Uncovering the Truths
An Oral History Interview with my Dad
“Calling.” A frightening word really. As I was prepared to interview my dad and ask him questions about our family’s history I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous. Not because my dad was hard to talk to but rather because we’d never really talked about our family’s history in its entirety. I’d hear a few stories here and there from my dad and his relatives, but was never told the full story of how we got here. “Calling.” There’s no turning back now.
I decided to interview my dad for my oral history and as the eldest male child of the family I felt it was appropriate for the story to be told from his perspective. My goal in conducting this interview was to uncover the truths behind my family’s immigration story and discover the details about how my grandpa led his family to a new life. What I discovered was there were many subtle but obvious differences between some of the stories my grandpa told me and the story my dad was telling me. Perhaps my grandpa hid certain details of his life from me because they were too hard to talk about. I can only guess his intentions, but grandpa was a powerful story teller and I believe it was his intention to mask some of the truths that were too hard for him to express.
My family’s tradition of gathering often and eagerly has been an important aspect of my life. I’ve been able to build upon those relationships with my relatives and they’ve made me into the man I am today. When my grandpa’s family came to the United States with no belongings all they had was each other. However sad that sounds, it was all they really needed. Sounds cliche but family really made my dad into the man he is today. I’m glad my dad passed down my grandpa’s story to me. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell the same story to my own kids and my own grandchildren. “Calling.”
Interview with my Dad
Me(James Dang): Alright so I’m with my dad right now. Dad can you please state your name, when you were born, and where you were born.
JD(Joe Dang): Okay my name is Joe Dang and I was born on January 10th, 1972 in Southern Vietnam.
Me: Can you tell me more specifically what city, or was there a city near where you lived?
JD: Yeah the city was named Can Tho. It was a decent sized city, definitely one of the biggest in the South.
Me: Our last name Dang… does it have any special origin or history to the name?
JD: I believe Dang originated from China. I know your grandmother and your grandfather… my parents… they both had Chinese blood in them, so we have some distant Chinese blood. The Chinese awhile back, they married the local Vietnamese and overtime we became less and less Chinese to the point where we were Vietnamese. So that’s why we are Vietnamese.
Me: What do you remember about Can Tho and about the surrounding area where you lived?
JD: Okay so I was 6 or 7 years old when I left Vietnam so… I remember we did not have alot. After the Vietnam War the Communists took over the country we kinda lost everything. So there was no possession. My job when I was 5 or 6 was to watch the Goats and take them down to the river and let them eat and take them back… and that was my daily chore. I had to do that everyday.
Me: Would you consider your family to have been poor or wealthy or somewhere in between?
JD: I would say before the war before the Communists took over… we were upper middle class, but after the war we were definitely lower class. Under the poverty level. They took over everything. The house you used to own they took over and now you have to pay rent to live there or no longer live there.
Me: Who lived in this house with you?
JD: So I lived with my mom and my dad as well as 6 sisters and brothers. There was alot of us. We had some farm animals other than the goats… like chickens and ducks. Thats pretty much it.
Me: Do you have any memories of the war while it was happening that you remember?
JD: I remember… I remember towards the end of the war having to hide in caves or under the ground in tunnels and stuff like that from the constant bombing and stuff like that… from the constant bombing and the fighting stuff like that. I couldn’t comprehend then why we had to hide in these rooms with so many people at the time.
Me: What memories do you have of Grandpa going to the war?
JD: He told me stories. He told me he was a soldier in the South. He got in the army and fought just like everyone else. During that time everyone did. Around 1968 or 1969 he was injured in a surprise attack and there was some bomb that exploded in front of him. After he got out the hospital they told him he had lost part of his hearing and decided to no longer let him fight in the war. He became a normal civilian and that’s when he got married to your grandmother… right around there.
Me: Why did Grandpa decide to join the war effort?
JD: Well at the time everybody was fighting the Communists. They were fighting for freedom. Because they knew if the Communists took over they wouldn’t have any freedom. Umm no freedom of religion, freedom to express yourselves, everywhere you go you have to register. You have to register with the local authority and tell them where you’re going, what you’re doing, what you’re studying. It was a very tough time. They fought against that, but ultimately they didn’t get what they wanted and the South lost.
Me: Do you remember how you escaped Vietnam?
