Comment by jryle70
1 day ago
A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more tragic. People died, families split, a country divided.
1 day ago
A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more tragic. People died, families split, a country divided.
Yup.
I met a guy in the East Bay who escaped Vietnam in 1978. Family sold everything to bribe the government to look the other way.
Boat trip lasted a week - people died, mostly the youngest and oldest, their bodies thrown overboard. Thai pirate came and stole anything of value they had left and raped the women. Boats passed by and did nothing.
They finally make it to Malaysia and spent almost a year in a refugee camp before coming to the US.
Now multiply that story by 2,000,000 with 200,000-400,000 dying along the way. A total of 4-5% of the entire population tried to escape by boat. The lucky ones fled before 1975, some later one.
A massive human tragedy that few people know much about.
The barber I patronized for many years was a boat person. Wonderful people.