My good friend, Ju Luc, experienced many terrible hardships during the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon, as the Americans troops pulled out, the South Vietnamese were left to fend for themselves. Some tried to escape by sea in flimsy fishing boats, while others went into hiding. To draw out the insurgents, the Communists promised them that they would only need to spend three days in the re-education camps if they surrendered willingly. This deception tricked many of Ju Luc’s compatriots into giving themselves up for capture and immediately being sent to the camps for much longer than three days.
As a naïve twenty-year old, Ju Luc had joined the underground rebellion following the war. Yet he did not realize that that too was a Communist ploy to remove any pockets of resistance. Once dissenters associated with these groups, they could be rounded up as troublemakers.
One day, the Communists persuaded a Catholic priest to lure the rebels to the Vinh Son Catholic Church where they could spring a trap. Over one hundred men were captured, then tortured to extract more names. Ju Luc himself had gone to the church meeting earlier in the day, but he left when the priest had not gone up to speak. My friend had sensed that something was wrong and was not captured with all the rest. Yet his name was eventually given up by those who had succumbed to torture. The next day, Ju Luc found his entire home turned upside-down. They even examined every page of his mother’s Bible to see if they could find evidence to use against him. The Communists arrested Ju Luc for insurrection and held him in a prison cell deep beneath the ground. He did not see daylight for an entire year as his captors tortured him and knocked out every one of his teeth. He could give them no names, however, because he had joined the rebellion by himself.
After a year of punishing torture, the Communists finally sent Ju Luc to a re-education camp where he saw people dying every day, especially the very old. The prisoners ate only rotten vegetables and were forced to do hard labor. They hauled lumber from the forest, built the camp itself, and grew the very food they ate. They even had to defecate in a specified location so that their excrement could be used as compost. Ju Luc buried many of his fellow prisoners and, each time, would apologize to the corpse for taking their clothes. He felt ashamed for having to bury them naked, but it got so cold at night and the other prisoners who were still alive desperately needed clothes to wear.
Ju Luc endured over three years in that camp until he decided to escape. He had grown tired of the meaningless existence and watching people die every day. So, he and two fellow officers formed a plan. One had served in the Navy like me, while the other had been in Army Special Forces and was well-trained in jungle survival tactics. Each man knew that they were risking their lives because they had already witnessed three failed escape attempts. The guards captured all who fled, then cruelly executed them in front of the other prisoners. Ju Luc realized his chance for freedom was small, but he preferred a quick death to languishing in the camp.
The night before their attempted escape, the Catholic priest who slept beside Ju Luc woke him up and asked, “Are you leaving tomorrow?”
Ju Luc feigned surprise, “No, of course not. Where would I go?” Although the priest was a trusted friend, Ju Luc did not want to incriminate him in case they were caught.
The priest answered, “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything, but good luck to you all the same and let me say a prayer for you.”
Ju Luc did not believe in God at the time, but after that day he became a man of faith. And he still prays that same prayer every day before he goes to work.
The three men made their escape in the middle of the night. They cut through the fence and sprinted blindly into the jungle. The guards fired multiple times, but none of their bullets hit the mark. The Army Special Forces officer quickly left Ju Luc and his Navy friend behind, so the two of them had to navigate the forest together. Both men also contracted malaria along the way, which caused their bodies to violently convulse. Thankfully, each man was ill while the other was not, so they could take turns carrying each other. They ended up walking through the jungle for seven days, stricken by malaria, until they finally made it to Saigon. Many, along the way, were afraid to help them, although a few kind strangers offered aid.
When Ju Luc arrived in Saigon, his home was still surrounded by Communists. So, he secretly sent a messenger to contact his father, myself, and some of our friends to tell us he had escaped. We agreed together that we now had to find a semi-legal way to flee Vietnam. At the time, if you left without the government’s permission, you could be thrown in prison. Yet the corrupt Ca Mau officials would look the other way if you bribed them with gold or signed away your property rights. Sometimes they even helped you find a boat.
My family was responsible to collect the gold and to compose the boat’s passenger list, but we could not include Ju Luc on the list since he was a fugitive. No one dared to even help him for fear of retribution, so I hid him in our home until the departure day. I stood next to the local officer as he read off the list I had composed. Then, as the passengers came forward, he counted the heads in each family and checked them off the list. Finally, I heard my own name called, “Tran Quoc Cuong, family of three.” Yet remember, that was just my paper name—the one my father had used to falsify my age with the Navy. Everyone else, including the officer reading the list, simply knew me as Dai.
