witness.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So John and Robert, you mentioned to me different things you saw that touched you, that you remembered to this very day.
22:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wonder if you might share some of those experiences.
22:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And coming back to Ocanawa, when things start sinking in, you know, I say the best and worst of humanity because of things that happened on the ship.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the, the orphans, you know, some of them were great.
22:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them I throw over the side of that ship in a second, you know, they laughed, they thought it was funny.
22:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, us helping women and children
22:51
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, elderly people up and down these cardio mats, you know, that's dangerous enough and it's self going down up and down by yourself, but when you're trying to keep someone from getting hurt, you know, in a two story fall, and they think it's funny.
23:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sitting there thinking, you know, you're sitting up here in the shade.
23:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I can't even imagine how that would feel, you know, and I just, there's things you reflect on over time, you know, and to see it firsthand as a kid, you know, you're thinking, how do you even survive something like that?
23:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought about that for 50 years until I met you.
23:43
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and then I see the fruits of what we did and know why we did, you know, I guess you have questions your whole life because you don't know from the other side of the coin.
23:59
[SPEAKER_02]: What happened?
24:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I do want to ask this question, Robbie, because you just brought it up, which is this.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: These experiences happen to these young men like you in the Marine Corps, and they also happen to these Vietnamese refugees.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm how in my heart, I don't want to wish any of this experience on anybody, but I think America became a better country as the result of all this mixing of hardships, John, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
24:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Edwards was close to me.
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Edwards was a character in itself, right, right, robbing.
24:50
[SPEAKER_04]: But here comes an individual up.
24:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I am the former minister of interior for the former country of South Vietnam.
25:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Nam has his passport.
25:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Somehow he got misplaced and I ended up with it for 50 years, but
25:13
[SPEAKER_04]: he wanted his state room.
25:16
[SPEAKER_04]: We are living on the outside in the weather and he wants his state room.
25:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So we gave him his state room.
25:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I told him, I told him last call for language.
25:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Please take the former minister of interior to the former South Korea, the South Vietnam Republic to his state room.
25:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So he put him into bottom hold.
25:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Bottom hold is where the sewage ended up.
25:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a little girl came up and they were running the mind detector over and it went off.
25:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Edwards came over and he said, sorry, girl, when something's wrong and went over, we lifted her shirt.
26:00
[SPEAKER_04]: They had wrapped money belts around her full of wafer scrolling.
26:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We put her on the search stand, thinking that as her family came up, they would pick her up.
26:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I got busy, thanks for going on around, I look up and she's gone.
26:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I figure okay, your family came by, she's with her family, everything's good.
26:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Two days later, they bring her body up.
26:42
[SPEAKER_04]: The Oriental Culture was that if you save someone's life, you become responsible for it.
26:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So the refugees wouldn't feed her.
26:51
[SPEAKER_04]: They wouldn't let her sleep with.
26:54
[SPEAKER_04]: They wouldn't let her have water, and she passed out.
26:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I think she's dead, but it's corpsmen, think God, they had one bag of wringers left.
27:05
[SPEAKER_04]: They brought her around.
27:07
[SPEAKER_04]: But I've got a daughter that's three years old and the only thing I can think of, that could have been my daughter.
27:16
[SPEAKER_04]: That has haunted me for 50 years, in April, I dream about that little girl, because I did not know enough to realize what was going on, but I got distracted.
27:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I've hated that all these years, but there was nothing I could do.
27:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Under the situation, we're trying to, we were a freighter, the normal contingent of a freighter, a World War II Liberty ship freighter was 58, but that included the gun crews, we had no guns, so a peacetime contingent was 38.
28:02
[SPEAKER_04]: The ship's evaporator to make water fresh water was designed for a crew of 58, and we put on 4,755.
28:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Joshua Newton remarked, the only thing he remembers on a barge, he was eight years old, was being thirsty all the time.
28:28
[SPEAKER_04]: But when he got on the camera, at least he could get water every now and then.
28:33
[SPEAKER_04]: We saw the suffering.
28:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We saw the babies crying.
28:40
[SPEAKER_04]: People watching their homeland go over the deck on her eyes and they had lost everything.
28:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's nothing that we can do.
28:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We could feed them because we had a number of Vietnamese pilots that came on board that could speak enough English so that we could get our needs across, they formed work details.
29:04
[SPEAKER_04]: But we had to cook a rice because we couldn't let them on refugees into the internal portion of the ship.
29:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we didn't know who was who.
29:15
[SPEAKER_04]: We knew we had VC aboard.
29:19
[SPEAKER_04]: We knew we had third party elements that were there.
29:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We could not screen them out.
29:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So you didn't know if you were going to get your throat cut on watch.
29:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we end up with the problems with pay guy from the sanitary conditions.
29:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But hold on, John, there's nobody who did any violence at all in the ship, like there, you say there's VC reports, but did they did anything happen?
29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Not to, I am aware of.
29:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
29:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I bring that question up.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I bring that question up because when we think about letting Syrians into the United States, we think about people from the Middle East, we think about Gihadists, terrorists.
30:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a screening process.
30:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that this conversation about
30:14
[SPEAKER_02]: VC on the ship or we think about letting the Middle East people come into the United States.
30:22
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this sort of xenophobia.
30:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We're afraid of people who are from a different world than we are.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think about the real implications of
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: two different cultures, Americans, Vietnamese, Americans, Middle East, we're just all afraid of each other because we don't really know.
30:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And then until we get to know, and I think today, I want to bring this up in today's climate, political climate.
30:51
[SPEAKER_02]: We are so afraid of the other people, right?
30:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just so, and it just feels like when I think about 50 years ago, when I think about all these US Marines, like you guys who are on a boat with these people,
31:04
[SPEAKER_02]: your experience of the United States and the generosity of the United States at the time must have been transformed very differently from what we're seeing today.
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Would any of you comment on that aspect?
31:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Robbie, do you want to comment on that?
31:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me hope.
31:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, 50 years later, it's hard for me to compare.
31:25
[SPEAKER_03]: We watched the debacle in Afghanistan.
31:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was horrible.
31:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess comparatively they're basically the same, you know, two political wars, you know, as Marines, you do your job, you don't have any choice in the matter who makes the decision what the decisions made for, you know, but I look back at how it happened with us and like John said,
31:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we went up down the coast and we anchored next thing we know there's shell and bunk cow and, you know, they're trying to hide tell it out of there and the ship before something bad happens.
32:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Same thing with all the helicopters going in and out during the actual evacuation of the MSC, you know, they had gun ships, fire cover, you know, at any minute you just
32:28
[SPEAKER_03]: If one thing bad happens, where are you here?
32:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Where's the first wave?
32:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, because all this is gonna cease to insist and you know, we're gonna be right back on the ground where my brother was in 1969.
32:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, from a political standpoint,
32:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I just look at everything in a time frame.
32:56
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and I'm frozen, I guess, to this.
32:59
[SPEAKER_03]: What's happening now, it's way too much politics for me.
33:05
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm getting to be an old man and you just want to live out the rest of your life and not worry over such things.
33:14
[SPEAKER_03]: How do they vet people who knows?
33:17
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we couldn't vet them then.
33:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we went from
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: on that ship, the Ronde Island, everyone was off loaded.
33:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We took on a whole new load, sailed the ground, off loaded their operation, new life started.
33:33
[SPEAKER_03]: There again, everybody goes through that system.
33:36
[SPEAKER_03]: How it's working now?
33:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I couldn't begin to tell you again, tell me.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Could I jump in here?
33:47
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something that I want to emphasize.
33:51
[SPEAKER_00]: This is based on what I've heard from various interviews and what I've read as well.
33:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And this goes back to that sort of fluid nature of what was happening.
34:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So John and Robin others were, as we mentioned, they were in charge of safeguarding everybody and they're well being on that ship.
34:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But this was such a fluid and chaotic time where there are so many people, and we're talking about thousands of people coming on board, can I know what you're saying about, you know, if we're there actual reports, do we know if there are any folks that were coming on that might have had bad intentions, maybe not, but at the time, how would you know that?
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, especially if you were, if your mission is to protect, and my, my recollection of these stories that there was even when that barge came, there were processes to bring people aboard to screen them, but we have to think about how many people were involved in this process, you got a couple dozen folks on in the marine detachment who are bringing onboard hundreds, if not thousands of people.
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: at any one point of, you know, something happens, even if they're not armed, there's all kinds of consequences.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And John, you had your hand about it.
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll let you see up to that.
35:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll give you an instance.
35:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Whenever the barge was tied up, we started unloading the barge and then all of a sudden this young man comes running up the gang plane.
35:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's shouting
35:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember distinctly I was up on the O2 level.
35:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I had my 12 gauge shot gun, what are what and where was going on.
35:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And I asked one of the staff sergeants, what's going on, he said the kid says there's VC on board and they're going to blow up the barge.
35:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, if they blew the barge, it was going to sink.
35:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We're tied to the barge and it is huge.
36:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So we locked it down.
36:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Stop taking refugees.
36:05
[SPEAKER_04]: We did not know that the kid was out of his head, whether he was out of his head because he was dehydrated or what before, for 18 hours, Robbie.
36:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing moved.
36:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing moved.
36:20
[SPEAKER_04]: We distributed ammo.
36:22
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't have ammo until that happened.
36:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We went through
36:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And these people are on that barge.
36:29
[SPEAKER_04]: They have been without food, water, sanitation for three days, tied to the ship.
36:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They see that their ship has come in so to speak, and we're not let them on.
36:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And they don't know why, but we did not know we had to be careful.
36:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Eventually they brought in some grunts, and they did the initial screening down below.
36:59
[SPEAKER_04]: One thing, the difference between now and then.
37:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Nam just told you, his father would not have gotten on board the embassy compound or would not have gotten in there if he had not had to credentials.
37:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We turned a lot of people away at the embassy.
37:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So there was an initial screening.
37:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Not now, whenever we open the borders, we don't ask, we just bring people in.
37:28
[SPEAKER_04]: But we've got grandkids.
37:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We wonder what kind of world are they going to live in?
37:34
[SPEAKER_04]: You've got such incidents in this country right now, was your real law.
37:40
[SPEAKER_04]: This is unheard of.
37:42
[SPEAKER_04]: We have people dying from fentanyl.
37:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Whenever Robby and I were young during this period, oh man, marijuana was bad.
38:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the life to us was a beer, underage, or maybe a drink, a heart liquor, or to this experience, or what, having two drinks, or maybe two, maybe two, maybe two, maybe two, maybe well, I'm not, we talked about bowl of makers now, pretty much anything that came over the
38:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Since the experience on the Kimbero, how much do you all dwell and think about these memories?
38:42
[SPEAKER_03]: They come back often.
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like I said when I first met NAMM every year from February, March, April, it's on your mind.
38:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you wander.
38:59
[SPEAKER_03]: what, what we did, the things we did, how it ended.
39:06
[SPEAKER_03]: We never knew how it ended.
39:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And that has haunted me from the first, probably after I left the core, that's when I started thinking about it.
39:21
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and it's like I told Nam and John, and it's something I didn't really talk about.
39:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, nobody experienced it like we did.
39:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So how do you even go, you know, this is how I feel?
39:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, hell, I don't know.
39:37
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they have no clue.
39:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't there.
39:40
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't see the things that we saw.
39:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the best.
39:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Robbie I can give you some closure about what happened to those people.
39:52
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them moved on to have very successful lives in the United States.
39:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm, yeah, that's made me proud.
40:01
[SPEAKER_03]: That's made me know that what I did, what we all did was worthwhile for what all of us had to go through to get
40:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and it just took a long time.
40:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I just reached out to John about some awards to try to get my record bright before I'm gone for my children, grandchildren, who, if anybody even gives it dying.
40:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he put me in touch with none.
40:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And,
40:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Then Joshua showed up, you know, and it's like, wow, this is awesome, you know, this is what I've waited for.
40:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I waited 50 years for this year.
40:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's been, you know, a bit of a tough way, but like well worth it.
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything.
40:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a lot of them.
40:56
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of him went on to become professors and PhDs and doctors and lawyers and you know, they've had a really, really good lives and their children have, you know, really good lives today as a result of their, I mean, now we can look back and say ancestors came on this big ship.
41:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's, really four things are right now.
41:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we have several, we have
41:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Like here, I only have outside of Dallas for work about an hour, but I grew up in, you know, in several places, but there's
41:36
[SPEAKER_03]: three or four sizeable Vietnamese communities, you know, autumn cities one, one of the Irvings of Big One.
41:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would say, young from time to time, I worked all over the Metroplex.
41:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, but I don't know what nationality they are, but some of my can tell we're being amazed just by the language, but they have restaurants.
42:05
[SPEAKER_03]: They have grocery stores, doctors, they have offices.
42:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So I guess I've known a little bit over the years, but
42:16
[SPEAKER_03]: to actually meet someone and speak to someone, especially someone that was with us.
42:23
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's, that's made a huge difference in my life.
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It really has.
42:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a, it's like the circle's complete now.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: John, did you have something to say, John?
42:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
42:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
42:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Lost for train to thought a little bit, but it's served.
42:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it's age, I'll write it all today.
42:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It might be.
42:54
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what we had in the military.
42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I stayed in the military and eventually retired.
43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And the big difference between the Vietnam veterans that I knew, I couldn't express what I felt because we were proud of what we did.
43:12
[SPEAKER_04]: We wished that we could have done more.
43:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But these guys that have been in case of a content, what do you mean?
43:22
[SPEAKER_04]: You felt sorry.
43:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It is a totally different experience.
43:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So you kind of kept to yourself, but I knew April, but every day, April came around, it started.
43:35
[SPEAKER_04]: My wife will tell you, I don't sleep the day, but first life will tell you the same thing.
43:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't sleep the day, because those memories start to come and back.
43:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Namibri of the fisherman that was on that barge that I brought here in his son up.
43:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they're standing there.
43:50
[SPEAKER_04]: No suitcase.
43:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The only thing they've got is a thread on their back.
43:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And the other refugees were not letting them in line.
44:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So I sent a century down, got them and brought them up here and brought them up onto the
44:10
[SPEAKER_04]: at the half section of the ship and stole a case of sea rats and gave it to you to thought I'd give them a bucket of gold.
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: These these things you remember.
44:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean it's to me it was a life-changing experience.
44:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Then the next thing I do is later on to
44:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, was you a question now?
44:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you going to say something?
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, I didn't, but I'll take this this opportunity to ask.
44:55
[SPEAKER_00]: There was there were a couple of anecdotes that that I heard from the both of you, John and Robbie, about
45:06
[SPEAKER_00]: on the Kimbro.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: There was the woman that I believe went overboard.
45:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was also the story about this person.
45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I've not met yet, but who was born on the ship.
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to hear you share those stories.
45:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, John was more involved with the birth than I was.
45:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I was, whenever the
45:34
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... the fairy was the initial refugees that we received they came on board and we cut that ship away it started pulling off a custody at nom and this woman decided that she couldn't leave her country so she jumped into the water staff sergeant Glenn Hutchinson uh... Hutchinson went into the water and pulled her out but she had drowned
46:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Whenever we got her up, we finally got a line over to side.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: We were able to bring her up.
46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: The corpsmen were trying to revive her, but she was passed.
46:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Her family gathered whenever we begged her to see.
46:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't know what's going on.
46:28
[SPEAKER_04]: They know that she's dead.
46:29
[SPEAKER_04]: She's in a shroud.
46:35
[SPEAKER_04]: old parts in there so that it would sink.
46:39
[SPEAKER_04]: But what kind of service do you have?
46:43
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the first time I had watched someone pass in front of me.
46:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Before it was go to the funeral home and there they are.
46:54
[SPEAKER_04]: They're in Bob.
46:54
[SPEAKER_04]: They look pretty dog-ong good.
46:56
[SPEAKER_04]: They go into the ground.
46:57
[SPEAKER_04]: But now I've got a body that's turning gray in front of me.
47:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a shock.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: The, uh, what was the other advantage you mentioned, the birth of the birth of the birth of the birth of the birth after we brought them on board to ship.
47:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Suddenly, uh, this gentleman bring comes up with a woman.
47:23
[SPEAKER_04]: She's obviously pregnant and somehow he confaces that she's getting ready to give birth.
47:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's two other kids and took.
47:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Steph Sergeant Garland, which was our fancy of I see, perhaps a corpsman, and said, this woman's getting ready to give birth, take her in and do what you got into.
47:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And he says, well, you talking about, I've never heard the baby.
47:50
[SPEAKER_04]: None of the corpsman that we had with us had birth to baby, but they've got combat experience.
48:02
[SPEAKER_04]: She's already had two, get ready to have a third.
48:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So by self, and I can't remember, I think it was Bill Strubel.
48:11
[SPEAKER_04]: We're home and a blanket up.
48:14
[SPEAKER_04]: She's given birth to give her a little better privacy.
48:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So she gives birth, and of course, they named the child.
48:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Last name was Yon.
48:31
[SPEAKER_04]: the burial and the sailor's club in Saigon.
48:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So the sailor's knew him on board to ship from previous voyages.
48:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So the child is named Yunim from Marine Kimbro.
48:49
[SPEAKER_04]: About five years ago, I decided, I wonder if I can find him on Facebook, because we found each other on Facebook.
