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[SPEAKER_06]: Axis Mooney.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Simon Huafan was only a child, but he knew something important was happening.
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[SPEAKER_12]: It was April 1975, and he lived in South Vietnam at the Air Base near Saigon.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, everybody was afraid, and so schools closed, we stopped going to church, there was something the air, you know, I was only 10 years old, but I could feel there's something coming.
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[SPEAKER_03]: and it's coming to an end.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Simon was born during the war.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The growing up in Saigon, he didn't really experience the war firsthand.
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[SPEAKER_12]: He went to school, he went to church, and he played with his friends.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But his father was an officer in the South Vietnam Air Force.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And in the spring of 1975, everything changed, as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the city.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Simon's family began to prepare for the worst.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I remember my father called us together.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He lived each one of us a bag.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And in each bag, there was some food, our paper, some money, and some glowing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And he was ready.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna say, if anything happened, this is each one of you will have each bag to carry.
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[SPEAKER_12]: He recalled how, later that night, he and his little sister hunkered down in their house and heard the sounds of fighting and bombing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We took shelter under our beds, and I was one of the with sclerias moments in my childhood, just to hear the shell traveling the air, make that whistle noise, and then the explosion.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So the whole house shook and the cross on the wall fell down.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We were screaming, my little sister,
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[SPEAKER_03]: or night.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And the next morning it stopped.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So we stopped to venture outside of the house and about two doors down and one house got that hit.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I could see the rebels and my neighbors with bloody arm and bloody torso.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And my father decided that we need to leave the F was based.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So we took her back and left.
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[SPEAKER_12]: As they left the base, Simon and his family found a city in chaos.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He wrote outside the gate and into the city.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And it was not time was chaos.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There was people running all over, on smokes, on horizon, and we took refuge in the American embassy when my father worked.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Simon's father knew that he and the family were in danger, given his ties to the South Vietnamese military, and they wanted to escape.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But whether they'd be able to escape was uncertain.
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[SPEAKER_03]: My father learned that the royal evacuating people are off the rooftop.
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[SPEAKER_03]: by helicopter.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So we decided then to leave.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Because he wasn't an officer in the Air Force.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So there was a group chance that he would get arrested by the communist government.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so we went up on our own rooftop.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We thought our way through the crowd.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It was just a crowd and then there's the helicopter pad.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I remember building a line going up to the stairs and into the balcony, and grew top.
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[SPEAKER_03]: My sister and I got kind of pushed behind, so we were following this crowd.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And everybody was on the helicopter, except my sister and I.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So my father had to go back and drop the crowd and pull us out of the crowd and onto the helicopter.
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[SPEAKER_03]: and it will also go through it.
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[SPEAKER_12]: He will call taking a final look at the gun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We took off and I looked down and the fire in smoke all over the city.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That was the last image of Vietnam of my childhood.
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[SPEAKER_12]: On the other side of the world, Kathleen Villenga, a mother of three young children, was watching the evening news, like millions of other Americans, and she saw the same image, of a side gone on fire, and of helicopters evacuating Vietnamese families.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, not only a world away from Vietnam, but a place as different as anywhere on Earth.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Despite the thousands of miles between them, much of her life had been like Simon's before Saigon fell.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She went to church, she spent time with her family, she contributed to her community, she was happy.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But the spring of 1975 found her in a dark place, personally.
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[SPEAKER_12]: a health problem forced her to have a major surgery, and she found herself spending a month to recuperating in the hospital.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Her full active life had come to a
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standstill, and she was frightened and frustrated that her world had been reduced to a recovery bed, a hospital room, and a television.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And then, on a screen in the quiet of her room, she saw it, the fall of Saigon.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm watching the TV in my room.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And here are these people, you know, scrambling on the helicopters.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It shifted her perspective and gave her an idea.
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[SPEAKER_09]: I'm thinking there, I have people coming in, changing my sheets, bringing me a drink, a water medicine, whatever I wanted, you know, I got totally out of my slight pity party.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And just said, when I get well, we're going to find a way that someone can stay here.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Even though she didn't know it at the time, that idea would make Kathleen Valenga part of the largest refugee resettlement in American history.
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[SPEAKER_12]: This is One Million Avers.
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[SPEAKER_12]: I'm Dr. Melissa Borha.
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[SPEAKER_12]: This limited series is about a shining example of American faith communities who mobilize to do the impossible.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Resetling over a million Southeast Asian refugees in the face of deep and widespread hostility towards migrants.
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[SPEAKER_12]: This is episode two.
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[SPEAKER_12]: War.
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[SPEAKER_12]: What happened next?
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[SPEAKER_12]: Whether Simon and his family found a new home, and whether Kathleen found a way to help refugees come to the United States, is something we'll get to in a minute.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But first, we need to understand the events that preceded the spring of 1975.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Specifically, we need to know about the brutal wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
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[SPEAKER_12]: How the United States was deeply involved in each of these wars, and why Americans like Kathleen cared so much about refugees like Simon.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Kevin Lange is returning as ambassador to Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He resigned a year ago to take part in the Republican convention in the Stop Goldwater Drive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In his now returning to Saigon, as U.S. efforts are stepped up in the drive on the Vietnam Communist Rebels.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Vietnam was a colony of France until 1945.
