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Tavis: This weekend we commemorate the end of a dark chapter in American history--the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Writer Quang X. Pham was ten years old in 1975 and came to the U.S. that year with his mother and his 3 sisters. His father, a South Vietnamese pilot, would spend the next 12 years jailed in a communist camp. His remarkable story is captured in a memoir called 'A Sense of Duty, My Father, My American Journey.' Quang Pham joins us tonight here in the studio. Quang, nice to have you on.

Quang X. Pham: Tavis, thanks for having me.

Tavis: I'm delighted to have you on. Thanks for coming in. Let me go back to the beginning. At least the beginning of this story at age 10. Tell me what you remember about being 10 and being in a place far away from here.

Pham: 30 years ago this week my mother took my 3 sisters and I, and a week before the fall of Saigon, we were ushered in the middle of the night onto an airplane. We didn't know where we were going, we had one bag of clothes, and the communists were closing in. We could hear explosions. Danger was definitely nearby.

Tavis: Tell me about your father at the time. What was your father doing at that time?

Pham: My father was an officer in the Vietnamese air force, a pilot. He sensed this danger. And he sensed that we were gonna lose the war, so he got us on a plane, a week before the fall of Saigon, and he stayed. He had a sense of duty for South Vietnam.

Tavis: I just saw the movie months ago...'Hotel Rwanda.' And when you mentioned your father got you on this plane, I'm thinking about the scene in 'Hotel Rwanda' where Don Cheadle puts his family on the truck and sends them out because they're in harm's way inside the compound at the Hotel Rwanda. What was it like for your father sensing danger to put his family--his son, his daughters, his wife--on a plane away from him. Leaving him behind? What was that like for your father?

Pham: After he came to the United States, he told me that it was easier for him just to take care of himself, that he wanted to get the family out of the country, and about 100,000 Vietnamese were able to leave. About 1% of the population left before the fall of Saigon. And so he only had to take care of himself. And so he expected the danger to be closing in, and he didn't want to have to worry about us. He wanted us to be in safety first.

Tavis: So in some respects for him, it was easier to process that than to be thinking about his family and the danger they would be in. I understand that, I guess, from your father's perspective. Tell me about you and your sisters and your mother and what that separation anxiety was like for you.

Pham: When you're 10 and--a lot of kids and families here in the United States grew up without their father. And so our story is like a lot of them. Single parent family, no money, no culture, knowledge, no language skills, no job. And this country took us in. It was tough for the first couple of years. But we learned the language. We worked hard. And we met a lot of good Americans that helped us. So after about 3 years, we started to become more acclimatized to the American culture. But when we first got here, our image of Americans in Vietnam were all Caucasians, so I grew up in--just north of L.A. When I got here, I saw people of different color, backgrounds, and it was a big melting pot, so in a way, that was easier for my family to become Americans. We were around everybody.

Tavis: Tell me how you ended up settling in California. How'd that happen? I mean, you're on a plane in the middle of the night, you don't know where you're going. You just know that you gotta get out of here. How'd you end up settling in California of all places?

Pham: We came into one of 3 refugee camps. We went to the camp in Arkansas. And a young man named Al Mitten in Oxnard, an hour north of L.A., sponsored our family. So after 2 months in the camps, we became Californians. We came west, just like many Americans before us, and, like I say, it was a blessing, because California is a melting pot, and we grew up just north of L.A.

Tavis: I love Arkansas, but California, Arkansas, California, Arkansas...I'm glad you made it to California. Tell me--I'm fascinated and curious to learn more about what happens on your first morning when you wake up in this new country, in this new place, having been brought here in the middle of the night. Your father's been left behind. How did you learn to acculturate? How did you learn to fit in? Take me back to how you learned to become part of this place we call America.

Pham: Well, we got here at the end of June of 1975. So the first week we were in California, there was this great explosion at night. Explosions everywhere, fireworks. But we didn't know they were fireworks, so we had flashbacks to the war in Vietnam. So we went into our apartment. We couldn't speak any English. The next day we found out it was the fourth of July, so that was our first week in America.

Tavis: You like, 'This is not very different from being at home. What are we doing here?'

Pham: Exactly. And then our neighbors, they didn't speak any English either. So we were communicating with our hands. They came from Mexico. And so we had this great ethnic group altogether, but there was no tension. And we had friends from every color. I played Little League baseball. That was my biggest introduction into the American childhood, and all the kids accepted me.

Tavis: Yeah, well, if baseball doesn't do it for you as a kid, nothing will. Tell me to your point about L.A. and California being a melting pot, really a microcosm, if you will, of the world. Tell me why that meant so much to you, and I'm curious because in the place where you were from, it was--the culture was much more homogenous. Everybody pretty much looked like you and spoke like you. I'm just fascinated to learn more about why something so dramatically different from that experience from a multicultural experience you felt comfortable being a part of or embracing.

