Historical Background

The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and Vietnam’s reunification under a postwar communist regime triggered a major exodus. Its scale was unprecedented in Vietnamese history. The exodus followed widespread state repression in the former South, including the internment of more than a million people in re-education camps,^{Footnote 6} the forced de-urbanization of another million to the New Economic Zones,^{Footnote 7} the execution of 65,000 citizens,^{Footnote 8} curtailment of individual and religious liberties, nationalization of commerce and industry,^{Footnote 9} and discrimination against all those associated with the former government as well as against ethnic Chinese and Amerasians.^{Footnote 10} Over 700,000 people had fled the country by the middle of 1979.^{Footnote 11} The plight of boat people^{Footnote 12} received widespread recognition. The international community responded with “one of the longest-running migration and resettlement programs in the modern era,”^{Footnote 13} encompassing two major United Nations conferences in 1979 and 1989, and stretching for twenty-five years from 1975 to the closure of the last refugee camp in Hong Kong in 2000. More than two million Vietnamese left their homeland in the two decades following the end of the war. The main countries of resettlement were the United States, Australia, Canada, and France; however Vietnamese communities were established in countries as diverse as Israel and Norway. The toll of this mass migration in terms of lives lost was immense and one of the great tragedies of this exodus is that the number of deaths will never truly be known. The losses of boat people are estimated at between 100,000 to a million in the postwar years.^{Footnote 14} Postwar communist Vietnam was therefore characterized by widespread human rights violations including forced displacement, forced labour, internment without trial, and discrimination against individuals and families on political and ethnic grounds.^{Footnote 15} These measures resulted in the disruption of social and familial networks in the former South as relatives disappeared in re-education camps, the New Economic Zones, or as escapees. The displacement of Vietnamese refugees as a consequence of state repression addresses central transitional justice concerns relating to the legacies of human rights abuses.

In Australia, the Vietnamese community grew from 1,000 in 1975 to approximately 233,000 in 2011 or just over one percent of the Australian population.^{Footnote 16} There were three main waves of Vietnamese arrivals: the first, in 1975–1976, consisted of a small group of 539 well-educated refugees;^{Footnote 17} the second included many ethnic Chinese escaping from Vietnam after the closure of private businesses in 1978 and the border war between Vietnam and China that same year, with numbers peaking at 12,915 in 1979–1980;^{Footnote 18} and the third consisted of so-called “economic refugees”^{Footnote 19} with numbers peaking at 13,248 in 1990–1991.^{Footnote 20} By 1996, a total of 150,000 Vietnamese had resettled in Australia.^{Footnote 21} Vietnamese refugees formed the first and most difficult test case of the abolition of the White Australia policy,^{Footnote 22} and “received exceptionally high attention in the media and in public discourse, particularly surrounding the debates on Asian immigration.”^{Footnote 23}

Under Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser,^{Footnote 24} Australia responded generously to the Indochinese refugee crisis in 1978–1982 by accepting the largest number of refugees per head of population of all countries.^{Footnote 25} The Vietnamese in Australia now constitute a well-established community.^{Footnote 26} Fraser believed that Australia had an ethical obligation to take in Vietnamese refugees considering the scale of the humanitarian disaster after 1975.^{Footnote 27} The moral function of asylum as a form of reparation, suggests James Souter, “stems from a special obligation on the part of states to provide asylum to refugees for whose lack of state protection they are responsible, whether through military intervention, support for oppressive regimes, or imposition of damaging economic policies.”^{Footnote 28} Under Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 however, Australia deliberately restricted or prevented the entry of Vietnamese refugees. Such a historical analysis reveals that offering asylum as a form of reparation is time sensitive. It often requires immediate action in the wake of conflict.

It is against this background that I focus on the reactions of senior Australian figures to the end of the Vietnam War and the ensuing refugee crisis: the first is Denis Warner, a well-known journalist and author; the second is Geoffrey Price, the last Australian ambassador to South Vietnam; and the third is Sir James Plimsoll who was, in 1975, the Australian ambassador to the Soviet Union. All were responding to the Australian government’s reactions to events in Vietnam and the growing number of refugees from South Vietnam.

