bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2015) — Spring 2015 // Printemps 2015, pp. 20–22
Canadian Immigration Foreign Service Officers, tasked with saving a large number of Indochinese refugees, conducted a humanitarian effort of enormous scale in circumstances
that often defied description. These are a few of their stories, compiled by the Canadian Immigration Historical Society for a book to appear later this year.
The fall of Saigon
John Baker, head of immigration in Singapore, was in Saigon during the anxious final days. He recalls “everyone huddling around the communicator as ‘important’ telexes arrived. One telex asked the mission for an inventory of everything in the Embassy (including the attached residence). The communicator looked up at the Chargé seeking a comment — the reply was, “Tell them to f… off” which was duly sent. Several years later, I ran into John Hadwen, then Director General of Consular Affairs, who had been sitting in the DEA Comcentre when the message arrived. Not only did he think it was hilarious but, in the circumstances, most appropriate.”
The operation
Officers were quick to recognize the severity of the humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia and were determined to help as many as possible. Marius Grinius recalls that, “in many respects selecting refugees for Canada was relatively easy. The key was not to think too much about the yes/no life-changing decisions that you had to make 30 or 40 times a day. Otherwise you risked being overwhelmed. The enormous press of numbers ensured that one did not dwell on any philosophical or existential aspects. The criteria for acceptance were simple. By the end of the interview you decided whether the family, and it usually was a family, sitting in front of you, could establish themselves in Canada. An ideal scenario was a family unit comprised of two able-bodied parents, with at least grade school education, a trade and perhaps speaking French or English, one or two single siblings who could contribute to the family as wage-earners, and grandparents who could look after the children while parents were working. A tough, energetic grandmother and matriarch was always welcome. The family dynamics and the parents’ willingness to work at any job to start a new life in Canada invariably ended with a positive decision. Sometimes, however, as Bill Sheppit put it, “You made your decision based on the gleam in a child’s eye.’”
Likewise, Scott Mullin remembers that, “we were selecting people ‘who, in the opinion of the visa officer, will successfully establish in Canada….’ That flexibility allowed me to take cases such as an elderly man married to identical twin sisters. He had a son in the US but the Americans would not take him, his ‘wives’ and his three other sons and their families, because of the second wife. Once I had established which one was the eldest of the two sisters, the younger wife simply became his wife’s sister and the family was accepted.”
Tove Bording and Bill Sheppit were the selection team in Singapore shortly after the fall of Saigon. The workload was insurmountable, and one of the team was always away at a camp. Sheppit recalls that “Going to the refugee camps was always a challenge. On one trip in a rental car, I was forced off the road by a timber truck. My car did a 360° turn and then rolled over. Fifty feet off the road by the time the car stopped, I got out with nothing broken but with glass in my hair, a little bit of blood and covered in red mud with office files all over the inside of the car from my opened suitcase. I was picked up by an intercity taxi and driven back to Singapore. When I walked into the office with the suitcase, covered in mud and blood, Tove, reflecting on my recent annual appraisal, suggested that I was obviously trying for an outstanding appraisal!”
Bording recalls one of her early camp visits. “Khlong Yai was a tiny fishing village with no place for us to stay. It was monsoon season and the road was terrible. I thought it was under construction since we drove in and out of huge excavations. As we could not stay in Khlong Yai, we had to go back to Trat each night and return the following morning, making four trips over that road. It was only after I returned to Singapore that I learned that the road wasn’t under construction and that its rough condition was due to the road being mined, with a mine sweeper sent over the road twice a day!”
Refugees’ stories were harrowing. Sheppit writes of his last interview in Mai Rut on the Cambodian border: “I spoke with a man who had walked from Phnom Penh starting with 12 in his family. As they walked out they were stopped by the Khmer Rouge and took some casualties. Two of the women were later murdered. Three of the family made it to the Thai border only to encounter a mine field where two of them were blown up. The man I met was the only one in the group to survive.”
As Bording explains, “Critical in our deliberations was the humanitarian side. You made decisions which were ‘right’ and didn’t worry about it. I encountered four cousins who insisted that they would only go if all were accepted. Two of them had good employment prospects. They were going to Manitoba and I talked them into going ahead to get established before the next two cousins arrived. I had committed to taking the second two, one of whom I think was only 17. After a while, facing the grim realities in the camps, you didn’t ask headquarters — you did the right thing and sorted it out with headquarters later. When I was ready to visa the second of the two cousins we received a message from headquarters saying they had changed their minds, not to take them because Winnipeg had said something. I sent them anyway because we had made a commitment to help.”
