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Photo: Leia Onofrey
“Fishermen is a hard job. It was hard here; it was hard in Vietnam.”
Giao Dang
Giao is a Vietnamese-American retired scalloper who sometimes still fishes recreationally. In this excerpt, he recalls fleeing Vietnam by boat, spending time in a refugee camp, and then coming to the United States in 1983 where he first worked in a factory processing spinach. He describes getting a job on a scallop boat and explains the differences between scalloping in Vietnam and the U.S, namely the dangers of diving for scallops in Vietnam instead of using a net as is done in the U.S.
This interview was originally conducted in Vietnamese.
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Background Information:
Giao came to the U.S. in 1983 after the end of the Vietnam War as part of a generation of “boat people.” The war and abrupt withdrawal of U.S forces in 1975 left the region destabilized. From 1975 to 1995, more than three million people fled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, often in overcrowded, makeshift boats bound for refugee camps in Thailand, Malaysia or the Philippines. Some were sponsored by the Unitarian churches in New Bedford and Fairhaven. The local Vietnamese community came mainly from Phú Quý, an island in Southeast Vietnam, where most people grew up fishing and farming. Like Giao, many of the men now make a living scalloping.
