Oral History of Thai Quoc Ha

An oral history with Dr. Thai Quoc Ha, born in 1962 in Saigon, Vietnam. His parents fled North Vietnam in 1954 to come to the South where his father worked as the head nurse for Hong Bang Hospital in Saigon. He, the youngest in the family, was 13 years old when Saigon fell to the communists, but because one of his brothers was in reeducation camp, they did not leave until 1978. His oldest brother, who was a civil engineer, and some other people built a boat to escape. He and 9 other relatives, including his 2 brothers and 1 sister, left Can Tho in 1978. They were at sea for 2 days and 3 nights before they landed on the shores of Malaysia. He stayed in a refugee camp in Pulau Bidong for 8 months before reuniting with his 2 other siblings in the U.S. He first lived in Fremont, CA, then moved to Richland, WA for high school, then back down to Southern California where he went to undergraduate and medical school at UC Irvine. He is a medical doctor specializing in gastrointestinal. He is the founder of Picture Arts Foundation with a cultural center in Cal State Dominguez Hills and is currently residing in Redondo Beach, California.Recorded Digitall