MY STORY AS PUBLISHED IN THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS BELOW:

Dallas Morning News staff photographer Huy Nguyen was seven years old in April 30, 1975 when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, his hometown and capital of South Viet Nam, to end the Vietnam War. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 and eventually settled in Texas. On the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Huy is returning to Vietnam for the first time.

I. April 30, 1975: The War Is Over

Clutching his wife and three small children, my father waited patiently for a miracle he knew would never come.

The American embassy was his last hope. But there was no way in.

We had no contacts, no papers, and little expectation. Yet there we were—me, my father, mother, brother and sister--camped out for hours, hoping to get on a chopper to be taken away somewhere, anywhere.

We were not alone. Realizing that there were few ways left to get out of Saigon, thousands like us had jammed the streets around the embassy waving papers, official documents, permits, anything to prove they deserved to be evacuated.

The brick building stared back at us in stony silence as if to dare the raucous crowd to storm its iron gates.

Long a symbol of America’s presence in Saigon, the embassy remained an impenetrable fortress in a city about to fall. From its rooftops, noisy Chinook helicopters were ferrying loads of people away every few minutes. Below, wide-eyed American Marines stood their ground, pushing back against reaching arms and desperate pleas.

Sitting across the street with my bag of clothes and water bottle, I was a quiet observer to the chaotic scene unfolding. The giant Chinooks with their bellies full of people and their rhythmic pounding fascinated my seven-year-old eyes. Yet I was bothered by the crowd’s hectic movements and their despair.

A hot and tired witness to the closing of one of the most painful chapters in American history and one of the saddest days of my people, I just wanted to go home and play.

My father, however, was pondering our next step.

Just days earlier, he was faced with a farfetched scheme. One of the best pilots for Air Vietnam, our national airline, he was offered big money to steal a plane and fly a group out of the country to Borneo. As part of the deal, we could leave with him.

He refused.

Now, my father was terrified what might happen when communist troops marched into Saigon. He knew how brutal the Viet Cong could be and how they, after briefly taking control of Hue, the ancestral capital in central Vietnam, in the Tet offensive of 1968, had immediately executed whoever they thought were their enemies. He was fearful of another bloodbath.

The Viet Cong, bolstered by regular North Vietnamese forces, were rambling toward Saigon with no one to stop them.

In my people’s deepest desperation, we again looked toward the Americans for help, hoping that the commitment of these foreigners, strongly emphasized only a few years earlier, had not ended. But American troops never returned, and the last of them were on their way out.

In a few hours, the final helicopter flight carrying 11 U.S. Marines would rise from atop the embassy, its hurried departure broadcasted into American homes on the 6 o’clock news that night.

When our effort proved fruitless, I was happy to return home.

At my house, the fire in our front yard grudgingly devoured the last evidence of my beloved uncle Tri’s existence. Family snapshots, commendations, medals, letters, all went into the fire. Not even his clothes were to be saved. Any connection to my uncle, a major in the South Vietnamese air force, could subject us to reprisals, reasoned my father as he searched the house for my uncle’s belongings. We were not to talk about him, what he did or where he was. The last part was easy. We didn’t know where he was. My uncle had literally vanished into thin air, gone as far as his American-made F5 jet fighter could go, taking with him the last hopes of a nation.

On April 30, 1975, the last day of my country’s existence, our chances of leaving were slowly dying out.

Days earlier, my mother had taken me, my 4-year–old brother and my 3-year-old sister to my uncle Tri’s air force base, where they planned to disguise us as his immediate family for evacuation with the other military families. The plan failed. Knowing he was single, Tri’s superiors refused to go along. After some anxious nights at the base, we gave up.

In Saigon the shelling and explosions worsened. I had learned to squeeze down in the car for safety whenever I heard the familiar boom-boom-boom of gunfire and mortar fire. At nights, we huddled in the most secure places in the house for protection from the distant thunder spelling out the fate of my country.

