Nam Kim
Legacies of Displacement and “Operation New Life”
Nam C. Kim (based on recollections of Hien Vu Kim and Chong S. Kim)
This account details the experiences of my mother and father, respectively Hien Vu Kim and Chong S. Kim, as told to me many times since my childhood. Their memories of Guam are simultaneously powerful, vivid, and hazy, owing to the distressing conditions of our sudden departure from Saigon. I was just a baby, and so my knowledge of these events comes from their recollections and a handful of black-and-white photographs.
My parents and I fled Saigon on April 29, 1975 just as North Vietnamese forces took Saigon. My father was a photojournalist for the South Korean embassy, and so had press credentials and a camera as we desperately looked for a way out of a collapsing South Vietnam. Against a backdrop of chaos at the crowded gates of the USAID compound, Chong’s South Korean passport and papers won us coveted entry. Inside the compound, we found our way into a stairwell leading to the roof where American helicopters, part of Operation Frequent Wind, were ferrying people into the sky to destinations unknown. When it was our turn to frantically board our Huey, my parents were ordered to abandon much of their belongings, forcing them to heave suitcases into sea of materials strewn across the rooftop. There was no time to consider, rummage, or salvage. As the Huey lifted us, my mother suddenly realized with intense grief that her wedding dress was lost in the fray, left behind like so much, and so many, else. We carried precious few possessions out of the country.
The crowded Huey bore us to the airport, where we huddled in dark passageways listening to distant explosions. Hours later we were ushered onto our next mode of transport, a Chinook chopper that carried us to the coast, ultimately landing on the USS Midway carrier. For days we lived in crammed spaces within the bowels of both the Midway and the USS Kimbro. Alongside countless other families, our first days outside of South Vietnam as stateless people were spent dealing with shock and limbo on the decks and cargo holds of these massive ships, subsisting on the kindness of American service personnel who fed us juice, cookies, and rice. Faced with a murky future, we were brought to the Philippines where we boarded a military cargo plane bound for Guam and Operation New Life.
We landed in Guam at night and a school bus greeted us at the airstrip to bear us to Orote Point. Along the way my parents saw bright lights of stores lining the streets. At Orote Point we moved into “Tent City,” where we lived with our bags constantly packed and ready to move. It was a transient life in a makeshift city. By day we sat idly in the sun, listening for announcements in case our tent number was called.
My mother carried me on short walks near the camp, exploring local Guamanian landscapes to break up the monotony of camp life. While walking past the local fire station, a firefighter asked my mother how she was doing. Lost in melancholic thought, she could not muster a reply, instead feeling tears well up. Thinking we were starving, he gave her canned food.
When our tent number was finally called, we hoped that our fate would be revealed. Instead, we were transported to Camp Asan where old barracks housed us. At the common bath area, Hien was washing clothes one day when she spied a Vietnamese man pocketing the communal bar of soap. They exchanged heated words as she reprimanded him. “How can you act like this here - especially after we have all just lost our country and homeland?” she yelled (in Vietnamese). Upon hearing these words he cast his gaze downward and silently left, still clutching the bar of soap.
One day we were taken to the Tokyu Hotel and given a room to share with others. This respite from the heat constituted the first morsel of privacy and comfort since the journey began. My father welcomed the air-conditioned spaces, but he jokingly laments how the cold always seemed to trigger bouts of diarrhea for me. Using humor to deal with trauma, Chong looks back on our ordeals with laughter. He shrugs off the discrimination and sometimes anger he experienced from Vietnamese men who told him he did not belong. For them, this refuge was for Vietnamese people, not outsiders.
While on the hotel balcony overlooking beautiful beaches, Hien remembers seeing nearby homes. Laughter caught her attention as she gazed into a backyard where a local CHamoru family was enjoying betel leaves. Thinking of how her parents would sit around to “ăn trầu,” the idyllic scene brought on intense feelings of guilt and sadness as she missed her forsaken life.
We stayed in the camps longer than most families. After our stint at the hotel, we were moved back to Orote Point. Days were spent either waiting in long food lines or filling out forms. Refugees encouraged each other to pick up litter, saying that we were being evaluated and judged as prospective Americans.
Hien remembers teenagers playing guitars to welcome and entertain the refugees. Forever emblazoned in her mind is “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” sung by volunteer families. A young volunteer girl saw Hien crying and tried to console her with socks she pulled from her pocket. As she offered them to Hien, she smiled and asked if Hien believed in God, and implored her not to be angry at God for all the hardship that had transpired.
