Transcript
Kim Denham, Vietnamese War Bride
Interview by Dmae Roberts
Date: 1/20/05
1 Disc, 12 Tracks – 52:03
TRACK 1 – 0:14
TRACK 2 – 2:12
DMAE: First off, say your name and do I have your permission to broadcast and edit this interview for Crossing East the radio series?
KIM: My name is Wen Kim Denham and I give my permission to broadcast the interview today and edit this interview for Crossing East.
DMAE: I’ll send a release form later. Say your name again. Introduce and tell me how long you’ve been here.
KIM: I’m Kim Denham. I live in Eugene twenty years. I came to US in 1979.
DMAE: How old are you?
KIM: I’m 56 years old.
DMAE: Tell me about your life growing up.
KIM: My father was a truck driver, gone lots of times, and my mother trying to raise us with a little sewing.
DMAE: I hear clicks.
TRACK 3 – 5:01
DMAE: Introduce again with age or how long you’ve lived here.
KIM: I’m Kim Denham, I’m 56 years old, and I live in Eugene 30 years.
DMAE: Tell me about your life in Vietnam.
KIM: My father was a truck driver and my mother was homemaker. Three children, my older brother, me, and my younger sister. My brother now live in California, my sister live in Dallas Texas and I live in Eugene.
DMAE: In Vietnam?
KIM: No, they’re here now.
DMAE: I was wondering what it was like for you growing up in Vietnam.
KIM: We were very poor. At time we don’t have food to eat because my father never home.
DMAE: Can you start again?
KIM: When I was growing up in Vietnam we were very poor. My father would go away long, long time, truck driver some time come home. And my mother barely make us enough food to eat, so we’re hungry lots of time. And for me to go in school I have to be top three student to get free uniform for school.
DMAE: Was the war going on?
KIM: Yes, the war was going on the whole time I was growing up. I leave Vietnam when I was twenty years old.
DMAE: What was it like during wartime?
KIM: Because I grow up and was raised that way I didn’t know any different. I didn’t have any comparison so that’s just the way we live.
DMAE: What area did you live in?
KIM: I live in Ragyar, which is about 200 km from Saigon. Our house burn down three time while I was growing up. ? They burn up the bridge. Soldier come through the village and they die when the VC get them. But I didn’t know any different so I didn’t scare or anything. I thought that’s just the way we live.
DMAE: Did you have a lot of siblings?
KIM: I have one older brother, one year older than I am and my younger sister, she’s seven year younger.
DMAE: At what point did you leave your family?
KIM: I leave my family when I was sixteen because I didn’t want to marry the Vietnamese in Vietnam they were engaged for you to be married and I told my mother I did not want to be married to a Vietnamese person so she gave me money to run away cuz I didn’t want to get married. So I left home and go to Saigon which I been pick up by a madam and sold me to put me in the prostitute house but I was so young and naïve from the village so I didn’t know what they were going to do. I thought people were so nice to me.
DMAE: Can you tell me again, how did that happen?
KIM: Because I was at such a loss because I didn’t know where I need to go and the woman comes and said if you’re hungry I’ll buy you food and she said if you need somewhere to stay you can come to my house and I thought people in the city were so nice. I didn’t know. And she take me to her house, she feed me and give me nice clothes and I thought it was very nice. And then she said now you can go into work to be housekeeper for GIs. You make good money. And I said okay because I need work. And she took me to my husband who I married for twenty-five years.
DMAE: At that time you didn’t know.
KIM: I didn’t speak English so I didn’t know anything.
DMAE: Say that again. You didn’t speak English and you didn’t know who it was.
KIM: I didn’t know so they have young boy who speak English talk to the GI that I was there. And they told me that I supposed to be his housekeeper for twenty dollars a month. And that’s okay by me because I don’t know any different. Twenty dollars is a lot of money because I never see any currency we’re so poor. And so the evening come, I were mopping scrubbing, and the house had four GI that live there. So the other GI had girlfriend that speak English. And they ask me why
TRACK 4 – 5:01
I mopping the floor because I get paid the same. And I said what do you mean get paid the same and they said because you supposed to sleep with them. And I said that’s not what I’m here for, I’m here for housekeeping. So they talked over the women and GI talking about and then that goes that, they didn’t do anything. And he soon later, my husband, put me a mattress on the side of his bed, I can sleep there. And he won’t touch me because I’m just sixteen years old. Puny little kid.
DMAE: Were you married then?
