Lịch sử tái diễn 46 năm sau
Nhìn cảnh tượng người dân A Phú Hản đang chạy trốn nhóm khủng bố chiếm Thủ đô Kabul khơi lại ký ức cuộc di tản năm 1975 của chúng ta khi Sài Gòn thất thủ, người dân miền Nam phải bỏ chạy Cộng Sản - Lịch sử đang tái diễn cũng cùng lúc chương trình Australian Story của đài TV ABC chiếu lại cuộc hội ngộ của Thuyền nhân Việt Nam trên tàu MG99 và Hải Quân Hoàng Gia Úc của tàu chiến Melbourne đã cứu vớt con tàu MG99 sau bao ngày lênh dênh trên biển.
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Royal Australian Navy and 'MG99' Vietnamese refugees reunion 40 years in the making
Australian Story
By Susan Chenery and Olivia Rousset
Posted Yesterday at 4:59am, updated 11h ago
11 hours ago
The fishing vessel was pulled into a "vortex", spinning in a stomach-churning moment.
The fishing boat was drifting in the South China Sea. Six hours into a desperate voyage, the engine had blown. Now it was at the mercy of the elements.
Carried by mountainous waves and ferocious monsoon winds, it floated further and further out into open waters, away from the shipping lanes where help might come.
As it rolled up and down on the swell, walls of waves came crashing down onto the little homemade boat.
It was surrounded by the roaring of gales as they were sucked into a vortex, spinning like a leaf on the second day. The hold was full of vomit, fear, crying and praying.
“The force of the water, it was just so strong, the sound was deafening,” recalls Thor Vo, who was only 14 years old and unaccompanied.
The watery death was surely coming for them.
“I just felt so terribly sad thinking of dying in the cold sea,” says Giang Condon, who was 15 years old and also alone.
A group of Vietnamese refugees in a tender boat and wearing life vests start to climb a later up to a the deck of a warship
The refugees were taken from their disintegrating vessel to a navy tender boat.(Supplied: Royal Australian Navy)
Hope started rising on the second and third nights when they saw merchant ships lit up with bright lights away in the distance. They shot up a flare, screaming out, 'Help us'. But the ships turned off their lights and passed slowly like ghost ships. They didn't want to know.
When the boat had left the Mekong Delta on June 16, 1981, it had been under a full moon and at full throttle, intending to turn due south and cross the Gulf of Thailand to Singapore.
A black and white photo shows people filing up a set of stairs and onto a helicopter on top of a building
Some Vietnamese were able to evacuate on Air America helicopters from the top of a building near the US Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975. (Getty)
Its passengers were running for their lives. On April 30, 1975, the People's Army of Vietnam captured the capital, Saigon.
It was the culmination of a 20-year conflict between the communist government of North Vietnam, and South Vietnam and its western allies, which included the United States and Australia.
Many have said the chaotic scenes during the fall of Saigon are eerily similar to that of Afghanistan today.
Of the estimated million people who fled Vietnam, about 300,000 would perish in treacherous seas, attacks by pirates or exposure to the elements.
A group of people scramble to climb up stairs with a plane behind them.
A horde of people try to climb onto stairs at Kabul airport in a desperate bid to escape Afghanistan.(Twitter: Sudhir Chaudhary)
Rickety boat 'doomed from the start'
Former South Vietnamese soldier and fisherman Nguyen Van Tam had secretly constructed the 13-metre escape vessel on the banks of the Mekong River. His own parents had been killed by the communists.
The Nghia Hung was disguised as a fishing boat to divert the authorities. It was built to carry 30 people — his own family of seven children and members of a syndicate who had been part of the plan. But when it departed the Delta there were 99 people on board — women, babies and teenagers were crammed into the hold like sardines.
"It was almost doomed from the start," says Carl Robinson, an American former Vietnam correspondent. "It was up to the gunwales even as it pulled out of the mouth of the Saigon River."
Afghan visa allocation explained
People wearing masks walk toward medical professionals wearing blue gowns and masks in a large hangar space
When the captain found out how many people had scrambled into the hull in the dead of night and the rough seas, he wanted to turn back. But his syndicate partner refused.
If they had been caught in those waters they could have been imprisoned and the organisers executed. Out here, they would die free.
By the fourth day at sea, the drinking water was contaminated, they had run out of food and the overloaded boat was leaking badly, disintegrating.
The people in the hold were up to their knees in seawater. For four days they had been sitting in the dark below deck in diesel and motor oil that was spilling over the bilges.
"They probably wouldn't have lasted another day," Robinson says. By the fifth day, passengers prayed that the end would be fast and merciful.
Composite navy rescue and John today
Former Royal Australian Navy sailor John Tregoning helped lift fuel-soaked people to safety aboard the Australian warship.(Supplied: Royal Australian Navy Rob Patterson)
HMAS Melbourne answers the call for help
Royal Australian Navy tracker plane 851 was on the last surveillance mission of the day, participating in Cold War exercises, when observer Lieutenant Steve Langlands saw black smoke on the rough water. The plane descended for a closer look in the deteriorating evening light.
