Hà Giang/Người Việt
WESTMINSTER, Calif. – At age 88, Talbot Bashall, former executive director of the Centre for Refugee Control Hong Kong, decided to board a plane from Australia to California to attend the 40th anniversary of the April 30 commemoration in Westminster – the capital city of Vietnamese refugees.
A page from a scrapbook about Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong that was put together by Cynthia Bashall. (Photo: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
And on Monday, April 27th, at 4 p.m., as part of his journey, Bashall will stop by the community room at Nguoi Viet Daily News to present a priceless gift to the overseas Vietnamese community: a collection of scrapbooks, consisting thousands of photographs, articles, letters and documents related to Vietnamese boat people in the refugee camps in Hong Kong.
The event, to be held at Nguoi Viet Daily News community room, 14771 Moran St., is free.
This six scrapbooks, each more than 100 pages, were meticulously put together by his deceased wife, Cynthia Bashall, who researched, collected and gathered the materials, then arranged them in chronological order. It was a labor of love for her during the period from 1979 to 1982 when the couple worked at the Hong Kong refugee center.
Bashall said the evacuation of boat people from Vietnam played “an important part in my career, but a much larger role in life, and in the history of mankind.”
One has to understand Bashall’s sentiments to realize that memories of April 30, 1975, the fall of Saigon, do not belong only to the Vietnamese but also to those who were somehow involved in this historic event that changed the lives of many Vietnamese and the destiny of a beautiful country.
(Photo: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
For Bashall, it all began in April 1979. He was then 52, a former British Air Force officer, and was summoned to Hong Kong. There, he was given the responsibility as commanding officer of the Centre for Refugee Control on the island.
Bashall assumed his responsibility at a time when the waves of refugees fleeing Vietnam to Hong Kong was at its highest point, ranging from 1,500 to 4,000 per day. And so over the next four years, he and his family lived their lives entwined with the fates of the Vietnamese boat people who left Vietnam in desperate attempts to search for a life of freedom.
And to say that his life today, almost 40 years later, is still affected by the story and plight of Vietnamese refugees who arrived at Hong Kong at the time is no exaggeration.
Today, Bashall still occasionally writes to politicians to share his thoughts. He thinks that the regime that caused this desperate evacuation, pushing countless people to lose their lives in search of freedom, still being in power, is somehow just plain wrong.
(Photo: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
“The story of Vietnamese boat people was a big part of our lives. Their memories should be protected and preserved.” he said.
Preserving and protecting memories is why, after his beloved wife passed away, Bashall and his children entrusted the scrapbooks to Carina Hoang, editor of “Boat People: Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus 1975-1996,” published in 2011.
One of many paintings by Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong (Photo: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
Cynthia Bashall put together the scrapbooks with the extraordinary ability of a researcher and the emotions of an artist deeply touched by humanity. Flipping through these pages is like watching a vivid film about the most challenging time both for Hong Kong’s government and for the frightened Vietnamese boat people who continued to show up on the island’s shores.
(Photp: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
Even though she felt honored to be asked to protect the historical scrapbooks, Hoang wanted to turn the valuable material to the Southeast Asian Archive at the library at UC Irvine.
“On the occasion of Mr. Bashall’s visit to Westminster to attend the 40th anniversary of April 30, 1975 commemoration, I decided to donate this scrapbook to UCI so Mr. Bashall can personally deliver these valuable documents to them,” Hoang said. “A collection of this magnitude should not be a private collection and should be put in a place that can properly protect and preserve it. And more importantly, it must be disseminated to the public so more people can extend their knowledge about this period in Vietnam’s history. “
Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, a representative of the UCI archive, will accept the gift on behalf of UCI.
“We have reviewed the materials from the Talbot Bashall family’s scrapbooks of boat people, and we think the scrapbooks will be a great addition to the ever-growing collection of UCI about Southeast Asia’s experiences of refugees,” he said.
Also attending the ceremony to transfer the scrapbooks will be John Renaud, assistant university librarian for research resources, and Wendi Morner, UCI’s library development director.
(Photo: www.vietnamesediaspora.com)
In addition to the scrapbooks, Bashall also kept a personal diary, writing something memorable about the activities of the Vietnamese boat people in refugee camps in Hong Kong every day from 1979 to 1982.
“Mr. Bashall will bring his diary to the event and will tell us the story of Vietnam boat people in Hong Kong during that time,” Hoang said.
Một trang trong nhật ký của ông Talbot Bashall, viết trong thời gian ông làm việc ở Hồng Kông. (Hình: Người Việt)
For more details about the scrapbooks, visit http://vietnamesediaspora.com/hongkong/gallery/scrapbooks/
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Contact the writer: [email protected]
To read this article in Vietnamese click here.
