THE BOAT PEOPLE

...Over the past three years, American diplomatic failures exacerbated Vietnam's internal difficulties and also contributed to the country's growing isolation on the international scene...

...The Vietnamese made it clear that they desired American technological help to exploit potential offshore oil resources...

...We need a new policy that begins by asking what we as individuals and as a nation can do to reconcile and rebuild...

...For example, since food shortage has been a major contributor to the mass exodus, the United States could begin sending food to Vietnam...

...A severe drought in the summer of 1977 made food shortages more severe...

...But the Vietnamese, who perhaps had not anticipated the Americans' strong response, still insist that the prior refusal of U.S...

...Vietnam had been able to join the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund...

...In the September meeting," a Vietnamese official told me recently, "we all agreed on the establishment of normal diplomatic relations...

...I visited two camps in Thailand in the summer of 1978...

...Press reports also indicate that most paid considerable amounts to be allowed to leave, suggesting that the refugees come from what once was a more well-to-do segment of Vietnamese society...

...Papers of some 10,000 people have reportedly been processed...

...The Don Luce works with the Asian Center, an affiliate of Clergy and Laity Concerned...

...funds from being used by the World Bank to aid Vietnam...

...More than 200,000 Vietnamese refugees now wait impatiently in camps in Southeast Asia...

...The Vietnamese deny that American policy had any impact on internal politics and programs...

...Food was inadequate...

...The young man held the old woman, but explained in an embarrassed way that his name was Ba, not Ninh...

...Or it could channel aid through various international agencies, including the United Nations...

...Many opted for the latter...

...The conditions in, the camps are appalling...

...United States eased slightly its trade embargo on Vietnam and the Vietnamese began gradually to drop preconditions for normalizing relations...

...But the American policy toward Vietnam continued to waver...

...We could also hasten Vietnam's industrial recovery by lifting the U.S...

...Earlier that year, the United States had taken several actions that the Vietnamese deemed unfriendly...

...But a few months, later, Vietnamese hopes for reconciliation were crushed...

...No commercial trade has been allowed...

...The Chinese business community controlled the rice trade in Vietnam...

...But when the "boat people" are discussed in the United States, it is often in terms of the human rights issues they represent...

...The reconciliation between those who have left Vietnam and those who have chosen to stay could be aided by a normalizing of relations between the United States and the Vietnamese...

...She spotted a knot of people and hurried over...

...Reverse aid In what was called a protest over the plight of the Vietnamese boat people, the House of Representatives voted on July 18 to bar U.S...

...By normalizing relations with the Vietnamese, the United States could help prevent more fighting — or even a full-scale war — between Vietnam and China...

...trade embargo and allowing American companies to do business with Vietnam...

...It is clear that existing American and international policies toward Vietnam are not working...

...Many of the ethnic Chinese were offered the choice of leaving the cities and going to work on collective farms in the countryside or leaving Vietnam...

...And, during the past two years, a large portion of the refugee "boat people" — estimates run as high as 50 per cent — were ethnic Chinese...

...And that, of course, in the end also produces more refugees...

...They heated up quietly but inexorably over the next two years, until they finally exploded this year with the "boat people" — a half-million desperate refugees either lost at sea or scattered in squalid camps throughout Southeast Asia...

...They say their government's policy has been consistent, and that there have been no power struggles within the Vietnamese government...

...Normalizing relations, the encouragement of mutual visits by groups of artists, religious leaders, and other professionals, the exchange of mail — all would help alleviate some of the human suffering More than 700,000 people have left Vietnam...

...The United States appeared to be easing its hard line against aiding the Vietnamese, and the gradually improving relations between the two nations seemed to bode well for Vietnam...

...Normalization would also help those refugees who worked with the United States during the war to come to grips with their ambivalence toward their homeland...

...They were as bad as the worst refugee camps in Vietnam during the war...

...Only a historic perspective that recognizes our role in helping to create the conditions which have caused hundreds of thousands to flee can ultimately begin providing solutions...

...Fear of land mines and other unex-ploded munitions, as well as a lack of fertilizer and other basic agricultural supplies, make Vietnamese city dwellers even more reluctant to return to the countryside...

...contributions to the Asian Development Bank, in retaliation for more than $20 million in loans by the bank to Vietnam since 1975...

...Many choose to flee instead of going to the New Economic Zones...

...They passed word to the Pentagon that maps showing where the United States had left land mines would be deeply appreciated...

...The floors of the tents were mud...

...Deteriorating relations with China, which culminated in the Chinese invasion in February, brought enormous pressure on Vietnam's sizable community of ethnic Chinese...

...The United States said it would lift the trade embargo and that U.S...

...Unex-ploded munitions made much of the remaining arable land too dangerous to work...

...According to figures published in July by the U.N...

...The grandmother, dressed in faded purple blouse and trousers, embraced the young man and began to cry...

...The House also approved a $4 million cut in U.S...

...The future seemed promising in those days...

...But despite the appearance of bright promise, internal problems and international pressures were building in Vietnam early in 1977...

...There are no preconditions to normalization of relations between our countries," the official said...

...Food shortages have plagued Vietnam since the war ended four years ago...

...They asked for food, fertilizer manufacturing plants, mine detectors, and medicine...

...They hurried, tottering forward in the tiny steps of the elderly, and peered intensely into the waiting crowd of people...

...Vietnamese officials apparently feared that, in the event of war with the People's Republic, the ethnic Chinese might side with their ancestral land and disrupt Vietnam's economy...

...They requested spare parts for American-made equipment in factories in the South...

...That is a convenient way of ignoring American complicity in creating the conditions that produced this enormous mass of refugees...