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[SPEAKER_12]: When Vietnam led by the Nationalist Leader Ho Chi Minh, declared independence, a war followed.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And in 1954, when the Vietnamese defeated the French, Vietnam split into two.
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[SPEAKER_12]: North Vietnam was communist and South Vietnam was not communist and backed by the United States.
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[SPEAKER_12]: These events unfolded during the Cold War.
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[SPEAKER_12]: A time when the United States wanted to prevent the spread of communism all around the world.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Anti-communism justified all kinds of interventions and countries far from American shores.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In this case, the United States sent military advisors to support South Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The situation escalated in 1964 when the U.S. Navy reported that its ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Congress for permission to increase U.S. military forces in Southeast Asia.
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[SPEAKER_07]: The determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the government of South Vietnam will be re-doubled by this outrage.
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[SPEAKER_07]: Yet our response for the present will be limited and fitting.
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[SPEAKER_07]: We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risk of spreading conflicts.
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[SPEAKER_07]: We still seek no wider war.
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[SPEAKER_12]: That's not exactly what happened.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Despite Johnson's promise that the American response would be limited, the long and brutal war in Vietnam killed millions of people, and uprooted millions more.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And the U.S. played a central role in all of that.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Many Vietnamese lost their homes and refused to migrate during the war in the 1960s and early 1970s.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The violence and destruction of war displaced around 6 million people in South Vietnam by 1971.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Another group of refugees fled Vietnam after the war, when Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Some of these refugees were like Simon, and were evacuated by air by American military forces.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Others fled on their own, and were later taken into protective custody by the United States.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And later, in the late 1970s, and into the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese escaped by sea.
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[SPEAKER_12]: These refugees were known as boat people.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Some of these refugees were formerly political, military, and cultural leaders in South Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Others were persecuted ethnic minorities.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They were all fleeing violence and persecution in Vietnam, but they still weren't safe.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Their passage was
incredibly dangerous.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They had long journeys to China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They traveled on boats that were barely seeworthy, and they faced disease, storms, starvation, and pirates.
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[SPEAKER_12]: On-boy, it's a Vietnamese man who experienced this perilous journey.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, so my dad got out prison in 84 and he looked at us, it's like, yeah, because my dad is well educated and he looked at us, yeah, this is just a life here, there's no it's a case.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, you know, maybe some of you should seek a better life, so yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So that's when he sent half of us away.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, in the 80,
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[SPEAKER_04]: So we would skip Vietnam from Vietnam to Malaysia and it took us seven days and seven nights from Vietnam to Malaysia.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And on our way to Malaysia, the boat died, you know, on our third date of boat.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Just die.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we just float.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, the engine die and it's about it's a small boat.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was 56 of us.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I believe in a boat and just at night the world was floating and just let's see what's so calm and you can see the stars so close and water is like oh my god.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah We're doing this
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[SPEAKER_12]: around 25 to 50% of these refugees died during their journeys.
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[SPEAKER_12]: If they reached land, they were sometimes forced back to see by governments that refused to accept them.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And if they were lucky enough to make it safely ashore, they were forced to live in crowded refugee camps that housed tens of thousands of refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The United States was also involved in the Civil War in Laos, again, in the name of anti-communism.
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[SPEAKER_12]: After Laos gained independence from France in 1954, a Civil War erupted between communists and their anti-communist opponents.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The United States recruited trained and supplied these anti-communist allies in what is commonly called the Secret War.
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[SPEAKER_12]: By 1969, these U.S. backed allies included 40,000 mong soldiers, led by General Vang Pao, and they were supported by the CIA in the Green Barades.
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[SPEAKER_12]: These mong soldiers were the front-line defense responsible for warning off the communist advance.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The human toll of the secret war was staggering.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Hundreds of thousands of refugees were displaced and lost by 1971, an estimated one in four among soldiers died, and one in six among civilians were killed or wounded.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Over nine years, from 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than two million tons of bombs here in Lovs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II.
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[SPEAKER_12]: President Barack Obama discussed the bombing when he visited Laos in 2016.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It made Laos per person the most heavily bombed country in history.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As one Laosian said, the bombs fell like rain.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The United States eventually pulled out its military advisors from Louss in 1973.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Thousands of mong soldiers were left behind, and their situation became even more dangerous in 1975 when communist forces seized control of Louss.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Twelve-ang remembers the difficult decisions he and other among people faced at this moment.
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[SPEAKER_12]: His father had served under General Van Pau, and in 1975 they feared for their lives.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So when the communists took over the long-hatted decision, either stay either surrender to the communists or resist the communists or with the third option leave, knowing that they surrendered, they'll be killed because they are in the enemy.
