Different Paths to a Place of Honor

The two were once proud lieutenants in the South Vietnamese military.

One found American success, an engineer in Southern California who sent six children to college before his death. The other’s fate was a Communist prison, and he never fully recovered from beatings by his jailers.

What they share is thanks for their service from those who remember.

The two veterans of the South Vietnamese military will be buried with honors this afternoon, side by side. Theirs will be the first graves of the new Vietnamese veterans burial grounds at Westminster Memorial Park.

Hundreds from the Vietnamese American community are expected to attend a 1 p.m. inaugural memorial for the two. A coalition of Vietnamese war veterans bought 300 adjoining parcels to create their own armed forces cemetery. It’s close to Westminster’s Little Saigon, the biggest concentration of Vietnamese in the country.

The new cemetery is designed partly to help those veterans or their spouses who cannot afford their own burial sites. But it’s also a symbol of unity, a reminder of the Vietnamese veterans’ bravery during a lengthy civil war.

“We fought together, we want to sit down together,” said Long Dang, one of the coalition’s leaders.

Being buried today are Khanh Nhi Tran of Diamond Bar, who died in April at age 68, and Tuan A. Ngo of Garden Grove, who died in May from wounds he received years earlier while in numerous North Vietnamese military prisons. He was 46.

A third burial expected at the site this weekend will be for Nuet Ti Pham, a veteran’s widow.

Tran had asked before his death that he be buried at the new veterans’ site. Ngo, whose body was cremated, requested that an urn with his ashes be returned to his father in Vietnam. It’s unclear if that will happen. But even if it does, the grave reserved for his ashes will remain, coalition officials say, as a reminder of his sacrifice.

Tran was the more fortunate of the veterans. He had studied civil engineering in Paris while in his 30s and returned to Vietnam to serve in his country’s Air Force. When Saigon fell in 1975, Tran managed to escape to America with his family ahead of the mass exodus of boat people.

They settled in Toledo, Ohio, near the family that had sponsored them. But Tran soon learned his engineering level did not meet American standards, so he found work as an industrial mechanic. He continued that work after he moved his family to California in 1981, his family members said.

A few years after that he was able to return for extra schooling so he could resume engineering work, at a plastics company in El Monte.

Today, five of Tran’s six children are engineers. The sixth is in college studying pharmacy. Nga Tran, his daughter, says they are all proud of their father for the sacrifices he made for them.

“He was happy that America provided us great opportunity,” she said. “But he was always sad about leaving Vietnam, and hoped to return some day to visit.”

Tran never made it back. In his younger days, with so many children in school, he could not afford it. And later, when his grown children gladly offered to pay his way, his health was too poor.

Among those scheduled to attend the tribute will be Duc Le of Westminster and her daughter Linh Truong. Duc Le was once a neighbor of Tran’s family in Saigon. The families became reacquainted in recent years after Duc Le saw his name in a Vietnamese newspaper, in a list of local engineers.

“He was always helpful to Vietnamese coming to America,” Linh Truong said. “That’s why we want to honor him.”

Ngo, the other veteran, will be remembered more somberly by Tuyet Mai Nguyen of Westminster. She knows she’ll think back to a happier time for the two.

In the 1970s, she had been vice president of the student body at St. Thomas Catholic High School in Saigon. Ngo was student body president. They became best friends.

“He wanted very much to be a doctor,” she said. “He could have been, too. He was one of the two or three brightest in our class.”

But Ngo also felt a strong obligation to serve his war-torn country. He even took tests to permit him to graduate from school a year early so he could enter the Vietnamese army, his former classmate said.

Ngo, though quite young, was eventually assigned to Group 7, military intelligence. After the war, its members were singled out for retaliation by the victors.

Ngo spent nearly 12 years in Communist prisons, where torture and beatings caused permanent damage to his health, including a collapsed lung. After his release, he told American friends, the only job he was capable of holding was repairing bicycles.

But five years ago, Ngo came to the U.S., sponsored by Tu-A Nguyen of Westminster, an Associated Press photographer during the war (no relation to Tuyet Mai Nguyen). Nguyen had known Ngo’s father, then a soundman for CBS News.

The Nguyens added Ngo to their own family. He had no brothers and sisters and his mother had died. He spent his days here quietly, the Nguyens said. He loved collecting American movies. He worked just part-time jobs, because of his health. He seemed to live for letters from his father. He kept each one, along with his release papers from prison, and his high school diploma.

A year ago Ngo collapsed and had to be hospitalized. He spent the rest of his days in and out of hospitals, and finally died in a Garden Grove nursing home.

His handwritten final will tells of a once bright future that prison dimmed: “If I die, all my videocassettes and audiocassettes will be given to Mr. Hieu [Nguyen’s uncle]. The rest of my property will belong to my uncle.” The “rest” amounted to his papers and his wallet, with $13.

Tuyet Mai Nguyen had never known that her old friend lived so close by. She only recently saw his name listed in a Vietnamese newspaper article about the memorial service.

“If we had known, my husband and I could have helped him,” she said. “He had so much promise.”

The name of the burial grounds for veterans will be Vuon Vinh Cuu, “Garden of Peaceful Eternity.”