Reflections on South African Apartheid Anna Griffith Fillipo

South African Apartheid will forever scar the history of this country. Discrimination against blacks has always been theme throughout the white world, but the Dutch Afrikaners of South Africa took this discrimination a step further. South Africa was completely segregated, and whites took special precautions to ensure this, such as making separate homelands to force blacks into the bad parts of the country and away from whites. Anything that could be controlled by the white minority was, and blacks were forced into virtual slavery for nearly 50 years.
The effects of apartheid were felt across the world. This cruel oppression was an outrage and reason for protest for many people in Western countries. Apartheid had a huge influence across the globe, and its influence can still be felt today in not only movement for civil reform, but in culture.

A Personal Fight Against Apartheid: Interview with Alan Aderem
Alan Aderem grew up as a white in South Africa during apartheid, and now lives in the United States. He spent his youth in South Africa fighting apartheid, and had to leave for that reason. He remains involved as a proud supporter of the new South African Government.

Alan Aderem was born in Karoo, a smaller town located in the semi desert part of South Africa. When he was 12, his family moved to Capetown. His young childhood was spent with black friends because as he explained, when you are young you don’t notice color, but as you grow and become aware of social norms, the separation of races is noted. Mr. Aderem grew up in a family that was very anti-apartheid. His biological mother was a doctor with a black practice, and a black woman, who he considered his other mother, mostly raised him. His biological mother’s strong moral protest of apartheid and the fact that someone he loved was treated poorly by all society made him aware of the social injustice of apartheid at a very young age. Mr. Aderem explains that on the most crude, basic level, apartheid just meant that black and whites were not allowed to be together, and blacks received the short end of the stick.

Mr. Aderem noted that as a white child, he always had much better resources than the blacks of his age. Even before he understood the apartheid system, he noticed the segregation as soon as school began. Blacks and whites went to different schools, and the white schools were far better than the black schools because the blacks were poor, and the whites could afford quality. Mr. Aderem remembers going to stores that had two entrances, one for whites and one for blacks. Within the store, he notes, there was a fence separating the white side and the poor quality merchandise on the black side. He explained that even if there were twenty black kids and only one white person waiting in line to be served, the white person would always be accommodated first. Mr. Aderem said that as soon as he realized these things, he developed a social conscious.

It was this social conscious that prompted him to take up anti-apartheid movement when he was just sixteen years of age. He started by becoming a member of the National Youth action and met up with black kids from townships to make little anti-apartheid newspapers. He then became involved in more assertive public demonstrations, such as going into the streets with banners, spurred by some issue such as a seemingly unnecessary arrest. These demonstrations were risky as he was often arrested and beaten up. He decided to protest differently, and at the age of twenty, he was recruited and became a member of the ANC (African National Congress). In the ANC, Mr. Aderem was involved with starting trade unions, which would disrupt the South African economy as it relied on black labor. This landed him in a lot of trouble as he put it, and at the age of twenty-three, he was arrested and imprisoned for five years after a protest right after the Soweto Uprising.

His imprisonment was brutal. The first part was the interrogation but Mr. Aderem says it could be considered torture, as the white authorities were willing to go to any lengths to get information on anti-apartheid movements. While imprisoned, they were four to a cell and treated particularly poorly because they were political prisoners. Mr. Aderem witnessed many protestors killed in prison, no matter what their race. After he served his five years in prison, he remained under house arrest for another year. He was banned from leaving or from talking to more than one person at a time to prevent conspiracy meetings. After this, Mr. Aderem was asked to leave the country by the ANC because he knew too much and was at risk. From South Africa at this point, he escaped to a neighboring country in exile, and from there traveled to London and then New York.

When asked about how South Africa was separated from the world, Mr. Aderem replied with the obvious lack of trade because of global disdain towards apartheid. He also explained how South Africa sport was affected because of separation. Apparently, South Africa was good at a number of sports, but no South African sports team was allowed to play anywhere else, and other sports teams would not come to South Africa. As a sports fan, this ostracism was one of them most noticed global consequences for Mr. Aderem.