The events of the previous weeks had been discouraging as outer cities fell one by one to the Viet Cong, producing streams of refugees and demoralized, beaten troops scampering south toward Saigon. Their lives saddled on their backs, thousands poured into the city hoping to find safety and shelter in relatives’ homes.

My mother’s cousin and his family arrived with harrowing tales of their long, arduous trek -- stories that only added to our growing desperation. There was nowhere else for anyone to go. Saigon was the war’s last stop.

The armed forces that were supposed to protect us were in tatters. In a bizarre turn, some young soldiers took potshots at the coconut trees in our front yard. Most soldiers were now fending for themselves, commandeering boats to take their families out to the South China Sea where the U.S. 7th Fleet awaited. Some just flew off in their military planes.

Along with my uncle Tri, who landed safely in Thailand after jettisoning all his bombs and fuel, roughly 130,000 Vietnamese refugees made their way out in those frantic few days.

Everyone else who remained faced a harsh reality. We had lost our war, the war that had killed millions, the war that became a struggle between the world’s two largest superpowers, the war that deeply divided not only Vietnam but the United States as well.

It was over. Later that day North Vietnamese troops would march victoriously through the streets of Saigon, my hometown and capital of the soon-to-be abolished South Viet Nam.

Within days, the borders were sealed, locking in all our thoughts of escape. We were trapped. Our lives were at the mercy of the victors.

We were fearful what they would do to those of us who sided with the Americans. Would they kill us all? Would they take my father away? And our home?

I envied the lucky ones who escaped. I imagined them being in a much safer and happier place, the paradise called America.

Three years later, my chance would come.

Do you want to go to America? After 1975, thousands of families in South Vietnam faced the decision. Life under communism was becoming unbearable for those of us on the losing side. Claiming that capitalism exploited the poor, the new government confiscated everything: businesses, bank accounts, homes. Several times, citing our previous involvement with American businesses, armed soldiers came to take our house. Each time my father held his ground.

America’s appeal was obvious: it was the land of riches where life was free and wonderful. Like our communist rulers, we believed in freedom, but of a different sort. They talked about being free from the grip of colonizing westerners; we wanted to be free from their rules and regulations, their suspicion and vengeance.

Do you want to go to America? Could parents of children like me realize that sacrificing their heritage was part of the deal? Did they know that their children would eventually be absorbed into strange Western cultures? That in choosing a better life, their sense of identity would forever be altered?

Do you want to go to America? Like many of my immigrant friends, my answer would result in a life defined by a multiethnic mishmash of eastern beliefs and western values. At 10, I did not know enough to even imagine who I might become. But now, as I reflect on that question, I realize what it means for me to be a Vietnamese-American: I am an American with a constant craving for "pho," the traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and I am also a Vietnamese student body president in a small rural Texas high school. My identity is forever a duality of cultural stereotypes: I am an American photojournalist who likes to write, and I am a Vietnamese electrical engineer with no fear of math.

Do you want to go to America? I said yes immediately.

The journey started on a quiet morning in May at a bus stop. Two aunts, four cousins and I were to make the four-hour trip to Vung Tau, a popular beach resort city. From there we would head off to sea that night. My father saw me off at the bus stop but I was not allowed to say goodbye to him.

Fearful that all of us would be arrested that morning, my parents had instructed me not to acknowledge his presence. Like a good son, I stared ahead as we pulled away. I pretended not to know my own father, whose serene expression did not betray the thoughts of someone who was sending his oldest son off into the unknown.

Perhaps a sign of things to come, my identity had already been changed. If the police checked us, I was instructed to say I was a Chinese–Vietnamese named To (I forgot the first name). That was my cover. I was part of the throng of Chinese minority allowed to bribe their way out of Vietnam, leaving behind their homes and businesses to the government.

In Vung Tau, the starless night hovering over the eerie silence of the beautiful Vietnamese coast guarded our secret as 180 people furtively boarded the fishing boat. To hide ourselves, we huddled below in the rank, damp tanks normally used to store fish. As they boat slowly swayed toward open water, we prayed.

