Name: Thao
Birth Date: 1969

Loc - Husband - 1966 Hoa - Daughter - 1991 ATien - Daughter - 2004

I did not know anything about my father until just before my mother died. She gave me his picture and said in the future if you have an opportunity to find your dad you can use this picture. My mother worked in Long Binh camp as a maid for soldiers. I am not sure when my mother worked there. Before she met my father she was married to a Vietnamese man who was a soldier. They had one daughter before he died. After this is when my mother met my dad.
I am not sure when she met him but there is a year of 1969 on the back of my father's picture.
After my father was gone my mother met and married a Viet Cong soldier and they had a son. This man left her before the son was born. Three weeks after I was born my mother sent me to live with my grandmother in Binh Duong. All 3 of us children lived with my grandmother. Now we have our own families and rarely have any contact with each other. One of the reasons there is no contact is we all have a different father and our mother is dead now. I lived with my grandmother until I was seventeen. Every month my mother would come to visit me for one or two days and then return to Long Binh to work.

When I lived with my grandmother I had to work very hard to earn money to give to her so we could live. When I was young I did not have many friends. The children would call me "My Lai, My Lai". They did not like that I had an American father. My grandmother would shave my hair off many times, because it was blond in color and identified me as AmerAsain. That made me very sad and I wanted to go live at a Pagoda, but I worry about my grandmother that no one would take care of her.

At the age of 7, I started helping my grandmother with things to sell. I would get up at 3 AM and cook sticky rice and wrap them in banana tree leaves and take to the bus station to sell. I would also sell ice tea. I do not remember how much I would make each day as I just gave it all to my grandmother. We would sell all day until 5 PM and then go to the market to get the supplies to make the things to sell for tomorrow. I did not go to school because we had no money.

There was no public school where we lived and you had to hire a teacher to do private lessons at the teacher's house. On my way to sell the rice I would stop by the house and stand outside and listen and try to learn. I had one friend whose sister was a teacher so she helped me to learn how to read and write, but I am very poor at it.

When I was 17 years old I got a job as a housekeeper. I lived there at this house. My boss would pay me 23,000 VND a month and every year he would give me two pair of pants and two shirts. I worked for this man until 1993 at the age of 24. Then I went to another house in Sai Gon to do the same thing, and also to help them sell food in a restaurant early in the morning. In the afternoon I would go back to the house and fix their meals, do laundry, do housework. This boss paid me 150.000 VND a month. I used to get up at 11 PM and help my in-laws make bread all night and then work all day. A typical day for me today, I get up 2:30 AM and go to a bakery and help them make bread. At 5 AM I deliver over 300 pieces of bread to customers, until about 9 AM. I earn 15,000 VND for doing this. At 10 AM I go to the market and buy things for lunch.

I have to cook the meal for my family and my in-laws. For the last four months at 2 to 5 PM I help my mother-in-law prepare lottery tickets for sellers. She does not give me any money for helping with this. Before this I used to go to the fields and help with the cutting of rice and planting of vegetables. Sometimes I go next door to help an old lady with her housework and she gives me food. Every time I get sick this lady will help me with medicine and food.

In the past my in-laws treated me terrible, worse than a dog. Today my father-in-law treats me much better. One of my sister-in-laws used to chase me with a knife and try to kill me. My husband was there but would do nothing about it.

My husband does not listen to me; he always listens to what his family says even though they are wrong. I found out that my husband has a girl friend, who works for my mother-in-law, and she treats her much better than me, and she knows it is her son's girl friend. I used to try to kill myself, but my daughter found out and would keep the medicine away from me.

My husband works occasionally in the fields when they need him. When he works he can make 25,000 VND a day.

I am not educated and cannot apply for good jobs in the factory. My life was very different from other Vietnamese children, because I am treated so different. If I can go to the US I can change my situation, and if I stay here it will not change. We will struggle all of our lives.

I applied for immigration to the USA in 1991. I had an interview in 1994 and was rejected because I did not have enough proof and I did not look AmerAsian. They told me to go home and if I have more evidence submit it.

JON'S NOTES: The original AmerAsian Welcome Home Act of 1987 did not require any documentation, only that they looked AmerAsian. Thao has blond hair, and it is not dyed, as it has grey hair all through it. They have not changed the law but are requiring more proof today. Most of the people burned what proof they had in 1975 because they did not want the government to find it. You tell me if she looks AmerAsian or not.