Ship of Fate : : Memoir of a Vietnamese Repatriate / / Trụ Đình Trần; ed. by David K. Yoo, Russell Leong.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Trần, Trụ Đình,
• HerausgeberIn: Leong, Russell,; Yoo, David K.,
• TeilnehmendeR: Lipman, Jana K.; Tran, Bac Hoai.
• MitwirkendeR: Lipman, Jana,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies ; 21
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 14 b&w illustrations, 3 maps

Ship of Fate tells the emotionally gripping story of a Vietnamese military officer who evacuated from Saigon in 1975 but made the dramatic decision to return to Vietnam for his wife and children, rather than resettle in the United States without them. Written in Vietnamese in the years just after 1991, when he and his family finally immigrated to the United States, Trần Đình Trụ's memoir provides a detailed and searing account of his individual trauma as a refugee in limbo, and then as a prisoner in the Vietnamese reeducation camps.In April 1975, more than 120,000 Indochinese refugees sought and soon gained resettlement in the United States. While waiting in the Guam refugee camps, however, approximately 1,500 Vietnamese men and women insisted in no uncertain terms on being repatriated back to Vietnam. Trụ was one of these repatriates. To resolve the escalating crisis, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a large ship, the Việt Nam Thương Tín. An experienced naval commander, Trụ became the captain of the ship and sailed the repatriates back to Vietnam in October 1975. On return, Trụ was imprisoned and underwent forced labor for more than twelve years.Trụ's account reveals a hidden history of refugee camps on Guam, internal divisions among Vietnamese refugees, political disputes between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. government, and the horror of the postwar "reeducation" camps. While there are countless books on the U.S. war in Vietnam, there are still relatively few in English that narrate the war from a Vietnamese perspective. This translation adds new and unexpected dimensions to the U.S. military's final withdrawal from Vietnam.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter One. My Early Life -- Chapter Two. Coming of Age -- Chapter Three. The Evacuation -- Chapter Four. The Refugee Camp on Orote Point -- Chapter Five. The Repatriates -- Chapter Six. Give Us a Ship -- Chapter Seven. Camp Asan, Guam -- Chapter Eight. The Struggle -- Chapter Nine. The Việt Nam Thương Tín -- Chapter Ten. Receiving the Ship -- Chapter Eleven. Leaving Guam -- Chapter Twelve. The Return Voyage -- Chapter Thirteen. Arrival at Vũng Tàu -- Chapter Fourteen. Reeducation Camps -- Chapter Fifteen. Moving from Camp to Camp -- Chapter Sixteen. Winds of Political Change -- Chapter Seventeen. The Day I Left Prison -- Acknowledgments