When I woke up, I was back in Saigon. I realized this because through the windows I could see familiar buildings and skylines. I wasn’t far from home. A mere minute of walking, from what I could see out the window, would take me back where I belonged- my home, my neighborhood, my alley. I was on a chair- the guys had taken me back home! Yet something felt off. I was surrounded by other people I didn’t know, there were other girls about my age looking around very nervously, and at the center of it all was an older man talking to the Japanese soldiers in Japanese, which I didn’t understand. Panic began to set in. When the old man walked back, I asked, “Ông là ai?” (Who are you?) He could tell I was asking him a question, but it was beyond him since we didn’t speak the same language. He called another man, the one I talked to in the car last night, to translate for him.
I stood up and said to his translator. “Toi đi về bay giờ… cảm ơn anh.” (I’m going home now. Thanks for the ride.)
But to my very surprise, the guy who I talked to in the car stood up and said, “Em không đi đâu. Em có một công việc phải làm cho Anh.” (You aren’t going anywhere. You will stay and do a job for me.)
“Phải làm gì?” (What do I need to do?) I was starting to get worried now. The stories of Nanking suddenly crept into my head, and I fully understood what was about to happen. “Dung co ép-” I started to protest, but suddenly the seemingly nice guy who I’d talked to last night slapped me in the face. He wasn’t the fun guy he had promised to be when I met him in Tan An.
The old Japanese officer in charge told his translator to tell for him “Im đi! Nếu không là ổng đánh bây giờ !” (Shush, I’m going to hurt you if you don’t.) I struggled for several minutes, crying so loudly I couldn’t even hear the officers yelling at me. I was punched several times in the face, but that didn’t seem to hurt when I knew what I would soon be enduring. I had to shut up. I knew what was going to happen. I shouldn’t have left.
Wow, my family is full of good writers. As you can imagine, the story got a lot more traumatizing and painful once I read… you know, that part. I hate to say it, but the book is really vivid when it gets to that point so… skip. I don’t know who’s reading this, but if you’re easily traumatized, I’ll spare you from the bulk of what I read.
The important part is that one of the Japanese soldiers, Hiroshi, as I mentioned… did some… questionable things…
And….
Yeah…
Now she’s pregnant.
Should I even be here? The only reason my grandma was ever even born was because of… that? There should have been some other guy, someone of her own place, someone who actually spoke her language, practiced her culture, understood her. Hoa Tran couldn’t even protest to Hiroshi when it happened- she didn’t know Japanese. And that’s the summary of her next few years. For obvious reasons, I’m leaving out some of the detail. But it was excruciatingly painful. The remainder of World War II was a time of constant torture- she was put out to work every day once her baby was born and it was a miracle she never died. The few soldiers who she could communicate with turned down and threatened her at every protest, and she’d have to shut up then. And the idea of feeding and caring for these children they had captured was obviously a joke to them.
The end of World War II seemed to signal the end of their problems. Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam in 1945, and Vietnam had control of Vietnam. A new era was coming. Bao Dai abdicated, and Hoa Tran, after years away from her family, reunited with them. They had sat out most of the war in Tan An, away from all the hell that their daughter had undergone in Saigon, but it wasn’t a paradise there, either.
They had no idea what had happened to her after she ran away from home that night. Had she survived, made her way back to Saigon? Would she be waiting for them when they came home, now that their country was free? They hadn’t seen the light of freedom since their lifetimes ended- the Nguyen Dynasty surrendered to the French all the way back in 1884, and Saigon had been part of French Cochinchina for even longer. Or, worst of all… she had received the suffering they wanted her to stay away from. She had been abducted, tortured, or worse, killed. Their family also had been through a huge ordeal in itself- some of them had tried to resist against them when the Japanese raided their house, and the Japanese killed three more of Hoa Tran’s siblings, her father, and several more of her family members. The remainder of their family went back a few weeks after Vietnam declared its independence where they did find Hoa Tran. She had been released from captivity since 1944, but her pain was far from over. She had a baby, whom Hiroshi had named officially “Hana Suzuki” (But she just called her Hai), and was living off whatever she could make by working around the clock at random jobs while still keeping her baby within her sight. The little money went for food, and she couldn’t keep the child at home because it had broken into multiple times. Their family had to rebuild everything from the ground up, which took three years.
And remember when I said that the Vietnamese had gained independence from France? Well, the French weren’t ready to give up their protectorate yet, so they went ahead and invaded. Saigon was occupied again, and the next bike rides Hoa Tran went on would be under the French flag. Nothing had changed from that fateful bike ride five years ago, except for the fact that she had a baby now. This traumatic experience with sex ensured she would never be in a relationship or engage in any sexual activities for the rest of her life. After reading her book, I’m pretty sure even when I become an adult I won’t take this lightly.