The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2015 97 senior South Vietnamese general. In late April the general had taken him on a reconnaissance flight; but instead of flying over the battlefield, without warning the general ordered his chopper out to sea to join the many helicopters landing on vessels of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. My new friend told me his U.S. contacts had assured him they would see to his family’s safe evacuation when the time came. Alas, they hadn’t. I sent inquiries to all refugee processing camps, but only received negative replies. My friend insisted he be allowed to return to Vietnam, as he could not imagine life without his family. We could not know what would happen there, but many feared there would be a bloodbath. I told himhis rank and position practically guaranteed that the new government would not allow him even to visit his family. He would be better off going to the United States, with the hope of their joining him later. He was adamant, and as far as I knowwas among those who eventually returned to Viet- nam—and imprisonment. The heartache involved in this captain’s case was in part offset by the hundreds of family reunions I was able to arrange on Wake, a happy result of my cables to Guam and the department. I was also able to get Washington to overturn a decision to indefinitely delay any resettle- ment fromWake, and enjoyed seeing smiles on the faces of those who were among the first fromWake to resettle in the United States. After a couple of months, I was medi- vacked to Clark Air Base in the Philip- pines, and from there returned to Kabul. I was happy to leave Wake, but remained in contact with a few of the refugees I met there for several years. That experience laid the groundwork for my later refugee work in Malaysia, Thailand and Kosovo. It is now 40 years since the evacuation, and 50 years since I was among the first U.S. combat troops sent to Vietnam. I still wrestle with the ghosts of Vietnam. My evaluation of our efforts in that war has evolved over the years, but I am still criti- cal of myself and my country. What could I have done better? What should we have done differently? But life, and the world, move on. I resumed trips to Vietnam in the mid- 1980s, and from the first was over- whelmed by the friendly reception I received—not only from officials (who weren’t always that warm), but from the many people on the street with whom I spoke. Now one of “my” former first-tour officers, Ted Osius, has recently arrived as the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, some- thing hard to have imagined four decades ago. Even if one era ends on a sour note, another one begins. Let us hope that this will be a better chapter. n Bruce Beardsley interviews a family for resettlement in Kota Bharu, Malaysia, in September 1979. Though his language ability had returned sufficiently to conduct interviews without an interpreter, he used a volunteer (to his left) to assist with Chinese speakers and to help keep interview notes. A crowd watches the U.S. team interview their colleagues to determine resettlement eligibility and priority interviews in Pulau Bidgon, Malaysia, in August 1979. This island held about 45,000 Vietnamese refugees at the peak in 1979.