Kim Vo ~ A Survivor’s Story ~ Part Two

“We went from Guam to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. At the refugee camp I did the same thing . . . same ole thing I did. One day, I got so mad, I washed two buckets of clothes, and my hands [were] bleeding, and it just bothered me, you know, thinking about my family. I sat outside on the step and I cry. There was a lady out there who saw me and she said, ‘what’s wrong?’ I told her I just want to go back home, go back to Vietnam. She said, ‘You can’t go home, who’d you come with?’ I said, just me, I don’t have nobody. I said, did you come with somebody, she said she come with her aunt. I told her I don’t want to stay with these people and she said, ‘I help you. First thing in the morning, you meet me at the cafeteria, and I’ll be there . . . five o’clock.’ She said.”

“I couldn’t sleep that night; I couldn’t wait to meet her. I got up and ran over there and sat and waited for her. She came, and I’m happy to see her too. She said, ‘I’m going to take you to see the father, who is a Catholic.’ I’d never heard of that, I never heard of Baptist church or preachers, all I know is Buddha, that’s all I know, that’s what my family is. I told her, ‘Father, what do you mean father, I don’t have a father, my father is in Vietnam.’ She said, ‘No, the priest the Catholics call the father.‘ I said I thought you came with your aunt, now you say you have a father? She was laughing, but I wasn’t laughing, ‘cause I didn’t know. She said, ‘No, in the Catholic Church, the people, we call him father.’ I said not me, I’m not calling him daddy, not me. So, she took me to the church and the father walked out and she said, ‘Good morning father.’ I’m looking at her and I’m looking at him and I’m thinking to myself, I’m not going to call you father, I said, ‘Good morning, sir.’ That’s what I said. He said, good morning, he took me and her in his office and we were just talking. I was fourteen at the time. He said in the United States, under the age of 18, it’s hard to get her out . . . he said he would see what he could do. He said I could go back to the family and he would send somebody tomorrow to get me out of there. I was happy, boy, Hallelujah! So, I came home, I was happy and she asked me where I’d been. I told her, ‘I don’t know, some lady came and took me to see somebody she called father, but he’s not my daddy. She knew exactly who he was and said, ‘No you don’t need to go with him.’ I said, ‘I am, he’s not my daddy, but I go with him.’ She and her husband tried to scare me, they said, ‘You don’t know what the country do to you, you’re a young kid, a little kid, they’re going to rape you, they’re going to kill you, they’re going to hurt you. You better stay with us, you don’t need to be going with them.’ I said, ‘No, I go with them. If they hurt me, I accept that, cause they’re not my people. My own people hurt me.’ She said, ‘Well, I’m going to keep all your clothes, I’m not going to give you none of your clothes.’ I said, ‘You can have them, the charity people, they gave them to me.’ She gave it up, ‘cause she knew I was going to go,” said Kim. The lady tried one last tactic to dissuade Kim telling her she was her daughter, a fact Kim denied, defiantly telling her she was not her daughter, she was her slave. 

“So, the guy came and got me and took me to the building where all the nuns stay. I never seen anything in my life that wear the kind of clothes, the uniforms that those nuns wear, I got scared,” whispered Kim. I got scared, I thought, those people gonna eat me tonight, kill me and eat me. But the nuns, the sisters, were nice to me. They said they were going to get some lunch for me, they were going to have some chicken that day. Oh, I want the chicken, but I couldn’t eat it ‘cause I’m afraid they poison me,” said Kim, laughing now at her fear. “I didn’t eat it, I was hungry, but I didn’t eat it. I lied to her saying, ‘Ma’am, can I go to the bathroom?’ She said, ‘Sure, go to the bathroom, make sure and come back.’ As soon as I got out the door, I ran, I ran about a mile to the office.” Kim went into the office of the man in charge, she remembers his name was Bob. At this point, she still could speak no English, and he didn’t speak Vietnamese. He was asking her where she was going, but she could not understand him. He called a translator who had married a soldier, and she asked Kim why she was there. She told her she wanted him to help her. “The man they call father, he’s not my daddy, he came and got me out and took me to the building where there’s a bunch of people wearing something I’ve never seen and I got scared, I don’t want them to kill me. He laughed and said, they’re not going to kill you, they’re nice people. I said I’ve never seen those people, weird clothing, I never seen anything like that, I got scared and ran away from them, I don’t want to stay with them. He said, ‘Okay, I’m going to put you in a group shelter.’ I didn’t know what a group shelter was . . . the lady said it’s a building with a whole bunch of kids who don’t have any parents. I said yeah, yeah, I’ll go there, I don’t want to go back to those people, I scared. The guy laughed and took me to the group shelter. I was so happy, I got a bed to sleep, I got blankets over me, A.C., I thought, man I’m in Heaven, thank God. I sleep all night long and about two days later the father came with the nuns, I hid under the bed, I didn’t come out and they didn’t know where I was. They kept calling for me but I didn’t come out ‘cause I didn’t want to go with those people. Finally, I came out and I sat with the translator, the father, the nuns, and Bob. The father said I had two choices, he said either you go with us or you stay here. When he said that I said, oh, I stay right here,” laughed Kim tapping the table for emphasis.

Kim married a Vietnamese fisherman, and they moved to Oak Island, Texas in 1989. Together they had three children, Kim is no longer married. While living in Oak Island, Kim cried out to God, saying, “You need to help me find my family, I need to go see them. I don’t know where they are or if they have anything to eat or not, I don’t know how their life [is] over there.” One day a lady called Kim and asked Kim if she knew her parents’ names as she was going to have someone go to Vietnam and look for them. Kim provided her with the needed information, spelling the names as they sounded to her in English, as she had a limited ability to write in Vietnamese at that time. About a year later, she received a letter from her family. “I wasn’t sure it was them, some people pretend to be family to try to get your money,” stated Kim.  Kim asked them two questions; what she called her mom when she lived there and how did she leave there. She sent a stamp with the letter to ensure she received an answer, when she received their response, they had answered her questions correctly confirming they were her family. She wrote them back requesting their phone number. She waited anxiously for their return letter, which came a month later, and she called them immediately. “All they did was cry,” said Kim, ‘they were happy to hear from me, I guess, they thought I was dead . . . before I got off the phone, I said I [will] be there in June . . . and I will see you all . .  . I took my little boy with me." 

"They picked me up at the airport, it wasn’t what I expect, they just different. I went to their home and see my mom . . . I didn’t see my daddy . . . people were sitting around talking to me . . . I say, ‘where my daddy at?’ All I get was, ‘Your daddy went somewhere. He not home yet,’ so I believe them. I went to his in-laws and asked, do you know where my daddy at? She said, ‘Your momma didn’t tell you?’ I said they said he went somewhere and I’m waiting for him. She said, ‘You sit down and stay calm and I tell you the whole story.’ She patted my shoulder and said, ‘Your daddy’s gone, he died.’ I asked how, and I started shaking. ‘Your daddy died starving himself, he don’t eat, he don’t drink, he come to see you, to find you. Anywhere he heard your name he go there to look for you. The last time he go the lady told him that you dead, that she found your body and the dump people picked it up and dumped you. He believed her because . . . the woman know you. He went to a palm reader and a psychic, and she told him you are not dead, but you are far away.’ He told my brothers and sisters if I still alive, I won’t see her . . . so, he don’t eat, he don’t drink, he just die, he was all bones. When he die I was in Oak Island and I saw him in my dreams. I saw the family a month after. It was hurting me so bad to know how he die, to see me,” said Kim, losing her composure as she recalled the circumstances of his death. “He knew his daughter was somewhere, but he didn’t know where. He know now.” she whispered.