Among the first to leave in 1978, we were the start of a massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of people that lasted more than 10 years. Mostly on small boats, these refugees risked the wrath of Vietnamese border patrols, sea pirates, and the unpredictable temperament of the high seas. Though some later went by land to Thailand and by sea north to Hong Kong, almost all headed south like we did.

Our tiny boat churned on, bobbing gently atop the merciful water that was slowly but steadily guiding us to the land of our dreams.

On the way, we passed giant freighters too busy with their own commerce to notice us and an American warship from which cheerful sailors showered us with food, water, and goodies. Despite our pleading, they would not rescue us.

Four days later, we reached a small island in Malaysia. Determined not to be forced back to sea, our captain deliberately grounded the boat on a sandbar, causing it to turn on its side. Spilling out, we waded ashore through chest high water to the shrill whistles of angry Malaysian soldiers. Their unwelcoming rudeness could not dampen our joy and relief. We had made it.

Happiness soon turned to a longing for home. On the cold windy beach that night, I thought about my house, my parents, my grandmothers, my brother and sister and how I missed everything that was comforting and familiar about my life.

Within 4 months I was in southern California -– a thoroughly unfamiliar place – living with my aunts and uncles.

California was the final stop for many Vietnamese-American immigrants, especially those who had left before me in 1975. There, they carved out their own slice of homeland in the new country. Fueled by the desire for community, refugees who were dispersed all over the states migrated to southern California where the Asian population and businesses boomed. In the midst of that defining period of Vietnamese resettlement in America, I was very unsettled in my own move.

My sleep in my first months in America brought me many happy dreams and nightmares. I often dreamt of being in Saigon again. I would be playing with my siblings and my cousins in our front yard, my parents nearby in the house. Inevitably, those warm feelings about being home would disappear in an obvious realization -- that I wasn’t supposed to be there anymore. Panic followed. I had escaped, hadn’t I? How could I be in Vietnam? How would I leave again?

At times, my family seemed so far away, I might as well have been dead. I gradually prepared myself to accept the possibility that I might never see them again. Worldwide communism was going strong, its grip showing no sign of diminishing. As long as communists were in control, there was no going back to Vietnam.

Yet I dared not think about my young brother or sister risking their lives on the high seas like I did. By then Vietnamese boat refugees were facing great dangers. Border guards were on high alert and sea pirates preyed on these boatloads of defenseless people. I could not imagine my family taking that perilous journey.

But they did. A year later, my father, brother and sister escaped on a cargo ship full of people to Hong Kong. Their ordeal was long, tense and full of detours but free of danger. Soon after their arrival in the United States, we moved to Texas.

My mother joined us three years later after having flown to France first using a complex scheme of bribes and deception. Her arrival into our home in the small town of Richmond , Texas, completed our long journey to America in pursuit of freedom and opportunity.

We lived there for years, through high school and college. Like many other Texas families, all three of us kids attended and graduated from Texas A&M University.

My parents’ stories about Vietnam became less frequent as my siblings and I began to speak more and more English in the house. We were busy with our own lives and they were too busy making a living to dwell on the past.

Presently, their Vietnam belongs to someone else. Fearful of reprisals by the Vietnamese communist government, many Vietnamese-Americans felt they could never return to Vietnam. Only until trade and travel restrictions between Vietnam and the U.S. were relaxed a few years ago could viet kieus (overseas Vietnamese) venture back to their homeland.

Hardly anyone seriously considers living there again They only want to visit and enjoy the flavor of a land that they had pushed back in their minds for so long. They want to be tourists in the land where they grew up.

In my family, we never felt the need to make the trip home. Not until now.

Once again, I was the first.

III. April 25, 2000: Revisiting Saigon

Flight 767 approached close enough so I could spot Saigon -- officially Ho Chi Minh City, but no one calls it that -- from above, a view I had not seen since I sat in my father’s plane more than 25 years earlier.