48:56
[SPEAKER_04]: All of us, you
48:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Robbie and Bill, I figured, okay, maybe I can find him, so I put in your M. Kimbro.
49:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing comes up, so I go, but maybe he Americanized his name and I put in.
49:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Kimbro, M. You're a graphic artist, Miami Florida.
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So when he was born, I gave his family $20.
49:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I had $20 to my name, but I figured they needed a little bit of American money.
49:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So I gave him my address and a $20 bill.
49:30
[SPEAKER_04]: The year later, I get a picture of his first year birthday.
49:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I got a picture of young and Kim bro, one year old.
49:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So when his birthday came up, which happened to be the, uh, I believe, 29th of April, the day, everything, the shit had to fail.
49:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I sent him an e-mail with an attachment of this picture.
49:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, happy birthday.
49:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So he comes back from Eddie and he said, who are you and how to hell did you get my first you birthday picture.
50:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So I went back to him and I said, well, son, I was there when you were born.
50:14
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's a good end of bad.
50:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what a great story, John.
50:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it was an amazing
50:26
[SPEAKER_04]: He is meeting the NAM coming in out of the blue 50 years to the week that he came on board to Kimber.
50:36
[SPEAKER_04]: My wife and I looked at each other and said, this has got to it is because how out of 8,000 people that we eventually took brought out of Vietnam on the Kimber Road, we have
50:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Joshua was eight years old on that barge, and we beat him.
51:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Joshua, chemical engineer, would do pawn, responsible for new construction all over the world, for do pawn, a great success story.
51:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're looking back and saying, this is God coming in this late stage of my life, and showing
51:26
[SPEAKER_04]: My life did have purpose.
51:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I brought some good into this work.
51:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Joshua.
51:31
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't do.
51:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Joshua has, he has memories from elders and himself.
51:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I spoke to him for well over an hour on the phone and he was a sharp eight year old, you know.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
51:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So he still has more in him than we do at our age now.
51:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was I was amazed at the conversation because he had his uncle.
51:59
[SPEAKER_03]: He had his parents.
52:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So he had a bunch of people on that ship with us.
52:07
[SPEAKER_03]: that he's conversed with throughout his life about things that happened, and it was a great call.
52:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I want a meeting in face to face about it, can't stand it.
52:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So five hour drive, I'm just gonna have to get myself up and go one day.
52:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, it's amazing to talk to people.
52:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I've looked and looked and tried to find others that were there with us.
52:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just can't, you know,
52:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a Facebook group that that's USS Kimbro dedicated?
52:43
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but there is a one for operation frequent win operation by us because you got to remember that after we got back to Okinawa, my voice went down.
52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So we got the triple whammy.
53:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We got an operational full operation, frequent wind, and then the mile was incident right there.
53:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was a rough time in the third green division.
53:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I...
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're going to wrap up in a little bit, but I do have this question about what would you say to future Americans who face situations like evacuation in Vietnam, Afghanistan, the young Marines that are facing that future in the next few years?
53:38
[SPEAKER_02]: What would you say to them?
53:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's it.
53:45
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a tough question to answer for me.
53:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I did four years in some time, a little bit extra time.
53:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I did two tours in Oakland, Iowa, because I loved it over there.
53:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, I think I expressed a novel in our conversation before that we win as a unit.
54:11
[SPEAKER_03]: but you're a bunch of brothers.
54:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And you look out for each other.
54:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You have each others by no matter what, no matter how tired you are, how physically beat down you are, you're there for them.
54:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll do anything to keep them safe.
54:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And you go on missions like that.
54:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, from a danger standpoint, I mean, I never was terrified, but you didn't have time to be anyways.
54:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was basically 24-7 for a couple of weeks and then it was over.
54:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, thank goodness everybody came home in one piece and, you know, it's hard to say what to tell them other than, you know, the brotherhood just like we did.
55:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what you're there for.
55:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, everything else to me was out the window.
55:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I could have gave a damn about.
55:09
[SPEAKER_03]: anybody except the guys that were with me on that ship.
55:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know when they got into a situation like that, I'm sure they would all feel the same.
55:20
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, no matter what your personal feelings are towards one another, you have each other's back, no matter what, because everybody wants to
55:36
[SPEAKER_04]: years of working life.
55:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I was a government employee.
55:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I trained the Marines that were going to Iraq and Afghanistan with new communications equipment before they went home.
55:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would tell them at the end that, you know, looking back, realizing I have more of my life behind me than in front of me.
55:59
[SPEAKER_04]: One thing that I've come to realize,
56:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you could say it's for God, country, but whatever you get into it, it's for that marine that's beside you.
56:14
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't want to fail him.
56:16
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't want to fail you.
56:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the brotherhood that is instilled in us.
56:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's Andy A.
56:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Go, Player, Silent, or Quantico.
56:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It's at pride.
56:33
[SPEAKER_04]: because that Marine is going to see you beside you.
56:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So you keep on doing things that ordinarily you wouldn't do.
56:42
[SPEAKER_04]: One thing that Robbie didn't bring up.
56:45
[SPEAKER_04]: We were sedam tired.
56:47
[SPEAKER_04]: We couldn't be afraid.
56:51
[SPEAKER_04]: We were putting one foot in front of the other.
56:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Our work day was 20 hours.
56:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We were going for 20 hours and in the four hours that we had as a break, that was when we slept and we had to clean our weapons.
57:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So you clean your weapon, get it old up.
57:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So you wouldn't be a rust bucket in the morning, try to get some sleep.
57:12
[SPEAKER_04]: But if we weren't on guard, we were feeding, getting water out.
57:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It was just one thing after another.
57:26
[SPEAKER_04]: We were 30 hours straight, outbreak in the hot sun, that was whenever the kid came up on the barred said there was BC on board.
57:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know about Robby, but my spanked regards said that on tight, you couldn't drive it a day.
57:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I love it with a 20 pound sledgehammer.
57:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I know what was going to happen.
57:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I told you, I told you, and now I'm, you know, that was the first time I ever loaded a weapon and pointed it at a human.
57:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, you see motions just rust through you because you're laying there on a rope port, loaded weapon at 18 beers, all pointed at humans.
58:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't know them.
58:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't know their intentions, but all we knew is what that kid was telling
58:19
[SPEAKER_03]: we were woke by the time that was over.
58:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It was hot.
58:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It was measurable.
58:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And it went on into the night until the fourth Marines, you know, they sent a quick reaction force to get everything back under control on the barge that was tied up to us.
58:37
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, that's what I mean.
58:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It was an emotional time.
58:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You reflected back on it more and more and more and you, you know,
58:49
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we'd give the sea rations, you know, we'd save our crackers and peanut butter and jelly and, you know, and give it to the kids, you know, and they were... Jandy?
59:03
[SPEAKER_03]: That, yeah, candy.
59:05
[SPEAKER_03]: They'd be doing back.
59:07
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, chewing gum, they'd never seen chewing gum before.
59:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That was, that was, that's the stuff that,
59:15
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, I at sticks with you, you know, I mean, it just, it was fun to watch, you know, they had some entertainment to break up while it was really happening and how bad it really was because they had no clue.
59:31
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I would get three.
59:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to thank both of you for your service during those years and for the years following from a Vietnamese American kid, myself, I often think about all the servicemen that help the Vietnamese people.
59:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So for my heart to both of you, thank you for your service.
59:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I don't know if you have any closing questions or statements, but please have it.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_00]: you're chiming at the grandfather clock and somebody's back down.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm sorry.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I, I want to go back to a comment that was made earlier about, you know, how every year you, in that time period from around, you know, February onward into April, we have these, these, these sleepless nights, you have these memories come back.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and how that's kind of coupled with the fact that even afterwards in the years after 1975, it was hard to talk about these experiences with people because they just didn't live through them, they didn't understand them.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They had totally different perceptions about the war, about what happened after the war, all of that.
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And it strikes me because, you know, my parents, they lived through this experience and all of these folks who fled, lived through the experience and it was from a different perspective.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Their trauma was from a different perspective.
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But they were all there, right?
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We all intersected, our lives intersected in these very complex ways.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that they continue to live through these memories as well.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_00]: These experiences don't go away.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_00]: There are different conversations, different moments that hug them in the years since then.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But to me, what I find as tragic as all of this has been, what I find sort of hopeful, right?
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's powerful and meaningful.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Is how our lives did connect, not only in 1975, but continue to be intertwined in the succeeding generations.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean just through today, I mean moving into the future because my parents have their grandchildren.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna have successive generations in the United States as well.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're going to continue to be intertwined with the generations that come after all of us.
1:02:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And it all comes back to that, that central history, that epicenter related to the Exodus out of St. John and also other parts of Southeast Asia related to Guam, related to all of these threads, I'm amazed by how we can be connected.
