Vietnam labor camp survivor finds strength in Buddha

By Erin Grace, World-Herald

They let the sick prisoners die and shot the ones who tried to escape.

Phung Nguyen leads a service at the Quoc An Temple at 3812 Fort Street. Phung prayed to Buddha for strength during the years he spent in a “re-education” camp in central Vietnam. CHRIS MACHIAN / THE WORLD-HERALD

They fed the rest hardly anything — half a potato for breakfast and tiny bowls of rice and potatoes for lunch and dinner.

They were harder on him because he was a colonel. Each day, he had to collect the buckets of human excrement from the latrines and turn it into fertilizer.

But the worst part of the eight years Phung Nguyen spent in a “re-education” camp in a jungle in central Vietnam was the uncertainty about whether he would be released and when.

After the Americans left Vietnam in 1975, the North Vietnamese rounded up Nguyen and many others who fought for South Vietnam. They killed them or put them into prisons and labor camps. They told Phung he would be detained for three years.

Three turned into eight.

It was a miracle, frankly, Phung made it given what happened to the others. Some got sick, some starved, some shouted defiantly, “Down with Ho Chi Minh!” and were promptly shot.

The days were hell.

Night brought some peace.

In the silence and dark, Phung, a colonel, a husband, a father of nine children, would pray.

He prayed silently. He prayed in secret. He prayed, thinking of the same entity that inspired generations of his family and most of his countrymen.

He thought of the Buddha and he prayed.

Let me live. Let me stay healthy. Let me be strong.

Read the full article by Erin Grace from World-Herald.