Los Angeles News Review; No Time to Cry

<v Jonathan>To the banks where they deposit the cash they make from the sale of gold and jewelery. <v host>Yea, I think we can safely conclude that Jonathan's judgment of San Clemente <v host>is political rather than esthetic. <v host>Thank you, Jonathan. Many of your thoughts on that refugee situation are graphically <v host>shown in the documentary we're about to see Casey Ities. <v host>News director Bill Wilson has been in and out of that camp for about three weeks. <v host>And here's how cameraman Dick Davies saw the place. <v host>It's narrated by newsmen Clete Roberts. <v Speaker>[indistinct talking]. <v officer>I would like to personally welcome you to both California <v officer>and to the United States. I cannot tell you for sure how

<v officer>long you will be here some were here only a <v officer>week or so. Others have been here for two months. <v officer>We will try to make your stay as comfortable as possible. <v interviewee>They gave us some field jackets, some blankets, <v interviewee>and they put us on a tent. <v interviewee>We were very miserable. <v interviewee>We only saw the tents and it depress us <v interviewee>very much. <v Speaker>[Star Spangled Banner plays ] <v interviewee>We don't have time to feel sad.

<v interviewee>We don't have time to cry. <v interviewee>It is time for decision. <v interviewee>acting, not for showing emotion. <v interviewee>And we know that we want freedom for our children. <v interviewee>For us. And so we have to go <v interviewee>to leave everything that are dear to us our whole life. <v interviewee>We are homesick. <v interviewee>We have to prepare ourselves for a new life. <v interviewee>And I think that when we have a secure <v interviewee>position in this new country, then <v interviewee>Vietnam will be more lovelier than before. <v narrator>Camp Pendleton in 1975 could be long, tall.

<v narrator>In 1967, the long rows of military tents. <v narrator>The Vietnamese families walking hand in hand, the strolling MPs. <v narrator>And always the faces of a people who have suffered through war. <v narrator>It's a bizarre scene. This Marine camp in southern California. <v narrator>Not without irony after the 15 years we spent in Vietnam. <v narrator>But it is a refugee camp where 19000 Vietnamese wonder what kind <v narrator>of country and what kind of people lie beyond the barren hills. <v narrator>Americans are asking questions, too. <v narrator>Since those dramatic days last spring when Saigon fell and <v narrator>out of duty or compassion or conscience, we brought 150000 <v narrator>Vietnamese to America's shores. <v narrator>Are they all corrupt generals, dope pushers, be girls,

<v narrator>all undesirables? <v narrator>Are they people without a will to fight? <v narrator>Losers and failures? <v interviewee>To remember about the past is not good for building a new future. <v interviewee>So we don't want to remember the war. <v interviewee>The way we lost it. <v interviewee>But remember the way we live in Vietnam <v interviewee>and we have to face the future. <v Speaker>[song plays] <v narrator>The Vietnamese and the Marines have developed an easy relationship. <v narrator>Few of the younger men ever served in Vietnam. <v narrator>Those who did strongly defend U.S.

<v narrator>actions there and strongly believe in our obligation to the refugees. <v narrator>One of them is 27 year old Pete Carter, a Navy petty officer <v narrator>on special assignment at Camp Pendleton. <v narrator>Carter arrived two months ago looking for children from a Catholic orphanage he helped <v narrator>support in Vietnam. <v narrator>He's been here ever since. <v Pete Carter>I'm proud of my role in Vietnam. <v Pete Carter>I'm proud of the U.S. <v Pete Carter>in helping as many people as they can. I just wish <v Pete Carter>they could have got more out. <v Pete Carter>Now, I'm called gook lover by a lot of Marines [inaudible]. <v Pete Carter>Well, I think of it as a compliment. <v Pete Carter>I'm a gook lover and I'm proud of it. <v Pete Carter>I speak Vietnamese enough where I get along with the people, <v Pete Carter>you joke with them in their own tongue and they feel a little relaxed. <v Pete Carter>You swap stories. The enemies are big storytellers. <v Pete Carter>We could learn an awful lot from these people, in turn, they'll

<v Pete Carter>learn a lot from us. <v Pete Carter>It's gonna be like two worlds coming together. <v Pete Carter>I just hope they learn the good things, not the bad things. <v Speaker>[song plays] <v narrator>Family is all important for the Vietnamese, and Kai worries <v narrator>about how he'll keep the family together here. <v narrator>There are seven of them, including his wife, who is expecting a second child. <v narrator>His ailing 61 year old mother, a retarded sister, and <v narrator>his uncle, a one time publisher in Saigon. <v Kai>Vietnamese people stick very much together. <v Kai>We are very close.

