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Updated Monday, November 9, 2009 11:15 am TWN, By Aude Genet, AFP

Former refugee returns to Vietnam as U.S. commander

DANANG, Vietnam -- More than 30 years after he was picked up by a U.S. warship as he fled Vietnam, Le Ba Hung has returned to his homeland as commander of a destroyer in a sign of warming ties between the former foes.

On April 30, 1975, five-year-old Hung escaped on a trawler with his parents, three siblings and scores of other Vietnamese.

With the fall of Saigon that day, the war had ended with the communists poised to take control of a unified Vietnam.

Hung, now commander of the U.S.S. Lassen, still has memories of those last hours in his native country.

“We left with around 200 passengers. By the time we were picked up by the U.S. Navy warship, the number had doubled to about 400 people,” he recalled.

Before they were spotted by the navy, the trawler had been at sea for two days and had picked up other refugees who left on smaller boats.

Hung left behind four other brothers and sisters in their home city of Hue, close to Danang, where his destroyer made an official port call in a goodwill visit at the weekend.

It would be several years before they would be reunited in the United States.

His mother and some of his brothers and sisters have visited Vietnam but Hung said he had been too busy with his studies and work to have an opportunity to return until now.

Hung, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1992, said he decided on a career at sea following in the footsteps of his father, who was a commander in the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese navy, which fought against the communist North.

His father has never returned to his homeland. “It would be a very long trip for him,” said Hung, 39.

Hundreds of thousands fled Vietnam at the end of the war in 1975 as boat people, often risking their lives to escape. Some left with no intention of ever returning.

Relations between Vietnam and the majority of its diaspora have been marked by decades of mutual distrust and bitterness which has only recently started to fade.

Increasing numbers of overseas Vietnamese, known as “Viet Kieu,” now return to their homeland on business or to set up ventures.

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	U.S. Navy Commander Hung Ba Le is seen in front of his ship USS Lassen, off the Tien Sa Port in Danang, Vietnam, Saturday, Nov. 7. On the day his side lost the Vietnam War, Hung Ba Le fled his homeland at the age of 5 in a fishing trawler crammed with 400 refugees. Thirty-four years later, he made an unlikely homecoming as the commander of a U.S. Navy destroyer. (AP) Enlarge Photo


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