Chan Eiland

My Life’s Experiences: From Viet Nam to America, and Points in Between
4/1/2022

My family background in North Viet Nam

My Mother was from a wealthy land-owning family. My father was an officer in the Chinese Kuomintang Army that came to North Vietnam in 1945 to disarm the Japanese. Their marriage was arranged after the commander of my father’s KMT unit (who was his father), did a large favor for the family by saving my maternal grandmother from the Viet Minh. My mother was reluctant to marry because they had no common language and she had never met my father. Her mother insisted, however, so they married. When the KMT unit withdrew back to China, my father stayed behind. I think he never saw his father (my grandfather) again.

Early Life in North Viet Nam

My parents had 10 children, 8 of whom survive. We are all in the United States now. I am the third oldest child. We older children grew up speaking both Vietnamese and Cantonese Chinese.

I have vague memories of Hanoi before 1954. For example, I recall a drunken French soldier banging on our front gate trying to break in.

Our Move to South Viet Nam

When the Communist Viet Minh defeated the French in 1954, my family went to the South as refugees. We were flown on a US military aircraft (I remember someone was carrying me on their back running toward the plane at night time). Interestingly, in 2021, I met the American official who was head of the team arranging the evacuation flights. Unfortunately, he passed away a few months after we met.

In Saigon, my father became a police official. He was close to President Diem. This is a bit of a mystery, as he was Chinese and not Catholic. He was assigned to several provinces as police chief. Sometimes we followed him, and sometimes not. He was once stationed at Con Son Island, where the French had built the prison containing the so-called tiger cages. Later the South Vietnamese government used it to incarcerate political prisoners. My sister and I accompanied him there. He was also stationed in Long Hai, where our quarters were attacked by the VC one night in the summer of 1963. It was a very frightening night and there were close calls from being killed by the VC, but we lucked out. God had protected us. The next morning, many of our dogs were killed by booby traps.

After I finished high school in 1968, I went to work for American Express Military Banking Facility on the US base in Vung Tau. This was my first contact with Americans. I missed my mother, so I moved to American Express in Saigon in 1969 when the Amex main office was established. That is where I met Mike in 1970.

Mike and I are Married

Mike and I were married in Saigon in 1972. I then accompanied him to his Special Forces assignment in Thailand where I started to learn to speak Thai there and fell in love with the country.

My First Experience in America

My first experience living in the United States was at Norfolk Naval Base, when Mike was a student at the Armed Forces Staff College. After that, he was assigned to the Pentagon and our two children were born at Fort Belvoir in 1977 and 1978.

Before having children, I studied accounting at the Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale while working for in the Virginia Bank main vault, taking care of distributing money to over 30 branches weekly. I love working with numbers.

In 1980, we went back to Thailand, to the US Embassy in Thailand, where Mike was in charge of the Indochinese Refugee Program. I worked as a case worker in that program. I interviewed refugees, mostly Vietnamese who walked across Cambodia to Thailand, and prepared case files for resettlement in the US. I heard many terrible and heartbreaking stories, especially from the females, but it was a very satisfying job.

After he retired from the Army in 1985, Mike entered the foreign service. I was able to accompany him to various assignments. Our overseas assignments included 5 tours in Thailand (18 years, including Lop Buri, Bangkok and Chiang Mai), 2 tours in Hanoi (6 years) and 1 tour in Jakarta, Indonesia, for 2 years.

Luckily, the State Department had a program to employ spouses overseas, and I was able to participate in that. I was an escort for diplomatic pouches, an office management specialist, and a linguist at various assignments. There were some disadvantages to this life. We missed our families in the U.S., and Mike worked long hours and sometimes was gone for months. But we really loved our lives working and living overseas where we met so many great people and experienced so much of the local cultures. Our boys grew up in these cultures and attended international schools, which we think was a good thing. At one point they were fluent in three languages (Vietnamese, Thai, English).

At these assignments, we were privileged to get involved with many Presidential and Congressional visits. One of the vivid experiences I remembered was when President Clinton visited Hanoi in November 2000. We were assigned in Chiang Mai at the time, but were called back to support the visit. On the day of President Clinton’s arrival, I was assigned as the Control Officer at the airport. After the President arrived at the airport at midnight, his entourage of over 100 was whisked away leaving me and my local staff staying behind to deal with the Immigration officials processing the entourage’s passports. The funny thing was that the Vietnamese immigration officials were taking their time checking and stamping the passports. Needless to say, I was very tired and annoyed by then, having been at the airport since 8:00 am. After asking them a few times if I could help, to their amazement, at about 2:00 am, I grabbed the stamp from one of the officials and started stamping the remaining passports. I don’t think anyone would think of doing it but I did. By the time I got back to the hotel, there was no one around so I had to safeguard all passports in our hotel room, including President Clinton’s.

Full Retirement Back in the States

Since Mike finally retired, we have lived in the house in Arlington that we bought in 1984. I enjoy being near about 30 family members in the DC area, where we have regular get-togethers involving lots of good home cooked food. I also enjoy get- togethers with classmates and their wives. Since the first time I saw West Point in 1975, I have sensed how much it means to graduates and their families, and the tight fellowship the Class of 1961 enjoys.