<v Kai>We don't ever want to be separated. <v Kai>The first thing is the family. <v Kai>Before everything. <v narrator>Kai doesn't understand what he's heard about American families where parents <v narrator>grow old, separated from their children. <v narrator>His older sister Mai thinks about their mother and the traditional <v narrator>family life they shared in Vietnam. <v Mai>All my brother sister are really respectful to my mother. <v Mai>She said that's why. <v Mai>Now she is 61 years old. <v Mai>She has to leave uh Saigon. <v Speaker>[women speaking in Vietnamese] <v Mai>She doesn't have friends here. <v Mai>That's why she's very sad. <v Mai>And she doesn't feel good. <v Mai>When I live in Saigon. <v Mai>I then realize that I have a really,

<v Mai>really easy life. But now realize that the life in Saigon <v Mai>we have not like the type of life that we are going to have <v Mai>here in America. <v narrator>Despite some hardships, Mai's mother will adjust. <v narrator>She has her family. <v narrator>But 82 year old Tran-lee and his wife are all alone. <v narrator>They miss their 17 great grandchildren in the fishing village of Phan Thiet <v narrator>they want to return to their homeland. <v narrator>The old couple fled by boat after a Vietcong attack on their village and they were picked <v narrator>up by a U.S. warship. <v narrator>Before they understood what was happening, they were aboard a plane to the states. <v narrator>They don't like it here. <v translator>They see no reason to stay in the state because they are old people <v translator>and and even the food is not right for them. <v translator>They are very old and they want to die in their own land.

<v narrator>Quonset hut six four four five six is the temporary home of Krom <v narrator>Te Num and the family, the numbers 14 and spans four generations. <v narrator>She's 109 years old. <v narrator>Born in 1867, when an emperor ruled Vietnam. <v narrator>Her son, Wang Luang is 78. <v narrator>Great granddaughter Kett is two. <v narrator>Tante Nahm is a refugee for the second time. <v narrator>She left North Vietnam in 1954 and now <v narrator>at one hundred nine years of age. <v narrator>Why did she leave again? <v Speaker>[speaks in Vietnamese] <v translator>She said, I don't miss Vietnam at all because I have to run. <v translator>If not, they're going to kill me.

<v Speaker>[speaks in Vietnamese.] <v translator>I'm trying to be run as far away from them as possible. <v Speaker>[baby crying while people talk in the background] <v interviewee>Every afternoon when the marines is over with <v interviewee>their duty. The camp is a playground. <v interviewee>Is a playground for children. <v interviewee>I think that that our children get adapted more easily <v interviewee>than us old people. <v interviewee>I have watched some of the children here in the camp. <v interviewee>They're not afraid of, of American people. <v Speaker>[Song in Vietnamese]. <v interviewee>We know that all of us are going to get out of this camp.

<v interviewee>So the Vietnamese people are patient <v interviewee>by nature. They know that they have to wait. <v interviewee>But it doesn't prevent them from feeling like prisoner. <v Speaker>[inaudible announcement] <v interviewee>The children call him [word in Vietnamese]. <v interviewee>That's like it's man big, <v interviewee>big man. He is fat. <v interviewee>Yes, but they call him [word in Vietnamese]. <v interviewee>He has been in Vietnam before.

<v interviewee>Three years. <v interviewee>That's why he'd like to come over here. <v interviewee>He likes the Vietnamese people and he like to come to help us. <v interviewee>I'm be worried about something outside of here. <v interviewee>He tried to explain. <v officer>This little fellow was separated from his family in Saigon and they just had a family <v officer>reunion. He just flew in him and his brother flew in from Arkansas. <v officer>And this is the first time the family in about three and a half months. <v officer>There's reunions here all the time, people come in from Florida <v officer>and Arkansas and Guam and Wake Island in the Philippines and they're, they finally <v officer>get their families together. You'll see it all over. You'll see it in the mess hall some <v officer>time see it in the PX line. <v officer>I saw one family was in the chow line and people just filled in behind <v officer>it and they turned around and it was somebody they've been waiting for for two months. <v interviewee>Oh they don't know how to cook rice. <v interviewee>They don't know the right way to cook rice. <v interviewee>I don't even eat it.

<v narrator>Life in Camp Pendleton is little more than survival. <v narrator>Three meals a day, bland Marine fare without the spicy <v narrator>not mom fish sauce the Vietnamese so dearly love. <v interviewee>But we don't care about that. We don't care about the food, anything like that. <v interviewee>They're just anxious to get out of camp and start a new life. <v teacher>Fru- oot,. <v students>Fru- oot. <v teacher>Fruit. <v students>Fruit. <v teacher>Restaurant. <v students>Restaurant. <v teacher>Barbecue. <v students>Barbecue. <v teacher>Barb-uh-que. <v students>Barb-uh-que. <v teacher>And. <v students>And. <v teacher>Month. <v students>Month. <v teacher>Month. <v students>Month. <v teacher>Month. <v students>Month. <v teacher>Not quite. Thhh. <v students>[laughter] <v Pete Carter>They are trying to get the history books to learn about the US.