Some 45 days after we fled Saigon, we finally learned our fate. On June 16 we boarded a plane bound for Camp Pendleton, where we changed jets and flew across the expanse of our new homeland to Eglin Air Force Base to begin life anew. My parents have always impressed upon me the gratefulness they hold for all the empathy of various strangers, from military personnel to local Guamanians, including CHamorus. The situation in those early days was hard owing to the fresh trauma and the ambiguous fate for us and loved ones left behind.
Our entire lifeworld had undergone radical and uninvited transformation, fraught with violent displacement. In recovering from utter upheaval, we owe an immeasurable debt to the foundation Operation New Life furnished. Guam set us on a completely new life trajectory, a multi-generational path of hope and resilience with family history chapters still being written today.
At Eglin we once again found ourselves in a makeshift home, sharing space in a large tent with other families. This time, however, my parents felt much more at ease. Soon after arriving in Florida, we were reunited with my mother’s childhood friend who had married an American soldier from Durham, NC. Our first two years in the US were spent in that beautiful small town, welcomed and supported by friends and more sympathetic strangers.
In 1977, we moved to Chicago where my father opened a photography business. In addition to studio portraits and passport photos, the business covered weddings and other events. While my parents both worked at the store, my father was a one-person operation in the field. Within a couple decades, my parents’ hard work led to countless opportunities within the local Korean American community, and my father was in high demand to cover social and political events throughout the city. My two younger brothers were born in Chicago.
Our life trajectories had been significantly affected and shaped by our experiences of displacement and of arrival as refugee newcomers to American society. Throughout my childhood I was privileged to hear the stories of our family histories, good or bad. I was never shielded from the traumatic details of war and displacement. Without a doubt, these stories and our experiences instilled a curiosity about identity and shaped my intellectual interests. From childhood, I have always been fascinated by humanity’s history of war and its consequences for societies, and I eventually sought to answer research questions related to war, societies, and the past, setting me on a path to doing archaeological research in Vietnam.
Today, I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I specialize in the early histories of Vietnamese culture. My theoretical focus has dealt with the causes, conditions, and consequences of organized violence throughout human history.
In recent years, I have sought to reconstruct our family histories as related to displacement, trauma, and resilience. This journey has led me to explore pivotal episodes, such as our exodus and subsequent odyssey from Vietnam. I was recently combing through a website someone had recommended, one that features US Navy photographs of the USS Midway throughout its operational history. As I was scrolling through countless thumbnails over coffee one morning, I looked at photos of the ship’s role in Operation Frequent Wind. Several of the images showed refugees aboard Huey’s or standing in lines on the deck of the Midway while clutching babies and scant possessions. I opened each thumbnail, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of my parents’ faces in a crowd. No such luck - until I clicked one thumbnail with the caption “Refugees in Midway's hangar bay.” As the image opened on my screen, a sudden wave of shock washed over me – I was staring into the eyes of my toddler self. I had stumbled across a photo of my father and me sitting below deck. In the ensuing days and as the full weight of the discovery settled, I found myself wondering if other photos are still out there. How many photos, artifacts, and stories are still waiting to be found, brought forward, or excavated? In scanning the faces of our fellow refugees across those Navy photos, I pondered what kinds of stories lay behind the expressions of shock, sadness, anger, confusion, happiness, and relief.
My journey has begun to come full circle. I recently visited Guam for the first time since 1975, to express our family’s gratitude and to see if collaborative work can be done to “excavate” other stories and to engage with local stakeholders. In the coming years, I will be working with key partners on anthropological research related to Operation New Life in Guam.
Biographical sketch
Nam C. Kim is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the current Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies on its campus. He holds degrees in anthropology (PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago), political science (MA, New York University) and international relations (BA, University of Pennsylvania). As an anthropological archaeologist, he has conducted research in various countries. His research deals with early civilizations and the significance of the material past for modern-day stakeholders. He is especially interested in the archaeological history of organized violence and warfare. Since 2005 he has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in Vietnam at the Cổ Loa settlement in the Red River Delta. A heavily fortified site located near modern-day Hà Nội, Cổ Loa is connected to Vietnamese legendary accounts and is viewed as an important foundation for Vietnamese civilization. He is currently exploring aspects of the Vietnam War’s aftermath, including events related to Operation New Life and refugee displacement and resettlement.
Nam’s work has been featured in various podcast interviews and a documentary (on the History Hit website). He has also authored several articles and books. The Origins of Ancient Vietnam (2015) provides a glimpse into the foundations of Vietnamese civilization, as seen through the archaeological record. Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past (2018, co-authored with Marc Kissel) provides a comprehensive view on the origins of war within the history of humanity. It seeks to answer the questions about how far back in time we can see warfare, and whether or not organized violence is somehow innate within our species.