KIM: No. I live with him for three weeks and then I get homesick to go home so when he get paid he give me money to go home. When I go home to my village my father throw me out because I’m shaming the family. Runaway. So he kick me out so I go back to the city and I go back to the same house where I was before and ask if I can be housekeeping. And so I have somewhere to stay.
DMAE: Who did you ask?
KIM: The lady that live there with other GIs to talk English to other GIs so I can live there.
DMAE: Did you ask your husband-to-be?
KIM: Yes.
DMAE: And what did you call him at that time?
K :I call him GI. But I can’t talk to him because I don’t speak a word of English.
DMAE: What did you think of him when you met him?
KIM: Nice. He very nice to me. He good to me. And I stay there for two, three months and we finally doing our thing. And then he have to leave Vietnam to go back to America.
DMAE: What do you mean doing your thing?
KIM: Having sex.
DMAE: Do you want to say that again? Did you fall in love with him?
KIM: I probably fall in love with him because I like him a lot. He really nice to me, I don’t have anybody that nice to me and in Vietnam you’re not allowed to talk to men or touch men or anything. But I live in the same house with him so I like him a lot.
DMAE: How long was it before you became intimate?
KIM: Probably three weeks. Maybe longer.
DMAE: What did people think of you?
KIM: In Vietnam if you live with a GI then they think you’re cheap. But it didn’t bother me because I didn’t know any different, I didn’t know any better. I just need somewhere to stay, food to eat, place to live. So that’s okay with me. I actually locked myself in the house for a long, long, long time, maybe six months and I never come out because I’m afraid of people. And I afraid of being lost because I’ve never been in the city. It take me a long time but I never go outside. I’m afraid of outside.
DMAE: Did you continue being a housekeeper?
KIM: Yes. I continue doing housekeeping so I have a place to stay and he give me twenty dollars a month.
DMAE: What happened when he was supposed to be shipped out?
KIM: When he was shipped out I think my world’s going to end because I’m pregnant. At sixteen, seventeen years old. We cry a lot because we can’t communicate. I can’t talk to him, he can’t talk to me, so we just cry and then he leave me some money. I cry harder because I think he’s buying me out, but I can’t tell him anything because I didn’t speak English then even. So he left and he sent me money. He sent me money so I could live. I had the baby. Then he came back seventeen months later and marry me and bring me to the states when he come back in 1970 he stayed two more years. Then we get married and come to Japan.
DMAE: He must have been a good man.
KIM: He very good. He good. He don’t want to abandon me with a daughter at the time.
DMAE: A lot of men didn’t do that.
KIM: I know. He send me money for a long time. My mother told me to marry him because of my daughter and she said if he wouldn’t have loved you he wouldn’t have come back here. He could have been killed but he come for you so go with him so you can raise your daughter and send her to school, but in the meantime I’m pregnant again.
TRACK 5 – 5:01
So then I pregnant my son. Then my husband then marry. When we leave Vietnam my son then three months old. And my daughter was almost three.
DMAE: When did you get married? What was it like?
KIM: We don’t have any of those things. We go into the courthouse and sign here and I bring two of my friends for witness. We sign and that’s all. We don’t have a proper wedding or anything because we don’t have any money. And I don’t have any friends I need to impress so not something I want to do so we didn’t do it.
DMAE: After you had your first baby.
KIM: We marry when my daughter almost two. Our daughter to be two. And then I pregnant again with my second, my son. And when we come here he three months old.
DMAE: What did your family think of this?
KIM: They don’t talk to me. They disown me, they don’t talk to me because I’m shaming them to have a white husband.
DMAE: Start again with “my family.”
KIM: My father disown me because he never want to talk to me. I’m shaming him for marry to a white man and my mother kind of neutral. She love me, doesn’t matter what. She talk to me. But my father have nothing to do with me.
DMAE: Didn’t want to see your baby?
KIM: He did come when I had my son, because a boy is important. So he came for a visit and say goodbye too, because I’m leaving the country when my son is three months old.
DMAE: That must have hurt.
KIM: I don’t know my father very much because he leave home all the time truck driving so we’re not really close. I’m close to my mother. I do everything for my mother.
DMAE: When did you leave?
KIM: 1970.
DMAE: Can you say I left in 1970 and where did you go to?
KIM: I leave Vietnam in 1970 in October and we come to Yokota near Tokyo, Japan. We live there for five years because my husband in the air force. We stay there for five years and then we go to California, Edwards Air Force Base for another five years.
DMAE: Where’s that?
KIM: California, Mojave Desert, Lancaster.
DMAE: That must have been a big change.
