In 1973, as the Chinese advanced through the Pacific Belt islands, the U.S. decommissioned their PTF boats to conceal how they had crossed the seventeenth parallel. Once my contract as a PTF crew member expired, I returned to the Vietnamese Navy and served as an intelligence officer until the Communists arrested me in Ca Mau after the fall of Saigon. They interrogated me to elicit a confession, but I never revealed how I had helped the Americans because I knew they would have executed me. I had also learned their techniques from serving in the intelligence department, so I just told them I was a Chinaman who worked in the Navy kitchens. One time, an officer threatened me with a stack of papers accusing me of certain crimes. He then offered me cigarettes and left the room, hoping I would be intimidated by the accusations and turn myself in. I refused to even read the papers because I knew that none of them were true. He was upset when he returned to find me sitting there quite calmly. After that experience, I taught other prisoners how to “confess” as well. I showed them how to take notes on their wrists to remember previous answers as the interrogators asked them the same questions in different ways. “No matter what,” I told them, “Don’t admit to guilt or they will keep beating you to find out more. Stay calm and show no weakness.”
Prison food was unpleasant and mostly inedible. For meals, we drank a type of soup made from boiling the water spinach which grew in the field like weeds.[1] Sometimes, we also received a special treat of rice or yams. These were the cheapest meals available and mainly used as pig slop, but after several months even this food ran out and the Communists permitted family members to supplement our meager rations.
As family began to visit, however, our guards used the threat of prison to extort more money from the wealthy. They would even falsely arrest rich people and accuse them of being spies. Then, they would throw them in prison until the family paid a small fee. I met one man, Jo Ba, who owned a hotel which the Communists wanted to seize, so they threw him in prison with the rest of us. I urged Jo Ba to pretend he was crazy like one of the characters I had read about in Chinese literature. So, Jo Ba listened to me and became a very persuasive lunatic. He found an old army helmet and began to use it for everything. He ate from it, carried his bath water in it, and even used it to urinate. When his wife and children brought him food, he reluctantly gave it all to us to pretend like he was crazy. We benefitted from this generosity for many months until he convinced the officers he truly was insane and they released him from the prison.
In prison, I also met my future wife’s brothers for the first time. Her second oldest brother, Binh, became my good friend. He was very clever and we liked to take risks together. In particular, we found a way to get around the water rations. All the prisoners were given a small canister of water for washing, so we often teamed up to make the most of every drop. One man would stand as he poured out a canister on his own head. The next man would stoop slightly below him and let the runoff water fall upon his shoulders. Then, the last man would use the remaining trickle to wash his legs and feet. Yet Binh and I were shrewd enough to get more water. We were in charge of cleaning the showers, so we each took turns “tripping” each other and falling in the muck. Then, whenever we got dirty, the guards forced us to take a full shower. No one else dared to do this because we could have been sent to the camps if they figured out our scheme. Yet in addition to the dignity of feeling clean, we found pleasure knowing that we could still take charge of certain freedoms.
Despite such minor victories, we still faced many injustices in prison. The guards would chain my future wife’s oldest brother, Lam, to the bunk above me, while I slept unchained on the bunk below. I still received special treatment since one of my former school buddies was a Communist. At night, I would unchain one of Lam’s hands to allow him to sleep more comfortably. Yet I knew that the Communists would check on him every morning around one o’clock and startle him awake. This was a cruel technique to wait until a prisoner had just fallen asleep before waking him up and subjecting him to more torture. I stayed up, however, until just before the guards returned and quickly replaced Lam’s chains again. The Communists mercilessly tortured him until he told them where his family had hidden their wealth. I don’t fault him for this because many would have done the same. Prison was a very unpleasant experience, but it was there when I first saw my future wife as she came to visit her brothers. She would bring them food or news from the village. Sometimes she would cry when she saw how they were treated. I didn’t have the chance to speak with her then, but I would never forget her face.
[1] Sautéed water spinach with garlic (rau muong xao toi) is now a delicious side dish eaten with rice, meat, or fish.
