It was April 30, 1975. Saigon was falling. Amid the chaos, smoke, and deafening sounds of helicopters overhead, a ten-year-old girl named Linh was swept away from everything she had ever known. Vũng Tàu, her hometown, was no longer a place of peace and ocean breezes—it had become a launchpad for the unknown.
In the frantic rush of people clawing toward the last chance of freedom, Linh lost sight of her parents and two younger siblings. Pushed by the crowd, carried by the tide of desperation, she found herself aboard a U.S. Navy ship—alone. Surrounded by strangers, her small hands gripped the cold steel railings of the ship as it pulled away from the only home she had ever known. She didn’t even have time to cry. The tears would come later.
She arrived at Camp Pendleton with thousands of other Vietnamese evacuees. Disoriented and silent, Linh wandered through the sea of refugees until a Vietnamese couple from the same ship noticed her. They saw in her the eyes of their own daughter who hadn’t made it out. Out of grief and compassion, they took Linh in as one of their own.
In America, Linh grew up with an adopted family who loved her, provided for her, and gave her all the tools to succeed. She learned English, celebrated Thanksgiving, graduated from college, and built a career as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. She was admired for her resilience, her intelligence, and her smile.
But deep inside, there was a wound time could never close.
As years passed, so did the hope—yet never completely. Linh made several trips back to Vietnam, walking through the streets of her childhood in Vũng Tàu. But the landscape had changed. The narrow alleys and tiled rooftops she once played under were gone. Hotels now stood where family homes used to be. Tourists walked where children once played barefoot. No familiar faces. No one remembered the family that once lived in a small house with a blue door near the sea.
She searched community records, old photos, even visited churches and schools. Nothing.
There is a loneliness that comes not just from being alone, but from not knowing where you come from. Linh, now nearly 60, still feels that ache. Who were her parents? Were they lost at sea trying to escape years later? Did they suffer? Did they survive and wonder what had happened to their daughter?
“I live a life with many blessings,” Linh once said quietly, “but I also live with a name without a past.”
She doesn’t know if her family is alive or dead. She doesn’t know if she has nieces or nephews somewhere across the ocean. Every now and then, she dreams of a woman’s hand holding hers, guiding her through a crowd, or of her little brother’s laugh echoing through the halls of a house she can no longer find.
Fifty years have passed. The war ended, but the silence continues. Maybe someday, by some miracle, she’ll stumble across a face, a name, a story that will unlock the truth. Until then, Linh continues to live, to hope, and to remember—because some stories, though unfinished, are too powerful to forget.
-Lê Nguyễn Thanh Phương-