KIM: It was a big change every time because when I live in Japan I really have a hard time. I didn’t speak the language but I look like Japanese people so when I’m out shopping they’d talk to me in Japanese and I really have a hard time because it frustrating to me to not be able to communicate with them and not be able to tell them that I’m not one of them.
DMAE: And then.
KIM: And then when I come to America I have a harder time, but by then I learn English. I become American citizen after two years. When you live in Japan when you marry a serviceman you don’t have to live in America for five years. You can take a test. And I try very hard because my passport expires in two years. If I don’t pass citizenship I would have to go back to Vietnam which I didn’t want to leave my kids.
DMAE: The military made you do that? What was it like being a military bride?
KIM: I don’t know what you compare with so I don’t know what it’s like.
DMAE: Were there a lot of rules?
KIM: Not to me. If they do I wouldn’t know because I don’t speak English.
DMAE: Where did you live?
KIM: Edwards Air Force Base near Lancaster.
DMAE: What was life on the base like?
KIM: Very close neighborhood. I did sewing at home so I met lots of my neighbors and do sewing for them. And I learn how to drive. And I go to school with my kid because I’m a grown-up but I don’t speak English. So I go to school with my daughter.
DMAE: How old was your daughter?
KIM: She was five.
DMAE: So you were in a classroom with five year olds?
KIM: Yeah. So when they’d talk to all the kids they’d say Kimmy or Fon, but when they talk to me they had to say Miss Davis.
TRACK 6 – 5:01
DMAE: Were there other military brides on the base?
KIM: One. But her husband in some kind of trouble and they send her back to Vietnam.
DMAE: So you had a Vietnamese friend?
KIM: We were not friends. I just met her and then they sent her back to Vietnam so we’re not really friend friends.
DMAE: Were there any Vietnamese people you could talk to at that time?
KIM: Not at that time because it was 1970 so not too many Vietnamese come out of the country so I have many American friends but we couldn’t communicate. So we’d just get together and smiles and I talk my language and they talk their language. But food is the same language, and we all eat a lot. So I cook for them, I like to cook and they love Vietnamese food.
DMAE: What was it like for your kids?
KIM: They too young to know.
DMAE: Did you try to do Vietnamese culture in the house?
KIM: I try but it didn’t work. My daughter speak Vietnamese when we leave Vietnam but in one-year time she do all in English.
DMAE: Does she know Vietnamese now?
KIM: She do, yeah. She do. She comprehend little, but she could. My son don’t know any.
DMAE: Did your husband have family?
KIM: His family was from Norman, Oklahoma.
DMAE: My dad was from Telaqua, Oklahoma.
KIM: I guess the family doesn’t accept me as well so I have a very hard time when we go for a visit.
DMAE: Did you go? What was that like?
KIM: The family come and ask what do you think of America? And I said it was so big but it has no rice, because I was concerned about no rice to eat. So we drove from California to Oklahoma but I never see any rice paddy, so I thought oh my god I’ll be so hungry because there’ll be no rice here in America. At that time I was so naïve; I didn’t know that we were imported rice. So I thought I’m going to die here in America because no rice.
DMAE: Were they prejudiced against you? Tell me.
KIM: Yes. Many time we go there my husband go there for family reunion.
DMAE: Tell me where.
KIM: My husband, our family, my husband and I and our two children go to Norman Oklahoma for family reunion – his family. And when I get there his family six brother and sister, no one invite me to their house. And at Christmas morning when my mother in law, who give all the grandchildren twenty dollars, except our two, they get five dollars. And they cry and they don’t know why our grandma only give them five dollars.
DMAE: Did anybody ask why?
KIM: I ask why. I say if you don’t have enough money we didn’t come here for your money. Why you only give them five dollars? No answer, she just left the room.
DMAE: How did she treat you?
KIM: Cold. When I were there in Vietnam culture you supposed to earn your mother in law’s love. So when I was there I buy her little stuffs and bed robes and slippers and things, trying to earn her love. When I leave Oklahoma, she pack everything, put in my car and say I don’t need them. And the stuff I send for her when I’m in Vietnam I mail her some pictures and things like that, it’s all in a shoebox and give them back to me. She said I don’t know all the people in the picture. And I say that was your grandkid. She don’t want them. And so the family had family pictures all over the table. None of our children were there. She don’t want them there.
DMAE: It still hurts.
KIM: It hurts.
DMAE: How does it make you feel?
KIM: I’m still hurt today.
DMAE: Did your kids know this was going on?
KIM: Yeah. They hurt too, when they talk about it.
