Jana K. Lipman is a Professor of History at Tulane University. (Click photo to learn more.)
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In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates by Jana K. Lipman (University of California Press, 2020)
This academic monograph focuses on the people and politics of Vietnamese refugee camps, highlighting the often overlooked first asylum sites of Guam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. In chapter one, Lipman details the Vietnamese repatriate movement in Guam: the “unusual story of the more than fifteen hundred Vietnamese on Guam who decided they did not want to resettle in the United States,” calling into question “the U.S. government’s rhetoric of humanitarianism and generosity” (24). Lipman’s careful historical research details the repatriates’ activism:
“Repatriates also aimed many of their actions at American and Guamanian leaders. The repatriates believed the United States had the power to return them to Vietnam and was simply stalling. Upon his arrival on Guam, Le Minh Tan immediately organized a two-day hunger strike. Two hundred and fifty individuals participated, and the military reported that it served meals to only twenty women and children in the camp. In one memorable photograph, an elderly couple posed holding a hand-written sign declaring simply, ‘We Are on Hunger Strike.’ The juxtaposition of their aged bodies and faces with the defiant sign lent a moving image to the repatriates’ cause” (37).
“[Sometimes the] repatriates’ rhetoric verged on the violent, and they spoke out against the United States loud and clear. One elderly Vietnamese man threatened suicide. Calling on ‘Mr. Gerald Ford!’ and ‘Mr. Henry Kissinger!’ he explained that the only humanitarian response would be to let the repatriates return to Vietnam. Others had no patience for America’s humanitarian claims and blamed the U.S. for the bloodbath in Vietnam. If there had not been a war, there would be no refuges. Anticipating the arguments that would be made by scholars in the field of critical refugee studies decades later, some of the repatriates viewed Operation New Life as yet another failed U.S. initiative. In a strongly worded letter, they stated, ‘If the U.S. did not interfere into Vietnam’s internal situations since 1956, there would have been no Vietnamese killed innocently! . . . If the senseless war cause by the U.S. planners did not happen, how completely united Vietnam would have been developing its economy during the past two decades? To drop the final curtain for a clumpsy [sic] drama, the U.S. planners planned the evacuation program called “Operation New Life.”’ Unlike other accounts, which applauded American generosity, this letter questioned the assumption that Vietnamese would be welcomed into U.S. society, particularly as a non-white minority: ‘But can those 100,000 Vietnamese refugees appropriately respond to their “NEW LIFE” in a very different society? Or are they just becoming a new kind of colour-people among the colorful American Society?’ These repatriates clearly did not feel ‘rescued’ by the United States, and their language marked a general skepticism of American racial liberalism. They did not want to be a minority in a foreign country” (42).
This academic monograph focuses on the people and politics of Vietnamese refugee camps, highlighting the often overlooked first asylum sites of Guam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. In chapter one, Lipman details the Vietnamese repatriate movement in Guam: the “unusual story of the more than fifteen hundred Vietnamese on Guam who decided they did not want to resettle in the United States,” calling into question “the U.S. government’s rhetoric of humanitarianism and generosity” (24). Lipman’s careful historical research details the repatriates’ activism:
“Repatriates also aimed many of their actions at American and Guamanian leaders. The repatriates believed the United States had the power to return them to Vietnam and was simply stalling. Upon his arrival on Guam, Le Minh Tan immediately organized a two-day hunger strike. Two hundred and fifty individuals participated, and the military reported that it served meals to only twenty women and children in the camp. In one memorable photograph, an elderly couple posed holding a hand-written sign declaring simply, ‘We Are on Hunger Strike.’ The juxtaposition of their aged bodies and faces with the defiant sign lent a moving image to the repatriates’ cause” (37).
“[Sometimes the] repatriates’ rhetoric verged on the violent, and they spoke out against the United States loud and clear. One elderly Vietnamese man threatened suicide. Calling on ‘Mr. Gerald Ford!’ and ‘Mr. Henry Kissinger!’ he explained that the only humanitarian response would be to let the repatriates return to Vietnam. Others had no patience for America’s humanitarian claims and blamed the U.S. for the bloodbath in Vietnam. If there had not been a war, there would be no refuges. Anticipating the arguments that would be made by scholars in the field of critical refugee studies decades later, some of the repatriates viewed Operation New Life as yet another failed U.S. initiative. In a strongly worded letter, they stated, ‘If the U.S. did not interfere into Vietnam’s internal situations since 1956, there would have been no Vietnamese killed innocently! . . . If the senseless war cause by the U.S. planners did not happen, how completely united Vietnam would have been developing its economy during the past two decades? To drop the final curtain for a clumpsy [sic] drama, the U.S. planners planned the evacuation program called “Operation New Life.”’ Unlike other accounts, which applauded American generosity, this letter questioned the assumption that Vietnamese would be welcomed into U.S. society, particularly as a non-white minority: ‘But can those 100,000 Vietnamese refugees appropriately respond to their “NEW LIFE” in a very different society? Or are they just becoming a new kind of colour-people among the colorful American Society?’ These repatriates clearly did not feel ‘rescued’ by the United States, and their language marked a general skepticism of American racial liberalism. They did not want to be a minority in a foreign country” (42).