"I'm back to where I started, only this time I have $1 million of debt."
U.S. storm turns Vietnamese into refugees once more
Mon Sep 12, 2005 10:51 AM ET
By Crispian Balmer
BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - At the end of the Vietnam War, thousands of poverty-stricken Vietnamese refugees migrated to the U.S. Gulf Coast where they worked tirelessly to build themselves a new life.
Now, by a cruel trick of fate, many of them are once again homeless, stripped of their possessions and hope by the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina.
Around 5,000 Vietnamese have settled in Biloxi alone over the past three decades, the men mainly working as fishermen in the shrimp fleets, plying a trade they knew in a humid, sultry climate that reminded them of home.
Many of them moved into Point Cadet, on the southeastern tip of the city, a poor neighborhood that has absorbed waves of migrants since the 19th century.
Katrina leveled virtually the entire Point, flicking aside bloc after bloc of largely shabby timber housing, upending the cars and wiping out thriving businesses.
"I came to the United States when I was 18 years old and spent the last 23 years just working and working. The storm took everything away from me in just 12 hours," said Cody Tran, 41.
His family-run, sea view motel was demolished by the Hurricane's flood surge, leaving behind just a pile of debris and debt. Like virtually all the Vietnamese community, Tran did not have flood insurance.
"Usually out of bad things good things are meant to happen, but I don't see how that can happen here," he said, staring into the distance.
"I'm back to where I started, only this time I have $1 million of debt."
ACCEPTING FATE
Tran was viewed as one of the Biloxi success stories. He had learned good English, worked hard and set up his own company.
Many others have stayed where they started in the United States, still scrapping together a living in the shrimp fishing fleets. But, like Tran, they have also been ruined by the storm.
Fisherman Bay Do, 55, sat on the veranda of a Buddhist temple, which has become his new home.
"You have to accept the fates," he said, smiling gently. "I left Vietnam empty handed and now I am empty handed again."
Do has $100 in his back pocket, a T-shirt, shorts and tattoos climbing up his arm like wild ivy. Apart from that, he has nothing.
Worse still, his wife has been arrested, "possibly for looting," he said shyly. He isn't sure because despite living in America for two decades he barely speaks a word of English and doesn't understand the police.
Many of the Vietnamese shrimpers rode out the hurricane in their boats in back bays along the coast, and lots are still trapped in the fetid waters by mountains of debris blocking the shipping canals.
Debris is also choking their fishing fields, the boatyards are wrecked and there is no port infrastructure left to process any catches.
Many locals believe it will take at least a year for the already fragile industry to recover, which means a year without pay for the fishing crews unless they can find themselves jobs in the reconstruction effort.
Although the storm destroyed many houses, it bypassed two pillars of the Vietnamese society -- the Van Duc Buddhist temple and the Roman Catholic Church of the Vietnamese martyrs -- which stand side-by-side on an otherwise flattened Oak Street.
The two holy places have become a focal point for all the aid flowing in from Vietnamese communities across the United States, with 6,000 sacks of rice from Houston, Texas, stacked in the temple and the church forecourt looking like the backyard of a shopping mall.
The priests and monks are confident their community will survive the catastrophe, but admit the storm is bringing back scenes of horror they thought they had left far behind them in Vietnam.
"I saw the fighting in An Loc in 1972. It looked a bit like this but there were more dead," said Father Dong Phan, one of the thousands of "boatpeople" who fled Vietnam in a flotilla of rickety boats after the war.
"I never dreamt that I would see those sort of scenes again, not in America."
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