DMAE: Are they close to grandma? Has she passed on?
KIM: She passed on, but never close, because she don’t accept them. Never did.
DMAE: It must have been hard for your husband too.
KIM: Yeah. But he said you’re married to me, not to them, so don’t worry about what they think.
DMAE: When you want to be accepted I don’t think people know what that feels like.
TRACK 7 – 5:01
KIM: I want to be loved because I had no one here. I want to be accepted and I try but she never did. The whole family, all the brother and sisters the same. They all feel that Vietnamese people are bad people. And they feel at the time that I want to marry with my husband because I want freedom. That I didn’t really love him, I just want to come to America. They assume that, but it’s not true. I’d rather be home with my people. I’m homesick, I don’t know the language, I don’t like the weather, I’m very miserable. The first two years I’d rather die, I was so hurt and so lonesome. And back home, maybe we’re poor but we had love and I got lots of helps. And when I came here I had no one.
DMAE: How did you go to the store? How did you do things?
KIM: I don’t get out of the house. Weather was so cold and I’m not used to the weather. It’s too cold for me and I don’t drive, so I had to wait until husband day off to take me shopping.
DMAE: So you were stuck.
KIM: Yeah, for a long time. When I live in Japan for five years I totally take the bus or depend on my husband, which he have to work extra part-time job because with two kids we didn’t have enough money and I don’t work. I do sewing, I make a little bit.
DMAE: You’re living here. You’re miserable. What’s the lowest point?
KIM: When I took a whole bottle of aspirin. I thought I’ll die and then I’ll go home with my soul. I don’t want to be here no more. And I didn’t die. And then my husband say he want to give me freedom, he want to give me happiness, and if he can’t do that I can go home. So he send me home after two years. And when I go home I wake up to reality. My people not accepted me because I have two white kids and they laugh and are sarcastic because they think that I go to America and I got kicked out and sent home. I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good woman, and my kind don’t accept me no more. Even my family think I’m go home, be a burden to them, that I’m going to eat their food, stay in their house, and I don’t feel accepted. And by then I…. The village didn’t accept me and the family didn’t accept me because I come back with my kids, a big burden for them. They have to feed me and they have to help raise my kids and they want no part of that. But the fear for me, I wake up to reality and see freedom that I have here in America and going home and bombs are going off, neighbors were burned down, GIs get shots, and I get scared then because I had some compare and a taste of two years no war. And I was so scared I couldn’t stay. So I came back and be a good wife.
DMAE: So you were there when it was still going on. What year was that?
KIM: ’70. I leave Vietnam in ’70, I go back in 1972. But war is still going on then until ’75. so I stay a whole month there in ’72. And my kids not get accepted and I worry for them because they’re going to chop their heads off because they’re white kids. And I worry too much and my mother worry too much so she said leave, because no future for you here. We don’t want you here. And she said you have a chance to have freedom which people give their lives to get and they don’t and they die for it and here you have a chance to have good home, good food, have freedom, have freedom for your kids, they go to school, and why do you come back here? She said, I can give you love, but I can’t save you. You dies here. So then I grow up and see reality, I will die there if I stay
TRACK 8 – 5:01
so I leave.
DMAE: Was that the last time you saw your mom?
KIM: Yeah. She pass away after that, so I don’t get to see her. My father pass away too. I don’t get to go home either because the war is still going on and I become American citizen so I’m not allowed to go there in a communist country.
DMAE: Tell me about when you say goodbye to your mom.
KIM: My mother helped raise my daughter so she want to keep my daughter and my daughter don’t want to go. She don’t like America. She call her father American Man. She said grandma, I don’t want to go with American Man, I want to stay here with you. And my mother was so hurt and heartbroken, she loved my daughter. And but she said you go because you belong with your parents, you don’t belong with me. So I say goodbye to my mother and that’s the last time I seen her. Then when I go back in’72 I see her again, then that’s the last time. Because she pass away after that. I couldn’t go home, or I didn’t know about it because the mail takes so long to get here she died three, four months before I get a letter from home.
DMAE: You didn’t know about it for three or four months.
KIM: After she pass away, because the mail takes so long to get here.
DMAE: Do you have a religion at all?
KIM: I’m Buddhist.
DMAE: Do you know Guan Am?
KIM: Yeah, I got all those.
DMAE: How was your spirituality during this time? Did it help?
KIM: Yeah, you have to pray you’re Buddhist. Everything I do, even up today I’m still believing Karma you have to earn your good Karma. So everything I do I truly believe that, so I do lots of good thing to earn my good Karma so I can be healthy.
