The World Looked Away

<p>What happened to the people who remained in the former South Vietnam after the war ended in April 1975? Few of us know.</p><p>The war-weary United States had turned its attention away from the region and the Communist leadership closed Vietnam to Western journalists.</p><p>For more than a decade little was heard but retribution against the South Vietnamese was swift and unending. Hundreds of thousands of former South Vietnamese military officers were sent to Reeducation Camps. Expecting a confinement of just ten days most were incarcerated for years suffering brutality starvation and death.</p><p>The families of prisoners had property and savings confiscated. They were denied jobs and medical care. They lived in poverty.</p><p>Ultimately nearly a million “Boat People” chose to escape Vietnam by sea taking their chances in fragile overcrowded vessels. Thousands died at the hands of pirates and the unforgiving ocean.</p><p>This is the true story of Quoc Pham a former South Vietnamese naval officer and his wife Kim-Cuong. It tells of the love between a man and a woman and their courage in the face of hopelessness.</p><p>It is a story of a people – of what happened in Vietnam while the world looked away.</p>