During the war, my father was a pilot for Air Vietnam, the same national airline that was now bringing me back to the land of my ancestors. Everyone around me stared out the windows as if searching for lost memories. In front, a gray-haired couple in their 80s who had boarded in Los Angeles turned to each other with huge grins. I asked them if it was their first time back, and how long they’ve been away.

"Oh, we’ve been back two or three times, " they said happily. The trip home is always a joyful one.

Seeing their happiness, I wondered if my parents would ever return and how my father would feel as he floated over Tan Son Nhut International Airport, taking the same dips and turns that are forever etched in his memory.

When I told him about this assignment to photograph stories for the Dallas Morning News, he wanted to know if I would travel alone. He commented that it would be easy for the Vietnamese government to snatch me and no one would know, as if they would be fearful of what a Vietnamese-American journalist might reveal, or still be angry that I spurned them for the riches of America when I ran off many years ago.

My more practical mother, on the other hand, wanted to go with me, but her schedule at her nail salon business, where they were short-handed, was busier than ever. But I was encouraged by her enthusiasm.

Arriving, my mother’s younger sister, My, and her husband, Hao, brought me to their house where they live with two daughters and my grandmother. The skinny three-story house stood straight like a condo nested in a maze of back alleyways. It was big by Saigon standards but the smallest two-bedroom, two-bath home you’ll ever see in the United States.

Knowing that I wanted to stay with them, my aunt kindly offered me her room with the air conditioner. All five of them would sleep next door.

"Use it," she says of the air conditioner. "You need it."

Showering me with food, my aunt thinks I am an American who has forgotten everything.

She was wrong.

I remember the coolness of sudden rainstorms. The sight of busy commerce on street corners. The sounds of groaning of motor scooters loaded with entire families on board and the smell of stinky green medicine, used to ward off colds and fever.

After returning from the airport, my aunt insisted I lay down for the afternoon nap. How did she know? How did she know for everyday of my first 10 years, I hid from the scorching heat and snoozed away the lazy afternoons?

"Hello ba ngoai, this is Huy. I am your eighth daughter’s son from America."

Her eyes didn’t flicker, she didn’t remember me.

Ba ngoai, my mother’s mother, had moved back to Saigon some years earlier after a brief stay in southern California where she shuffled between each of her children’s homes. After about four years, during her 80s, she gave up and returned to Vietnam for good to battle Alzheimer’s disease.

Diem, 27, my vivacious cousin, came out from the kitchen.

I had never met this streetwise tomboy to whose expertise with a motor scooter I would entrust my life with for the next two weeks. She was going to be my guide in her city.

Born in Saigon, Diem could have gone to the U.S. when all my aunts were leaving Vietnam in the early 80s. But her mother wouldn’t let her. Of all my cousins, she is the only one who remained.

"It worked out OK," Diem told me in her cheery convincing voice. "There would be no one to take care of ba ngoai if I wasn’t here."

Guilty that I have had opportunities that I sometimes take for granted. So have my parents and overseas aunts and uncles _ who gave me $300 to give her. I handed over the money, roughly the average Vietnamese’s yearly earning.

It was not enough.

"Banh mi, banh ngot", the vendor chanted, his hoarse voice rattling through the pre-dawn serenity, as he tried to sell an assortment of breads.

I hadn’t been able to sleep much. Blame it on an unusual combination of work stress, loud karaoke music and homesickness.

But for which home was I sick for? The one of my wife and son -- or the old one only a few streets away at 68 Nguyen Dinh Chieu street?

It was still there, a two-story modern brick design tucked back behind a large yard protected by a fence 15 feet high. Next to it was the house that belonged to my father’s parents and my uncle’s house beyond that.

Eugene Garcia, a photojournalist friend, came with Diem and me. He wanted to photograph my homecoming for his paper, The Orange County (Calif.) Register.