DMAE: So you came back and where did you come back to?
KIM: 1972, then we live in Japan for another three years. Then we come to US, Edwards Air Force base in California in 1975. Then we live there until ’79. And my now ex retire from the Air Force, then we move to Oregon.
DMAE: I’m confused.
KIM: ’70 to ’72 we live in Japan. And then I go to Vietnam. Then I come back to Japan for three more years until ’75, and then I went to Edwards from ’75 to ’79 and then he retire so we move to Oregon in ’79.
DMAE: Here?
KIM: Yes. And I stay in Eugene all this time.
DMAE: What brought you guys?
KIM: He don’t like the desert. He want tree and he want green and he just five year in California was so miserable and he wanted to go to Oregon. And every year we’d take a month vacation and go to Oregon and just camp out. He loved that.
DMAE: What was it like to be Vietnamese here?
KIM: Bad.
DMAE: Describe.
KIM: When I’m in California I have my own dress shop and I love my shop, but because my husband want to move to Oregon so I thought well, home where you make it, so I didn’t mind to move to Oregon so we moved here to Eugene. Then I couldn’t get work. I’m more than qualified to get sewing job, but no one give me a job. I get to the point that I said I call for the job but I’m Vietnamese, will that make any difference? Because I’m so hurt that they not hire me, they not accepting me, and they don’t like Asians. So I couldn’t get work for a long time and I couldn’t even do sewing at home because no one wanted to come to my house.
DMAE: Were there any other Vietnamese?
KIM: Not at that time. I didn’t know anyone here. And I was so miserable I wanted to move back to California. But I’ll stay. Then I get a job. I make jeans. I sew zippers for jeans for four and a half cents per zipper. I do four, five hundred zippers a day to make twenty-four dollars and I was happy because that’s lots of money to me.
DMAE: That’s hard work. Do you have Vietnamese friends now?
KIM: Because I live in Oakridge, no Vietnamese there.
TRACK 9 – 5:01
DMAE: There are Vietnamese here.
KIM: Yes, but because the lifestyle so busy and so I come to Eugene, I go straight to work and when I get off work I go straight back to Oakridge where I work.
DMAE: Why do you live in Oakridge?
KIM: Houses are cheap there. And my now-husband owns a house there so I live there.
DMAE: So you got divorced at some point?
KIM: I get divorced in ’92 after 25 years of marry.
DMAE: Why?
KIM: The kids were grow up and we kind of grow apart. We didn’t see together anymore. My ex-husband want to move to Belize, Central America, because he getting tired of US and he want to go there and I say if I want to be poor and needy I’ll go to Vietnam. At least I talk the language. But I don’t want to be in either place. I love here in America. I love Eugene. I want to be here. And I said I don’t want to go. And he said well, I go with or without you. And I was hurt so much that I said then, you go without me. So we get divorced and we go.
DMAE: Have you been back to Vietnam?
KIM: I did in 1993 for a month. I took my two children. My daughter is now 37, my son now 34, he be 35 this year. He born in 1970. We go to where I grow up. I want to show them that and we go there. But it’s so sad to go there because you’re home but you’re not because the family is not there anymore. The family that my mother live, it’s still there. I get to go in and take pictures and so on but nobody know who I am because it’s been 30 years since I leave Vietnam. So I don’t know anyone there. And I visit a home and then I visit the grave. It’s so sad. I only stay one day in my village because I don’t know anyone there to stay longer.
DMAE: Didn’t have any family at all.
KIM: No. They all moved and I leave home so long the younger generation don’t know who I am and the older don’t remember. And most of them die already.
DMAE: The way you describe your life it sounds like you’re without a country.
KIM: I feel belong here in America. I like it here. If I’m poor when I’m old I can go back to Vietnam and live with very little money, but I never have that dream or thought or want to because I be all alone in my own home in my own country. So I like it here.
DMAE: What is the stereotype about a war bride?
KIM: I think people don’t understand not everyone married to GI is prostitute. I think they assume that either work at a bar or prostitute so they look like you cheap, you low. You not …? And I stand that many times.
DMAE: Do people assume that you’re a prostitute?
KIM: Oh yeah. They ask…
DMAE: Have they said that?
KIM: If I’m a ‘working girl’ they ask me. Working meaning prostitute. And I say at some time or another somebody have to do something for a living. We do it because we have to, not because we like to, but whatever it takes to provide for the family, to get food for the brother and sister, to get food for the parent, and girl in Vietnam wasn’t worth anything anyway so we have to do that then. That’s just a job, just like any other job that you do to survive.