Captain Tam had seen the plane and let off his last flare — their last chance. They had set diesel-soaked rags on fire on top of the wheelhouse.
Stephen Nguyen, 21, who was on lookout on deck, was ecstatic.
"We believed we will be rescued by American people," Stephen remembers. "I just saw the word Navy I said, 'Oh, it's America!'."
If it had been a Soviet plane, the group could have been returned to Vietnam.
Ten nautical miles away, the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne dispatched its escort destroyer to investigate.
Officers on board decided to rescue the refugees without upward referral to Navy headquarters.
When HMAS Melbourne loomed half an hour later, Stephen says it looked like, "a small city: a five-storey building".
An Australian Royal Navy warship black and white image
HMAS Melbourne, 1981.(Supplied: Royal Australian Navy)
Sharks, swell and sickness: The impossible rescue
By the time the rescue began, it was in big seas in the pitch dark.
"How on earth are you going to get 99 emaciated, weakened, seasick, malnourished people 3 to 5 metres onto the lowest point of the decking on the Melbourne?" former Supply Commander John Ingram says.
John Ingram
John has described the event as the "pinnacle of his career".(Australian Story: Quentin Davis)
There was no lighting on board the fishing vessel and it was moving sideways in the wind.
"We knew there were sharks in the water, we just couldn't see them. There was a lot of wash between the boats, we were extremely concerned that people would be crushed against the ship," he remembers. The Melbourne was also rising, rolling and drifting.
A close up of a man's hands holding a photo of the Royal Australian Navy guiding Vietnamese refugees on to a warship
John Ingram was described as a "policeman directing traffic" as he ran the operation to get the refugees on board.(Australian Story: Greg Nelson)
Many of the Nghia Hung passengers were too dehydrated and sick to climb up the makeshift ladder hanging over the side of the Melbourne. Young sailors answered the call to volunteer to carry them.
It was 40 years ago, but the memory of that night remains indelible for everyone involved.
"It was pretty full-on," recalls sailor John Tregoning.
"There were guys starting to carry kids, there were sailors climbing down the net, there was one sailor, all you could see was the back of his legs leaning over the side of the ship, trying to get down as far as the net to grab these people because we're very concerned that someone was going to fall."
Peter Evans remembers standing at the bottom with his arms out while a sailor climbed the ladder holding a baby. "You think if he drops it someone's gotta catch the baby. I did this three or four times going up on the outside and quickly scuttling back down to get the next one."
Thor Vo was able to climb the ladder, but when he got on deck, "my legs buckled underneath me".
Sailor Anthony Martin was only 18. He recalls them as "just exhausted, absolutely exhausted".
A man wearing glasses and a Navy uniform holds a photo of his younger self carrying a refugee aboard a war ship
Anthony Martin was just 18 when was part of the rescue efforts.(Australian Story: Greg Nelson)
John Ingram was directing operations and had been put in charge of the refugees once on board. "The young women and children were the worst off," he says.
The Nghia Hung passengers were saturated in the diesel fuel and effluent they had been sitting in.
One by one, volunteer seamen helped the refugees up the swaying ladder. Some, attached to safety lines, carried the weakest over their shoulder or on their backs, while others climbed behind them to stop their fall. It was, says Ingram, "a hazardous operation" and a long three hours.
But at the end of it every one of the Nghia Hung's 99 passengers, who had come so very close to death, were alive and they were safe on an Australian warship.
"These young sailors were the real heroes," John says.
"There's not a day in the last 40 years that I haven't thought about how everyone got out safely without any injuries or deaths whatsoever."
Rescue operation
On June 21, 1981, 99 men, women and children were saved from a sinking fishing boat in the South China Sea by the Royal Australian Navy.
'I wanted to make a good life for myself'
On board the Melbourne, under the flight deck, 13-year-old Jessica Chi Crosskill ate the first apple she had ever seen.
Sailors gave the children toys they had bought for their own children at home. Stephen and a small group of young men came and asked what they could do to help on the ship. Later he and John would discover a lifelong friendship. "Stephen is like a son to me."
Australian Navy members feed Vietnamese children and adults at bench tables and seating aboard a warship
The refugees get a much-needed feed after their traumatic ordeal.(Supplied: Royal Australian Navy)
A large group of Vietnamese adults and children sit on mats on the floor of a ship's deck
Some time to relax aboard the HMAS Melbourne.(Supplied: Australian War Memorial)
John says on the first night, only 22 wanted to claim Australia as the new homeland. By the time they arrived at Singapore, that had increased to 77.
"I think that is a manifestation of how grateful our new passengers were for the way they had been treated on board," John says.
Thor Vo, 14, didn't need much convincing. "With a ship this big, they can't be a bad country to go to. I want to make a good life for myself and that I would repay Australia. I felt a very strong sense of that."
MG99 aboard HMAS Melbourne
The Supply Commander of the HMAS Melbourne was a passionate refugee advocate.
