Mong Ha Le, Fountain Valley, California – USA

In memory of April 30th 1975
Today was April 30th 2019.

I was born in the year of the ox. My mother used to say that this means I work hard and work most of the time whether I want to or not. I turned 14 years old to witness the tragic end of the Vietnam war: we lost the South Vietnam to the iron hands of the North Vietnamese. After several years of lengthy application forms submissions and government bureaucracy, my family and I finally got the approval to leave Vietnam under the ODP (Orderly Departure Program). We left Saigon then spent some time in a transit holding center in Thailand, where my older sister Bí and I during another lengthy paperwork process, were classified as “refugees”. We received a big rubber stamp on our papers, which said “Nguoi Ty Nan” (meaning “refugees” in Vietnamese). It was this rubber stamp that allowed us to earn our much needed U.S. Government assistance dollars during the first eighteen months we started our new lives in California.

I was 22 years old the day I set foot in California, the land I only knew through American movies as the Wild West. Except on this land I could not find gold, nor did I ever start with any saved pocket money. Beginning my new life from nothing but a blank slate, decades later, I am now the proud mama of two beautiful grown-up girls, the owner of two houses, a car, three bicycles, five fancy cameras, and a collection of near 100,000 photos I took fueled by my passion in photography. And I also work, just as my mother has predicted.

My life is good.

Photo taken before I left Saigon.

A few months after arrival to California, I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco. I sewed the outfit I wore in this photo, and saved enough money to buy my own cassette tape player.