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**** This essay received an Honorable Mention. ****
My Parents’ Journeys to Freedom
by Kristina K. Pham
My name is Kristina Khanh Pham and I am an 11-year-old rising sixth grader at Moody Middle
School in Richmond, Virginia. As the daughter of proud Vietnamese immigrants, I was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This
important historical document states that the citizens of the United States of America are entitled
to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” because the USA is a free country. Freedom is an
honor and privilege that some people take for granted. For my parents (Cathy and Valentine
Pham) and their families, the pursuit of freedom and happiness is their American dream.
However, their respective journeys to freedom and establishing roots in a new country were not
easy.
For my mother, her family, and her paternal relatives, their journey began 30 years ago on April
29, 1975. There were 28 members in the family who made this journey. Fortunately, they had
already made their way down to the sea by the time the South Vietnamese president announced
the surrender to the North Vietnamese soldiers (also better known as the Vietcong) on April 30,
1975. When the Vietcong troops and tanks knocked down the gates of the presidential palace,
the Vietnam War finally came to an end after decades of war. If my mother’s family had waited
until April 30th to escape, they would have been caught and sent to the jungle for hard labor or
even execution. This was the fate of those South Vietnamese loyalists who were well-educated
and wealthy. The same fate befell the South Vietnamese government employees and military
troops who were captured by the Vietcong. My mother’s dad and uncles were all in the military
and my mother’s grandfather was a famous soccer commentator so they all had to flee fast or
face persecution. When my mother and her family reached the seashore, they boarded a small
boat that took them out to the South China Sea at night. They were transferred to one of the
barges, which were larger than the boat they had sailed on and left in the sea by the military.
Conditions on these barges were horrible since they were all unsanitary and overcrowded with
scared and hungry refugees. Eventually, the boat people, including my mother and her family,
were picked up by the US Navy Ship Kimbro and transported to Subic Bay in the Philippines.
Although my mother was only five years old at the time of the escape from Vietnam, she vividly
remembers how during the transfer from the barge onto the big military ship, many people were
so anxious to board the big ship that will take them to begin their new free lives elsewhere that
some refugees fell into the wide open sea as they rushed to climb the rope ladder from the barge
to the ship. Luckily, my mother and her family boarded the Kimbro safely. When the American
sailors gave them rice with soy sauce and Spam to eat, they divided the food among their family
members because there wasn’t enough food for all the passengers. Nevertheless, they enjoyed
each bite of their food since this was the first time in several days that they finally had something
to eat or drink. Eventually, the Kimbro took the passengers to Guam, where they had to fill out
immigration papers and waited to be sent to one of the three refugee processing centers that were
hastily set up in the United States to handle the overwhelmingly large number of Vietnamese
who had fled their homeland to avoid the Communist regime. My mother and her family were
sent to the refugee processing center in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Then through the support of
U.S. Catholic Charities, an American friend of my mother’s uncle sponsored her entire family to
resettle in Newport News, Virginia, where they have been residing for the past 30 years.
Establishing roots in a new country was rough for my mother and her family in the beginning.
But they slowly adjusted to the language and new culture. To learn English, my mother
remembers watching educational television shows like Sesame Street and Romper Room and
even entertaining shows like The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. She also remembers
the bad part of adjusting to school in a new country. Her first school year in America was
unbearable in the beginning because the kids in school teased her since she looked different from
the American kids, but she later befriended many classmates since the kids were amazed that my
mother was such a smart student for someone who was new to the country. The other children in
my mother’s family were also encouraged to study hard so that they could go to college and get
well-paying jobs. My mother eventually graduated cum laude from Christopher Newport
University in Newport News in 1990. The adults in my mother’s family, on the other hand,
worked blue collar jobs in the beginning to provide basic needs for their families. One of the
most gratifying and emotional moments for my mother and her family occurred in 1980 when
they became naturalized as citizens of the United States of America. Having endured a tough
and unforgettable flight to freedom, my mother and her family are proud to be Americans in the
land of the free.
My father’s journey to freedom, on the other hand, was much tougher emotionally as he had to
escape without his family, which consisted of 11 members including my father. He was 12 years
old in 1978 when he first attempted to flee with his two oldest brothers. Unfortunately, my
father was caught by the Vietcong and sent to a labor camp before he was allowed to return to
his family. Four years later in May 1982 my father tried again to escape and succeeded when he
and 92 other strangers sailed to a refugee resettlement camp in Malaysia. There he was
interviewed by the U.S. Embassy to come to America. Then he went to the Philippines to learn
English and finally a refugee resettlement agency called the Connections Program in Northern
Virginia had my father flown to Northern Virginia to resettle there. After finishing high school
in three years, my father joined the U.S. Army in 1986 and served a three year tour of duty in
Germany. In 1989, he was transferred to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where he met my mother, who
was living in nearby Newport News, Virginia. My father’s lonesome journey to freedom was all
worth it when he became naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1990.
Having established his roots in the United States, my father was now able to sponsor his entire
family to immigrate to the United States as well. The family included his parents, five brothers,
three sisters, a brother-in-law, two nephews, a niece, and a sister-in-law. Since the family had a
friend who was already living in Philadelphia, the family decided to establish roots there. After
my father was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1992, he used his GI bill to pay for
his four years of college at Philadelphia University. My parents were married in 1993 and I was
born a year later in 1994. After my father graduated cum laude from Philadelphia University in
1996, he and my mother decided to uproot from Philadelphia and headed south to Richmond,
Virginia for better jobs. Since resettling to Richmond in 1996, our family of three had grown to
four with the birth of my younger sister Maria in 1999.
My family and I are very happy living out our American dream in Richmond. My parents have
fulfilled their American dream of having the freedom to choose their occupations and provide
financial security for our family to enjoy life fully and happily. Now my sister and I will
continue to study hard in school so that we can pursue any opportunities that interest us. One of our interests is to maintain our Vietnamese heritage even though we live in America. My family
and I are very proud of our Vietnamese heritage and we keep it alive by speaking the language at
home, watching Vietnamese entertainment shows, eating traditional Vietnamese foods, attending
Mass at a Vietnamese Catholic church, and participating in Vietnamese cultural events. So we
are very thankful to be living in the United States of America, a free country that not only offers
many opportunities, but also allows us the freedom to celebrate our Vietnamese heritage. May
God continue to bless America indeed!
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