The Happiest Refugee (Memoir by Anh Do)

The aftermath of the Vietnam War motivated many people in Vietnam to leave their country seeking safety and a better life.

Surprisingly, few people fled Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The enormous wave of refugees from Indochina started after the war, beginning in 1975 when totalitarian communist governments had control of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and forced millions to flee.

The Happiest Refugee begins in 1976 in Saigon (current-day Ho Chi Minh City). The Vietnam War has ended and the country is in
turmoil as the brutal communist government tries to impose its new regime.

Two million Vietnamese people became refugees. Many, like Do’s family, fled their country in small, overcrowded, substandard boats. Some boats made it to the safety of neighbouring countries like Malaysia. Other boats made it as far as northern Australia. However, in trying to cross the South China Sea, many people died, the victims of unseaworthy boats and pirates. Some refugees spent years in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, such as Thailand, before finally being allowed to resettle in other countries like Australia. 

In the ten years from 1976, approximately 94 000 refugees from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam settled in Australia. Only a very small number of these, about 2000 people, came to Australia by boat.

A report by ABC News, [‘The Luckiest Refugees’], http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/the-luckiestrefugees/ tells the story of another group of Vietnamese refugees.