Australian Perspectives: The Papers of Denis Warner

Denis Warner was Southeast Asian correspondent for the Reporter, editor of the Asia Pacific Defence Reporter, and the author of several books including The Last Confucian (1963) and Disaster in the Pacific (1992). He left Saigon on 25 April 1975, five days before the city fell, on the last Australian plane with Ambassador Price. Warner notes in his memoir that he left “with immense sadness [and] with tears in [his] eyes.”^{Footnote 29} Warner’s papers contain a vast amount of material on Vietnam. He wrote letters of reference for individual Vietnamese and contacted international organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to ask for information about the missing relatives of refugees. Among Warner’s papers, the letters he received from Australians who were touched by the plight of the refugees were particularly compelling.

The following extract is from one such letter. It is from Margaret Grouse, whose husband was an academic at the University of New South Wales. Her letter is dated 6 April 1976 and concerns the thirty-five married Vietnamese students in Australia who tried to bring their families over. Two of these students were in New College, where her husband was Dean. She writes:

This letter is cited at length because it provides a vivid portrayal of the chaos surrounding the last days of Saigon in April 1975 and demonstrates the extent to which individual Australians—in this case, a small group of concerned academics and academics’ wives—went in their efforts to assist Vietnamese refugees.

Warner’s papers contain his detailed statement to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence on the issue of Vietnamese refugees. He appeared before the Committee on 13 October 1975. Two points in his statement stand out. The first is that Australia evacuated only one Vietnamese staff member from the Australian Embassy in Saigon. Warner states,

The second is that Australia did not help any of the Vietnamese who had worked closely with the Australian Army.

He continues:

The issue here is that of loyalty. Warner believed that Australia should have repaid loyalty with loyalty. Of the prime minister’s role in all of this, Warner’s submission reads:

Warner’s statement underlines his concerns regarding those who had worked closely with Australian forces in South Vietnam. He knew that they would be at particular risk from the incoming communist regime—a belief that was borne out by the postwar internment of more than a million former soldiers, public servants, and teachers in re-education camps. Warner’s representation to the Committee links to Souter’s theory regarding the provision of sanctuary as a means of reparation. Warner believed that Australia had a moral obligation to evacuate the Vietnamese staff of the Australian Embassy as well as all those who had assisted Australian troops during the war. “Asylum should be conceived not only as playing a ‘palliative’ humanitarian role or expressing condemnation,” writes Souter, “but also as potentially providing a means by which states can rectify the harm they caused to individuals by turning them into refugees.”^{Footnote 36} Warner’s statement aligns closely with Souter’s argument regarding the reparative role of asylum.

The Fall of Saigon: Difficult Choices

Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces on 30 April 1975. The city’s collapse led to the first wave of refugees from South Vietnam. In Australia, the Report of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence on the issue of Vietnamese refugees was published in 1976. The report was highly critical of the Australian government’s actions. Five of its findings were notable: first, it referred to the difficulty of obtaining accurate information and to conflicting and incomplete evidence provided by government departments, voluntary organizations, and individuals;^{Footnote 37} second, the admission criteria for Vietnamese refugees were announced too late on 22 April 1975;^{Footnote 38} third, every decision was centralized in Canberra, and this impeded the work of the Australian Embassy in Saigon;^{Footnote 39} fourth, only one Vietnamese member of staff was evacuated (with his wife and child);^{Footnote 40} and last, the Australian government had a moral obligation to assist in the evacuation of Vietnamese but had deliberately delayed in order to minimize the number of refugees Australia would have to contend with.^{Footnote 41}

Official records on the fall of Saigon that were released after the end of their thirty-year embargo not only confirm these findings but also provide considerable additional detail. The documents include secret cables that were sent between Canberra and the Australian Embassy in Saigon and confidential ministerial submissions relating to Vietnamese refugees.