...In a meeting between American and Vietnamese officials in New York in September 1978, a breakthrough appeared to have been achieved...

...The United States could aid their departure by indicating willingness to accept people directly from Vietnam...

...Yet through most of 1977 and 1978, the Vietnamese continued to have high hopes for reconciliation with the United States...

...In addition, by focusing on human rights, the United States ends up fueling hopes within Vietnam that America will open its doors to unhappy victims of repression...

...Rather than throwing dirt out, the bombs compacted the earth, making the task of reclamation much more complicated than merely filling up the craters...

...aid pushed them into dependence upon the Soviet Union...

...First, by refusing to aid in postwar agricultural and industrial reconstruction, the United States helped create the food shortages and poverty that prompted many Vietnamese to leave...

...No American aid arrived to alleviate Vietnam's economic woes...

...The Vietnamese, in turn, further modified their positions...

...Several American delegations had visited Vietnam, returning with information on the prisoner-of-war situation, news of Vietnamese friends, and a generally positive picture of what was happening in that once war-torn land...

...Asked whether the United States had a moral obligation to rebuild Vietnam, the President insisted that the nation had no such obligation because the "destruction was mutual...

...The Carter Administration apparently felt betrayed by the Vietnamese...

...They wanted friendship and cooperation, and even agreed in principle to send a Vietnamese religious delegation to visit the United States...

...That joyous reunion took place when I visited the new Vietnam early in 1977...

...There was not enough water for bathing — that had to be done in the rain...

...But it might well be more helpful to the refugees for Secretary Vance and others in the Carter Administration to begin to ask if there are steps the United States could take to alter the conditions that have produced the refugees...

...Many of these refugees harbor great fear and anger toward Vietnam...

...But some of the responsibility must also fall on the United States...

...Still, no food aid or funds for the reconstruction of Vietnam's agriculture were forthcoming from the United States...

...Much of the land I saw in 1977 was brown from defoliation...

...Oh Ninh...

...as many as 260,000 others never completed their dangerous journeys in unseaworthy boats...

...More money for refugee camps, while important, won't solve the problem...

...In hindsight, it is easy to see how both circumstances led almost inevitably to the "boat people...

...Part of the responsibility for the plight of these pitiable refugees lies with the Vietnamese...

...Still, there is no doubt that the Vietnamese search for postwar American aid failed, and that the nation became increasingly isolated because of that failure...

...These people are waiting for a country to accept them as refugees...

...Hundreds of thousands of bomb craters pock-marked the rice paddies...

...Accepting more refugees in the United States, while useful, won't solve the problem...

...He spent thirteen years in Vietnam — first as an agricultural volunteer and later as a journalist...

...Relaxation of the U.S...

...This time she found her family, from whom she had been separated since the partition of Vietnam in 1954...

...Slowly, she comprehended her mistake, released the young man, and began again to search the crowd...

...By November, the United States had broken off the negotiations that had seemed to be leading to normalization, apparently in response to a twenty-five-year treaty of friendship that the Vietnamese signed with the Soviet Union...

...as long as the United States has no official relationship with Vietnam, these refugees will be unable to come to terms with either their positive or negative feelings toward their native land...

...Why, you look just like your Dad...

...High Commissioner on Refugees, an estimated 203,000 "boat people" are now in camps in Southeast Asia, another 250,000 ethnic Chinese have crossed the border back into China, and an estimated 260,000 other refugees have perished at sea...

...The Vietnamese let it be known that they needed American help...

...aid would be provided directly or indirectly through international agencies...

...Second, by isolating the Vietnamese and pushing them closer to the Soviet Union, the United States exacerbated relations between Vietnam and China...

...In January, Vietnam's ambassador to the United Nations, Dinh Ba Thi, was ordered out of the United States on unsubstantiated espionage charges...

...America's failure to aid the Vietnamese helped produce refugees in two specific ways...

...Neither will attacking Vietnam for human rights violations, no matter how justified the criticism...

...And as Vietnam began putting pressure on the ethnic Chinese and began pressing other citizens to go back to the land to end food shortages, the tide of refugees increased dramatically...

...They are the lucky ones...

...Overall, the nation's infrastructure of canals, roads, bridges, and factories had been destroyed by the war...

...In interviews, most of the refugees have stressed the hard economic life in Vietnam...

...Industry desperately needed reconstruction, and under Prime Minister Pham Van Dong the Vietnamese promulgated a liberal foreign investment code...

...Later, the United States vetoed United Nations funds designated for reconstruction in Vietnam...

...It is always easy to call on others to act...

...Suddenly, one of the grandmothers near me shouted: "Ninh...

...Vietnam has indicated its readiness to work through the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to provide an organized and safe exit for those who want to leave Vietnam...

...It might also open up a new channel of communication between China and Vietnam...

...Such an American action would signal the Chinese our real interest in avoiding further bloodshed in Southeast Asia...

...The United States had lifted its veto of Vietnamese admission into the United Nations...

...As early as March 1977, Jimmy Carter had made it clear that the United States would be reluctant to respond to the Vietnamese requests...

...Secretary of State Cyrus Vance undoubtedly reflected the feelings of many Americans when he said, at the Indonesian Conference on Vietnamese Refugees in July, "We have called upon Vietnam, publicly and privately, to change the conditions and policies which are forcing hundreds of thousands to flee and tens of thousands to die...

...The request was refused...

...Then, in September, the United States seemed on the verge of normalizing relations...

...The United States could make flight a less desirable alternative — and going back to the land more attractive — by providing mine detectors and mine sweepers, fertilizer, water pumps, spare parts, and other basic necessities to the Vietnamese...

...trade embargo on voluntary aid was selective and only intermittent...