E-mail this page to a friend	Tell me when this page is updated

Nga Nguyen

Vietnamese people call April 3 "National Hatred Day" and in our community books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, pictures, and diaries are published that catch at least some of the memories under the Communist administration.

 I was only eight years old in 1975, but I still remember clearly what it was like. My family lived in Thu Duc (a suburb of Saigon). On that day, my father drove my family to the capital and found a friend's house to stay at temporarily. On the way there I saw Communist tanks and troops in the distance. They were moving slowly and didn't fire at civilians and non-protesting military forces. At noon the ex-president Duong Van Minh officially ordered all military divisions, police, and semi-military forces to give up and put down all arms and munitions and he was waiting in the presidential palace to pass the political power over to the Communist officers.

 I think the reason there wasn't any battle between the two armies might be because they had a secret agreement to avoid blood between "same skin" soldiers (even though they had different ideologies).

 Then our National flag (yellow with three red stripes) was dragged down abolishing the freedom and liberty of the government of the Republic and a new red flag with a yellow star in the center went up; a Communist flag which people were scared of and tried to escape from because it represented a government administered mainly by police.