The Age: A Vietnamese girl’s unbreakable spirit tested as she escapes war-torn Southeast Asia

By Marie Hughes
Director, Chambers County Museum in Wallisville

Oak Island resident Kim Vo, although no bigger than a minute, possesses a remarkable strength forged in the furnace of tribulation. Born in Vietnam around 1962 to a Buddhist family, she entered a world scarred by war and upheaval. From an early age, Kim witnessed firsthand the brutal realities of conflict. What follows is her extraordinary journey to freedom—and the answers her heart longed for.

“My name is Kim Vo, I was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1975. My parents are deceased, I have seven brothers and sisters, but I don’t know if they are still living or not. I lost contact with my family for 25 years. I came by boat as a little kid, I was away from my parents for a long time . . . I stayed with different people here and there.”

Despite the chaos around her, Kim was drawn to the beauty of creation—and the mystery behind it. She often looked upward, yearning for a deeper truth.

“My family is Buddhists,” Kim noted, “but I always looking to Heaven and I say, ‘Who up there?’ I want to know who up there. Every day I go outside, and I say, who up there, I look at the moon and everything . . . how am I going to find out who’s up there. And it came to my mind, angels up there,” she exclaimed excitedly. “I said, angels up there, I’ll talk to angels. I said, ‘Please, help me, take me somewhere so I get to know, who up there.’”

“When I was still young and at home, I asked my mom, ‘Mom, who created the people?’ She said generations and generations. I said, ‘but who created them?’ She say, ‘Way back, go way back.’ I say, ‘But when you plant something you have to plant a seed, who plant the seed?’ She said, ‘I don’t know, that’s all I can tell you.’ That’s why I look to Heaven and talk to angels.”

God in Heaven heard Kim’s childlike prayer and during the years that followed she never failed to see His unseen hand guiding and protecting her. 

Life at home, however, was difficult. Kim was often sick and felt deeply burdened by cultural beliefs and fear. In her own words, she recalls one terrifying memory:

“One day I was so sick,” exclaimed Kim. “I am sick, my daddy just about to lose me. My daddy said he was going to get the Buddha monk, master monk or something, to wash me and pray for me. It just scared me to death, I thought they were going to put me to hell, I seen them do that to other people and I just got scared.”

She continued, “I never talked back to my momma or daddy, I never ever did, whatever they say I listen, even if I don’t like it, I listen, I don’t ever talk back. So, I cry, I just sit there and cry, but I cry behind his back ‘cause I don’t want him to know I cry. I just pray to angels, and I say please, please, get me out of here, ‘cause I don’t want those people to come put me up there and build a fire around me, I don’t want to go to hell,” she said, now able to laugh at the memory. “And it worked . . . it worked.”

Eventually, her father’s mind changed.

“Sooner or later he said, ‘I’m not going to bring anybody over here, you can get better on your own. If you die, you die,’” she said.

That turning point led to a real medical diagnosis.

“Then, my momma took me to the doctor because I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t hold nothing inside my belly. We lived across the canal, so we had to take the canal to get to the doctor. They took an X-ray and said I had pneumonia. The doctor said if they wait a couple of days they would lose me, so they gave a bunch of shots,” Kim said.

Even treatment was a trial.

“We came back home but my momma and daddy working, so they told me I had to walk to get to the doctor to get the shots. I had to take the canal every day for a month. I got better, but the reason I ran away from home is I got sick all the time,” she said.

Kim’s fear was not just for herself—it was rooted in family tragedy.

“My momma and daddy told me I got two sisters who died at the age of 12, both of them, and it scared me, and my daddy was scared I would die at 12,” she explained.

Her decision to flee was one born from desperation.

“I’m not blaming my momma and daddy, I did that. The only thing I know is that God in Heaven, He helped me, He guided me. He brought me over here,” she stated with steadfast assurance.

“My neighbor, next to my parents, went to work in Saigon and would come back to see her parents and then go back to Saigon. I was a little kid, about 8 or 9 years old, and I begged her to take me with her,” Kim said.

At first, the neighbor was reluctant to take responsibility for a young child. But Kim was determined. She promised she could find work as a babysitter and insisted she would stay with the family she worked for.

“I went home and I lied to my dad and my mom,” confessed Kim. “I told them, tomorrow morning I was going to go with the lady to the supermarket and buy some groceries. I’m going to go with her and then I’ll be back. My dad didn’t have any reason not to believe a little kid and I remember, he gave me fifteen hundred dollars, their money, which is not even a dime or something like that here. I remember he got up in the morning and got me warm clothes on. I couldn’t pack nothing, ‘cause I didn’t want him to know I was going to go away from home.”

