SAN DIEGO (KGTV) -- After the fall of Saigon, San Diego offered the start of a new life for so many people who fled their homeland of Vietnam.
That included Dr. Pha Le and his family.
ABC 10News anchor Melissa Mecija spoke with him and his wife, Dr. Joan Le, overlooking the ocean in Del Mar.
“As we sit here with this beautiful backdrop, I get to surf here with my sons, on the warmer months, and I can’t be more grateful,” Pha Le said.
Those same waters decades ago instead brought uncertainty for the Vietnamese people.
“The same ocean on the other side of the Pacific claimed between 200,000 and 500.000 lives in the search for freedom,” Le said.
When the Vietnam war ended on April 30, 1975, Le’s father was a commander in the South Vietnamese Navy. He had to evacuate with his crew to the ocean. The U.S. Navy picked them up and brought them to Subic Bay in the Philippines before heading to Guam.
Le’s father did not want to continue to the United States mainland. He wanted to find his family, including his wife and three children.
That reunion did not happen for years.
“Unfortunately, upon his arrival, he was taken to North Vietnam and imprisoned for five years,” Le said.
He was seven when he remembers seeing his father for the first time.
“He was released, took a bus … tapped me on the shoulder. That’s how I met my father,” Le said.
Two years after that, he and his parents escaped Vietnam on a boat in the middle of the night.
“We got tossed violently,” Le said, remembering how everyone on board the boat became seasick and started vomiting because of the rough waters.
Only three in his family were allowed on the boat. His parents made the tough decision to leave his younger brothers in Vietnam, taking only Pha because he was the most likely to get drafted, with Vietnam still at war with Cambodia.
“I didn’t fully grasp the pain that my parents went through, especially my middle brother. He was at the station and remembers us pulling out of the station and leaving him behind. That memory continued to cause him pain until today, and he’s turning 50 this year,” Le said.
They ended up in a refugee camp in Indonesia for more than a year before immigrating to Virginia.
“So many things could have gone wrong, and they didn’t,” Le recalled.
His wife, Dr. Joan Le, wasn’t quite born yet during the fall of Saigon. Joan’s mom was pregnant with her as her family fled Vietnam before eventually settling in California.
“That was a difficult time period for everybody. For the south Vietnamese families, it was a loss. Loss of their country, loss of their freedom,” Joan Le said. “From the U.S. military, we were very grateful for the largest humanitarian operation at that time.”
Pha’s two brothers are now in the United States.
Pha and his wife are both doctors, giving back to the country who took them in. Joan Le gives her time to help children with amputation.
Besides surfing with his sons, Pha spends his time volunteering with veterans. He also served as chairman for the April event on the USS Midway Museum, commemorating Operation Frequent Wind—the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
The City of San Diego recently marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon during a proclamation presentation at City Hall, where Pha participated.
The couple is now raising their two kids in San Diego County, with their eldest currently at the Naval Academy.
“We’re all just the product of our history, but what we do with the opportunities we’ve been gifted by the men and women who fight for it every day is something we’re really grateful for,” Pha Le said.