DMAE: Did your son or daughter ask you that? What did you tell them?
KIM: I tell my kids that their father bought me for twenty dollars. And sometimes they don’t like that.
TRACK 10 – 5:01
Daddy kind of a bad boy. But he good to me, we were married for 25 years. But when the kids grew up and moved out we started to grow apart. I miss all my teenagers, all my childhood I never date, I never know anything but my husband, and so I just wanted to be alone. I just wanted to have my own self, do what I want to do, eat when I want to, sleep when I want to, without somebody tell me how to dress, how to eat, how to sleep. Because my husband is eight years older than I am, so he tell me what to do all the time, and even those twenty years later I’m kind of grow up but he still treat me the same.
DMAE: Is that your new husband?
KIM: No, my ex-husband.
DMAE: Tell me, how long were you single?
KIM: Five years. I divorce and I be single for five years. But I enjoyed that because I can go and stay with brother and sister and work and do what I want to do, which I love that time.
DMAE: Your siblings are here?
KIM: They’re here, yeah.
DMAE: Tell me about that.
KIM: My older brother had nine kids and lives in San Jose, California. My younger sister had three daughters, lives in Dallas, Texas. And they came over twenty years.
DMAE: How did they come over?
KIM: I sponsored them.
DMAE: Describe that because I didn’t know that part.
KIM: In 1975 when I lost contact with my family for a long time, maybe three years, I thought they were all dead. And one day I get a letter from my sister and I was so happy I cry. I couldn’t even read, I couldn’t even call my husband and tell him I got a letter from my sister. And then we drive back and forth for many years so I have to go to embassy to do sponsor paper, which tell you have to have so much money in the bank and you guarantee that they’re not going to come to America and draw on welfare or take any assistance. I have to be see through that they have job, they got helps and so the Presbyterian Church, who is my co-sponsor, they will see that they have work, without going to welfare.
DMAE: That must have helped so much to have your brother and sister here.
KIM: I was so lucky because I ran a duplex. And I ran a duplex next door for my brother and family to live so we so enjoy. We have dinner every night, we go fishing, we then I take them sightseeing. I have so much to show them and I really enjoy that. And because they never seen anything like what we have here in America. So everything I show them they so enjoy and be happy.
DMAE: Was that your happiest time?
KIM: My happier time yeah, when my family come. And they come just before Thanksgiving, so when we have Thanksgiving, that’s a bigger Thanksgiving we have for my brother and sister. And they only live here two year in Oregon, then they move on.
DMAE: How do you stay in touch?
KIM: We talk on the phone a lot and then I go visit and they come visit, so we see two three times a year. And we talk on the phone every week.
DMAE: Back to do they know your story?
KIM: Yeah. We all talk about yeah they know. But there’s nothing new to. All normal story. That’s just how it is. Right now today in Vietnam still is the same.
DMAE: In what way?
KIM: The poor family will sell their daughter for money. So the family can eat and go on survive, so the girl feel I didn’t worth anything, so if I can sacrifice to give my family the better lifestyle, I’ll do it. And so it happens today.
DMAE: Do you think there are military brides that were prostitutes?
KIM: Yes. I would say half of the brides were prostitutes. Some were work on base, some work at a hospital, and some got sold.
TRACK 11 – 5:01
But that’s just a fact of life there, so I don’t think that’s bad or good. That’s just the way we live.
DMAE: Why is there so much shame?
KIM: Shame to the family that not endorse that kind of thing. And they’d rather go hungry than have their daughter prostitute. So if you do it so your family can live good lifestyle you don’t tell them. You say I work at a post office or I do scrubbing, mopping for rich people for money, I work at a bookstore, little job like that.
DMAE: What do you want to tell women who were prostitutes and got married? What do you want to tell those brides?
KIM: Always better future. Just hang in there. Some never get out of it, some never get better. They die from being sick.
DMAE: What I’m talking about is women who got married but maybe feel shame?
KIM: Well, those who feel shame never talk about it so they make up story from good lifestyle or wherever they are, but deep down they know, some of them.
DMAE: Do you know any?
KIM: No. Not many Vietnamese live around here.
DMAE: So you were single for five years and then what happened?
KIM: I met my now-husband, he just wanted a companion to go to New Zealand. And so I thought hey, that’s a vacation dream I could never afford to do it, I’ll go. Then we get to know each other. I date him for two years, then we get married.
DMAE: When did you go to New Zealand?
KIM: 1992.
DMAE: What did you think?
KIM: I’ll go again.