She left that morning, with nothing but what her father had given her. At the airport, reality set in—Kim didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket.

“I had earrings my momma gave me and I told her, ‘take them off and sell them and get the money and buy me a ticket.’ So, she bought me a ticket, I don’t know how much money it was, and she took me to Saigon with her,” Kim recalls.d

In Saigon, the neighbor kept her word. Kim stayed with her for a week before being placed with a North Korean family, where she was hired to babysit the children. The man was a dentist; his wife stayed home with their five children.

“Two years I work for her and I never get paid,” Kim recalled, her voice trembling. “As a little kid, I didn’t have any money or anything, as long as I get something to eat, that’s all I need. Back then I never think it will affect me.”

But it did affect her—deeply.

“I never had enough to eat or anything like that, whatever they left me I would eat that, that’s it,” she said softly.

Kim wasn’t permitted to sit at the table with the family or even be near them unless she was serving food. She was treated not as a child, but as a servant.

“They had a black and white TV, I want to see it, but I can’t see it,” Kim stated sadly. “I tried to sneak to look at it, uh uh, I get yelled at. They gave me a little place in the corner of the kitchen and a chair for me to eat on. I would have to clean up the table and everything before I ever sit down to eat. They gave me a separate plate and a bowl and chopsticks. That’s all they gave me. I cannot touch anything that they eat . . . If they left me something I would eat it bone dry, that’s all I eat. The fish is all bone with sauce on it, that’s it, no meat. I didn’t even think about it, as long as I get something to eat, I’m good.”

Even the smallest comforts were out of reach. Despite her age, Kim was sent to the grocery store alone, unable to read or write, armed only with verbal instructions.

“I never been to school in Vietnam because I didn’t have an opportunity to do it,” stated Kim. “I don’t (didn’t) know how to read, or to write, I didn’t even know what the numbers looked like, what the ‘a’ looked like, I don’t know. She just tell me to go buy a pound of meat or whatever and I did it. I would take it home and wash and clean it and get everything ready for her to cook, then she cooked it.”

Her hunger was constant.

“One day her kids ate the ramen noodles, she told me to cook it for them. I’m sitting there, literally looking at them eat and I’m just hoping they leave me some kind of juice so I can drink it, I want it that bad,” she said, recalling the rumblings she felt in her stomach.

She remembered sweeping the sidewalk and staring at the children eating sandwiches, hoping for even a scrap. But there was no compassion or kindness shown to her.

The father, walking out and seeing her staring at his children eating, sent her in the house without a thought for her hunger. Her days were long and exhausting. Kim woke at 6 and worked until midnight. Food was scarce, sleep was short, and kindness was nonexistent.

Yet even in deprivation, Kim found small rebellions that gave her a sense of power—like the morning she stole from the Buddha.

Stealing From Buddha

“They were Buddhists and one morning they bought a tray of food to put in front of the statue. I wanted the fruit so bad, I wanted to steal it. So, one morning I got up early, before six o’clock, and I tiptoe, so wouldn’t nobody hear me, and I steal that plate, the fruit, I ate it,” Kim said with satisfaction.

“I hide it and I eat all of them, I didn’t want anything to be found. Seed and stuff I throw them away, no evidence,” she laughed. “She got up and went in there to light the incense for the Buddha and she didn’t see the plate of food. She said, ‘Who took my plate of food!’ I said, ‘I don’t know,’ cause if I said I did I would get in trouble. I asked her if she locked the door, maybe somebody took it when she wasn’t paying attention, but I ate it, it was so good I ate it all.”

Kim was both delighted and terrified.

“After I ate the plate of food I was scared, ‘cause I was scared Buddha would come and get me for eating his food,” she chuckled. “I got scared he would come and pull my leg when I was sleeping. I didn’t worry about her, but I worried about the Buddha. I didn’t feel bad for eating it though, ‘cause I wanted it so bad,” confessed Kim.

Her living conditions reflected the rest of her treatment—deprived, cold, and isolated.

“I had two sets of clothes, that’s all I had. They were made out of the kind of material the parachute is made of, I had one white and one colored. I got two sets a year. I cannot wash my clothes in the same bucket I wash her kids clothes in,” Kim said. “[The child’s mother] gave me a little bucket to take in the bathroom she allowed me to use, not their bathroom, I can’t use that, I couldn’t use the water heater either. I used the water faucet to take a bath. Every two or three days I would take a bath, ‘cause I had to wait for the other set of clothes to dry to change. I used cold water, now I don’t want no cold water. Back then that’s all I knew was cold water.”

