(wow these accents make the text look weird sorry lol) – me after editing this
Things became terrible for Hoa Tran when she discovered the soldiers at her house, ransacking her family’s belongings, and leaving nothing that they saw of importance behind. The world belonged to Hiroshi Suzuki, and it was no one’s place to tell him what he could or couldn’t do. Especially not some random, innocent teenage girl.
Hoa Tran wasn’t above to let her family just get taken away, so she tried to resist if she could. She begged the Japanese soldiers to stop, but she discovered an issue… there was a communication barrier. She only spoke Vietnamese and French. The Japanese spoke Japanese, and some might speak Mandarin. She tried to tell them to put back their belongings, but partially because they couldn’t understand her, Hiroshi was tasked with keeping Hoa Tran in line. Several of Hoa Tran’s uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends were all killed. Hoa Tran’s older sister was killed, but luckily everyone else in her family survived that first day. She wouldn’t be so lucky next time…
I actually discovered Hoa Tran made a book of her own about this whole situation as well, so I’ll give some snippets here. It’s actually because of this book that I was able to write such a vivid scene about the bike ride.
The first encounter with the Japanese soldiers would be far from my last. I was about to encounter some of my worst and most painful years- so exceedingly intolerable that the childbirth I experienced afterwards did not feel like such a terrible challenge.
My family decided there was little we could do to improve our nearly impossible situation- there was no choice but to hide until the other government returned- when the French arrived, we’d come back. But for the time being we hitched a ride out of the bustling city we once knew. I wasn’t born here, but it was my whole life. I almost never left its streets and the outside world could have just been Mars- it was an untamed, scary, and unfamiliar world to me. They spoke the same tongue, practiced the same culture, even our skins were the same color: even the very concept of racial injustice did not exist here because nearly everyone was the same. And yet the only real division between me and them was I lived in Saigon and they didn’t- that was the only issue. I didn’t even want to leave even if the Japanese were in the city- it was my only world. Outside its walls there was nothing. The entire world outside of Saigon could have disappeared at the time and I might not notice. My parents announced their decision to me a few weeks after the bike incident, and my resistance was stubborn and harsh.
“ Con không muốn đi! Con co’ moi thu o đây!!! Sao bố mẹ không hiểu vậy?” (I don’t want to go, I have way more in Saigon! Why don’t you understand?!) I repeated my reasoning again and again. My parents lashed out too and told me that this decision might save my life- the news of what happened in Nanjing had shaken them to their core, and they did not want their family to be the next to fall into that hell. They had picked Tan An, a town a day’s trip south of Ben Thanh where we lived these days.
“Con có bạn ở Tân An ma`, phải không?” (you have friends in Tan An already) they argued, but I wasn’t listening. The only problem for me was that I was by far the most rebellious child out of my siblings. The rest of them wouldn’t argue. I’d be left alone in the dangerous city, with no one to watch my back. I soon realized I didn’t have a choice- going to Tan An might mean going to Neptune, but the alternative guaranteed death. This did not. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand that at the time.
About a month after the Japanese had arrived in Saigon we took a car down to Tan An. The familiar city that I always knew was left behind with every mile we traveled. The land turned into a green, endless field of crops and grass (and also labor. Hate physical work, same then as now.) – not the ideal place of a city girl like me. I quietly sat the entire ride, thinking only of the hell I was sure I would experience in Tan An. I, like an indescribable number of other children, forgot to think of the positive sides of having parents. My only thoughts were on how to get home.
I had no idea how I was to get home- the thirty miles between Saigon and Tan An felt like the longest distance I had ever traveled in my life. When we reached the village of Tan An, I genuinely could have been on another planet. I was never used to the strange ways of country life outside of the city. I saw many houses still built with wood, which sharply contrasted with the concrete and urbanized city atmosphere that I was accustomed to. Many people lived without electricity, without any remote luxuries…
We walked into the house of relatives who had visited us so often, yet out here in this alien place I did not feel at home. I refused to talk with anyone because I would have refused to be here in the first place. Merely the will of my parents had forced me here, but this situation was about to take a step further.