JD: Right around 1978 your grandpa decided that we should try to escape Vietnam. The war had ended in 1975, so we had lived under Communist rule for 3 years by then. The conditions we were in… we didn’t have a future. All his kids including me and your aunts and uncles belonged to the old regime, so we didn’t get to go to school and get ahead like the kids of the Communist government stuff like that. So in 1978 he decided we needed to leave Vietnam and if we could reach a third country… another world… preferably the United States. So he gathered a group of people he trusted, because at the time it was illegal to leave Vietnam. If you were caught you would go to prison, so he needed to get a group together that he knew he could trust. Whatever people had if they had money they chipped in money, if they didn’t they chipped in labor. So him and a few of his students, because he was an English teacher at the time… went up to the mountains and started chopping wood to build a boat. On April 30th, 1979 that night we decided to escape from Vietnam. As soon as we got onto the water and started the boat we were spotted by a Communist patrol boat, so they start chasing us trying to catch us. They shot at us but nobody was hurt and for the next couple days we traveled the South China Sea, from Vietnam to Malaysia and we went into a storm and there was a lot of rain and the boat… because my dad and his students weren’t professional boat builders it started to crack and water started to come in… and for one of the nights over there the whole night everybody was using buckets trying to bail the water out of the boat. And of everything it was your grandpa’s faith that helped us get through. Some of the people that were on the boat told me that night that later your grandpa stood on top of the boat… and he raised his hands and he prayed all night that we wouldn’t die. And ummm in the morning he passed out and he fell and somebody caught him. A few days later we were safe and near the island of Malaysia. We stayed there for a day or two… and then we were spotted by the pirates and they came. They saw a boat on the island and they robbed us, they tried to… they had knives and guns and they robbed us. And they tried to take the women and the children, so they can sell them. The reason is… cus Thailand… at the time Thailand was roaming the sea so they wanted to take some of the women and children so my dad told them you can take anything you want, you can take all of our stuff, but if you try to take any of the women and children you might as well kill me and all my students here. And there was a couple of them that they were with your grandpa against the pirates. And for some reason not sure why they left us alone and didn’t take any women and children. I believe that was just God protecting us the whole time cus they could have easily just killed us all and taken the women and children. So I believe it was a few days later we were spotted by some local fisherman who said they heard there were some boat people stranded on some island… so they notified the local authorities and the Malaysian government came and moved us to another island where all the refugees were staying at the time waiting for another country to come pick us up waiting for the interview… so my dad when he was in Vietnam he worked for a local church he was a pastor and he know of these missionaries that actually brought him to Christ. So when he was on the island he wrote them a letter telling them that he had escaped Vietnam and that he was on an island and wanted them to help him. So these missionaries went to the Home Mission Board and said hey we need to help this family… so I believe there was some pushing on the Home Mission Board and Baptist Commission to convince… and they contacted the refugee… the refugee board in Malaysia and they told them we want you to expedite this family. And that’s why we were able to get to the United States and get here faster than most people, and while we were there is when your Aunt Cindie was born. So I would say it was a 6 or 7 month ordeal. It was pretty terrifying at the time.
Me: I’m glad you brought up Grandpa’s faith. What role do you think religion played in pushing for you guys to leave Vietnam?
JD: No doubt Vietnam is an Asian country. Buddhism dominated probably 90% percent of the country and Catholics and Protestants were maybe less than 1% so for grandpa to find God and find faith with the help of the missionaries was a blessing. I’ve been a Christian all my life and I have never regretted being a Christian so I’m thankful for everything that has happened and that we were able to make it to the United States.
Me: Do you remember any relatives you were forced to leave behind?
JD: We had a grandma, your gandpa’s mom. When we were growing up we had a lot of kids and grandma and grandpa couldn’t care of so many kids so grandma lived with us to help out. He gave his mom me and she took care of me until the night we escaped. And I was told a couple weeks after I left she stopped eating and she got sick… cus she was depressed because grandpa took me away from her and she passed away while we were on the island. My grandfather… I never met him. He passed away when my dad was young. He died in a car accident… and he was involved in a car accident when my dad was a teenager.
Me: With the help of the missionaries you were able to expedite to the US and where did you arrive? What did you bring with you?
