River Patrol Boat stops a small Vietnamese boat. River patrol boat on the Mekong Delta. Photo from the U.S. Navy All Hands magazine July 1969.

Patrol Boat Stop on the Mekong River

(This excerpt from Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands is a first-place winner in the Southern California Genealogical Society’s 2014 GENEii Family History Writing Awards and appears in the 2015 Summer edition of The Searcher) After dinner, Má decides who’s coming to the countryside in the morning. I try to go whenever I can. I’d rather swim and fish all day…

Boat in a stream on Cồn Tàu (Ship Island) in the Mekong Delta.

Unconditional Surrender (30 April 1975)

On the 29th of April 1975, helicopters evacuated people from the roof of the U.S. Embassy before the fall of Saigon. Twelve-year-old Luong La stood on a dock on the bank of the Mekong River and watched the entire Navy go out to the ocean that day. Here’s his story of the days leading to South…