Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees

After eight months in the Pulau Bidong Refugee Camp, fourteen-year-old Phu flew to San Francisco. Since he was a minor (a child under eighteen), and alone, he was quickly sent to live with his cousin in “Little Saigon” in Orange County, California. Two years later, his mother, brothers, and sister escaped from Vietnam to Malaysia by boat and immigrated to California through a family sponsorship program. Phu worked to help support the family, getting a part-time job at McDonald’s, cleaning toilets, working at theaters, and playing in a band. Phu hung out with other minors who had escaped from Vietnam. Since they had no family in America, Phu’s mother invited them to come live with them. Phu shared his room with eight guys.

Phu and his friends faced a lot of prejudice. There were only thirty or forty Asians in his high school of more than four thousand students. People taunted him with racial slurs and Phu got into a lot of fights with the Caucasian students. Even the Vietnamese students who had come to America in 1975 and spoke better English berated the new Vietnamese students and called them FOB, “Fresh Off the Boat.”

After high school, Phu enrolled in an aerospace program at California State University. He became very interested in reading about the Vietnam war and decided to join the US military. From there he studied management and then went back to school to become a criminal defense lawyer. To pay his dues to the United States, he became a US Army Reserve Officer.

“My army captain told me not to change my name. He said be proud of your heritage, because if you’re not proud and you don’t know who you are you will not be a good American.”