the refugee
June 20 is World Refugee Day.
I was a refugee.
My parents were refugees.
My parents were Vietnamese Boat People who miraculously survived the perilous journey.
My Cậu 3, Cậu 5, and Ông Chú 6, who were on that same boat, were refugees.
Identities shift.
Refugee was where my story started.
I had read somewhere that women who made that journey were prone to being raped. So I asked my mom, “How did you not get raped?” She was the only woman on that boat with 14 other people.
How? She cut her hair, made herself dirty with the mud, disguising herself among the men and boys she was with.
Identities shift.
In 1987, I was born at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) in Bataan.
On April 30, 1987, exactly 12 years after the Fall of Saigon, my parents and I (19 day old newborn), set foot in America, settling in Arlington, TX.
We had an apartment in the peptobismol pink complex called Eagle Crest (now The Palace Apartments), near the legendary Ba Lẹ Vietnamese Restaurant. My order: Bánh Mì Đặc Biệt.
Because I’m Đặc Biệt, duh.
Identity shifting.
*Located in Morong, Bataan, the PRPC was established in 1980 by the Philippine government and the UNHCR. It temporarily housed nearly 500,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees before they were permanently resettled elsewhere. It was officially closed in 1994 and has since been converted into the Bataan Technology Park. UNHCR, formally known as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is the United Nations’ specialized agency mandated to protect and aid refugees. Commonly referred to as the UN Refugee Agency, it leads international action to protect individuals forced to flee their homes due to conflict, war, and persecution.
The mass exodus of refugees from Vietnam in the late 1970s and 1980s—collectively known as the "Vietnamese Boat People" crisis—was caused by a combination of brutal political repression, ethnic targeting, severe economic collapse, and regional wars.