Geoffrey Price, the Australian ambassador to South Vietnam, cabled Canberra on 20 April 1975:

And further on,

Canberra cabled back on 21 April:

It should be noted that there were approximately 350 Vietnamese students in Australia at the time, and that the great majority of these were unmarried and childless. Phan Dong Bich, for example, who was a Colombo Plan student in Sydney in 1975, said that students were frantic about their families in Vietnam and organized demonstrations, petitions, and hunger strikes.^{Footnote 45} “Family” for these students meant parents and siblings, but these fell completely outside the criteria set by the Australian government.

Peter Edwards was right to note that Ambassador Price was “caught between horrific political and moral pressures, while he and his staff struggled to operate in a capital facing imminent defeat and while he tried to comply with instructions from Canberra that in many cases he thought were shameful, contradictory or impossible of achievement.”^{Footnote 46} Like Warner, Price was fully cognizant of the fact that the Vietnamese staff of the Australian Embassy would be targets for communist reprisals after the fall of Saigon. As head of mission, he had a moral obligation to protect his staff (whether Australian or Vietnamese). The Australian government bore direct responsibility for the fate of locally engaged staff working in one of its missions overseas. However, as the cable of 21 April 1975 reveals, Canberra specifically ordered Price not to admit any Vietnamese embassy staff to Australia. Price’s son Christopher published a letter to this effect in The Australian in 2005:

Geoffrey Price may have obeyed his government’s instructions, but he was haunted by this decision for the rest of his life. It was clearly a matter of conscience for him.

Vietnamese Refugees in 1975: The Archival Record and the Papers of Sir James Plimsoll

The cables dealing with the fall of Saigon were distressing enough, but it was in another set of documents on policies relating to Indochinese refugees that I first saw my father’s name and uncovered the following information on Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s actions. While Whitlam’s lack of sympathy towards Vietnamese refugees in 1975 is well known, these papers reveal the extent to which he had a direct hand in refusing them entry. The documents show that Whitlam personally rejected Vietnamese refugee applications that had already been approved by his foreign minister, Don Willesee.

Whitlam’s annotations appear in a confidential document entitled “Vietnamese Refugees: Applications by Former Vietnamese Diplomatic Staff, Now in Third Countries, to Enter Australia” containing two applications for entry approved by ministers, and fourteen applications approved by the foreign minister.^{Footnote 48} Whitlam wrote “No” next to most names: an example of lives determined by a stroke of the pen. His handwritten annotations appear in blue on the left-hand margin.^{Footnote 49} He provides no explanations for his decisions. Out of fourteen refugee applications, Whitlam rejected eleven outright, wrote “Possible” for two, and “Not at present” for a third. My family was one of these two “Possibles.” My father’s is the last name on the first page:

It appears that Whitlam put “Possible” because of those favourable comments by Plimsoll and Shann—he underlined those sentences. However, this “Possible” was conditional on my father signing a special undertaking. A later document dated 11 June 1975 by K. H. Rogers^{Footnote 51} states:

Whitlam’s handwriting is visible in the margin: “Admit both” for my father and Mr. Ban, and “No” for Mr. Tran Van Ngo, initialed on 13 June 1975.^{Footnote 53} The original of my father’s signed undertaking is also in the archives:

The irony of a democratic government insisting on this undertaking when he was a political refugee from a communist state did not escape my father. It was an added humiliation that he had to bear on top of the loss of his country, government, and career. My father stressed how grateful he was to the Fraser government that came to power at the end of 1975, because Michael MacKellar, the minister for immigration under Fraser, sent him a letter of apology in 1976, which states,

In all, seven restricted cables dealt with my father. The cables also reveal that he had said that “his family would not become a charge on the state,” and that he interceded on behalf of “those members of his former staff and…Vietnamese students in Japan who wanted to migrate to Australia.”^{Footnote 56}