Mr. Aderem reports that back in the 1960s, not very many white people knew about Nelson Mandela, but he was informed because of his mother’s early involvement in the anti-apartheid movement. Mr. Aderem looks up to Mandela hugely, mostly because of his original leadership in the ANC. Mr. Aderem explained that the most effective step in ending apartheid was the decision instigated by the ANC to make the country ungovernable through people’s uprisings starting with the Soweto Uprising and leading throughout the 1980s. Whites realized that they couldn’t hold on to power and they began making reforms. Mandela was in jail at this time, and Mr. Aderem explained that he refused to come out of jail until the ANC was unbound. When it was announced that Mandela was to be released, Mr. Aderem flew to South Africa. Ever since Mandela became president, and blacks were given political power, a vote, and representation, Mr. Aderem has been an advisor to the South African government. He is very interested in the HIV/AIDS impact, and works with the government commission to equalize health care. He expresses his concern for the number of problems that remain in rebuilding South Africa, but was pleased to report that since Mandela became president, over ten million houses have been built in the poor areas were blacks used to be sent.

Mr. Aderem stated that the end of apartheid was a great role model. He feels that the success of South Africa greatly rests in the amazing leadership skills of Nelson Mandela. This dismantling was extraordinarily important to the developing world to see that a country could be free. The relative peacefulness of the break down of apartheid (no war was fought to end it) demonstrated that radical political change could take place peacefully, he explained. The way South Africa was able to come together after apartheid, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a good example for the rest of the world to follow, showing that things could be straightened out between major powers peacefully. Mr. Aderem also said how the constitution that was adopted after apartheid was very progressive and should be taken as an example for its liberal views on women’s rights and gay rights, aside from the obvious racial equality. In all, Mr. Aderem stressed the large effect that the end of apartheid had on people fighting their own freedom battles, and that they can overcome a stronger power with perseverance.

The major point that Mr. Aderem thinks should be taken away from the end of apartheid and the reconciliation of South Africa relates back to the basics of doing what is right and following your moral compass. He feels that the apartheid being overcome exemplifies the ideal that no matter what odds, an underdog can win, and no one should ever fall into something just because everyone else does, “do the right thing.”

Listening to Apartheid: Interview with Beverly Mendheim
Beverly Mendheim is a performer who is very familiar with African culture, music, and dance. In this interview, she expresses the effect that apartheid had on South African culture. We learn of apartheid's resounding influence on music across the world.

Ms. Mendheim started out by stating her extreme displeasure at never having personally visited South Africa. She would have liked to at some point while she was employed, but that was unfortunately during apartheid, and she didn’t want to support the South African economy while visiting. She also didn’t feel comfortable as a black person, visiting.

Ms. Mendheim started out by explaining the historical context of two major indigenous black groups that make up South Africa. These are the Swazi and the Sotho. She explained how these large groups of indigenous people were able to form their own nations during the height of apartheid, based on the “homelands” that were within South African borders. In 1966, Lesotho was formed by the Sotho people, a country entirely within South Africa, and in 1968, the Swazi formed Swaziland, a small country between South Africa and Mozambique. Both are recognized by the United Nations as countries. She explained that there was some debated between black and white scholars about the languages spoken in these areas. It is widely agreed however, she stated, that the languages the indigenous Khoi-Khoi spoke were Bantu, the largest groups being Xhosa and Zulu, along with Tswana, Ndebele, and Venda. Each of these language groups has a distinct culture, condensed by an apartheid made homeland, she informed me, and she happens to own a dance costume commonly worm among the Venda.

Traditional music across all homelands included no drums, rather a clapping or tapping of a shield. Ms. Mendheim explained, however, that the Dutch likely introduced drums from other parts of Africa, and then these Bantu speakers began to follow the commonality of drum use. String instruments are apparently very common, made out of traditional items such as a bow and arrow. Like the Dutch the Porteguese had European influence in South Africa, and they introduced the guitar. According to Ms. Mendheim, the guitar, along with drums, is a main theme in South African music now. One of Ms. Mendheim’s favorite musicians is South African, Miriam Makeba, and she preformed traditional songs of the Xhosa and Zulu peoples. South Africa is also famous for its choral harmonies, exemplified by the work of the Lady Smith Black Mambozo, who took traditional Bantu music and has now globalized it.

