DescriptionThis interview consists of one video recording. Dai Le was interviewed on 25 June 2019 at Studio 2166 in the Whitlam Library, Cabramatta by Alinde Bierhuizen.Interview SummaryDai Le, her mother and two younger sisters were among the first refugees to escape Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. The Vietnam War between the Communist North and the US-supported South lasted almost twenty years and culminated in the Communist take-over of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City.
Dai was seven years old when she escaped the chaos of war by boat. She lived in refugee camps in the Philippines with her mother and sisters, waiting for her father to join them.
‘But we waited for a few years and he never turned up and lots of families were waiting for their fathers, uncles, but obviously, because of the war, they never made it.’
After living in a state of limbo, Dai and her family escaped a second time by boat. Whilst crossing the treacherous South China Sea in a small vessel, they got caught in a storm:
‘I remember the boat just constantly hitting the water so hard and I remember my face almost touching the water.’ ‘At that moment there was a huge fear of the darkness, a huge fear of the water because we couldn’t swim. But then the realisation that maybe we were going to die anyway.’
After the storm subsided they got picked up by a patrol boat and taken into Hong Kong harbour, alongside thousands of other Vietnamese refugees. Eventually Dai’s family was accepted to be resettled in the USA, but her mother decided otherwise:‘She said to me: “There is an island, a big island, with the best education system in the world ... I believe this is the best place for you girls to grow up ...”. That island happened to be Australia.’
The Vietnamese community is currently the largest migrant group in Fairfield City, with over 30,000 people born in Vietnam living in the area, predominantly in Cabramatta. Like many Vietnamese boat refugees, Dai and her family were not able to bring anything with them when they fled, except for these treasured photographs.
Dai Le Oral History (25/06/2019). Fairfield City Heritage Collection, accessed 15/01/2026, https://heritagecollection.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/886