Nam C. Kim (based on recollections of Hien Vu Kim and Chong S. Kim)
This account details the experiences of my mother and father, respectively Hien Vu Kim and Chong S. Kim, as told to me many times since my childhood. Their memories of Guam are simultaneously powerful, vivid, and hazy, owing to the distressing conditions of our sudden departure from Saigon. I was just a baby, and so my knowledge of these events comes from their recollections and a handful of black-and-white photographs.
My parents and I fled Saigon on April 29, 1975 just as North Vietnamese forces took Saigon. My father was a photojournalist for the South Korean embassy, and so had press credentials and a camera as we desperately looked for a way out of a collapsing South Vietnam. Against a backdrop of chaos at the crowded gates of the USAID compound, Chong’s South Korean passport and papers won us coveted entry. Inside the compound, we found our way into a stairwell leading to the roof where American helicopters, part of Operation Frequent Wind, were ferrying people into the sky to destinations unknown. When it was our turn to frantically board our Huey, my parents were ordered to abandon much of their belongings, forcing them to heave suitcases into sea of materials strewn across the rooftop. There was no time to consider, rummage, or salvage. As the Huey lifted us, my mother suddenly realized with intense grief that her wedding dress was lost in the fray, left behind like so much, and so many, else. We carried precious few possessions out of the country.
The crowded Huey bore us to the airport, where we huddled in dark passageways listening to distant explosions. Hours later we were ushered onto our next mode of transport, a Chinook chopper that carried us to the coast, ultimately landing on the USS Midway carrier. For days we lived in crammed spaces within the bowels of both the Midway and the USS Kimbro. Alongside countless other families, our first days outside of South Vietnam as stateless people were spent dealing with shock and limbo on the decks and cargo holds of these massive ships, subsisting on the kindness of American service personnel who fed us juice, cookies, and rice. Faced with a murky future, we were brought to the Philippines where we boarded a military cargo plane bound for Guam and Operation New Life.
We landed in Guam at night and a school bus greeted us at the airstrip to bear us to Orote Point. Along the way my parents saw bright lights of stores lining the streets. At Orote Point we moved into “Tent City,” where we lived with our bags constantly packed and ready to move. It was a transient life in a makeshift city. By day we sat idly in the sun, listening for announcements in case our tent number was called.
My mother carried me on short walks near the camp, exploring local Guamanian landscapes to break up the monotony of camp life. While walking past the local fire station, a firefighter asked my mother how she was doing. Lost in melancholic thought, she could not muster a reply, instead feeling tears well up. Thinking we were starving, he gave her canned food.
When our tent number was finally called, we hoped that our fate would be revealed. Instead, we were transported to Camp Asan where old barracks housed us. At the common bath area, Hien was washing clothes one day when she spied a Vietnamese man pocketing the communal bar of soap. They exchanged heated words as she reprimanded him. “How can you act like this here - especially after we have all just lost our country and homeland?” she yelled (in Vietnamese). Upon hearing these words he cast his gaze downward and silently left, still clutching the bar of soap.
One day we were taken to the Tokyu Hotel and given a room to share with others. This respite from the heat constituted the first morsel of privacy and comfort since the journey began. My father welcomed the air-conditioned spaces, but he jokingly laments how the cold always seemed to trigger bouts of diarrhea for me. Using humor to deal with trauma, Chong looks back on our ordeals with laughter. He shrugs off the discrimination and sometimes anger he experienced from Vietnamese men who told him he did not belong. For them, this refuge was for Vietnamese people, not outsiders.
While on the hotel balcony overlooking beautiful beaches, Hien remembers seeing nearby homes. Laughter caught her attention as she gazed into a backyard where a local CHamoru family was enjoying betel leaves. Thinking of how her parents would sit around to “ăn trầu,” the idyllic scene brought on intense feelings of guilt and sadness as she missed her forsaken life.
We stayed in the camps longer than most families. After our stint at the hotel, we were moved back to Orote Point. Days were spent either waiting in long food lines or filling out forms. Refugees encouraged each other to pick up litter, saying that we were being evaluated and judged as prospective Americans.
Hien remembers teenagers playing guitars to welcome and entertain the refugees. Forever emblazoned in her mind is “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” sung by volunteer families. A young volunteer girl saw Hien crying and tried to console her with socks she pulled from her pocket. As she offered them to Hien, she smiled and asked if Hien believed in God, and implored her not to be angry at God for all the hardship that had transpired.
