Through Other Eyes

Over the years, I have come across interviews, documentaries, photographs, and pieces of journalism that helped me better understand the histories surrounding my family's journey from Việt Nam. Some capture the war directly. Others reflect its aftermath: displacement, silence, survival, memory, and return.

These are not definitive histories. They are simply fragments that stayed with me.

I first watched Rory Kennedy's 2014 documentary, Last Days in Vietnam and later recommended it to my parents. After seeing it, they told me it was one of the most accurate portrayals they had seen of those final days in April 1975. For me, the documentary gave shape to fragments I had carried since childhood: being lifted by cargo net onto a larger ship, standing among a sea of people, and trying to understand the scale of what we had survived.

I have included a short clip of the reflagging of South Vietnamese Navy ships at sea. Since watching Last Days in Vietnam, the scene has always stayed with me, not only because of the symbolism of losing a country, but because of the humanity shown by the American naval officers during those final moments. Their courage, compassion, and respect for the grief unfolding before them still move me deeply.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4272fa_763944cf1def47d4af8719c2c7e6b868/240p/mp4/file.mp4

To lose one’s country is something most people, thankfully will never fully understand. Perhaps that is why, even now, I sometimes feel suspended somewhere between memory, loss, and belonging.

After fleeing Việt Nam, my family passed through the Philippines and Guam before eventually arriving at Indiantown Gap refugee camp in Pennsylvania. Some of my earliest memories in America are connected to that place: playing marbles in the camp, unfamiliar surroundings, long lines, uncertainty, and the feeling of standing between survival and beginning again.

Indiantown Gap Documentary

When Americans Opened Their Doors

Watching footage and reflections connected to Indiantown Gap years later felt strangely intimate, as though fragments of childhood memory were briefly becoming visible again through other people’s eyes.