Perhaps the most famous example of the effect of homelands on traditional tribal music is that of township jive, Ms. Mendheim said. Township Jive directly reflected popular jazz music of the 1920s and ‘30s around the world, like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. However, the people of the townships preformed this music in their own language. The jazzy undertones to their music developed into a new kind of music characterized as marabi or kwela. The Mahotella Queens, originally created in 1964, but still around today, one of Ms. Mendheim’s favorite groups, combined rock with the township jive as western culture began to seep into black South Africa through blacks working in the cities and returning back to their homelands. Ms. Mendheim explained that the wide spread of this new sound gave South Africa a new type of indigenous music that many Americans are familiar with today.

Apartheid directly affected the music scene in South Africa aside from the highly developed musical identities of the homelands. Ms. Mendheim proved this by listing off popular South African songs. The South African national anthem began as an ANC song, “Nkosi Sikelele Africa,” which translates as “God Bless Africa.” This song was originally an anti-apartheid protest song, which is how Ms. Menheim learned it in the 1980s. Another song she brought up related to apartheid was “Shosoloza.” Ms. Mendheim believes that this song is indirectly linked to apartheid because it talks about working in the mines, a job that blacks maintained with their apartheid-stunted education. Many other famous songs have come from South Africa, such as the “Wimoweh” song in the Lion King, which is in fact preformed by South African folk singers, right at the time when Nelson Mandela took power. Since the end of apartheid, South African folk singers have become abundantly featured in popular music all over the world, and Ms. Mendheim sampled a few of these songs in her own voice.

Ms. Mendheim informed me that apartheid had a great impact on the musical development of South Africa. She explained that there was very little radio in black South Africa until after World War II. It wasn’t until 1962 that there was actually widespread radio, when the government made Bantu Radio. This radio was propaganda to enforce separate development of Bantustans. For Swazi and Sotho people this was effective, she explained, because they stayed to themselves and managed to make separate countries. For Zulu and Xsotha peoples however, the issues of Bantustans made it hard for them to work in the cities, so the white culture diffused into the connective homelands.

Ms. Mendheim was very familiar with and introduced me to resources in the Seattle area where South African music can be heard. For instance, Mondays from 6-9pm on KEXP is a pop Africa radio show, and on KBCS from 6-9 there is often South African music. The most important thing that Ms. Mendheim wanted me to walk away from this interview with was music in other countries had a singular traditional sound, but the combination and condensed nature of the apartheid-forced homelands allowed South Africa to develop different musical and cultural identities across the entire country.

Apartheid Across the World: Interview with Drew Fillipo
Drew Fillipo is an American citizen and Quaker who has always been interested in African affairs. In this interview, he expresses the effects that apartheid had in the United States. As a Quaker, he reflects the outrage that peace and equality groups had towards this institution.

Reflecting on the impact of apartheid on the United States, Mr. Fillipo remembers the general outrage that was towards this institution. Mr. Fillipo reflects the demeanor of most Americans that it was appalling that 120-130 years after the United States’ own civil war against slavery, that the blacks in South Africa were still being treated like slaves. Equally appalling, he said, was that even after the United States’ recent civil rights movement, where blacks were a minority fighting for equal rights, in South Africa, the black majority still suffered severe segregation and oppression.

According to Mr. Fillipo, apartheid in South Africa caused continuous protest in the United States. As a college and grad-school student, Mr. Fillipo participated in many protests. He and many other students took special care to ensure that universities divested any support to South Africa. The goal of most Americans aware of the apartheid issue was to pressure the United States’ government to more strongly protest the South African government. With his university, and with many universities across the country, students like Mr. Fillipo encouraged their schools to give scholarships to black South Africans to be taught in the United States. This would give black South Africans a chance at education never presented in South Africa. By bringing kids to the United States, universities supported the leaders of peaceful protest in South Africa.

Explicitly as a Quaker, apartheid was an especially upsetting concept for Mr. Fillipo. As a group, Quakers are dedicated to achieving equality and peace, and this violent oppression of an entire race of people, led to many protests. Quakers were a large part of the National Anti-Apartheid rally held in October of 1985. Although Mr. Fillipo was not a part of this particular rally, his meeting discussed in great deal protests and some members did attend. In general, apartheid was a huge energizing point in the Quaker community to band together to support black South Africa, as apartheid embodied almost everything that Quakers were against.

