LOCAL Houston | The City Guide JANUARY 2016 | Page 36

I was a baby when I left Vietnam. I have no memory of the war, or the
fact that my family fled the country – leaving everything behind save for
whatever bare essentials they could fit into two plastic bags – just 72
hours before we lost our country to Communism.
We were the lucky ones. Through connections with the American
Embassy, my parents obtained approval to be airlifted out of Vietnam, but
there was a catch. “We only had the papers for the three of us to leave,”
recalls my father. “The rest of my family didn’t have papers, but at the last
minute, I told everyone to pack and just get in the car.” It saved our lives.
My mother remembers arriving at Tan Son Nhut airport in
Saigon with most of my dad’s side of the family – my paternal
grandmother and grandfather, my aunt and four cousins, another aunt and uncle, and us (my mom, dad and me). She was
30 years old at the time. I was just 18 months old. Asked if she
knew what the future held, she says that she had no idea what
would happen.
We were all loaded onto a cargo plane and seated on the
floor, separated by rows of ropes. We ended up at a U.S.
Naval Base in Subic Bay in the Philippines. Three days later,
my mom recalls hearing the dreaded news on the radio:
Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, the country where I was
born and the only home that my parents had known, was lost.
My family came to the U.S. by way of France. They chose Paris
first, because an uncle lived there, and second, because they
spoke the language fluently. By 1976, however, when it was
clear that my father, an architect by profession, would not be
able to find work in Paris, our family immigrated to the U.S. We
eventually settled in Sacramento, California, just two months
before my little sister was born, when my dad got a job as an
architect with the state. My parents lived in Sacramento for 33
years before retiring to Southern California, near Little Saigon,
home to the largest settlement of Vietnamese in the U.S.

E

My sister also lives in Southern California, but me? I met the
husband when I was 21. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, but
when we got married, he spirited me off to Houston, and now,
this is my home.

By Mai Pham

36

L O C A L

| january 16

...IS FOR EVACUATION