My April 30th

To this day, I still remember what General Duong Van Minh and Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh said on Saigon Radio at 9:00 a.m. on April 30, 1975: "...requesting all soldiers of the Republic of Vietnam to remain calm, stop shooting and stay where they are to hand over to the revolutionary government in an orderly manner and avoid the needless bloodshed of our compatriots."

It was a joy when the war ended in a moment, the people of Saigon were safe, the city was intact.

On the afternoon of April 30, I left my house in District 3 to visit my mother in Thi Nghe.

My family has 9 brothers, 5 of whom were in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam: one became a disabled veteran in 1964, one died in 1966, one was a sergeant, one was a private, and one was a second lieutenant.

My two other brothers had military numbers, only my adopted brother and I did not have military numbers. That afternoon when I met my mother, she choked up: "If the war continues, I don't know how many more sons I will lose."

Leaving my mother's house, I went to Phu Tho University of Technology (now Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology) to see the situation.

At that time, I was the third person in the school's leadership, and the head had gone abroad a few days before.

Entering the gate, I saw some staff wearing red armbands standing out to protect the school. Glad to see that the University of Technology is intact and safe.

It is hard to describe the joy of seeing peace coming to the country, but 50 years later I am still happy. By 1975, the war had lasted 30 years, longer than my 28 years at that time. Our generation was born and grew up in war, there is nothing more joyful than peace.

After the happy days of peace and unification, there were many hardships. The economy went down, life was difficult, the war in the southwest border with the Khmer Rouge and the war in the north border with China in 1979 made many people feel gloomy, many chose to leave.

I still tried to be optimistic about the peace of the country, after all I was still young, able to endure hardships. But looking at my child, I could not help but feel heartbroken. My wife and I had another daughter at the end of November 1976, our child did not have enough milk to drink, my father-in-law gave his standard milk to his grandchild.

The government salary was not enough to live on, so we had to gradually sell whatever we could. My wife taught English at the Banking University, at the Polytechnic Training Center of the Patriotic Intellectuals Association, and gave extra lessons at many private homes, cycling dozens of kilometers until evening.

Early in the morning, I cycled to Binh Thanh District to take my two children to their grandmother's, then went to the Polytechnic University in District 10 to teach. At noon, I returned, took my son to Le Quy Don School in District 3, then went back to work at school.

In the afternoon, I returned to Binh Thanh district to pick up my daughter and then went back to my home in Yen Do residential area in district 3. My wife picked up our son. I cycled more than 50km every day like that for several years. In the early 1980s, I lost more than 15kg, as thin as when I was a student.

Difficulties and deprivation are not the only sad things, for us Southern intellectuals, the mental storm is even more serious.

At the age of 28, having just returned to Vietnam less than a year after seven years of studying abroad, with the position of assistant dean of the Technical University at that time - equivalent to the current vice principal of the Polytechnic University, I was classified as a high-ranking official and had to report to the Military Management Committee of Saigon - Gia Dinh City.

In June 1975, I was ordered to go to a re-education camp, but I had a stroke of luck. The day I arrived, there were so many people that I had to postpone. The next day, there was an order: those in the education and health sectors who had to go to re-education camp were reduced by one level, so I didn't have to go.

One by one, my friends and colleagues left, one way or another, for one reason or another, but everyone carried sadness, everyone left behind their ambitions. By 1991, at the Polytechnic University, I was the only PhD who had been trained abroad before 1975 who remained to teach until my retirement in early 2008.

Having been attached to Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology for more than 50 years through the flow of history, with many happy and sad experiences, even bitter ones, I have never regretted my decision to leave a prosperous life and a bright scientific future in Australia to return home in 1974 and continue to stay in Vietnam after 1975.

I chose to teach at university with the desire to spread my knowledge and understanding to university students to contribute to the development of the country, to find peace of mind in the dedication to the homeland, and to fulfill the responsibility of an intellectual.

During 11 years as head of the aeronautical engineering department, laying the foundation for the development of human resources in the aeronautical engineering industry in Vietnam, I have contributed to training over 1,200 engineers, of whom over 120 have continued to study abroad and achieved doctoral degrees.

It is an even greater joy and pride that I personally participated in initiating the program "For a Developing Tomorrow" of Tuoi Tre newspaper starting in 1988, since then being the "pioneer" to support many generations of students.

With the "Tiep suc den truong" scholarship of the program, I have been campaigning for the Thua Thien Hue region for 15 years. Tens of thousands of scholarships worth hundreds of billions of VND have opened the future for tens of thousands of young people.

By joining hands to contribute to Vietnam's future, the loneliness I felt during the difficult days after 1975 has gradually disappeared.

30 years of war have left millions of families with many painful losses, leaving behind hatred, prejudice, and misunderstanding in the hearts of many people... 50 years of peace, being able to live together under the same roof in Vietnam, working together with the same goal for the future of the country, family love has dissolved hatred and prejudice.

For many years, I became a person in the middle: in the country I was considered a person of the old regime of the Republic of Vietnam, abroad I was considered a person from the socialist regime. Calmly choosing my ideals for the country, my way of living and working naturally became a bridge between the two sides.

After 50 years of peace and unification, I have established many close relationships between "people on this side" and "people on the other side" and am proud to be a part of national reconciliation.

On the altar of my grandmother's house in Hue, there are three parts: in the middle are the portraits of my great-grandparents and later my paternal grandparents, on one side are the children of my grandparents who served in the liberation army, on the other side are the other children who served in the army of the Republic of Vietnam.

My grandmother had weak eyesight, and in her last years her eyesight became blurred. I think it was partly the result of her crying over the years with her children who died in the war.

