For Marine Corps aviator Quang X. Pham, the Fall of Saigon nearly 50 years ago isn’t consigned to the pages of history.
It’s a story he lived, the story that his life is built upon, and the story that he documents in his book, “Sense of Duty.”
Pham grew up in a military family. His father, Hoa Van Pham, served in the South Vietnamese air force for more than 20 years and was once rescued by U.S. Marines after being shot down.
Pham said his mother made two decisions when Saigon began to fall in 1975. First, to leave the country, and second, to come to America, instead of France, where they had relatives.
Pham, along with his mother and two sisters, flew out of the country aboard a cargo plane on the first night of the evacuation that ultimately brought them to America.
“Those two decisions right off the bat changed our whole life,” he said. “I went from first to flee to first to fight.”
Pham’s father stayed behind, feeling it was his duty as a South Vietnamese military officer to remain behind. He would spend the next 13 years in a re-education camp before being reunited with his family in Southern California in 1992.
After being evacuated, Pham, his mother, and sisters were initially taken to Guam, then to a refugee camp in Arkansas. They eventually settled in Southern California, where he learned to speak English, attended school, and played sports. He graduated from UCLA, where a Marine recruiter told him he could join the Corps and learn to fly jets.
Pham jumped at the chance. In 1986, he went to Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia. While Pham was prepared physically and academically for what he would experience at OCS, “the emotional and cultural shock was overwhelming, but I got through it,” he said. “It hit me in the face because no one told me what it was going to be like.”
Pham recalled being screamed at by a training sergeant:
"What the f--- are you doing in my Marine Corps?" "Are you a Viet Cong spy?"
Pham’s response: “I’m here to serve my country. I’m not a spy,” he said. “I almost broke down and left.”
But Pham didn’t.
About a week before graduating from OCS, Pham and a classmate made what for Pham was a life-changing visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“I stood before it and realized I did not know one American who died in Vietnam,” he said.
Pham is the second Vietnamese American to complete Marine Corps Officer Candidates School and the first Vietnamese American in history to earn naval aviator wings in the Corps. After leaving the Marines, he became a biotech CEO.
“There is an obligation, in my opinion, for people who came over like we did as refugees to give something back, it doesn’t have to be military service, but you’ve got to give something back,” he said.
For Pham, the seven years he spent in the Marines was more than service.
“I did something that was right for me,” Pham said. “I did something that I knew was my calling.”
In addition to “Sense of Duty,” Pham has authored Underdog Nation: Zero in on Effort and Results for Success,” which is available here.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.