Even hygiene was a struggle.

“I would wash my clothes in the little bucket, no soap except what she gave me to take a bath. She gave me a bar of soap, like Dial or something, I washed my clothes with that and take a bath with that, that’s all I used. And toilet paper, I’m not allowed to use that, you wash yourself, seriously.”

Kim paused, then said what so many from hardship often feel when looking at life today.

“That’s why I say now, we have so much over here. Kids don’t realize how much they’ve got . . . how much they have right here,” noted Kim.

The Fall of Saigon

Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese fled the country in fear of persecution under the incoming communist regime. Many escaped by sea, navigating treacherous waters to reach temporary safety in places like the Philippines and Guam before being processed for relocation to one of four refugee camps in the United States, including Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.

Kim was among those caught in this chaos.

“The war was going on and the lady said, ‘I’m leaving, but I’m not taking you with me.’ I said okay, but I got scared, ‘cause I thought, what am I going to do. If I stay in that house the communist come over and kill me. But she changed her mind and said, ‘You can go with me.’”

That decision may have saved Kim’s life. But what came next would test her endurance in unimaginable ways.

“We take off for the boat and I lost her ‘cause there’s so many people. God helped me, he bring me over and make sure I’m safe,” said Kim with certainty.

She found herself aboard a massive three-story boat crowded with people. No one knew exactly where they were going.

“I was on the boat for one month. There were a lot of people on the boat. I saw a soldier trying to guide us and someone shot him and he fell off overboard. The captain took off and we were in the middle of the ocean. I asked where we going and he said we go and then we come back in a couple days. We didn’t come back in a couple days, he kept going.”

The voyage quickly turned desperate.

“People were sick and dying and they throw [them] overboard. They just wrap them in blankets and throw them over, there’s no place to bury them. I’m not scared, I had a little seasick, but not much. We out of food, we ate rice with bugs in it, we had no water, we drank the sea water. We had to,” exclaimed Kim. “We had no water.”

The situation became even more dire when the captain began demanding payment in gold.

“One day the captain told everybody, I don’t care how many people in the family, 10, 20, one or two, he want two bar of gold. He didn’t want money, he said giving him money was useless. I don’t have no gold. A lady said if we have no gold you have to take the money. What you do with the people who have no gold. He said I put you overboard. That got me scared,” said Kim excitedly. “I don’t want to die that way.”

Kim was alone, young, and terrified. She sat crying by the side of the boat when an unexpected kindness appeared.

“A lady with long hair came and she said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I told her I got scared, I don’t got no gold, I came by myself and I don’t want to die that way. She said, ‘Don’t worry, if anyone asks you who you go with, you say you go with me.’ And I didn’t know who she was. She left and after that, no one came [and] ask me, no one came and ask me nothing, they brought me some food and water,” said Kim softly.

Her gratitude stayed with her.

“The next day I said I’m going to go find that lady and thank her. I went from top to bottom, each person I see, a long-haired lady, it[s] not her, she disappear. That’s my angel,” Kim said with conviction.

Their boat first landed in Thailand, where relief finally arrived.

“They brought us some food and water, they gave us bunches of apples and oranges and I thought, oh, boy, great food, I’ve never seen that. I say, I’m going to eat all of them, I’m so happy.”

She remembers being handed simple but satisfying gifts: “They gave me an apple, an orange, grapes and some rice.”

After three days, the group was told they had to leave again—this time for Singapore. Kim, still without official placement, blended into the lines of refugees.

“They had lists of people, who gets off the boat and I just sneak in and go with people, no one ask me . . . no one ask me. I see them in line to get food and I just got in line. I see people have plates of food with all kinds of stuff and I thought, man, I want some of that!” she exclaimed.

Her excitement at the bounty was heartfelt.

“I got in line and they gave me an orange and they gave me an apple, I couldn’t say no, I wanted to tell her, give me one more, I’m greedy, ‘cause I want to eat. I remember the food I eat was baked beans and ketchup and rice, oh, it was good!”

But peace was fleeting. Exhausted, Kim fell asleep under a tree—unfortunately, next to a pile of ants. She awoke in pain, covered in bites, frantically brushing them off.

A young serviceman stepped in to help. He guided her to a woman who assisted her while he found clean clothes for her and a place for her to bathe.

