Noi nho.

Nguyen, Dinh-Hoa

Phan Lac Tiep, a Vietnamese refugee writer-journalist whose short stories were reviewed in the Spring 1993 issue of this journal (see WLT 67:2, p. 456), has now given us two moving memoirs: the first, Noi nho (Remembrances), includes some of his wartime notes; the second, Que nha 40 nam tro lai (Notes on My Native Country Revisited After 40 Years), is just what its title indicates.

In Noi nho the former lieutenant in the Republic of Vietnam Navy recounts the last days of his military career, as several vessels tried to leave Saigon on 30 April 1975 amid the most chaotic debacle imaginable. In his capacity as commandant of the Thi Nai (HQ 502), Phan Lac Tiep had to maneuver his small ship and help the officers of other ships take off in the midst of the disorderly evacuation of civilian dependents. They later had to allow two small friendly planes to land on their ship, only to see the pilot of one of them jump into the sea out of despair.

When they finally were rescued by the Greenway, a U.S. transport ship, they painfully witnessed the lowering of the South Vietnamese flag - the last ceremony that refugee crowds attended, in tears, on the twenty-six vessels of the defeated Vietnamese Navy in Subic Bay, the Philippines. When they arrived in Guam, 2,100 miles east of Vietnam and 3,300 miles west of Hawaii, they all had to surrender their weapons and uniforms before buses took them to Oronte Point, where they were put up in two thousand Rainbow Camp tents.

The author also talks about the brave death of Navy Lieutenant Commander Le Anh Tuan, who committed suicide on 29 April 1975, when his unit and others had to surrender to the communist forces. This officer had served courageously on the battlefield instead of resorting to the then common practice of seeking a sinecure somewhere - which he could have done through the influence of his oldest brother, General Le Nguyen Khang. Phan describes the first days and weeks of his family's life following sponsorship by a church on the U.S. mainland. In the appendix are reprinted several articles that he contributed to Chan troi moi (New Horizons), the publication that provided orientation to the 40,000 tent dwellers on Guam prior to their resettlement.

The mixture of notes, reflections, and confidences is even more skillfully achieved in the second volume, in which Phan Lac Tiep presents his "annotated travelogue" to the Vietnam he had not seen in forty years. The trip back to his native village was a veritable pilgrimage; he undertook the journey even though it was full of uncertainty, and he did so in the clear knowledge of its many risks. That his return was amply rewarded is clear from his descriptions of his younger sister and of other relatives who had survived the long war, and from his reminiscences about his father, his mother, his elementary school, and their dog, as well as about the writers and artists of the 1940s. He saw as many former friends as possible, and within three short weeks he managed to visit his parents' graves, the Thay and Tayphuong Temples in Son-tay, as well as the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, before he boarded the train for Saigon. As a writer, he also spent time hunting for used books and reprint editions of classical works on Vietnamese culture.

Among his former friends are two poets whom the author admires in particular. Quang Dung, a talented painter, poet, and journalist whom the communist authorities persecuted in the 1950s, then chose to rehabilitate after his death in 1988, is survived by his wife, and Phan Lac Tiep paid her a visit to light an incense stick on his altar. The other poet, Hoang Cam, now over seventy years old, is the author of many delightful poems and of such popular plays as Len duong and Kieu Loan; a number of his verses have been set to music by the composer Pham Duy. The author's visit, arranged through a nephew, was deeply touching for both host and guest, and Phan Lac Tiep was proud to have the privilege of seeing those two giants of contemporary Vietnamese belles lettres.

The two volumes under review complement each other well. Their consistently smooth, pithy, and poetic style show the author to be a keen observer and a careful record-keeper concerning new people and new events as they reflect older people and older events in the new Vietnam - still a poor, crowded, and war-exhausted land but also as beautiful and dreamlike as ever.

Dinh-Hoa Nguyen Southern Illinois University, Carbondale