In Mr. Fillipo’s non-political life, apartheid played a role as well. Mr. Fillipo refused to buy a diamond engagement ring because he was aware of the oppressed blacks working in the South African diamond mines, and he refused to provide economic stimulant towards the terrible conditions that black South Africans had to work in the diamond mines. Without education, mine jobs were the some of the only jobs they could achieve, and Mr. Fillipo expressed his disgust at the thought of encouraging more mine work by purchasing a diamond. Mr. Fillipo had visited Africa a few times in the 1980s and ‘90s, but once given an opportunity to work in South Africa, he turned it down. He wouldn’t be working in black hospitals, as those were paid with black taxes and very poor, and if he wasn’t directly helping the black people, Mr. Fillipo decided that he couldn’t support South Africa under apartheid. By working and living there, he would be aiding South Africa economically and just generally aiding a concept he believed was just completely morally unjust. Instead, Mr. Fillipo took a job in Kenya instead.
In this post-apartheid era, Mr. Fillipo is very impressed by black South Africa’s rise to power. He attributes this successful rebuilding of a government to Nelson Mandela. Mr. Fillipo says that Nelson Mandela coming to power was the greatest positive political event in his life. Mr. Fillipo reflects on how before Mandela became president, he was completely dismayed at how decades of struggle against the oppressive government had taught black South African’s violence, and left South Africa with extremely high murder rates. Mr. Fillipo says that without Mandela, no one could “expect people who have been denied basic human rights to know how to run a government,” but with Mandela as president South Africa was able to peaceably rise to a true democratic government.

Since the end of apartheid, Mr. Fillipo has traveled with his family to South Africa. He noted how economically solid South Africa is, and how well the government was able to sustain white economic value. Mr. Fillipo was glad to note that although black homeland areas are still impoverished, they have improved, and will only continue to in the future. He worries, however, for the South African identity. He noted that all place names are in English, Dutch or Afrikaner, with no Bantu or traditional African names. He does concede that it would be very difficult to completely develop a new country, and he only hopes that South Africa will be able to get back to some of its African roots.

Although he has nothing positive to say about apartheid or any of its repercussions, he notes that black South Africans who have moved to the United States from homelands have a “vibrant culture with wonderful music and dance,” that will now diffuse and become part of American culture.

