My Living, Yet Lost, Father

The Final Weeks Of South Vietnam Changed Everything Between Us

In the spring of 1975, when I was eight years old, my family, which included my parents and younger sister, moved from Vietnam, our native home, to Singapore. My father was a war correspondent covering Southeast Asia for Reuters, and he believed Saigon was no longer safe. He was right. In the last days of April, as Saigon fell to communist rule, he would lose his job, his country, and his father. And I would lose the father I’d known.

Singapore was just a two-hour plane ride from Saigon, but it …