The yard, paved, is now a restaurant with all outdoor seating covered by blue tarps. Our giant, shady mango tree in the middle was gone, another casualty of the reunification of Vietnam. The eatery is called Coi Xay Gio, for the garish windmill that is its main feature, its neon glow a beacon in the night.

To go to the house, we must walk through the restaurant. My cousin bounces ahead as we zigzagged through chairs and tables. The waiters scrambled to find us seats. Diem brusquely dismissed them.

"Tell him chu cu is here," she said, referring to me as the former owner.

The teen-age servant happily opened the front door for us. Mr. Nguyen Nam Quynh, the current owner, was on his way down, she said. Please make yourself at home.

I was.

This was my parents’ dream house, the one they designed and built together, the one where they raised their children and the one they fought for years to keep.

The marble floors with the strange patterns was still there, the same floor that could not hide our clattering footsteps from our blind grandmother -- who always recognized each of us kids by the sounds that we make.

I knelt to touch it, slowly inching my fingers along the designs that my father had insisted on putting in. I wanted to lay down, stretch out, and relive all the old scenes hidden in the coolness permeating from below. I would take them with me back to America, where they would be safe.

Old memories rushed out to greet me like long-lost friends.

The secret stairway between your bedroom and kitchen is still intact, forever useful as a way to avoid guests in the front room.

Mr. Quynh, a wily, thin man with the gait of a bureaucrat, greeted us in this front room, cluttered with desks and assorted furniture.

Physically, the house is not as I remembered. It had been robbed of its elegance and warmth. The discolored walls were dirty. Gone was the sofa where I had sprawled on many painful afternoons with dozens of acupuncture needles sticking on my arms and back, eastern medicine’s way of curing my sneezing fits.

We sat down for the customary tea. Mr. Quynh explained how happy he was to see me. He asked about my family as if he knew us intimately. I tuned out his droning words, my mind regressing, my eyes holding back tears.

It’s hard to keep a journalist’s distance when you’re coming home.

In the corner, Eugene’ camera spitted out the unmistakable click-slide, click-slide so common to my ears. I hope he was shooting some good pictures because I was in no condition to work.

Jolted back to reality, I did a few obligatory snaps for my paper, thinking about how bad my aim was. Strangely, I didn’t worry -- not here, not in the place where I spent my carefree childhood in the comfort of my family.

We made a quick getaway. I thanked Mr. Quynh for showing me my own house.

In the car, I sat quietly, collecting my thoughts. In the front seat, my cousin chatted happily about what trendy nightclubs we might hit later for pictures of the Vietnamese youth culture.

We didn’t go out that night. I crashed on my bed, exhausted.

The next day, I did the tourist thing along Le Duan street, the stretch of road leading from the gates of the old presidential mansion, now renamed Reunification Palace, a popular location for visitors.

Eugene and I went in. Once again, he was looking for good pictures; I wanted to know where my country’s leaders were when they determined the fate of our land.

The palace remained immaculate by Vietnamese standards. Its airy design betrayed its importance.

Then I came upon the room. It was small, with a set of tables stretching across its middle. On the walls are maps of Vietnam with different colors and markings. Three telephone sets sit in austerity. It looked like what a war room might be in 1975, without all the electronic equipment.

The room is empty and undisturbed, its occupants long gone.

But I was enraged.

This was where our leaders abandoned us. In 1975, they had fled the country while men and women were still dying in battle, while we may have had a chance had they not decided on a plan of retreat.

They retreated alright, all the way to Great Britain, where the former South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, makes his home.

I, too, made my hasty exit from the lifeless building and its sorry history.

Down the street was the site of the old American embassy, which was demolished in 1998, leaving only its walls protecting nothing. The new U.S. consulate, with heavily-guarded front entrance and movie theater-like ticket windows, is next door.

An angry Vietnamese guard, his comrades close behind, opened the blue steel gate to shoo us away when he noticed me sneaking a peek under the gate.