They had also been delivered into the hands of a passionate and experienced refugee advocate in Commander John Ingram. Motivated by guilt at Australia's role in the unpopular Vietnam War, he would support and protect them. "The war really achieved very little, but caused massive misery."
He would visit them in the refugee camp in Singapore, requisitioning several truckloads of food from HMAS Melbourne when he witnessed people making soup from grass.
Within a month, the 99 were on a Qantas flight to Sydney. John visited them in the migrant hostel several times. His parents would foster two of the young women hauled off the boat who would become like sisters to him.
Youtube Full episode: Saving MG99
'I'm a proud Australian': Thor's story
Thor, one of seven children, still remembers the day his parents sent him away in hopes of a better life. His father would tell him about the boys who were disappearing from the streets, being sent to fight in the war with Cambodia.
They would scrape together the money to put him on a boat, telling him: "If you make it out of Vietnam and work hard you can become whatever you want to be."
A photograph of a 14-year-old Vietnamese boy
Thor Vo was just 14 when he made the solo journey for freedom.(Supplied: Thor Vo)
In Sydney he was an unmoored, traumatised 14-year-old boy with no English and no family in the immigrant hostel in Cabramatta. "You miss home, you miss family."
While Thor was helped by a compassionate English teacher, he did go off the tracks for a time and ended up in juvenile detention, where he faced becoming a ward of the state.
Catholic priest Brother Edward Mamo left the church to work to support Thor and his two friends through school and Thor went on to study at University of Technology Sydney.
Thor became an accountant and then moved into IT. Today he runs his own business consulting in general insurance. Now 54, he has two adult children and in 1991 sponsored his family to join him.
"I am a proud Australian," Thor says.
A vietnamese man with glasses holds a black and white photo showing him at age 14 aboared a boat
Thor has gone on to become successful in accounting and IT.(Australian Story: Quentin Davis)
'A free man': Stephen's story
Stephen Nguyen, one of nine children, was sent on the perilous journey alongside his younger brother.
If he missed this opportunity to leave he would have "no chance". Four of his brothers had ended up in jail trying to escape.
In Sydney he did factory work before moving on to Australia Post. Three of his siblings followed him on the perilous journey out and he worked hard to send them to school. Another sister disappeared in a boat with 50 others.
A young Stephen Nguyen
Stephen made a great life for himself in Australia.(Supplied: Stephen Nguyen)
He would co-own a bakery in Revesby for 30 years and run a bookshop. In 1990 he sponsored his parents. "They had suffered too much."
He waited for them to be there when he married his girlfriend of seven years. They have four children.
"I'm healed now," Stephen says. "I had a new life, the opportunity to be a free man."
Business owner for 20 years: Giang’s story
Two Vietnamese women hold a black and white photograph of themselves as girls aboard a navy ship
Cousins Jessica Chi Crosskill and Truc Giang Congdon hold an image of themselves taken in 1981.(Australian Story: Quentin Davis)
When she arrived in Australia, Giang Congdon, then 15, says, "I cried a lot, I had constant headaches because of stress. I missed family so much".
Giang would marry at 18 and have five children, taking in sewing when the children were young.
She would go on to run a bakery for 20 years, where she worked seven days a week before retiring.
Two navy sailors help an Vietnamese girl on to the warship
Truc Giang Congdon (centre) was just 15 when she made the perilous bid for freedom.(Supplied: Royal Australian Navy)
A reunion 40 years in the making
In June, the survivors of the Nghia Hung held a reunion with the crew of HMAS Melbourne.
It was held at HARS Aviation Museum at Albion Park, where they discovered the very same plane that spotted them, tracker 851, had been housed. Had it not been for that plane, for the sheer luck of it flying 250 nautical miles offshore at that hour on that day, June 21, 1981, many of the 300 people present would not exist.
They were the children and the grandchildren of what became known as Melbourne Group 99 — or MG99 — who were pulled off a sinking boat in a daring rescue.
John and Thor
Thor was excited to say "thank you" in person to John.(Australian Story: Olivia Rousset)
"Most people like to think that when you pass, you leave a footprint," former sailor John Tregoning says. "And I think that because of that night, when my day comes, I'll be able to leave a footprint, something that's going to be here forever. It's made me a better person."
Meeting John Ingram, Thor Vo exclaimed: "I have waited 40 years. Finally I get to say thank you. Back then I couldn't speak a word of English."
For Ingram, whose naval career was long and illustrious, that night, "was the pinnacle of my career. It is just amazing what they have achieved in their lives".
For sailor Rob Patterson — a navy photographer who would capture the moment in photos — the event has had a huge impact on him. "It's a moment that wasn't just a high point of my military career, it was also a high point of my entire life."
For Stephen Nguyen, it is a connection that was forged in a moment of life and death. "They are you and you are them. So we live in that spirit."
"Gentlemen", he said with heartfelt gratitude. "We owe you our lives."
A Vietnamese man in a cap holds a photo of himself about a ship as a refugee
Stephen says without the Australian sailors, he and the others on the fishing boat would not be alive.(Australian Story: Olivia Rousset)
