Review of A Sense of Duty; My Father, My American Journey by Quang X. Pham
Ballantine Books, April 2005. 261 p., photos.
I first saw U.S. Marine veteran Quang X. Pham in a talk that he gave at De Anza College about four years ago. Following his “how to do it” successful business development lecture, and a brief description of his career as a helicopter pilot that included combat service in Desert Storm and Somalia, he then asked that the blinds be closed. What he had to say for the rest of his talk should remain confidential.
What was the secret spoken in shame and anger? It was the racism that Quang received from fellow Marines after he entered Officer’s Candidate School in 1986, upon graduation from UCLA. His father, Hoa Pham, a top fighter pilot for the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) Air Force, was successful in guiding his wife and four children, including 10-year-old Quang, to American evacuation on April 29, 1975. But he could not save himself, and was imprisoned in Communist Vietnam with a million other South Vietnamese following the invasion. Meanwhile in America, his son Quang Pham, the first Vietnamese pilot in the U.S. Marines, was called “VC” and “Charlie.” by white Marine officers and the black drill sergeant. He was asked, “are you the enemy?” or told “My brother was killed in Vietnam”—as if it were somehow his fault. At the same time he did not know if his father was alive or dead at the hands of the same enemy that killed his American allies.
The blinds are opened with the publication of A Sense of Duty; My Father, My American Journey by Quang X. Pham, which is available from the publisher, Ballantine, beginning April 12. The author is on a cross country book tour that opens on April 13 at Cal State Fullerton (3 pm.) and the Nguoi Viet Daily News office in Westminster (7 pm.).
Although separated from his father, the author son connects their lives and fates in an interesting narrative. As part of the immigrant generation removed from the war at an early age, Quang X. Pham can analyze the failures with an objective passion. As a Vietnamese American, and as a member of the generation who did not necessarily learn the history of the American war at home—and certainly not in textbooks—Quang Pham succinctly describes events such as the Tet Offensive, the Peace Accords of 1973 and the famous photograph of General Loan executing a Viet Cong officer (with deliberate introduction by his father at a Vietnamese social gathering) for young American audiences. Most moving are the re-education camps, the prisons where his father was held for twelve years and nearly died of starvation. A camera smuggled by his aunt shows Hoa Pham running toward her with other inmates, still rakishly handsome, smiling, alive.
Another part of the author’s secret was the camps. For many years the Communist prisons were not discussed publicly among Vietnamese Americans. This aided the Communists in their influence on the American media. Recently the director of the pro-NVA and Vietcong Hearts and Minds, Peter Davis (winner of Best Documentary Film, 1975), publicly admitted that he had only learned of the re-education camps in 2003.
Quang X. Pham thoroughly researched them in looking for his father’s story, and, like a true pilot, makes it look easy. Two of his cousins remain in Communist prisons in Vietnam (yes, 2005), for trying to escape. Because of this and other scholarly aspects of this memoir, the publisher should include an index. I would like to share it with students who are assigned Black Hawk Down in studying U.S. History. Black Hawk Down has been the hands-down favorite of assigned films, and I would like to tell them a Vietnamese American pilot was there, too, keeping his rotors running. The author will be at San Jose State University on April 18, a Monday night, at 6 p.m. Hope to see you too!
Jean Libby
Viet-Am Review
