Kiem Do

"There was a knock, and Kiem reached for his Smith & Wesson .22 revolver. It was his aide, Lieutenant Su. "Excuse me, sir," said the lieutenant, "but there was a call while you were out. A colonel from the Four Party Joint Military Commission, speaking with a heavy accent. Borck or Borek- some Polish or Hungarian name beginning with a B. He wouldnt leave his number. Said he had an important message for you and that he might call back later." "What the hell?-" said Kiem. He didnt know a soul on that worthless commission charged with monitoring the terms of the 1973 Paris "peace" agreement. That lying, two-faced German Henry Kissinger had set it up as a sham, just before selling out South Vietnam to the communists. If the Four Party Commission had a message for him, they could stick it, as far as Kiem was concerned. Fuck the bastards."

"Kiem Do, a native of Hanoi, was a captain in the South Vietnamese Navy and the deputy chief of staff for operations when Saigon fell in 1975. During his twenty-one years in the navy, he served as district commander, chief of staff of the Mobile Riverine Force, and commandant of the Vietnamese Midshipmans School. After settling in the United States he taught high school math and science, studied in the MBA program at the University of New Orleans, and worked as a cost engineer with a Louisiana utility company for more than twenty years. Since retirement in 1997, he has been active as a leader in the New Orleans Vietnamese community and has lectured frequently on the Vietnam War at local universities and before veterans groups. He and his wife of thirty-nine years, Thom Le Do, have five children and six American-born grandchildren."

"For two thousand years Vietnam had been ruled by an emperor and a class of mandarins- scholars who had passed the difficult poetry and philosophy examinations necessary to advance through the bureaucratic hierarchy. Anyone could take the examinations, young or old, poor or rich, and become a mandarin. In a society where change was almost nonexistent, memorization of traditional knowledge was the key to success. Then, late in the nineteenth century, following decades of armed resistance by the Vietnamese, the French finally succeeded in conquering the country. They took over everything, from the government to the police, and staffed all of the good jobs with French colonials. The annual mandarin examinations continued, but the highest scorers could aspire to be only low-level civil servants under the French."

"The Navy of the Republic of Vietnam never surrendered. Instead, in accordance with the best tradition of navies, the ships got under way with families aboard and turned themselves over to the United States at Subic Bay in the Philippines. The story of the heroic way in which this was accomplished is part of the life story of Kiem Do, an illustrious and patriotic veteran."