<v Pete Carter>They are trying to get books to learn about the language. <v Pete Carter>They want to fit in. <v Pete Carter>They're proud people. <v teacher>Canh. Soup. <v students>Soup. <v Pete Carter>I'm glad to see them go and I'm glad to see 'em get a home and settled, and, <v Pete Carter>and have something and get out of Camp Pendleton. <v Pete Carter>But in a way, I'm kind of sorry to see 'em go. <v narrator>Camp Pendleton was supposed to be a three day stopover for the refugees. <v narrator>It hasn't worked out that way. <v speaker>You have no sponsor? <v speaker>They're going to Australia. <v speaker>They're the ones that were going to Australia. <v narrator>The exodus has been slowed by the sponsorship program. <v narrator>Every family must have a sponsor.

<v narrator>An American who will accept financial and moral responsibility for a refugee <v narrator>family's first year. <v narrator>The program is run by volunteer religious agencies that attempt to match sponsors and <v narrator>refugees. <v narrator>It takes time to check out potential sponsors, and the checks haven't <v narrator>always eliminated people with questionable motives of cheap labor. <v narrator>There's a shortage of sponsors, too. <v narrator>Americans have been less willing to help the Vietnamese than other refugees. <v narrator>And few Americans can afford to sponsor a family of 45. <v narrator>Every Vietnamese arrival must be investigated by no less than five U.S. <v narrator>security agencies. <v narrator>No one seems to have failed a security test.

<v narrator>So far, no one seems to know what would happen if they did. <v narrator>But the paperwork continues. <v narrator>So the refugees wait. <v narrator>Job opportunities are lost. <v narrator>Big families are subdivided and often sent to sponsors thousands of miles apart. <v narrator>And there's growing despair. <v narrator>Bo Di Kee has been at Camp Pendleton for six weeks. <v narrator>On this day, he was leading, but with only 16 members <v narrator>of the 45 people in his family. <v Bo Di Kee>Today we are leaving Camp Pendleton for Orange, uh county. <v Bo Di Kee>We are sponsored by Reverend F. <v Bo Di Kee>Mornam. That's a Lutheran Congregation in Orange County. <v narrator>Kee was a colonel in the Air Force. He's a graduate of the University of Marseilles and <v narrator>the French Air Academy. <v narrator>He speaks three languages fluently and would like to become a professor at the University <v narrator>of California. <v narrator>His first job will be pumping gas at a service station in Orange County.

<v narrator>This row of tents is isolated from the rest of the camp. <v narrator>It houses some of the 2000 refugees who have decided to return to Vietnam. <v narrator>Not an easy decision. <v narrator>They are mostly young, like an Win Von Saugn, an airplane technician who <v narrator>climbed aboard a military aircraft only minutes before Tan Son Nhat airport was shelled. <v narrator>The communist government has said it will welcome them back. <v narrator>Saugn is a troubled man. <v translator>Yes. He say that he is very afraid to go back to Vietnam, <v translator>but he has a wife and two children back in <v translator>Vietnam. He's afraid of revenge upon <v translator>the Vietnamese who has Opel's in D.C. <v translator>but he has to go back to Vietnam even if he's <v translator>afraid because of his family still in Vietnam.

<v Speaker>[singing in Vietnamese] <v woman>I mean, I'm like. <v woman>I feel that I... <v woman>Could never see Vietnam again. <v woman>Even though I know now I could never see it, but I still want to have a hope. <v woman>I would see it again one day. <v woman>I would say that the in I'm like like

<v woman>in with other girls with, we help good and bad people, <v woman>I would expect that I could meet good people <v woman>who would try to help us, refugee, you know, first <v woman>few months. I'm like. <v Speaker>One, two. <v TV>Card is the queen of diamonds, and by the way, if you have 21 exactly of any combination

<v TV>you have to get a jackpot. It starts at five hundred dollars and goes up five hundred <v TV>dollars a day [inaudible] 1000 dollars. <v TV>That a 21. <v Speaker>[music ends and people applaud]. <v Speaker>[people singing in Vietnamese] <v narrator>It's not a unique scene.

<v narrator>After all, America has always been a nation of immigrants. <v narrator>After two centuries, there's much world history written in the faces of the American <v narrator>people. <v narrator>And these new faces are the raw stock of the American melting pot. <v narrator>They still come in the name of freedom. <v narrator>These generals and fishermen and clerks <v narrator>and farmers from Vietnam and though Vietnam was a painful <v narrator>chapter in our history. <v narrator>For Americans, too. <v narrator>This is no time to cry. <v Speaker>[song continues] <v host>Next week, the Los Angeles News Review, a special report will be the California <v host>controversy over state support of the arts and your guest moderator will be Warren Olley.

<v host>All of us, thank all of you for joining us tonight.