The first wave of Southeast Asian "boat people" arrives in San Francisco - September 20th, 1977

On this day in 1977, the first group of the so-called “boat people” were admitted to the United States as refugees from Communist Vietnam.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in history class is a production of I
heart radio. Hello and welcome to this day in history class,
a show that reveals a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gabe Lucier and in this episode we're
talking about the plight of the boat people, including the
global resettlement program that eventually got them off the water

(00:23):
and back on dry land. The day was September seven.
The first group of the so called boat people were
admitted to the United States as refugees from communist Vietnam.

(00:45):
They were nicknamed boat people because they had fled their
homeland aboard old freighters and small rundown fishing boats, which
they then lived aboard for weeks or sometimes even months.
Their plan had been to float to a nearby country
and Southeast Asia and then hopefully secure sponsorship to a
democratic nation like the US, Canada, Australia or France. Most

(01:09):
of the boat people who found refuge in the US
arrived at Travis Air Force Base, roughly fifty miles northeast
of San Francisco. President Carter had approved a plan to
admit fifteen thousand new refugees in nineteen seventy seven, and
on September twenty, the first. One hundred and thirteen of
them walked off a Pan American Airways flight, ready to

(01:31):
begin their new lives. This relocation process continued, of few
hundred people at a time, in countries all over the
world for the next fifteen years. The first mass exodus
from Vietnam began in nineteen fifty four, when the Geneva
conference temporarily divided Vietnam into two parts, a communist controlled

(01:52):
area in the north and a non communist region in
the south. This placed northern Vietnam in the hands of
a violent communist regime known and the Vietnameme. Under their rule,
citizens were pitted against one another, with Catholics, intellectuals and
landowners all branded as enemies of the state. The oppressive

(02:13):
environment led hundreds of thousands of northern Vietnamese villagers to
risk their lives by fleeing to southern Vietnam by boat.
Life in the south was also difficult, but since the
region was still under the control of the Republic of Vietnam,
it was better than living in the socialist state to
the north. For the next twenty years, the Republic of

(02:34):
South Vietnam fought against the North's attempts to reunify the
country under communist rule. The United States joined the effort
in nineteen sixty five, sending thousands of troops to help
fight communist Viet Cong guerrillas and other north Vietnamese forces.
But after eight years of bloodshed, the war was still
raging with no clear path to victory for South Vietnam

(02:57):
or its allies. The US withdrew the LAD STA its
troops in nineteen seventy three and two years later, Communist
troops overwhelmed South Vietnam and took control of its capital.
The fall of Saigon and the collapse of the South
Vietnamese government sparked the second mass exodus from Vietnam. Once again,

(03:18):
hundreds of thousands of people fled to the sea in
overcrowded boats, hoping to find refuge from persecution. However, this
second generation of boat people had much longer and more
perilous journeys ahead of them. This time, they set out
for other nearby countries like Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and

(03:38):
Hong Kong. Most families didn't have their own escape boats
ready to go and had no choice but to pay
exorbitant prices to be smuggled out aboard someone else's vessel.
For instance, one of the refugees who reached the US
on September Twentieth Nineteen seventy seven was a thirty seven
year old south Vietnamese man named Q do. He sold

(04:01):
everything he owned to pay for the passage of himself,
his wife, two sisters and a brother. The price for
the five of them was thirty ounces of pure gold.
That small fortune bought them a space alongside forty seven
others in a cramped thirty foot boat that set out
in darkness on June eleventh of that year. But escaping

(04:21):
South Vietnam was just the first part of their struggle.
The next was finding a place that was willing to
take them in. Like many others in their position, Ku
Doo and his family spent several months afloat at sea,
traveling from one Southeast Asian nation to the next, only
to be rejected or even threatened with death if they
attempted to come ashore. Those countries were known as nations

(04:45):
of first asylum, but as tens of thousands of refugees
continued to arrive each month, they started to feel overwhelmed.
Some countries began turning away boats, but others were far
more hostile. To make matters worse, most escape boats weren't
equipped for such open ended journeys. Water and food shortages

(05:05):
were in ever present danger, as was the threat of
being captured and taken back to Vietnam for punishment and
re education. It's estimated that between nearly four hundred thousand
Vietnamese refugees died at sea over the course of the evacuation.
Many died from dehydration, starvation, illness or drowning, while others
were murdered by pirates who saw the defenseless boats as

(05:27):
easy prey. Those who did survive and reached the shore
of a foreign nation were often placed in internment camps
where they faced an uncertain future, unaware of when or
if they would be admitted to a sponsoring country. To
gain entry to the United States, all Southeast Asian refugees
needed an American sponsor. In many cases, refugees already had

(05:49):
relatives in the country who could serve that function, some
of whom had immigrated there themselves a few years earlier.
Q do o and his family were lucky enough to
have such a connect action his wife's sister, who lived
in Chicago with her husband. American sponsors provided food, clothing,
housing and other basic needs for a refugee until he

(06:10):
or she was able to stand on their own feet again.
First priority was given to those joining family members in
the US, but refugees who didn't have you as relatives
still had a chance. They just had to wait until
a private individual, church or service organization volunteered to sponsor them,
and in many cases that weight was quite a long one.

(06:31):
Q Doo and his family were eventually allowed to dock
at a port in Thailand. They continued to live there
on their small, crowded boat until they were able to
board a plane from Bangkok to San Francisco in September
of nineteen seventy seven. Once government officers had confirmed their
papers were in order, the family and the rest of
the first wave of refugees were bussed to a hotel

(06:53):
near the San Francisco Airport. The following day, the boat
people went their separate ways, with the DOO family flying
to their new home in Chicago. In two years time,
sponsored refugees would be eligible to apply for permanent resident
alien status, which, of course, most did. Their adjustment to
life in a foreign country was far from easy. They

(07:15):
were immersed in a completely different culture and many couldn't
read or speak the English language. Upon arrival, they were
often relocated to impoverished neighborhoods as well and made to
attend below average public schools. Despite these disadvantages, many Vietnamese
refugees excelled both academically and professionally. Studies later showed that

(07:35):
the Vietnamese refugees and their children scored in the mid
to upper ranges on standardized tests, and, after a period
of adjustment, most adult refugees found full time work. In fact,
the unemployment rate among Southeast Asian refugees was roughly the
same as native workers. Assimilating to a new culture is
difficult even in the best of circumstances, and the same

(07:58):
is true of living on a small boat out in
the open ocean, but the people of Vietnam endured those
hardships because the chance to live free was worth it.
A doctor who declined to give his name was among
the refugees who arrived in San Francisco in September of
seventy seven before leaving South Vietnam, he had spent nearly
twenty months in a re education and reformation camp, where

(08:20):
he had been forced to work in the fields and
to study communist philosophy. He was only released because his
wife had managed to bribe officials in order to secure
his freedom. Four months later, they left with their two
daughters on a fishing boat packed with forty nine other people.
In spite of all the unknowns, the doctor knew that
leaving was the only real choice they had. They would

(08:42):
have killed me, he said. It was dangerous leaving by boat,
but it was better to die that way than to stay.
After another four months of drifting from nation to nation
and living in hope in a crowded refugee camp, the
doctor and his family finally made it to the United States.
They finally found a place to breathe free. I'm gay

(09:05):
blusier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you want to
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media Dot Com. Thanks to Chandler mays for producing the

(09:27):
show and thank you for listening. I'll see you back
here again tomorrow for another day in history class.