Human tragedy had an effect on all who served in the region. Cutting corners and going the distance to help save people came naturally. As Bording relates: “Late one afternoon, I received a call from the Singaporean immigration authority informing me that they had detained a man and woman with two children they had adopted in Thailand. They were all destined to Canada but the children had no visas and could not be returned to Thailand as that country would not re-admit them. I asked that they be allowed to come to our office which was refused. I suggested that the Singapore authorities hold the adults’ passports if we could have 48 hours to process the children. They were given 24 hours.
“The next morning the two adults with two small children in tow appeared in my office. The woman, although living in Canada, was a US citizen so I had no authority to allow retention of her passport.
Happily she made no objection. In addition, the adults were not a couple but friends who had each adopted a child. The children, a little girl of four and a boy of six, settled in a corner and played quietly with their toys. One of our designated doctors immediately arranged medicals for the children, which the children passed. I had the required documents prepared to facilitate the travel and then the problems began.
“To arrange travel I asked the Singaporeans for a 24 hour extension which they refused even though all airlines out of Singapore were fully booked. A call to CP Air in Hong Kong produced space on their flight although they too had been fully booked but would bump other passengers to help. However, to get to Hong Kong, the children required visas. My colleagues at the British embassy, which was already closed for the day, agreed to initiate the visas but then we found we couldn’t get a flight to Hong Kong. Then suddenly we found four seats on a PAN AM flight from Singapore to San Francisco, and US colleagues were called and proved prepared to get all four on their way. Technically, the legality of the adoptions was questionable but I sent them all off and advised headquarters to sort it out when they got there, which headquarters did. Two sweet little children were saved after being rejected, through no fault of their own, not just by individuals but by entire countries.”
The camps and the refugees
David Ritchie remembers the camps and their enduring smells. “At night, we sometimes slept on the same wooden tables at which we interviewed, rather than face the rough sea journeys back to the mainland. On one such occasion, I lucked into the improved accommodation in the camp’s wooden hospital. I was fortunate to get an upper bunk to avoid the rat traffic which continued all night long.”
An accurate figure of the number who left Vietnam but never arrived in a country of first asylum will never be known but it is certainly many, many thousand. Don Cameron remembers that, “Apart from the weather, the principal threat was attack by pirates. At the very least a pirate attack resulted in the theft of all of the refugees’ gold and valuables. In many cases the pirates wounded, killed and threw overboard refugees who attempted to resist and raped many of the girls and women. In some cases rape victims were thrown overboard to drown and in others they were taken by the pirates to brothels on shore. On arrival in one camp I was approached by the camp leader, the UNHCR representative and a Red Cross doctor asking me to help remove from the camp as soon as possible several recently arrived young women who had been repeatedly raped during a pirate attack. The doctor told me that the only reason they were alive was that their boat arrived directly at the camp where immediate medical attention was available. We got them to Canada quickly and they wrote after they arrived that they were doing well and were under the sponsorship of a supportive religious community.”
Every officer who served in Southeast Asia has similar stories of adapting the system to help those in need. Cameron also recalls “the arrival of a boat in a port on the east coast of Malaysia. The boat had been spotted at sea by the Malaysian police and escorted to the dock. Vastly overloaded, there was standing room only. The boat had successfully crossed the Gulf of Thailand only because the weather was calm. As the boat was emptied the police discovered a young woman who looked to me to be dead. Bloody rags were tied around the stump of one of her arms. Alive but unconscious, a flywheel from the boat’s engine had torn the arm off two days before. I told the UNHCR official at the scene that the young woman was accepted for resettlement in Canada. By chance I was at the Kuala Lumpur airport when she left for Canada and recognized her only because of the missing limb.”
Adventures in selection
Murray Oppertshauser writes of being “… in a Hmong hill tribe camp in the middle of nowhere in Northern Thailand. One interview was different. I was confronted with the impossible situation of a Hmong man with two wives and a multitude of children. This was a culturally acceptable familial relationship in Hmong society but hardly accorded with Canadian norms or laws. Having to make a decision in what appeared to be an otherwise nice and acceptable family unit, I advised the family to go outside to discuss which one of the wives would become the widow of the principal applicant’s ‘dead brother.’ Moments later, a decision had been made and the extended family was accepted for Canada.”
A thick skin and a good sense of humour were definitely needed back then, outside the office and within. Marius Grinius recalls arriving as “a six-month-old FS-1D in Bangkok with six more months of probation to go. Finally the ‘promotion’ telex to FS-1 arrived. Murray handed it over to me with the following written note: ‘Congratulations. This will be the last promotion you will ever get.’ I took it in the best way.” Grinius recalls other exchanges. “On the road from Nong Khai to Udorn Thani, after a long day of selection interviews at the camps, our van was behind a pick-up truck with a tall pile of cages with chickens in them. Murray was sitting up front in our van and called over his shoulder, ‘Grinius, get up here. I want to show you where you are in the embassy hierarchy. See that chicken in the bottom cage?’ I replied ‘Thank you, Murray. Good to know.’”