Escaping Communism - Carmen Tsui

Carmen Tsui
AP WH – 6
June 14, 2010

Escaping Communism

Interview One:
Introduction: This interview is about my mother Karen Tsui. She is a Bank of America worker and is the boss of many people (she works in the tall buildings in downtown, Seattle). I interviewed her on why she left Vietnam, which was because of communism, and how the immigration to America was like and what happened. This is connected to the Cold War because Vietnam was a proxy war of the Cold War, and the defeat of South Vietnam resulted in many Vietnamese citizens leaving Vietnam for America and many other countries. She was in South Vietnam at the time, and she was a teenager/young adult when this all happened.
My family and I were Chinese and lived in South Vietnam in the 1970s. At this time, there was a war going on between the North and the South. I was sixteen during this time. South Vietnam, who was allied with the United States, was fighting against North Vietnam, who was communist. This war affected everyone, but didn’t affect me that much since the only thing that affected my life from the war was the fact that they closed down all the schools. My eldest brother was a South Vietnamese military soldier so he fought alongside the United States army soldiers. However, the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War because North Vietnam took over South Vietnam when the Americans withdrew from the war. Even though this was the end, it was actually the beginning of the turmoil that would come from the communists that took over. After the war had ended, both North and South Vietnam had united together. Since we lived in South Vietnam, many people around us were wary and very apprehensive about the communist takeover. Soon enough, the communists took away our house because they said that we had too much money. These communists who kicked us out of our own home gave our money to the government and we were left with absolutely nothing. After that, my entire family had to hide in other people’s homes, such as our friends and relatives. Our entire family was split up and we hid in a total of about four or five houses. I believe that there were approximately two family members hiding per house. Although we were able to find shelter, it was not that great because the families we stayed with were not very good to us and we all had to pay the families for their living and ours combined. I had to stay with my sister in my friend’s house, and we had to work very hard in order to earn this money. Later on, everyone in the South wanted to leave Vietnam because of this unfair, communist government. We tried very hard to get on the boats to leave, but there were so many complications. One of them was that there were just too many people wanting to leave Vietnam at this time. Another was that everyone knew how dangerous it was and all the risks that were involved since this was a hazardous journey, so that made it even more difficult. Our oldest sibling, the South Vietnamese soldier, had been sent to America after the war had ended since he had worked with the United States and all South Vietnamese servicemen and their families would be able to be sponsored. Immediately after South Vietnam lost the war to the communists, many Vietnamese who had worked with the United States were afraid of malevolence by the Communist Party so about 125,000 or more Vietnamese citizens left Vietnam. The majority of these people was airlifted or fled Vietnam on American military cargo ships and was transferred to American government bases, refugee centers, etc. Many of these people were exiles, South Vietnamese, and political refugees escaping the new communist government.
Finally in 1979, my family was able to go on the Orderly Departure boats. The government was aware of these Orderly Departure boats, but they pretended not to know that it existed or they simply did not care that thousands of Vietnamese citizens were leaving their country in order to go elsewhere. These boats went to refugee camps all over the world, such as Thailand, Hong Kong, the Phillippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Many of the Vietnamese people did not know exactly which refugee camp the boats were going to, so it was kind of up to random chance. However, in the end all of these refugees did the same thing and admitted you to America or to other countries.
At this scary, rushed time I was only a nineteen year old woman just waiting with my family members who ranged from ages thirteen to fifty. It was just my siblings and my uncle. I was the middle child, so no one really acknowledged me… especially my parents. Life was changing so fast. One day I am waiting for a boat to come so my family and I could get on it to leave and go to a refugee camp, then to America. The next day, I am on a boat, risking my life, with about four hundred strangers on a 200 acre boat sailing to a new future out of Vietnam.
My siblings and I had no choice but to take whatever boats were available, and this small and overcrowded boat, like all the other ones, was the one that I had to take alone. For four to five days straight, everyone on the boat had to sit there and could not move at all; it was not because we did not want to move, it was just simply because we could not move at all because there was absolutely no room except for everyone to sit. The journey to where ever we were going to was extremely boring since we could not do anything, but it was also very frightening because there were so many dangers we were all aware of such as drowning, getting raped, robbed, etc. Knowing all these risks were terrifying since we were all completely exposed and isolated during our sail to another unknown destination. We had absolutely no food to eat the whole journey, and everyone was basically starving. Everyone on the boat brought very few things with them because if they brought too much, then they would have to leave it behind or the people who control the boat would have to get rid of it their own way. Also in these circumstances, it was best to just take whatever you really needed and to bring as less as possible.
Finally, my overcrowded boat safely arrived to our destination, India. All of us refugees were so relieved when we got off the boat because that meant that we had traveled to our destination from the beginning to the end without anything unfortunate events happening to us. When all of the refugees got there, everyone one else and I tried to get our luggage, but when I tried I could not get it because someone had either taken it or the people putting the bags on the boat had thrown it off the boat in order to make the boat lighter. I wasn’t angry about the fact that I had not gotten my bag because there is really nothing you can do about it so there’s no point being angry about something you do not have any control over.
In India, I stayed at a refugee with all the other refugees who were on the same boat as me and more. In the mean time, we were all waiting for admittance to America or third world countries. All my other siblings had taken different boats and went to different refugee camps elsewhere. We knew nothing about where each other were, if we were all safe, etc. Some of us were able to go to refugee camps together, but those were the lucky ones. I believe that most of us had to go alone… or at least I did. While I was waiting, I worked as a teacher and taught English to all the children there as a job. Everyone called me teacher, which was a weird, fun, and interesting experience. I was still nineteen or twenty around that time, and I had to be independent for the first time in my life because I was always with my family. I continued to wait and teach during my stay at the refugee camp in India.
At last, five months after I had arrived from Vietnam to India, my oldest brother in the United States sponsored me to come to America. He was able to sponsor me because he became an American citizen, since he was a South Vietnamese soldier and was transferred to the United States military bases. My family and I are very fortunate to have a brother that was in the army because of three reasons. One, the benefits he received from being a soldier that worked closely with the United States also contributed to us and affected our lives in a positive way greatly. Another reason is that these benefits were definitely very helpful in getting to the United States. The third reason is that being a soldier gave him benefits, which gave him the rare opportunity, which most people do not have, to bring our whole family over to America. Because of him, many of us were able to be sponsored to America from the refugee camps since we were family members. I arrived to Seattle in 1980 and lived with my brother. I went to college for two years and immediately started working in order to make a living, meanwhile my brother continued to sponsor the rest of my family over to the United States of America. He was the one to always sponsor because it was the oldest sibling’s duty to do it. My siblings, uncle, and I were the ones that had to go on that hazardous journey that many people would be too afraid to take and were separated right from the start. After all that time of risking our own lives, we were finally reunited. My family was able to sponsor my parents over to America, so they came in a plane instead of a boat like what we had to go through. Since then, all of my siblings and I have been working and have been a new family.