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And the like Ken was saying just a few minutes ago, my heart is filled with gratitude for everything that was done for us to allow this to be a reality.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just for me, it's not just for my parents, but it's for all successive generations coming.
1:02:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to express that sentiment and to say that the story that you have told and continue to tell,
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just you, but everybody else that was connected, all the volunteers, all the other service personnel, and all the refugees, the thousands and thousands of refugees, we are just scratching the surface with what we know and how we're connected.
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was just based on a few months of internet research and conversations on Zoom.
1:03:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine if we put that shovel and start digging deeper in the ground, how much more are we gonna fund?
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_00]: How many more people are gonna get connected to one another?
1:03:22
[SPEAKER_00]: whether they're still living or not, right?
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what gives me hope as well.
1:03:26
[SPEAKER_00]: John, you have your hand up.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, one thing that you've got to remember, gentlemen, when Robbie and I came back, we were baby killers.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_04]: You didn't as Dr. Dylan struck through Parasol in 1976.
1:03:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to tell a recruit for tunes after graduation or whatever they got of base liberty, go by as obey and close so that you could change at the airport.
1:03:56
[SPEAKER_04]: You didn't go in uniform.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So we kept it to ourselves.
1:04:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Our haircuts gave us a wave, but we didn't point it out because society looked at us and that lump, baby killing, dead gone, be it non,
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_04]: frame of mind.
1:04:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the hard part.
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_04]: We knew that we had done a humanitarian service.
1:04:27
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it's a different world now, gentlemen, that it was back in.
1:04:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I was glad to see the, it's come out of the golf and be praised, you know, you know, that lift, that's, I think one of my buddies lives in Arkansas.
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I speak to him a few times a year and he bought a Harley and buddy my Marine Corps shirt and said he rode down to the store on his new Harley and got off and some guy walked them said, thank you.
1:04:59
[SPEAKER_03]: He said, I stared at him for about 10 seconds and said, for what?
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_03]: He goes your service.
1:05:05
[SPEAKER_03]: He goes in 40 something years.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody's ever said to me, because I didn't know how to respond.
1:05:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I think he'd give you one more.
1:05:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a certain major in the headquarters battery, and a headquarters squadron that I was in before I retired.
1:05:25
[SPEAKER_04]: The Sergeant Major was a young PFC, but every came out of Vietnam.
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_04]: They got to Chicago and they were watching the body of a fallen, come off a plane.
1:05:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So all the military personnel coming back from Vietnam, lined up, rendered a salute.
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_04]: They felt something hidden.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't know what it was.
1:05:46
[SPEAKER_04]: After they had done their little ceremony,
1:05:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He had been hit with a bag of dog manure.
1:05:58
[SPEAKER_04]: He went to the airport, according to him, and this is his story, not mine.
1:06:03
[SPEAKER_04]: He went to the airport bar, and he started drinking.
1:06:07
[SPEAKER_04]: He was still drinking.
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_04]: He was a drunk, but it's hard to major, at night he was drinking, but he was straight
1:06:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Until he watched the parade after the Persian Gulf War, he never took another drake married a young lady with two children.
1:06:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And I hope to God he's doing well right now.
1:06:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But that was part of the effect of what was going on in this nation.
1:06:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for the opportunity, both of you, ma'am, Kenneth.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_04]: God bless you.
1:06:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, John.
1:06:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, all of you.
1:06:57
[SPEAKER_04]: That's your story.
1:06:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I'm thank you for inviting me into this.
1:07:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been a blessing.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like you say, the mayor things tattooed in me somewhere.
1:07:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just finding it out, you know, but it's good to speak.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It's good to speak.
1:07:14
[SPEAKER_03]: with you and Ken and and see the other side of what we did.
1:07:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really made my life.
1:07:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank y'all very much.
1:07:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for your service, Ken.
1:07:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all for opening up today.
1:07:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Super fly kid.
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Super fly, we're off.
1:07:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Super.
1:07:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a privilege, this has been a privilege, just being reconnected with you guys and being able to share these stories.
1:07:41
[SPEAKER_00]: These are stories that have to be told and they have to be remembered.
1:07:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very, very happy that Ken invited us on to do this and to record these memories because that history, I mean, there are aspects of that history there are known, but there are so many that are just unknown to the mainstream society, and they need to be known.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:08:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:08:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.