Pham: Well, we come to America and you see all the diverse cultures, like in California and in many other cities around the country, not just California. You read the history books--we started studying history in junior high and high school. You hear the struggle, you read about it. People come from Africa, Europe, and Asia. We're just like them except we came here under different circumstances, being losers of a war. But as far as coming here, paying your dues, learning the language, and appreciating what everybody else brought in their struggle. They made it, we thought, so we can make it, too. I think watching role models that didn't look like us, that transcended race, helped me a lot, especially during my Marine Corps career 'cause I couldn't find any Asian Americans in the Marine Corps to look up to. I looked up to minority officers who were senior to me.

Tavis: Fascinating. Tell me how it is that you became an officer in the military. Your father was a pilot, obviously, in South Vietnam. And you ended up being a pilot over here through our Marine Corps. How did that happen? Was that a childhood dream? Tell me about this.

Pham: It was a childhood dream, Tavis, for me to serve my country. I dreamed to become a pilot, but it was also the road to pay back what the country had given me despite what happened in Vietnam. It was a big tragedy for Americans and Vietnamese, but it gave--the Americans took us in, the government gave us a new opportunity for education. It used to take generations. We were given a lot of those opportunities and in this country, that's all you can ask for is an opportunity, not a guarantee, so the Marine Corps was my way of paying back as well as achieving my childhood dream.

Tavis: Tell me when you came into the knowledge of what the politics were around what you didn't quite understand as a 10-year-old in South Vietnam. When did you come into the knowledge of what the politics were around what was happening and how did you process that?

Pham: Well, I saw that in the Gulf War. I saw the country get gripped by the war by watching CNN and reading the papers after I came back in March of 1991. I saw that the country was really purging itself of the guilt over Vietnam. We had this big great victory, but in reality, a year later, our marines went back to the gulf and the war was never over. And now we're still over with Saddam. The second part was, I was here in L.A. in 1992, and I saw the problems in L.A. with the rising--I thought, wow, we have a lot of issues here that we're not paying attention to.

Tavis: Tell me how your father--when your father eventually came--your father came over here what year?

Pham: 1992.

Tavis: 1992, your father comes over. Tell me what those conversations were like in terms of how he processed what was eventually the end of the Vietnam War. There were a number of South Vietnamese--as if you don't know--who felt abandoned by the United States. Was your father in that camp? How did he process the end of the war in Vietnam when the U.S. pulled out?

Pham: Well, by 1973, 99% of the Americans had left Vietnam. There was a 2-year gap before Saigon fell. He felt abandoned, but he also held the Vietnamese leadership responsible as well. He didn't have much bitterness in the end because he felt he was fortunate, not only to survive the war, but also the camps. And he felt fortunate and grateful for the United States for letting his family in the country and also accepting him into the country in the nineties. And at the end before he died, he told my sister, "I have no regrets. We're lucky that we made it out of Vietnam."

Tavis: Yeah. I kind of buried the lead here. I went right to the question about your father's politics because I was so fascinated by that. Let me back up, though, because I should've asked this question first. Tell me about when you and your father and your family reunited. Tell me, what was that moment like?

Pham: Here we were, 17 years separated, and you have the only son. I had this great father and son reunion. I flew like he did, and it never really happened. There was a big gap because 17 years had gone by. But it was more difficult for my mother, who had raised 4 kids in this country by herself, and she had become fiercely independent, so she was fearful of the old Asian husband way. So when he got here, she was not gonna cook for him. You know, she was very independent, so they were alone in L.A. and all the kids were already out of the house, so they had a difficult first year. But they were friends until the end, so once again, many Americans didn't get their dads and their uncles back from the Vietnam War. Many Vietnamese lost fathers. At least I got mine back. My regret was I should've spent more time with him between '92 and the year that he died in 2000.

Tavis: How did your mother pull this off, being here and not speaking the language and raising 4 kids? What did she do to--and obviously, you guys turned out OK.

Pham: I think there's something inherent within females, women, that when they do have these things that happen to them and they become separated from their husbands, for whatever reasons--and I think this is all women--all of a sudden, they become this head of the household and they take charge and they become strong and resilient. I think many women have raised kids by themselves in this country. My mom is one of 'em, so it's a story that many women have gone through and done fairly well.

Tavis: You have kids now?

Pham: No, I'm married, but I don't have kids.

Tavis: If you have kids, what do you want to tell them? What's the lesson, if you have kids someday, for your kids, out of this book, for your nieces and nephews, for the offspring of your family? What's the abiding lesson here that you want them to get out of your story, the story of your family?

Pham: I want my kids and my family to know that my father was honorable, as were many South Vietnamese, and he took responsibility for losing the war in Vietnam. He didn't blame people, like many Americans have blamed each other. I also want my kids to know that this country gave us a lot, despite what happened to South Vietnam. And I also want my kids and other Americans to know that we should learn from our mistakes so we don't repeat them over and over again.

Tavis: Well, those are great lessons, and this is a great book. It's called 'A Sense of Duty, My Father, My American Journey,' by Quang X. Pham. Nice to have you on the program. All the best to you and your family.

Pham: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you on.