JD: We arrived in San Diego in 1979, and we had nothing. Nothing. We didn’t have anything. Whatever we had we sold to build the boat so we had nothing to bring to.
Me: Having no belongings must’ve been hard, and entering a new country unsure of what was to come must’ve been difficult… How did you transition to new life in America with having to learn English and becoming an American citizen?
JD: Yeah well when we got here in 1980 my dad had a sister and her family was able to escape Vietnam in 1975 and her family was able to move earlier. Yeah the American company she was working for took the whole family and then moved them to the United States and they settled in San Diego. So grandpa wanted to live near her so she could help with the settling in stage. So we were poor we were broke living on welfare and food stamps, but that’s what we had to live on. For the next 18 years I lived in San Diego. You know I don’t really remember a lot about the struggle of learning English. Ya know I was 6 or 7 I don’t remember struggling to learn English. I do remember my mom and dad were strict about keeping our native language so they were very strict on us… forbidding us to use English in our house. We had to only talk to each other in Vietnamese and because of that I was able to keep the Language.
Me: What do you remember of Grandpa’s church? How big was it?
JD: Grandpa founded a Baptist church. It was a Southern Vietnamese Baptist Church was the name. It probably had about 150…. 150 to 200 people max. It was a very big church. There wasn’t a lot of Vietnamese at the time yet.
Me: I know that I’m pretty close to my cousins as well as my aunts and uncles, and thanks to you and mom we are able to see our relatives pretty often making those close relationships. What’s your relationship like with your cousins and your aunts and uncles? Do you know them?
JD: I don’t have a lot of relationships with the relatives that are still in Vietnam, but when we came to the United States my dad’s sister had kids and they were our cousins but for some reason we never clicked so we never hanged out. So growing up we never had a relationship with a lot of the other people ya know.
Me: Why do you think family has become so much more important in this generation of Dangs compared to the previous generations?
JD: I think we learned from our mistakes. Our parents didn’t really do a good job as far as having us have a relationship with the other relatives. So I think we decided… Me, mom, Aunt Sau, Aunt Ut decided to hang out with each other. Know each other so that you guys can hang out with each other and grow up with each other so that’s what we tried to do.
Me: Did you ever envision your life being the way it is today? What did you expect your life to be like when you moved to the United States?
JD: You know ummm…. I think it was such a blessing to be where we are now. When I was 18 or 19 I never thought I would be where I am today. A few years later I wouldn’t have good career, I’m a police officer. My wife has a good career and she does ummmm… work at Emory hospital and we have great kids and all our kids grow up and they are well behaved. That’s all you can dream of and all you can hope for and I think God knew that and he was gonna help us and bless us with everything we have.
Me: Very blessed. We are so grateful for how our lives have turned out and I want to thank you for devoting time to do this interview with me. Thank you again talk to you later.
- How does your tradition-bearer’s story relate to your community in both the present and the past? How does it relate to you?
- Much like many other immigrants, my grandpa’s family entered the United States in search of a better and promising life. Immigrants today as well as back then face many hardships. Many with no possessions and nothing but each other. I come from an immigrant family and I’m proud of how far my family has come since moving here in the late 70s.
- How did your perception of community history change, from before the interview to now?
- I never realized the presence of tight knit Vietnamese people in my life. I fully realized it when I saw the attendance of my grandpa’s funeral as several hundreds of church goers and family friends showed up to show their respects to him. I’d always thought my grandpa was just really sociable and made lots of good impressions, but after talking with my dad I realized he was a selfless loving man who sought after God’s calling for him to be a pastor.
- How did this project inspire you to learn more about your family and community?
- It encouraged me to ask the questions I’d never been comfortable asking. It allowed me to become one of the family story bearers and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to explore my own family’s history in greater depth.
- What were some of the challenges you faced during this project? What could you do differently in your next oral history interview?
- Probably would improve by interviewing someone that was close to family at the time they escaped Vietnam. A new perspective from maybe one of grandpa’s students for example would be amazing and really eye opening.
- If the roles were reversed and you became the tradition-bearer, what stories would you like to tell?
- I would tell stories of my siblings and of my relatives. They are the most important things in my life so if asked for stories I’ll be ready to present them with numerous stories. I’ve inherited my grandfather’s gift of story telling over the years.
