The Tale of a Pharmacist and Wife of a South Vietnamese Army Doctor

Narrator:  Hao Tran

Place of birth:  Vietnam

Occupation during the War:  Pharmacy Student/Pharmacist
Year arrived in US:  1980

Interview Date:  March 14, 2015 

Interview Location:  Elizabethtown, KY

Interviewer:  Angela and Sarah Cao

Photographer:  Dede Tran

Mrs. Hao Tran was born in Ninh Binh, Vietnam, and is one of seven daughters and two sons. However, she grew up and studied pharmacy in Saigon.  In 1974, she married her husband, Khue Tran. He was a physician who had just completed his training as a captain for the South Vietnamese Army. She spoke of the uncertainty and angst that filled the city in the days leading up to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. They had two different opportunities to leave Saigon by air because her husband came from a high-ranking South Vietnamese military family.  But Mrs. Tran was not ready to abandon her family, her home, and her life in Saigon.

Mrs. Tran spoke of life in Saigon after the city fell to the communists. She said in order to do anything, they had to get permits. There were curfews and random roll calls at people’s homes. 

Like many other South Vietnamese military leaders, her husband was sent to reeducation camp. They were told that he would only be gone for ten days, but that was merely to lure him to the camps. He was held for nearly three years before Mrs. Tran hatched an escape plan. She, along with a few friends, drove motor bikes to a remote location where they knew Mr. Tran would have to walk past on his way to work in the reeducation camps. After much anxiety and fear, they found and took him with them. For fear that they would be caught, they stayed at different people’s homes for a few months before returning to their own home in Saigon.

Mrs. Tran and her husband finally flee Vietnam by boat, along with seventeen other Vietnamese people. Soon after, their motor died and they were stranded at sea for nearly seventeen days. They lost three people on board – one jumped off the boat, one died of natural causes, and one died later in the refugee camp. They were saved by a naval ship whose route had gone off-kilter and spotted their boat. Mrs. Tran says that, without her faith and God, she would not be here today.