DMAE: Where did you go?
KIM: New Zealand, where were we? We go to both island. We get in at Christchurch and we rent a car and we travel for two weeks. We drive, stop, sleep, eat and drive some more.
DMAE: Did he propose?
KIM: Well, we date for a long time and I told him if he don’t get married I’ll move on because I’m getting old, I need to get married. And so he said he’d think about it. So I go on to Texas to go out of the area because if we’re not married I have nothing to stay in the Eugene area. So I go to Fort Dallas Texas and he fly there and he said if you’ll fly back with me I’ll marry you. So I fly back with him and we fly into Idaho. We get married in Caulwell, Idaho. He’s 72.
DMAE: And how long have you been married?
KIM: 7 years.
DMAE: How’s it going?
KIM: It’s going good.
DMAE: You seem pretty happy to me.
KIM: We’re okay. We are two grown-ups now.
DMAE: Do you have anything you want to let people know about military brides?
KIM: You lucky to have someone love you and want to marry you and want to give you freedom. Be nice to them.
DMAE: What do you want America to know?
KIM: We’re not all bad. We’re not all prostitute. We’re women in a poor country and circumstantial thing happen but we make the best and want to have a good life. We work. Take care of husband, take care of children. We’re human. We do what we do know how to make a family happy. It doesn’t matter where you from, who you at or what you do. I’m in here. One minute.
TRACK 12 – 4:21
DMAE: You were saying some good stuff.
KIM: We are human. And we want to have a good life, a good home. Good wife, good mother. Sometimes things don’t go our way but we try and go from there.
DMAE: Anything about the children of military brides?
KIM: I think the children move around too much. It hurts for them because they don’t have any friends, so I don’t have any friends because everyone I know in two, three year we move because I’m kind of afraid to make friends because when we leave them I’m so hurt. So I don’t have any friends, I don’t even have any friends today because I’m afraid to.
DMAE: Why are you afraid to?
KIM: Because when you’re close and you’re good friends, they’ll move or you’ll move. And I don’t like that feeling. So I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any friends because I’m afraid I’ll get in close with them and then they’ll move.
DMAE: But you’ve been here for twenty years.
KIM: I know. But like now, when the Vietnamese people come, my ex used to work at the social security office and he used to know all the Vietnamese come into Eugene because they’d go in for a social security card. And he came home with different phone numbers and he volunteered me to volunteer to take them to doctors and shopping and all that stuff. But now I work full time, I can’t do that. I don’t do that anymore. But those who were here, and I had to help them, they seemed to go on with their lives and no one had time.
DMAE: I think it’s sad.
KIM: Where I live now, I’m so content with my lifestyle. I love my job, and I am an outdoor person so every chance I have I take a ride in the mountains or in fishing season I’ll fish, in hunting season I’ll hunt, so I didn’t really want to have time for friend because I’d rather contend with my outdoor activity.
DMAE: Is Oakridge nice?
KIM: Oakridge is nice. Quiet. Everyone know everyone. You better do good. They know.
DMAE: Small town. Is there anything you want to say?
KIM: America was the land of opportunity. Women have a chance here to get good jobs, be somebody important and earn respect, which we don’t have in Vietnam. You make good money too, I like that. And our lives are equal here. We don’t have to walk six pace behind, we don’t have to keep our voice down, we can say what we think, do what we like. That I like.
DMAE: What has your contribution to America been?
KIM: I work all the years I come to America. Pay lots of taxes.
CUTS MADE:
KIM DENHAM: I’m Kim Denham. I live in Eugene twenty years. I came to US in 1979.
My father was a truck driver and my mother was homemaker. Three children, my older brother, me, and my younger sister. My brother now live in California, my sister live in Dallas Texas and I live in Eugene.
When I was growing up in Vietnam we were very poor. My father would go away long long time, truck drive,r some time come home. And my mother barely make us enough food to eat, so we’re hungry lots of time. And for me to go in school I have to be top three student to get free uniform for school.
I leave my family when I was sixteen because I didn’t want to marry the Vietnamese in Vietnam they were engaged for you to be married and I told my mother I did not want to be married to a Vietnamese person so she gave me money to run away cuz I didn’t want to get married. So I left home and go to Saigon which I been pick up by a madam and sold me to put me in the prostitute house but I was so young and naïve from the village so I didn’t know what they were going to do. I thought people were so nice to me.