Interview Two:
Introduction: This interview is about my father David Tsui. He was born in China and migrated to Hong Kong when he was very young. He began work when he was only eight years old and ever since then has been working very hard his entire life. He is now 58 years old and has never really taken a break from working since he was eight. I am interviewing how his family left Communist China in order to migrate to America. This connects to the Cold War because many Chinese people were leaving China because they did not like communism, and the United States was encouraging the Chinese to immigrate over to America to show that capitalism is better than communism. This was around maybe the 1960s or 1970s.
I never really had any fun during my childhood. All I remember was working really hard and trying to earn enough money each day just to get by. I ran all over the place in the overcrowded city and eventually learned my way around the demanding place. My parents had no choice but to make me work because their work was still insufficient and was not enough for us to survive. I was a young uneducated boy, working in a hot, heavily populated, busy city on the Eastern hemisphere. That is what my childhood was like.
Before all this, I was only four years old. My mother disliked the government because everyone would do a good, hard day’s work and what would they get at the end? Nothing but little pay, and maybe only just enough to carry on with their lives. This was a hard life for my family because my parents worked very hard for very little which was unfair to the workers. My mother did not like how this system worked, so we migrated to Hong Kong on a plane. We lived with my aunt in her house and my mom worked every day so that we could raise enough money to go to the United States of America. I basically just stayed at home during this time because I could not do any work since I was too young. My mom was able to sponsor my father over to Hong Kong from China, and he also started working right when he arrived. They both worked very hard in order to earn enough money to immigrate to America, but we still did not have enough.
When I turned eight years old, I began working in Hong Kong. I was not educated, so I did many simple jobs. The jobs I did were delivery jobs. Basically what I would do in this job was I would go to a place, they would tell me to bring it to this location, and I would get paid. It was that easy. I did this job for the entire day, from morning to night, ate, then went to sleep. This was my routine everyday. The only thing that was bad about this job was that I had to run around a lot by myself, and I was only still a young boy with no one watching over me in case something happened. I was basically independent and on my own since I was young; not many children my age were even working yet because most were in school being educated. I was just as busy as my parents because all three of us were working very hard to achieve our goal, which was to migrate to the United States, and to survive. Later on, my mother and father had another child. This child became my brother, and I was older than him so I had to take care of him and I was not as alone as I was before.
Soon enough, the time finally came where we were able to achieve our goal which we had been working hard for, for a few years. My older sister, who was living in the United States, sponsored our whole family who was living in Hong Kong (my mother, father, brother, and I) to America. She was able to bring us over to America because she was an American citizen. The immigration policies were that children under the age of twenty one, spouses, and parents of American citizens were granted to come over to America, including family members. These policies were like this because America’s main priority was to reunite families, so this helped us out and made the great opportunity to migrate to the United States as legal immigrants possible.
By the time my family and I migrated over to America, I was already fifteen or sixteen. My whole childhood consisted of working and earning money to survive while other people’s childhoods were made up of playing, friends, school, etc. I never actually had the time and opportunity to go to school, and I am not sure if I could have afforded it since we wanted to use our money to go to the United States, home to the free and where you can live the American Dream. My family and I lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown, which is the most powerful network for Chinese in America and has been the oldest for many decades. I believe that is why we all settled in San Francisco, because then we would be connected with everyone who is similar to us in many ways such as culture. For the very first time in my life, I began my education in high school. I still worked very hard because my family was poor, so we had to earn money to survive. From there, I graduated high school and went to college for two years. After that, I still continued to work and am still giving the same, great amount of effort in my job that I did back in the past.

