Index for Major Ho Kim Giau Interview M2U00143.MPG.mp4 I believed in the agreement of 1973. So the Communists stopped at the 13th parallel and from there south, we are still a republic. But like everybody knows they violated and the US had withdrawn. I knew the US had withdrawn the troops but I didn't know they'd cut the ammunition and everything. I was working and fighting. I didn't pay attention to politics. But I knew a little thing. But I don't really know till the end in April. 01:20 I was in Da Nang in I Corps in the North, March 38th. The year before that I was ordered by President Thieu to drop the bomb on Paracel Island because China invaded. They write a book, the VNN Vietnamese Navy - Republic of Vietnam. They formed a committee to write a history of the Navy and they interview me. I was Commander of the Red Arrow Squadron at that time. There's a picture of me. 02:36 (Shows book,"Hải Chiến Hoàng Sa 19-1-1974" page 447.) And my airplane is in here, F5. 03:34 When I learned dog fight in Nellis Air Force Base in 1973. Photo: I flew this. I flew that, T-28 and then they invited me to Nellis in 1997-8 to talk to young pilot in Nellis. 04:32 So I still believed...so I didn't prepare to send my family in the program. Then it was too late when they said surrender and we were stuck. I don't know what to do. I just stayed at home with my family. Then in June, like everybody else, I go to a concentration point that they assigned. Then after that they carried us to many places. The high school was the point. They said everybody get together right here and they take us. They divided us by rank, full blown colonel here, some general here. We don't know. Finally we know about that, prime minister or something like that. Then they put us in a big ship and went to North. We land at Hai Phong. Then after that they put us in a train. 06:06 In a dirty train. I was in a group of 3000 in the ship. They had us in the hold. 3000. You shit in there. You piss in there. It was terrible. After that they put us in the train and it goes to the Northwest to the mountain area. They call ???wi Lang Son (?). They divided us into groups of 200, 500, sometimes like that. And, it was all jungle. Nothing. They have a tent and everything. And they forced us to set the camp for them but we have nothing. We chopped the bamboo, chopped the tree and make it flat and then we sleep right there. And sometime the water is up like this. (5 inches). All day, wet and stink (steam?0. And they start to give us very little food and we start to be hungry since that day. 07:41 And they move us. I don't recall how many times but to at least ten or twelve positions. Some place/some positions we stay only two months. We dig soil and everything. We grow vegetable and everything. Some people chop the wood, cut the wood. Make cot tents, make the fence. When we've almost finished they move us to another place and they move the others in. Just like that. Later we think they've made it so outside people don't understand where we were. So outside newspapers... 08:32 Even the Red Cross still cannot see us. The last years I know. I mean the last few years, after I'd been in prison 11 years and we'd been moved to the South -- that's what I heard right, I didn't see it -- the Red Cross come and visit us in some delegation. But they select some people who will keep their mouths shut - don't talk to them, from among us but old people who are careful and don't talk. So they take them to the house and they put some concentrated milk and an orange right there and said okay every day we have that. And all of us had to go to the jungle. We had to hide. We had to hide ourselves so it looked like few people at the camp. In a big, huge room there was just one guy. You know, with one guy who just says 'yes' 'no', that's all. He cannot talk to them. And the Red Cross comes and sees oh this very nice. It's clean and they treat you so well. Nobody knows us. They treat us like animals. 10:10 That's why we eat earthworms, grasshoppers, rat, snake, everything. This goes on for 13 years. And we have to work hard. We had to cut big wood like that down (tree diameter 80") and then we saw and then they carry it, to where, I don't know. They make money. They force us -- to make money. We grow vegetables, rice, but we cannot eat those things. We eat the worst thing they throw away. They the best thing, they took it. Once in awhile, one year, maybe one time, two times, they kill a buffalo or a pig and each of us can have a piece like this (end of thumb) because the whole camp is 700 people. One pig is about the 60 kilogram and they took all the best part of the pig. They ate it. They give maybe a few kilogram. So we had to cut like this and divide. 11:31 But they tell you and everybody else. We still give them rice, and give them food, and give them pigs... yo