"No photos! No photos!"

Not really wanting to incur the communist wrath for a picture of an empty yard, Eugene and I scampered away.

Across the street, an old woman approached us with a deal. Calling herself "Di Nam," or Fifth Aunt, she whipped out a small album of the embassy and offered it to me for three dollars.

The 4-by-6 photos flipped through like a boring lecture. There it was: the building with the rooftop helicopter pad that my family, along with so many people, were desperate to reach 25 years earlier. And its other side. And its demolition.

The entire scene of streets and buildings did not match up with my recollections, but I didn’t mind. I haggled half-heartedly. Di Nam clung to her price, she had history in her hands.

As I walked along the light–colored fence, I had no emotions about this place. My life had worked out fine.

I looked over at Diem, buying lottery tickets from two smiling street girls in rags. They didn’t look to be over 10, the evidence of a hard life had not reached their faces.

I have seen those little girls before, I thought to myself. They are my Vietnamese-American college friends at Texas A&M, where I went to college. They are also the same faces on every street corner in Saigon, selling for a meager future day after day.

We are the same people, I thought.

Diem, the adventurous soul, excited by my accounts about life in the U.S., had just filled out an application for a tourist visa.

"It’s a new program," she said. "But then," her voice lowered, "they probably won’t let singles like me leave, because I might get married and stay for good."

"It’s everybody’s dream to live in America," she then told me, something I already knew.

Yeah, my life had worked out fine after all.

On the eve of the big anniversary celebrations in this vibrant city, I wonder what the war has done to the Vietnamese people.

Twenty-five years of narrow-minded communism and economic corruption has severely crippled the country’s economy.

Only recently have international capitalism ventures returned, bringing with them some hope for prosperity.

I see new hotels sprouting from city corners and shiny cars inching along on busy streets. What happened the last 20 years?

People tell me the Americans are back, very much welcomed for their dollars and their grand business plans. It’s almost like they never left.

So I ask everyone the question that has bothered me for years, knowing no one really knows the answer.

Would it have made any difference had my side, the South, bolstered by American military and financial assistance, prevailed? Would Vietnam have been rebuilt into another Japan or South Korea, models of Asian economic success? Or would the war-time corruption has continued to thrive, robbing the country of its chance for financial stability?

In some ways, it doesn’t matter who won or lost.

Life goes on and on and on for a people who have lived through years of painful civil wars. Though reminders of the war are still around, the hills are quiet, its shadows no longer threatening. For a country that had not known peace for generations, there is finally a sense of newness like the thawing of winter.

The selfish me is happy about how my life turned out. The selfish me considers it fortunate that I have an education and prosperous life that I might never have had in Vietnam. I value my heritage, my freedoms and my rights as an American citizen. I value my multiethnic identity that has helped me to expand my understanding of people and to work as a journalist. I value the opportunities available to my family.

Yet I wish my side had won the war so that thousands of Vietnamese families would not be scattered around the world, so that hundreds of thousands of American and Vietnamese soldiers would not have sacrificed their lives for nothing. And so that my country would not be so impoverished as it is today.

Personally, I wish we had won so that my parents could have remained with their parents in the land that had forever been their home. And so that my father and many other fathers and mothers like him would not have had to stand silently at a bus stop, unable to say goodbye to their children embarking on uncertain journeys worlds away.

In a few days I will board a plane to return to Dallas. In my window seat, I will be completely tired, my mind filled with longing for my wife, Joy, our son, Remy, and the peace and security that is my life now.

But when the plane takes off, I will imagine that it is 1974 again and that I am a curious 6-year-old, sitting upright in the rear of the cabin surrounded by friendly faces. Those were the days when my father was still flying. Up front, at the controls, his confident hand would guide us through the clouds.

Or maybe, I will look out the window at the clear blue sky and think of my uncle and what he saw when he roared away in his jet fighter -- knowing he would never again set foot in his homeland.

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