- This book here starts out with the very first letter from his friend.

In brief, basically, they were on a refugee boat and they were captured essentially by pirates.

And they were dragged off to this island where terrible things happen.

And this letter was really the impetus that caused the formation of the Boat People SOS Committee.

(gentle music) My name is Phan Lac Tuong Huan.

April 30th is the clear, sharp transition in my life.

I had a memory as an 8-year-old, as a Vietnamese boy.

We got on a ship on April 30th, and we left, and the memory before and the memories after are distinct and different.

So as an 8-year-old boy growing up in Vietnam, I knew that eventually I would have to go to war.

And I knew that all my uncles and all of their friends, some of them didn't come back.

And then, so I didn't think of the future.

I didn't think of what I would be after I turned 18.

I knew that I would have to survive the war before I could worry about that.

I also knew that America was this mythical land of opportunity.

And when we were on the boat that first day, and I saw the vastness of the ocean, I recognized that it was possible for me that going to war may not be a thing anymore.

My father is a naval captain.

He was part of the large exodus of the Vietnamese Navy at the very last days of the war.

My father is a unique person.

He's a naval officer in Vietnam, and he's also a writer.

He wrote many books over 30 years about the war and about the refugee experience.

You can tell that he experienced this huge loss of country and culture.

He has this idealized idea of what Vietnam was and what Vietnam could be.

And he suffered that loss tremendously.

And that loss, that feeling of loss never really left him.

It held onto him for the rest of his life.

So he wrote a book about that.

There's this book right here that he wrote.

It's about his formation... or his part, his role in the participation of the Boat People SOS Committee.

(light music) Late in 1979 or 1980, he received a letter.

It turned out from one of his friends, high school friends that he had grown up with in Hanoi, another prominent writer.

And this prominent writer, Nhat Tien, he was on one of these boats and they were dragged off to this island where terrible things happened on this island.

And because he was a writer, he wrote a letter that reached my father, that described the circumstances.

This book here starts out with the very first letter from his friend.

In brief, basically, they were on a refugee boat and they were captured essentially by pirates.

And they were dragged off onto this island.

And on this island, all of their possessions were searched and stolen.

And then all of the men on the boat were moved off onto this cave and kept there while the women and young girls were dragged off to a different part of the island, far enough so they couldn't be seen, but close enough so they could be heard.

And so all of the atrocities that these women experienced could be heard by the men who were in this cave.

And this letter was really the impetus that caused the formation of the Boat People SOS Committee with Dr.

Nguyen Huu Xuong from UCSD.

And that committee was pulled together again to raise awareness and to raise funds to rescue these refugees.

You know, some of the more prominent things they did was they worked with international organizations like Medecins du Monde--Doctors Without Borders, basically-- and other organizations to essentially raise funds to get large boats, basically to drive out into the middle of the shipping lanes and see if they could rescue some of these people.

They also worked with countries around the world to make sure that there were visas on board so that they would know how many people they could rescue, and these people would have a place to go.

(Caption speaking in foreign language) (gentle music) What did I glean from this book?

What I learned is that when you're confronted with a scale of a problem that seems unsolvable, what should you do if you're not able to solve it all?

Can you do something?

Can you do some small part?

And then, so he put 10 years of his life into this, and he was able to directly affect the lives of 3,000 people or more.

Many, many more people died or were lost that he was not able... and the group was not able to find.

That's something that you try to understand what you should do in your everyday life.

What is my role?

What is my part?

What should I do?

That's something that I think we all struggle with.

He saw his responsibilities of what he could do, and he did what he could.

He did the next thing that he thought was right, and those next things that he thought was right ended up having gigantic impacts on first the 5,000 people that he helped leave Vietnam on the first naval boat.

Then the 3,000 people that he helped rescue on the open seas with Boat People SOS.

You know, people say that America is a land of immigrants, which I think is true.

I like to think that the thing that's unique about America is America is a land of optimism.

And that optimism comes from immigrants.

That optimism is constantly being restored by immigrants.

Because the sheer act of immigration, leaving your country and everything, you know, behind, is an act of optimism.

And that is what is restoring the wellspring of optimism, or in part.

And I think that's why so many startups, for example, are started by immigrants.

They bring this optimism that they can do it.

Looking forward, I would say that the diaspora in America, we have to decide, like any other Americans, what does it mean to be American?

And then if you want to honor my father's legacy, which I do, then what is our part?

What shall we do?

What is a small thing that we can do?

That's what I think should happen.

(gentle music)