Where do I start? At the beginning of course.

Born Februray 19th, 1974 in the city of Saigon, Vietnam. It was a tumultuous year for Vietnam with the War still raging on but on it’s last leg. My dad was an Air Force pilot, trained by the Americans, and studied in London, Italy and Tokyo. What I didn’t know until I was 21 was that my dad was an Intelligence Officer working for the U.S Air Force. In other words, he was a spy. But I’ll get back to that and how it shaped me as a person later on (like, next month). My mom was an orphan. Born poor like many others, her blood-parents too ashamed of raising her so they gave her up to a local Buddhist temple at the age of two. Once again, I didn’t know about this until i was well into my 20’s, but more on that later also. And then came April, 1975. The Viet Cong had Saigon surrounded, people were running around frantically, climbing onto the U.S Embassy’s wall, grasping on to their freedom one last time. The Fall Of Saigon was happening. My mom, dad, and I were relatively safe inside the compound of the U.S air base, but my two sisters were still with family outside the “safe zone”. It was then that my dad had to make the toughest decision of his life. Does he stay behind to be with the daughters, leaving my mom and I alone to face an uncertain future? Or should he leave the daughters behind with family members, and hope one day to see them again? My aunt, sensing the impending fall of Saigon, made contingency plans with my dad that if anything would happen, she would bring the two sisters to the gate and my dad would take them. The plan sounded simple enough, but in reality, the entrance gate was congested with Vietnamese civilians 40 deep with armed guards ordered to shoot anyone that trespasses. My dad pleaded with them to let his daughters through, to no avail. My dad had to make a decision, and he had to be quick. He reached out to the two daughters, kissed them, and told my aunt, “Please take care of them, you will hear from me soon”. It would be another twelve heartbreaking years before they would see each other again. With much sadness, they took off on a U.S Air Force DC-10 transport plane with me crying, the clothes on their back and ten U.S dollars, destination and fate unknown.