Oppertshauser was an extraordinary manager and remains a no-nonsense elder statesman today, highly esteemed by all who worked for him… Grinius described him as “one of the best leaders that I had the privilege to serve, and I include my 12 years of military service.” Within a year of arriving in Bangkok (with resources to process 20 families a month), Oppertshauser built an operation that moved a mixed clientele of over 18,000 Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian refugees to Canada on 52 Charter flights.
Ian Hamilton’s compassionate efficiency in the evacuation of refugees from the Hai Hong is remembered and admired to this day. His successor, Al Lukie redeployed Canadian and international resources to service thousands of refugees stranded in Indonesia and managed twin airlifts out of Singapore (26 flights) and Kuala Lumpur (56 flights) that brought over 26,000 refugees to Canada. Gerry Campbell, a veteran of the Uganda operation, returned to Ottawa after temporary duty in Singapore and was the catalyst for a revolutionary overhaul of the processing system that saved thousands of hours of work. He later led a team in Hong Kong that moved over 12,000 refugees on 45 charter flights.
Staying healthy was also a challenge. David Ritchie recalls that “On the first of my many trips to the huge, purpose-built camp at Galang, a UNHCR representative convinced us to interview a small number of refugees who had been left behind in a now abandoned camp, somewhere in Riau province. We travelled by boat and then by a 4X4 vehicle deep into uncut tropical forest. At our destination, waist-high grass and creepers had reclaimed most of the old camp. It was now home to just 100 or so poor souls, who were being nursed by the Indonesian Red Crescent for a variety of infectious diseases that prevented them from being moved. We had to machete the entire open air shelter that was to act as our interviewing area. Dust and flies and perspiration filled the equatorial air. None of us dared wipe the sweat from eyes, lips or nose all day long since most of the applicants were suffering from highly contagious conjunctivitis. Somehow, we all escaped without succumbing to ‘pink eye.’”
Unconventional selection protocols were sometimes necessary; Ritchie recalls the challenges of selecting unaccompanied minors. “In combing the camps for unaccompanied minors, I discovered that there were very few children who were alone. I did find several hundred unaccompanied young males, who may or may not be under the age of 16. These teens were the result of the efforts made by many Vietnamese families to avoid the forced military conscription of their sons. Out of desperation, many poor families saved enough money to place a son on an escaping boat. In the camps, the UNHCR had trouble figuring out the actual ages of these kids…. My solution was to employ several former Saigon bar girls as my volunteer refugee clerks and interpreters. They were delightful women who had a shrewd eye and ear for anyone of the opposite gender.
I was entertained by their easy way with G.1.-English. Most importantly, I found these women’s intuitive knowledge of young males invaluable in assessing the actual physical and psychological age of these young draft-dodgers. The kids’ reaction to the very attractive women sitting on either side of me told me a lot about their age of development, maturity and worldliness. I managed to find several dozen young men who were indeed alone in the camps and truly in need of a foster family’s love and protection.”
The Southeast Asian operation involved a fleet of charter aircraft ferrying hundreds of refugees to Canada every week. Murray Oppertshauser remembers that, “Wardair was the most professional. On their first flight to Thailand, they brought with them an engine for a 747 to park with the Thai airline service staff. That engine went home on the last flight out. ‘If something should happen to one of our engines along the way then we had another one ready.’ CP Air and Air Canada also were good…. Max Ward, head of Wardair, loved the refugee movement and took the project under his wing. He met the first two or three incoming charter flights in Edmonton, boarding the airplanes before anybody else to check on the passengers. On Wardair, the refugees were served their food on china dishes. The other airlines gave them plastic plates. Max Ward said, ‘They’re paying customers, they get treated like anybody else.”
The stories of this intrepid group would not be complete without that of Colleen Cupples. Supervising a departing charter flight, she spotted a tiny Vietnamese girl in the line-up carrying a bucket almost as big as she was. She gently asked her what she was carrying. The child took the lid off the bucket. It contained water: “When we left Vietnam we were all very thirsty. Now I am going to Canada. I don’t know how far away it is but it is certainly a long journey, and I am never going to be thirsty again.”
Kurt F. Jensen is a retired Foreign Service Officer who found a post-career vocation in teaching at Carleton University and writing on historical topics.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2015) — Spring 2015 // Printemps 2015, pp. 20–22. Read the rest of this issue →