Some 45 days after we fled Saigon, we finally learned our fate. On June 16 we boarded a plane bound for Camp Pendleton, where we changed jets and flew across the expanse of our new homeland to Eglin Air Force Base to begin life anew. My parents have always impressed upon me the gratefulness they hold for all the empathy of various strangers, from military personnel to local Guamanians, including CHamorus. The situation in those early days was hard owing to the fresh trauma and the ambiguous fate for us and loved ones left behind.
Our entire lifeworld had undergone radical and uninvited transformation, fraught with violent displacement. In recovering from utter upheaval, we owe an immeasurable debt to the foundation Operation New Life furnished. Guam set us on a completely new life trajectory, a multi-generational path of hope and resilience with family history chapters still being written today.
At Eglin we once again found ourselves in a makeshift home, sharing space in a large tent with other families. This time, however, my parents felt much more at ease. Soon after arriving in Florida, we were reunited with my mother’s childhood friend who had married an American soldier from Durham, NC. Our first two years in the US were spent in that beautiful small town, welcomed and supported by friends and more sympathetic strangers.
In 1977, we moved to Chicago where my father opened a photography business. In addition to studio portraits and passport photos, the business covered weddings and other events. While my parents both worked at the store, my father was a one-person operation in the field. Within a couple decades, my parents’ hard work led to countless opportunities within the local Korean American community, and my father was in high demand to cover social and political events throughout the city. My two younger brothers were born in Chicago.
Our life trajectories had been significantly affected and shaped by our experiences of displacement and of arrival as refugee newcomers to American society. Throughout my childhood I was privileged to hear the stories of our family histories, good or bad. I was never shielded from the traumatic details of war and displacement. Without a doubt, these stories and our experiences instilled a curiosity about identity and shaped my intellectual interests. From childhood, I have always been fascinated by humanity’s history of war and its consequences for societies, and I eventually sought to answer research questions related to war, societies, and the past, setting me on a path to doing archaeological research in Vietnam.
Today, I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I specialize in the early histories of Vietnamese culture. My theoretical focus has dealt with the causes, conditions, and consequences of organized violence throughout human history.
In recent years, I have sought to reconstruct our family histories as related to displacement, trauma, and resilience. This journey has led me to explore pivotal episodes, such as our exodus and subsequent odyssey from Vietnam. I was recently combing through a website someone had recommended, one that features US Navy photographs of the USS Midway throughout its operational history. As I was scrolling through countless thumbnails over coffee one morning, I looked at photos of the ship’s role in Operation Frequent Wind. Several of the images showed refugees aboard Huey’s or standing in lines on the deck of the Midway while clutching babies and scant possessions. I opened each thumbnail, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of my parents’ faces in a crowd. No such luck - until I clicked one thumbnail with the caption “Refugees in Midway's hangar bay.” As the image opened on my screen, a sudden wave of shock washed over me – I was staring into the eyes of my toddler self. I had stumbled across a photo of my father and me sitting below deck. In the ensuing days and as the full weight of the discovery settled, I found myself wondering if other photos are still out there. How many photos, artifacts, and stories are still waiting to be found, brought forward, or excavated? In scanning the faces of our fellow refugees across those Navy photos, I pondered what kinds of stories lay behind the expressions of shock, sadness, anger, confusion, happiness, and relief.
My journey has begun to come full circle. I recently visited Guam for the first time since 1975, to express our family’s gratitude and to see if collaborative work can be done to “excavate” other stories and to engage with local stakeholders. In the coming years, I will be working with key partners on anthropological research related to Operation New Life in Guam.
Biographical sketch
Nam C. Kim is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the current Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies on its campus. He holds degrees in anthropology (PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago), political science (MA, New York University) and international relations (BA, University of Pennsylvania). As an anthropological archaeologist, he has conducted research in various countries. His research deals with early civilizations and the significance of the material past for modern-day stakeholders. He is especially interested in the archaeological history of organized violence and warfare. Since 2005 he has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in Vietnam at the Cổ Loa settlement in the Red River Delta. A heavily fortified site located near modern-day Hà Nội, Cổ Loa is connected to Vietnamese legendary accounts and is viewed as an important foundation for Vietnamese civilization. He is currently exploring aspects of the Vietnam War’s aftermath, including events related to Operation New Life and refugee displacement and resettlement.
Nam’s work has been featured in various podcast interviews and a documentary (on the History Hit website). He has also authored several articles and books. The Origins of Ancient Vietnam (2015) provides a glimpse into the foundations of Vietnamese civilization, as seen through the archaeological record. Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past (2018, co-authored with Marc Kissel) provides a comprehensive view on the origins of war within the history of humanity. It seeks to answer the questions about how far back in time we can see warfare, and whether or not organized violence is somehow innate within our species.