Former Hong Kong refugee center director gives priceless gift to UCI

Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet

WESTMINSTER, Calif. – When Talbot Bashall, 88, took his pen and signed on the dotted line of the deed of gift presented to him by Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, archivist for the Southeast Asian Archive Collection at the University of California, Irvine, the room erupted into hearty cheers and applause.

Six scrapbooks from the personal collection of Talbot Bashall, former director of the Center for Refugee Control in Hong Kong, were gifted to the University of California, Irvine, on Monday. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

It was the moment that Bashall’s gift to the university became official: six scrapbooks, more than 100 pages each, detailing the work and life of what was happening in the refugee camps in Hong Kong in 1979.

The event, which was hosted in the community room at Nguoi Viet Daily News, was free and open to the public to attend. Former refugees, veterans and other community members came to see the scrapbooks themselves.

Bashall, the former executive director of the Centre for Refugee Control in Hong Kong, traveled from Australia to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in Westminster, joined by Carina Hoang, author of “The Boat People: Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus 1975-1996.”

 The event, held at Nguoi Viet Daily News’ community room, was free and open to the public. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet) (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

“I am very humbled to be here and to gift this to the University,” he said. “My late wife, Cynthia, did a phenomenal job putting this together. I think this is the most comprehensive history in existence of the Vietnamese coming to Hong Kong from April 19, 1979, to the end of October 1982, when we left.”

The scrapbooks, filled with photos, newspaper clippings and other artifacts from the refugee center, will be a part of the Southeast Asian Archive, a smaller collection of the UCI library system.

Dang said she feels a big responsibility serving as the steward of this collection, but added she is excited it has found a home at UCI.

“This is an amazing collection,” she said. “The reason why I’m so excited is that so many of our second-generation have never had a chance to learn what it means to be Vietnamese American, or where they came from, and how they got here. So these records help us tell this story, and helps us preserve it. Not just for scholars, but for everybody.”

Dang said this transition has been in the works for months, and she said is looking forward to making the scrapbooks accessible to the general public and to researchers.

Talbot Bashall, Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, John Renaud and Carina Hoang, left to right, pose with the scrapbooks in hand. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

“The historical significance of this has value to historians, sociologists and scholars across different disciplines. But it’s also important to people not involved in research because it’s a part of our community’s history and to have this is very meaningful,” she said.

Bashall originally gifted these scrapbooks to Hoang, who was researching a book that she eventually published in 2011. She decided it was too great a gift to keep to herself.

“It’s too valuable a collection to keep as an individual,” Hoang said. “It felt too selfish to keep it but it took me a while to find a place I felt had the capacity and resources to preserve it and share it. I chose UCI as the host and discussed it with Mr. Bashall and his family and they happily supported my decision.”

Bashall said he used to bring home artifacts from the state department and Cynthia, an archivist herself, would arrange and gather the information. He said her attention to detail and meticulousness paid off.

The scrapbook included newspaper clippings, photographs and other mementos from refugees during the period from 1979 to 1982. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

“I’m humbled and pleased that Cynthia’s efforts should be rewarded in such a way that is so appropriate for the forum for her scrapbook to belong,” Bashall said. “As the years go by, this will become more and more invaluable, because this detail and this information cannot be repeated.”

Albert Anh-Khoa, who brought his 8-year-old daughter to see the scrapbooks, said he felt it was important for him as a parent to expose his child to artifacts like these.

“I want her to understand the history of the boat people,” he said, “what came about and the sacrifices people had to make for freedom.”

Some attendees, such as Hazel Kassebaum, came from great distrances. Kassebaum traveled from Cottonwood, Ariz., to be present for the moment. As a former mental-health officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Philippines, Kassebaum said she found the boat people to be extremely resilient in such times of duress.

“When they were in the camp, they just gathered all their will power and strength to go on and continue,” she said. “I imagine the trauma of their journey took it’s toll when they were resettled and had time to process it all. Some of the boats they came on, you couldn’t believe people could cross streams in them, much less oceans.”

Each scrapbook has more than 100 pages of information and will be available to the public at UCI’s Southeast Asian Archive Collections.(Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

Dang, whose family members were among the hundreds of thousands of refugees to come to America, said preserving these artifacts and making it her life’s work is personal.

“I want to make sure that my family’s stories, and my community’s stories, are reflected in the public history that we teach,”she said. “So it’s not just us telling stories about ourselves to ourselves, but making sure it’s widely known among Americans and, really, the world.”

Bashall said he was humbled by UCI’s interest in the scrapbooks and will never forget his time working as the director of the Hong Kong refugee center.

“Unlike other nations — I could say Malaysia for one, whose deputy prime minister at the time enacted a ‘shoot to kill’ legislation for those poor people coming to their shores — we in Hong Kong never turned any boats away,” he said. “That is one of my proudest claims. I think it should be written on our epitaph when all is said and done, that we never turned anybody away.”

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