I stood unmoving in my place beside the officer, then watched nervously as Ju Luc stepped forward, holding my wife’s hand, and carrying my infant daughter, Amanda. No one stopped him as he stepped onto the boat, pretending to be me. Then, once the officer finished reading the list, I turned and nonchalantly walked onto the boat myself.
Behind me, the security officer called out, “Wait!”
I froze, then slowly turned around as my heart pounded in my chest.
“Have a good trip, Dai. Farewell.”
“Thank you,” I replied, as I strode confidently to the front of the boat. I didn’t need to be on the passenger list because I also happened to be the boat’s pilot due to my Navy training.
I held my breath until I steered our vessel into international waters where we could no longer be detained by the Communists. Once we were free and headed for Malaysia, I celebrated by breaking out a bottle of wine which I had smuggled aboard. Each passenger was only permitted to bring the clothes on their backs, but what kind of escape would it be without a bottle of wine?
I was about to pour a round of drinks, when suddenly, I saw a large boat cruising toward us at high speed. We had been sailing past Con Son Island, occupied at the time by the Viet Cong, and they had sent out a boat to intercept us. Con Dao Prison was situated on the island much like Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay. So, this large boat stopped us and directed us to dock at the island because the local officials on Con Son claimed no relations with the province of Ca Mau and had not authorized our passage. They clearly wanted a cut of the profits, so they towed us illegally out of international waters and took our passengers captive. I protested that they had no authorization to seize our ship, but the officers on the island would not listen. They insisted that their comrades in Ca Mau must confirm the names of all the people in our boat before we could continue our journey.
So, the next day, they contacted Ca Mau to telegram the list of passengers who were authorized to travel. With typical government efficiency, the answer would not arrive for another six weeks. We had to spend that time as prisoners on Con Son Island and we quickly realized there was no way to escape. The guards even allowed us to walk about freely as we performed manual labor. They didn’t need to watch us since there was nowhere we could run and they even left our prison cells unlocked at night.
Then, after almost two months of waiting, the anticipated telegram finally came through. All the passengers were impatient to leave the island, but Ju Luc knew he would soon be found out. I slipped into his cell late that night and wept with him, “Sorry, friend, there’s nothing more I can do.” I had no other words, but Ju Luc understood. One of us would have to remain a prisoner on the island while the other would go free. If this was Ca Mau, I might have been able to pull some strings because of my connections. Yet we were stranded on Con Son, a bleak island, with Communist officers who neither knew nor cared about my standing. I handed Ju Luc two of my precious gold bars and wished him luck, believing I would never see my friend again. Ju Luc also accepted that he would perish in that island prison. His only request, if I made it to America, was that I inform his mother of the courageous way her son had died. I gave my word to convey his message.
That night, however, another miracle happened while Ju Luc prayed. I will recount his story just as he told me. The sky was dark and cold as Ju Luc walked to the edge of his cell. He could see a very dim light in the distance and realized it was a boat, bobbing up and down on the waves. He prayed again and realized that it was our boat which would carry the refugees to freedom the very next morning. It was still anchored beyond the harbor with no one guarding it.
In that moment, Ju Luc knew he must get onto that boat by whatever means possible. So, he walked outside his doorless cell, across the sandy beach, and into the ice-cold water. The sea surrounding Con Son Island was so shallow that only flatbed boats could enter the harbor without dashing their hulls upon the rocks. This shallow depth made it possible, however, to scramble by foot along those rocks for quite some distance. Ju Luc sloshed through the water for what seemed like hours, feeling for the rocky ledge beneath his feet. And for most of the way, the water never rose above his neck. Then, without a warning, the ledge suddenly dropped off and Ju Luc plunged beneath the surface. He swam with all his might until he finally reached the boat and pulled himself over the side. Once he caught his breath, he scrambled below deck and buried himself beneath the luggage at the bottom. He lay there shivering, unable to sleep, and holding his breath until he heard the sound of the engine the next morning. Even as the boat motored out of the harbor and into the open sea, he kept hidden for hours because he could not tell when they reached international waters. I was standing on deck when Ju Luc emerged like a man resurrected from the grave. I was so overjoyed that I wept as I embraced him. I thought we had left him behind on the island prison and that I would never see my friend again. That morning, we had all stood on the beach, waiting for our names to be called again. Once more, a Communist officer read the passenger list and counted each family as we boarded the boat. This time, however, I took my place beside my wife and daughter. Yet Ju Luc was not on the list, so I thought he must have been hiding somewhere on the island. The Communists made sure every name was accounted for and that no one got on the boat who shouldn’t have, except for one.[1]
[1] Ju Luc would raise a family in America and build his career as an engineer for Boeing Aircraft. He and I are still good friends to this day.