“I go in there and take a shower and he went and found me some clothes. They were too big ‘cause I was a little bitty kid, just bones was all I was. The clothes don’t fit me, but I don’t care, I put them on and wear them,” she said.

The serviceman then brought her to a translator.

“He spoke to a lady that was a translator and asked me who I came here with. I said nobody, just me. He said I’ll get somebody to adopt you,” she said.

But Kim was overwhelmed and frightened by the prospect of starting over in a foreign land.

“I told him I want to go back to Vietnam, ‘cause I can’t speak the language, I can’t understand, I don’t know anybody, I want to go back. He told the lady to tell me not to go back, he said if she goes back she will die, the communists will kill her. I said but I want to go back to my momma and daddy where my family is, I don’t want it here.”

Despite her protests, a decision was made.

“He told the lady I would be fine. The lady asked me where the lady was I came with. I told her I don’t know she somewhere, maybe she here and she asked me what her name was. The man said I’ll find her. He found her and she came up there and said, ‘I going to adopt you.’ When she said she was going to adopt me I thought to myself, oh no! I don’t want to go through this. But I have no choice, I can’t speak I don’t know anything so I said I would go with her,” Kim said.

She joined the woman and her family at a refugee camp, where the hardships continued.

“They gave everybody a folded bed, a blanket and a pillow to sleep. She take the pillow away from me, she said that one my son needs, so she take it. I couldn’t take a nap, it was so hot and she wanted me to sit there when her kids take a nap, she gave me a hand fan to fan her kids so they could sleep and I fall asleep and get cussed out for that. Every day seven days a week I do that,” declared Kim.

Her workload increased. The lady would make Kim go stand in line to get food for her kids, even though they were grown and could do it themselves. Washing their clothes was another of her jobs and she washed clothes until her hands bled. Kim’s mind began to rebel.

“I started thinking, my mom and daddy never make me do this, why I do for you, you don’t pay me, you are not taking care of me,” she thought to herself.

But her options were limited. Leaving meant facing the world alone again.

They remained at the camp for two weeks before the woman announced they would be traveling to the United States. Kim had no idea what that meant or where they were going—only that she had to keep moving.

Their next stop was Guam, where Kim and the family were placed in a military camp. The climate was harsh, and so was the treatment.

“Guam is hot,” noted Kim. “There were no trees or nothing, it was hot. She made me do the same old things, wash their clothes, go get lunch, same old same, and fan her kids while they sleep.”

The repetition and exhaustion finally took a toll on Kim. One day, when she drifted off while fanning the children, it led to an explosive outburst.

“I fall asleep that day and she cussed me out and I got so mad. She called my momma and daddy names that day saying your mom and dad don’t know how to teach you, you don’t have no manners, blah blah blah,” Kim said.

Her anger turned to action. Kim needed to escape, even if just for a while.

“I got mad and I just take off and run, I ran to bathroom or somewhere, I just want to get away,” she said.

She ran until she stumbled into another military camp nearby—one that was eerily quiet and unoccupied.

“Then I ran to other military camp and nobody there. They had the beds all set up and all that and I lay on that bed and I sleep, I sleep, oh and I sleep good. I don’t remember nothing, I sleep all day just about.”

The peace was short-lived.

“The soldiers came back and they try to wake me up and I just sleep. He finally pull my leg so I get up. I got up and saw him and thought, ‘Oh, my God and I ran to the bathroom to wash my face.’”

Eventually, a woman recognized Kim and relayed her whereabouts back to the family she had tried to escape. Once again, Kim’s fate felt out of her control.

“She said, ‘Tomorrow we go to the United States and if you don’t come back I’m going to leave you here and people here are bad, they’ll do something bad to you.’ So, I got scared and I come back and go [with her],” Kim said.

Though resigned, a faint glimmer of hope stirred in her young heart. Somewhere beyond the uncertainty, hunger, and heartache, perhaps a new chapter was waiting.

Editor’s note: The next chapter “Hope on the Horizon” will be published in June. Look for that column. In the meantime, be sure to stop by the Chambers County Museum in Wallisville to pick up a copy of Marie Hughes’ newest book, “The Age.” The cost is $60. If you would like the book shipped to you, additional charges will apply.

On Thursday, May 15, from 6 to 7 p.m., the Museum will host a presentation from Jim Hodges, who will discuss the history of the Great American Cowboy from ancient Egypt to the present day. Anyone with an interest is invited.

The Museum is located at 20136 I-10 East in Wallisville, Texas, in Chambers County. You can reach the Museum by calling 409-389-2252.