As his daughter, I was privy to some of this history, but it is one thing to be told about past events, and quite another to see them recorded in such detail in the archives. The difference in these distinct ways of knowing my own past were illuminated starkly when the “formal” came face to face with the “personal.” My father had conveyed that the process of seeking asylum in Australia had been difficult. The material in the archives not only confirms this but also goes considerably further. With the recognition of my father’s name, his signature, and that list of “Nos” by Whitlam came the painful realization that our family almost did not become Australian—that Australia nearly rejected us and, in fact, did reject the other Vietnamese refugees whose names figure on that list. That one word, “Possible,” was the factor that differentiated our trajectory from that of the other refugees on the list. Terry Eastwood suggests that archives can provide a “retrospective understanding of the actions of government [and] foster the recognition and identity of cultural communities.”^{Footnote 57} These archives reveal the actions of the Whitlam government and more specifically of Whitlam himself towards Vietnamese refugees in 1975. Vietnamese refugees whose applications for asylum were approved by Foreign Minister Don Willesee were then denied entry by Whitlam. “Without archives,” suggest Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook, “memory falters…Archives counter these losses. Archives contain the evidence of what went before.”^{Footnote 58} Reading through these hundreds of pages of documents, I sought to reflect on the positive elements that could be drawn from the archival record.

First, I noted that senior public servants did their best in the face of the prime minister’s obduracy. Those who prepared ministerial submissions presented Vietnamese applicants and their families in as positive a light as possible. In a submission dated 6 May 1975, H. Gilchrist, First Assistant Secretary to the Legal and Treaties Division, wrote:

Second, I was touched by the cables Ambassadors Plimsoll and Shann sent on behalf of my family. Both were prominent senior diplomats—Shann had made his reputation in Indonesia in the 1960s^{Footnote 60} and was the Australian ambassador to Japan, while Plimsoll was then Australian ambassador to the Soviet Union.^{Footnote 61} Plimsoll had met my father in India. He cabled Canberra on 3 May:

Four days later, Shann cabled from Tokyo:

Sir Arthur Tange was at the time Secretary of the Department of Defence.^{Footnote 64} Both Plimsoll and Shann cabled strongly worded endorsements of my father’s application to Canberra, and it seems clear from the archival record that that was the only reason why Whitlam wrote “Possible” next to my father’s name.

In the midst of this research, I discovered that the National Library held the papers of Sir James Plimsoll (1917–1987). The archival record led me to consult manuscripts that I would not have examined otherwise. There was no obvious connection between Plimsoll and Vietnamese refugees—only the mention of one visit he made to Vietnam in 1967. I returned to the Manuscripts Collection and searched for traces of my parents amidst these papers. To my delight, I found several. The first was the following photograph of Plimsoll and my parents taken in New Delhi in 1964.^{Footnote 65}

Sir James Plimsoll with Nguyen Trieu Dan and Huynh Bich Cam in New Delhi, 1964. NLA MS 8048/14/8.

In a separate folder, there was a letter from my father dated 27 November 1964, which makes a logical companion to the photograph:

My father was thirty-four at the time, and my mother not yet twenty-four. They had married in London after my mother’s graduation from Cambridge in 1962 and arrived in India at the end of 1963. Plimsoll is described in a recent study as

I went through Plimsoll’s papers and diaries—many of which were partly burnt, with charred covers and pages following a fire at the Australian Embassy in Moscow in 1977—and found further references to my parents. He had extended invitations to them, and recorded receptions that he attended including the one at Vietnam House where the photograph was taken. He referred to my father by his full name and position (Plimsoll’s diaries were appointment diaries—he did not record his thoughts or feelings). In his 1975 diary, during his Moscow appointment, he recorded on Friday 2 May:

I reviewed my notes and found that he had acted swiftly: he cabled Canberra on Saturday 3 May, the day after receiving my father’s telegram. He was truly a good man, and I wish I could have met him to thank him. His last public appointment was as Governor of Tasmania, and he died in Hobart in 1987.