In front of the house there are two rows of areca trees and a small path leading to the gate. I imagine the image of my grandparents standing at the gate waving goodbye to their children going to war, also there is the image of them sitting on chairs in the afternoon on the porch looking far away waiting for their children to return, and also there witnessing the scene of white hair crying for green hair in immense pain.

Only countries that have experienced war like Vietnam can fully understand the endless wait of wives and mothers when their husbands and children are gone. "The purple wild afternoon knows the wild afternoon. The purple wild afternoon adds a sad color" (Huu Loan).

The fate of women in wartime was the same for all, my mother followed in my grandmother's footsteps. My father "got married and left", every time he came home on leave, my mother was pregnant.

I think during those years, my father also worried about how his wife would give birth and whether the children would be born healthy. My mother stayed home to raise the children alone.

One time, while walking home before curfew, a grenade exploded near my feet. Luckily, my mother was only injured in the heel.

My mother's generation was luckier than just having to wait for her husband, and even luckier that my father returned, one day we could reunite, without having to go through the sadness like my grandmother "sitting by her son's grave in the darkness".

My family story is not unusual. There were several times when reporters kindly wanted to write about the children on this side and the other side of my grandparents, but I refused, because most families in the South had more or less similar situations. My family had to go through less pain than many other families.

I have been to martyrs’ cemeteries across the country, pondering how much pain lies behind each tombstone. I once visited Mother Thu in Quang Nam when she was still alive. Later, every time I looked at the photo by Vu Cong Dien of Mother Thu with blurred eyes sitting in front of a row of nine candles symbolizing the nine children who did not return, I wondered how many other mothers like Mother Thu were in this S-shaped strip of land.

During the decades of peace, even though we had plenty, my mother still did not throw away any leftover food. If we could not finish it today, we would save it for tomorrow. That was a habit of saving since we were young, because "it's a waste to throw it away, in the past there was nothing to eat". In the past were the two words my mother mentioned most often, repeating almost every day.

The special thing is that when talking about the past - from the years of shelling to the long years of famine and cassava mixed with rice, my mother only reminisced and did not complain or lament. Occasionally, she would laugh out loud, not believing that she had overcome it.

The Vietnamese who have gone through war and hardship, when looking back, are all like young rice seedlings. I can't believe where the endurance, hardship and perseverance came from to be so resilient and resilient in such small, skinny bodies, with more hungry meals than full meals.

In the blink of an eye, 50 years of peace have passed, my grandparents are gone, my parents have also passed away, sometimes I wonder what would have happened to my family if there had been no war. It is hard to imagine with the word "if", but surely my mother would not have had the wound on her heel, my parents would not have had the years of separation, the children on my grandparents' altar would all wear the same color shirt...

After Buon Ma Thuot fell, time galloped forward like a galloping horse, straight to the day that perhaps no Vietnamese person will ever forget. Wednesday, April 30, 1975.

In a matter of a few dozen days, the developments on the battlefield and in politics made it clear that the South would fall. My family’s casual acquaintances were divided into two groups: those who were rushing to arrange plane tickets to flee Vietnam and those who were calmly observing the situation. The latter group was much larger than the former.

On April 29, the fighting seemed to be quiet, but the inner city became chaotic. People flocked to Bach Dang wharf and the American embassy, ​​scrambling to find a place to leave.

On the morning of April 30, news rushed in. In the alley in front of and behind my house, people were shouting and spreading the news through loudspeakers.

From early morning:

"They are coming down from Cu Chi."

"They went to Ba Queo".

"They went to Bay Hien crossroads", "They went to Binh Chanh", "They went to Phu Lam"...

A little more noon:

"The tanks are going to Hang Xanh", "The tanks are running towards Thi Nghe", "The tanks on Red Cross Street from the Zoo towards Independence Palace".

"They are turning into the Independence Palace. That's it, it's over!"

The events that followed that morning were merely formalizing the end of the war. President Duong Van Minh announced surrender on the radio.

Some people panicked. However, most families in the neighborhood watched quietly and somewhat calmly.

By noon on April 30, 1975, people had begun to open their doors to greet each other. Saigonese were used to the mutinies, so most people were temporarily reassured about the change that they did not fully understand.

That night my father had a family meeting.

My father: "I think it's good that they took the city like that. This war is very big, very long, now it's ended peacefully like this is very good. Anyway, the country's reunification is the happiest thing!".

My mother: "No one wants the war to last. Now you and I can rest assured that your generation will live a happier life than ours."

Amid such hopes and fears for the distant future, my family also found that the takeover was generally smooth, with the new government showing goodwill to stop looting, restore order, and stabilize society.

In the first days of May 1975, the streets were as deserted as on Tet holidays and lost their usual neatness. An entire army of several hundred thousand men of the Southern regime, which had deserted the day before, had disappeared without a trace today.

I wandered around Saigon and saw garbage dumps filled with hundreds of newly removed military uniforms hastily thrown away, thousands of pairs of very good boots lying around with no one paying attention, countless berets mixed with water bottles rolling around carelessly... Sometimes I even saw guns that had been disassembled and a few grenades rolled out on the sidewalk.

On the road, occasionally we saw a few Northern army vehicles, still covered with camouflage leaves. Everywhere we saw gentle soldiers with their eyes wide open, looking around, observing, curious, inquiring, and interested.

The reassurance and the initial good feeling made the supporters overcome the opponents, the enthusiastic overcome the indifferent. One thing was certain: there would be no more war.

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Content: NGUYEN THIEN TONG - NGUYEN TRUONG UY - LE HOC LANH VAN

Design: VO TAN

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/ngay-30-4-cua-toi-20250425160743169.htm