To Freedom

Back in January of 1980 when the rest of the world was celebrating the promise of a new year, I snuck out of Vietnam with 87 other people on a tiny 50-foot fishing boat. My dream was the same that more than 17 million Vietnamese shared after the collapse of the Southern government, and that was FREEDOM.

This was my thirteenth attempt to escape from Communism. I never stopped trying to seek a true FREEDOM that so many American’s may take for granted.

Spending five nights and four days on a tiny boat, sharing very little food and water, in unimaginable sanitary conditions was a hell I would not want anyone to have to live through.

In our journey for FREEDOM, we were chased by the Vietnamese boat patrol, we lost our second backup engine during a storm on our first day out to sea and were robbed by the notorious sea pirates. It didn’t look good. We were all ready to serve a few years in hard labor camps once we were caught.

On the third night at sea we saw a vessel in the skyline. Our dream of being rescued at sea and being brought to FREEDOM was about to become true. Unfortunately the ship disappeared into the darkness, never to be seen again.

The fourth day became worse, we ran out of water and the sight of death within our “float coffin” was all around us. People were lying everywhere, even underwater, with their own waste floating around them. Miraculously, we then spotted another ship. Barely able to move, our picture of a new FREEDOM had reappeared. We were about to be rescued. All of a sudden the men entered our boat and our joys turned to nightmares. We realized we had met the feared sea pirates.

They started kicking us, hitting us and pointed their guns at us threatening to kill us. They stripped us all and cleaned out all of our belongings – the last of everything we owned. Worse yet, they took an underage girl with them and raped and later killed her. Before they left the scene, they tried to sink us all by trying to destroy the boat’s engine and colliding their ship into ours.

The rear end of our boat split and water flowed into the boat much faster than we could hand-pour it out. On their last attempt to kill eighty-six innocent people, they sped up their ship and tried to collide on the left side of our boat. At that time, we couldn’t do anything else except wait for the worst to come while some people panicked and jumped to their deaths in the ocean.

When the pirates’ ship was about to collide with ours, all of a sudden the pirates changed their direction. We all wondered what had happened. Later we realized that another ship appeared not too far away from us. We were saved temporarily when one boat that looked just like the previous sea pirates we had encountered saw we were without possessions, and gave us enough food and water to temporarily live on. Due to the conditions of our boat, we begged the captain to carry us to the nearest land. The captain refused and sailed away as fast as he could. They left us behind, regardless of our screams for help. The next afternoon, following the direction of the second ship, we landed in Malaysia where we were all shipped to Pulau Bidong, a refugee center and also a temporary land for tens of thousands of boat people. Every refugee’s dream was to be admitted to the United States.

Without any relatives living there it was almost impossible unless you could find an agency willing to sponsor you. I was one of the lucky few to later be admitted based on my father working for the United States government prior to 1975 and my being a minor.

After two long depressing years with all sorts of complications in the refugee camp, in October of 1982, I finally arrived in the United States. I came here with only my two bare hands and my search for a better life was now a reality.

Arriving in the new dream land, just like thousands of other immigrants, I had to deal with a new society, new language and completely new culture. With a very limited English language, I immediately went back to school while I managed to continue working to improve my life. During the summer, while the other kids went to school or spent a vacation somewhere with their family, I worked three jobs from 5 a.m. until midnight daily. I saved every penny I could to try to get the rest of my family over to the United States.

One of my early jobs in America was working as a warehousemen for the Naval Supply Center in Oakland, California. While there, I taught myself how to use computers. In addition to my warehouse work, I sometimes worked around the clock helping others at the base with some of their important project deadlines that required much computer skills. I was a fast learner. I soon became pretty good at mastering most of the personal computer software programs.
I was then hired by a local marketing company as their computer graphics artist. With very little knowledge about the computer graphics technology, I spent countless hours working and learning in this new field. Over the next seven years I created hundreds, if not thousands of computer graphic visual presentations for some of America’s top companies and helped train their graphic artists on the latest graphics software packages.

As my knowledge of computers and communications increased, so did my job responsibilities and title. I eventually became the manager of information systems for an innovative high tech marketing company called The Alliance Group. I am learning new things daily in my ever changing field on databases, networking and now, most excitingly, the Internet.

Things have not slowed down one bit. The rest of my family is now in the United States, I bought my first house, I just married the woman of my dreams and I am now partners in a neighborhood grocery store, Fresh and Fine Foods in Livermore, California.
I hope by sharing my story - we will all truly believe that - Nothing is impossible as long as you follow your dreams and never, ever give up.

Quang is now compiling his in-depth story for his upcoming book “The Journey To Freedom.”