Voice after the Fall of Saigon: Oakland business owner's harrowing escape

It has been nearly 50 years since the Vietnam War came to an end.  That’s when North Vietnamese communist troops captured Saigon, the then capital of South Vietnam.  It’s now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

When we met Thinh Le, 57, he showed us to the rooftop of one of the buildings he owns in Oakland’s Little Saigon. Perched on top of it, the yellow flag with three horizontal red stripes that once flew in South Vietnam, representing the anti-communist republic.  That is, until the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Le is now the owner of Kim Viet, a jewelry store in The Town’s neighborhood.  He comes from a long line of jewelers from Ke Mon Village, a town near Saigon. When the communists seized Saigon, Le said he and his family knew they had to get out.  At just 11 years old, he, his brother, and a relative found a small boat.  Their goal was to escape alive.

“From the Mekong River to the ocean gate, the mission was compromised,” Le said. 

Their boat was captured, and everyone on it was arrested.  Even as a child, Le said he was thrown in jail.  But once he was released, he would try to escape again months later.

This time, Le was 12 and all by himself on a sugarcane boat. Le’s parents, siblings, and relatives all caught a different boat.

“It’s too risky.  You don’t want to lose all, lose all your kids, so you have to separate them out,” he said.

The precious metal his family had become so good at crafting meant the difference between life and death on the water.

“Our boat get robbed three times by Thai pirates,” he said.  “They want to threaten, they want to give them gold, they think we hiding gold in the boat,” Le said. 

He went on to describe violence when they were robbed. Le said someone was shot and their arm was ripped off. He added that they beheaded one of the men on the boat.

The boat was stripped of anything of value, and now Le had to stay alive.  He remembers grasping an empty plastic jug tightly, in case he and the rest of the 40 or so people went down with a sinking boat in storms. 

“We survive the whole time on sugarcane actually.  It was a very sad time, was terrible,” Le said.

He said seven treacherous days at sea on a tiny boat came to an end when they reached the sands of a Malaysian island.  Le takes his first photo outside of Vietnam in a refugee camp there. 

From there, he said it moved quickly.  Le was resettled with a distant relative he called an uncle.

“I’m the first, my brother, the second, I make it Canada 1980,” Le said.  “My brother make to the United States, 1981.When I was living in Canada, the thing I’m missing the most is family."

It was eight long years in Canada before he finally came to the East Bay to reunite with his parents. They had also successfully escaped and were sponsored by his brother.  His family had already opened up a jewelry shop in a neighborhood that was budding with other Vietnamese refugees.

“Oh, I love this community. This is my family now. Oakland, my family now, and my dream always have a Little Saigon in Oakland,” Le said.  “We need to know our roots, why we are here in America, very important the kid to know the truth about history, not by Google."

So, Le shares his history and flies the flag he honors, right next to the stars and stripes.

“We want to tell the mother Vietnam, we are here.  We still here,” Le said.  “I thankful for America,” he said.