Interview Three:
Introduction: My interview is about my grand uncle, who is my mom’s uncle. He was around fifty years old at the time and he is now seventy four years old. I am interviewing him about the immigration from Vietnam to America and the dangers there were. This is connected to the Cold War because the Vietnam War was a proxy war in the Cold War, and the defeat of South Vietnam resulted in many Vietnamese citizens leaving Vietnam for other places, such as America.
I was born in China around the mid 1930s and was old enough to remember World War II in my country. I lived in the countryside and lived in the village with my family. I was the youngest of them all, and my parents had seventeen children. Later as one of my older brothers, who I was closest with, grew older, he had a business in Vietnam and he took me with him since I was the youngest of all the siblings. Also, he did not want me to do the farming and backyard kind of jobs because they were hard work for very little benefit and pay. In Vietnam, my brother met a woman and they married through an arranged marriage. They both opened a business together involving diamonds and jewelry, and I worked with them. This work was better than what I would have done in Communist China because this family business actually gives me my hard day at work’s pay. Everything was good in South Vietnam, and my brother and his wife had about eight children. I took care of many of these kids while helping my brother with his business. I lived with them in the same house. However, things changed when the Vietnam War ended in 1975. The Americans had withdrawn from South Vietnam, which resulted in the defeat of South Vietnam. The communists came pouring in from the north to the south and that changed every South Vietnamese citizen’s life. We were all fearful of what will happen when the communists came to take over, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese had already fled from Vietnam to America; but these people were mostly people who worked with America during the war.
Soon enough after North and South Vietnam reunited, communists were knocking on our door and kicked us out of our own home because they said that we had too much money and that it now belonged to the government. We had no idea what to do except to find shelter, which was to pray that people would let us stay in their homes and hide. Fortunately, we were able to find places for all of us to stay, but we all had to split up in the end. For the first time, I was away from my older brother and I was with his son, who was around ten years old at the time. I had to take care of him and we were living with a family in the same house. Even though we found shelter, life was still hard because we had to pay for these families and ourselves in order to stay in their homes. My nephew and I worked very hard and were able to pay off these expenses.
Eventually around 1979, the whole family tried to go on the Orderly Departure boats to leave Vietnam to a better place like the United States of America. That was everyone’s dream place because there was freedom and democracy, and it was way better than the Vietnam now because America does not take your homes away just because you have too much money. Everyone knew the risks and dangers of going overseas. There are possibilities of getting robbed, raped, drowned, etc. We were very afraid of going on these boats since we did not want to lose our lives. I especially was afraid because I had to take care of my nephew and it was only around thirteen years old and I did not want anything bad to happen to him. Also, your trip overseas is not the end of your journey because once you reach your destination, you have to go to the refugee camps and await your admittance to the country of your desire (which is usually the United States). That made the journey to America even more difficult because you would not be done with the migration even when you already risked your life.
Later on, many of nephews and nieces had already gone on these boats either together or alone because they had no choice. I am quite relieved that the government is allowing these Orderly Departures because if they did not, it would make the conditions worse since more people would leave illegally and die out in the seas quickly. My nephew and I were the last ones of the family to leave on the boats. We finally got onto an Orderly Departure boat three years after my other families had left, and started off on our journey to America and to reunite with them.
We were stuck on the overcrowded boat for five days straight with no food or water. No one could move on the boat at all because there was absolutely no room to do that, and my body’s muscles were getting stiff from not moving. I was worried about my nephew during the migration, however he seemed fine with it so I was glad that he was okay.
After a long, tiring boat ride to our destination, everyone was happy that we had made it out of Vietnam and across its potentially dangerous waters. We had made it to the Philippines, and all the refugees from the boats and elsewhere went to the refugee camp. My nephew and I also went to the refugee camp to await our admittance into the United States of America.
It did not take long for us to get admitted to America because many of our family members were already there and they had become American citizens by then. When my nephew and I arrived in the United States, we settled in Seattle, Washington because that is where my family lived. We all lived in the same house just like before, and the family members who left on boats to America was finally reunited. Soon enough, my oldest nephew, who was a South Vietnamese soldier that worked with the Americans, sponsored my brother and his wife over to America. They came to live with us and the whole entire family was reunited once again. When I came to Seattle, I immediately started working at Picture Frame and have been working there for the past twenty years as my first and very last job here in America.