The next few weeks were tormenting. Life in the city was so different from out here- a change I could never cope with. Most immediately, our particular family had a number of shepherds- a considerable fraction of the hours I spent there were dedicated to aiding my cousins in their work- I soon found that caring for animals and cleaning up wild dog feces is very tedious and gross work. I didn’t eat any meat for the first two days after I started working- it was too painful. The Japanese soldiers eventually entered the town and several of them were in charge of occupying it for a few weeks afterwards, and stories began to circulate about the kidnappings, disappearances, and torture and rape of several in our community. That was a painful thing to hear or read about at the discussion table, without a doubt- but it did not immediately affect me. I could still stand, eat, speak, and breathe. At the time, this wasn’t my problem- that was theirs. I continued to complain to my parents about the work, how difficult it was, and how I missed my old life back in Saigon, who responded with the reasoning that Saigon was unsafe, and “nếu con quay lại Sai Gon, con sẽ chết.” (If you go back to Saigon, you die).
But I couldn’t be here a second longer. At dinner after a particularly tedious day of doing work, we got into another discussion about it, and I lashed out my hardest- it was the most disobedient and rebellious I’ve ever been in my life. “KHÔNG CÓ GÌ Ở ĐÂY! NẾU GIA ĐÌNH KHÔNG TRỞ LẠI, CON SẼ TU*. MÌNH TRỞ LẠI !!” (WE HAVE NOTHING HERE, AND MY FAMILY WON’T GO BACK WITH ME, I’LL GO BACK ON MY OWN!)
And I am not joking when I say this- I walked out of the house myself into the night and disappeared. I would not see my family again for many years. I tried to find my way to the road back to Saigon, with nothing in my hands, nothing on my back other than the clothes I was wearing, and nothing in my stomach other than the dinner I had just eaten. I walked on the road for most of the night until after an hour I was well outside of the precincts of the town- the lights of the village were behind me and ahead I saw nothing but the darkness of the fields and the night sky. But I knew a big city, my own home, was somewhere in that direction and I had to trudge forward. Looking back, I probably just needed some time to myself to calm down before coming back. Normally after a climax like that I usually just take some time to reflect on things and after a bit I’ll come back to apologize. That night was no different, but I’d begun walking blindly, lost in thought, as far from the problem as I could get, and it was going to cost me… well, everything. It would not be until many years later that I realized, in my anger, I had stumbled in the wrong direction. Saigon was north of Tan An, but blinded by rage I had forgotten that and was now moving South. A car randomly approached me that morning – a man got out, wearing a Japanese uniform. In the back of the car, I got my first glance at Hiroshi Suzuki, a man who I would go on to have a complicated time with. “Có muốn kẹo không?” the soldier (not Hiroshi) asked simply.
I stared at him blankly, not sure why he’d ask such a strange question. “O^ng là ai?” (Who are you?) It didn’t make sense for him to be in the countryside, asking people if they wanted candy.
The soldier replied. “Tai sao ban một mình?” (Why are you alone?)
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stayed quiet. The soldier probably figured I was some runaway girl who had no one to protect her at the moment. I wish now I had walked away at that moment, but I very stupidly stood still. “Muốn đi đâu?” He asked me where I wanted to go.
“Saigon,” I replied quickly.
“Saigon là xa lắm, muốn đến đó với tôi và bạn của tôi không? Sẽ rất vui!” (Saigon is so far away, do you want to go there with me and my friends? It will be so fun!!) Obviously I should have realized that there was something more to this than “fun”, but my anger at my parents dictated another decision. Any place was better than Tan An.
“Tôi muốn đi theo… Có chỗ không?” (I’d like to join. Is there space?)
“Tôi nghĩ là có.” (Yeah, I think so.)
And before I realized it, I was getting into the car with a stranger. They began to drive me down the road. I was so happy to be here, so happy to be out of the grasp of my parents.. I wouldn’t have to listen to them. I could go my own way, do my own thing, and head back to the place I wanted to be at. Saigon. I would be going back there, but I didn’t realize what I’d be doing once I got there. Hiroshi handed me a piece of candy a few minutes after I got in, and before I knew it I had blacked out.