Because I was at such a loss because I didn’t know where I need to go and the woman comes and said if you’re hungry I’ll buy you food and she said if you need somewhere to stay you can come to my house and I thought people in the city were so nice. I didn’t know. And she take me to her house, she feed me and give me nice clothes and I thought it was very nice. And then she said now you can go into work to be housekeeper for GIs. You make good money. And I said okay because I need work. And she took me to my husband who I married for twenty five years.
I live with him for three weeks and then I get homesick to go home so when he get paid he give me money to go home. When I go home to my village my father throw me out because I’m shaming the family. Runaway. So he kick me out so I go back to the city and I go back to the same house where I was before and ask if I can be housekeeping. And so I have somewhere to stay.
In Vietnam if you live with a GI then they think you’re cheap. But it didn’t bother me because I didn’t know any different, I didn’t know any better. I just need somewhere to stay, food to eat, place to live. So that’s okay with me. I actually locked myself in the house for a long, long, long time, maybe six months and I never come out because I’m afraid of people. And I afraid of being lost because I’ve never been in the city. It take me a long time but I never go outside. I’m afraid of outside.
When he was shipped out I think my world’s going to end because I’m pregnant. At sixteen, seventeen years old. We cry a lot because we can’t communicate. I can’t talk to him, he can’t talk to me, so we just cry and then he leave me some money. I cry harder because I think he’s buying me out, but I can’t tell him anything because I didn’t speak English then even. So he left and he sent me money. He sent me money so I could live. I had the baby. Then he came back seventeen months later and marry me and bring me to the states when he come back in 1970 he stayed two more years. Then we get married and come to Japan.
And then when I come to America I have a harder time, but by then I learn English. I become American citizen after two years. When you live in Japan when you marry a serviceman you don’t have to live in America for five years. You can take a test. And I try very hard because my passport expires in two years. If I don’t pass citizenship I would have to go back to Vietnam which I didn’t want to leave my kids.
My husband, our family, my husband and I and our two children go to Norman Oklahoma for family reunion – his family. And when I get there his family six brother and sister, no one invite me to their house. And at Christmas morning when my mother in law, who give all the grandchildren twenty dollars, except our two, they get five dollars. And they cry and they don’t know why our grandma only give them five dollars.
I want to be loved because I had no one here. I want to be accepted and I try but she never did. The whole family, all the brother and sisters the same. They all feel that Vietnamese people are bad people. And they feel at the time that I want to marry with my husband because I want freedom. That I didn’t really love him, I just want to come to America. They assume that, but it’s not true. I’d rather be home with my people. I’m homesick, I don’t know the language, I don’t like the weather, I’m very miserable. The first two years I’d rather die, I was so hurt and so lonesome. And back home, maybe we’re poor but we had love and I got lots of helps. And when I came here I had no one.
When I took a whole bottle of asprin. I thought I’ll die and then I’ll go home with my soul. I don’t want to be here no more. And I didn’t die. And then my husband say he want to give me freedom, he want to give me happiness, and if he can’t do that I can go home. So he send me home after two years. And when I go home I wake up to reality. My people not accepted me because I have two white kids and they laugh and are sarcastic because they think that I go to America and I got kicked out and sent home. I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good woman, and my kind don’t accept me no more. Even my family think I’m go home, be a burden to them, that I’m going to eat their food, stay in their house, and I don’t feel accepted. And by then I…. The village didn’t accept me and the family didn’t accept me because I come back with my kids, a big burden for them. They have to feed me and they have to help raise my kids and they want no part of that. But the fear for me, I wake up to reality and see freedom that I have here in America and going home and bombs are going off, neighbors were burned down, GIs get shots, and I get scared then because I had some compare and a taste of two years no war. And I was so scared I couldn’t stay. So I came back and be a good wife.
I think people don’t understand not everyone married to GI is prostitute. I think they assume that either work at a bar or prostitute so they look like you cheap, you low. You not …? And I stand that many times.
If I’m a ‘working girl’ they ask me. Working meaning prostitute. And I say at some time or another somebody have to do something for a living. We do it because we have to, not because we like to, but whatever it takes to provide for the family, to get food for the brother and sister, to get food for the parent, and girl in Vietnam wasn’t worth anything anyway so we have to do that then. That’s just a job, just like any other job that you do to survive.
We’re not all bad. We’re not all prostitute. We’re women in a poor country and circumstantial thing happen but we make the best and want to have a good life. We work. Take care of husband, take care of children. We’re human. We do what we do know how to make a family happy. It doesn’t matter where you from, who you at or what you do. I’m in here. One minute.
We are human. And we want to have a good life, a good home. Good wife, good mother. Sometimes things don’t go our way but we try and go from there.