Que nha 40 nam tro lai.
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