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[SPEAKER_13]: If they resist the communists, knowing that the United States
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[SPEAKER_13]: is not going to be there for them.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They will run out of supply and they cannot resist.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So they'll just be slaughtered as well.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So the best option is to leave.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The United States air lifted some mung military personnel and their families.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But thousands among people who had allied with the United States were stuck in louse, including to a bank's family.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They were among those that could not catch the air lift in 1975 and they were in immediate danger.
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[SPEAKER_13]: than the commonest seek out for my father for his services to the United States.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So my father had to flee to the jungle.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Take my mother and I, I was just a couple months old and we hide in the jungle for nearly two years before we escaped to Thailand.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Many other monk families made the same decision to journey westward.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Entire families traveled by foot, carrying their possessions on their back
and tracking through the jungle at night to avoid capture by the communists.
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[SPEAKER_12]: By 1979, nearly 30,000 long refugees attempted to cross the Macong River into Thailand each month.
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[SPEAKER_12]: One of those families was to a van.
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[SPEAKER_13]: We had to swim across the Macong River.
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[SPEAKER_13]: There was no boat waiting to take us over to Thailand.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And the parents were concerned that as soon as they touched the water, the cold water, the children were going to cry.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And they will alert the common troops who were stationed along the river.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And so they had to dope the children with opium to put them to sleep so that they can cross the river.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I was, I must say that my mother loves me.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She didn't gave me enough open to put me to sleep.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So as we cross the river, we swim across the river into Thailand.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Right when we arrive on the Thailand side, I woke up and started crying.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And I alerted the Thai locals.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Even in Thailand, they were not safe.
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[SPEAKER_13]: When we got to Thailand, they welcomed us to Thailand, told the men to surrender their weapon, and then took us to the southern row and robbed us.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Took everything that we had and left us there.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thanks for watching.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Cambodia was another side of war between communists and U.S. aligned anti-communist forces.
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[SPEAKER_12]: A communist group led by Pol Pot was gaining power.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In 1970, American and South Vietnamese military forces invaded to go after communists along the Cambodia of Vietnam border.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In 1973, the United States began to bomb Cambodia.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But in the spring of 1975, Cambodia also fell to the communists.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Pullpock controlled Cambodia for three and a half years.
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[SPEAKER_12]: During this time, they tried to radically transform Cambodian society into a classless, agrarian society.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In the process, they starved the population, split up families, created forced labor regades, and brutally tortured and eliminated political opponents.
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[SPEAKER_12]: between 1.5 and 3 million people around a quarter of the Cambodian population died of violence, disease, and famine.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Han Hen and his family were among those devastated by the Cambodian genocide.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Eventually the Vietnamese invaded and Pol Pot and his regime fell from power in 1979.
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[SPEAKER_12]: That year half a million Cambodian survivors sought refuge in neighboring Thailand.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Over 100,000 Cambodian refugees joined them in the early 1980s.
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[SPEAKER_12]: On-hin was among those who fled.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They had to do whatever necessary to continue on journey.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot go by, you know, since I joined
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[SPEAKER_02]: If I went back, I would be in a big chapel and I'm going to be killed all the time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, you can do nothing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They have to move.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I decided to go into the camp in Thailand.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Even though they were thousands of miles away, Americans like Kathleen Valenga witnessed these events unfold.
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[SPEAKER_12]: television news and newspapers carried arresting images of refugees fleeing Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and crowding in refugee camps.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The news coverage aroused widespread public sympathy.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Here's Kathleen again.
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[SPEAKER_09]: So I saw these pictures and I said they can't stay where they belong.
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[SPEAKER_09]: They have to leave.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She hoped that these refugees would be able to leave and make a home here in the United States.
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[SPEAKER_12]: but achieving that goal required the support of both the American government and the American people.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And given the long history of public opposition to refugees, including to Jews during the Second World War, that was a tall order.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But Kathleen wasn't alone.
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[SPEAKER_12]: There were people who agreed with her for all kinds of reasons.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Over time, these voices coalesced into a movement of refugee advocates.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Here's how they argued that the United States should accept Southeast Asian refugees for resettlement.
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[SPEAKER_12]: First, there was the idea that America is a safe harbor for people seeking freedom.
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[SPEAKER_12]: According to a 1975 survey, this was the leading reason for admitting Southeast Asian refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The idea that the United States has a tradition of being a sanctuary for people fleeing oppression and persecution in their home lands.
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[SPEAKER_12]: there are also geopolitical reasons.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In the context of the Cold
War, anti-communist fervor meant that Americans felt a special sense of obligation to aid freedom-loving people who faced retribution and persecution at the hands of communists.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In 1986, Paul found that a majority of respondents believe that the United States should accept political refugees who were specifically fleeing communist countries.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But finally, there were personal relationships and loyalties.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The fact that refugees were fleeing a region where the United States had been directly involved in years of brutal warfare, half a million bombing runs over Laos, gave some Americans a sense of obligation to help.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Americans would fought or worked in Vietnam or Laos were particularly committed to helping
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[SPEAKER_12]: Americans who had worked in the military or diplomatic corps refused to abandon their Southeast Asian colleagues.
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[SPEAKER_12]: But a key group of people emerged as refugee advocates, people of fate.
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[SPEAKER_12]: At the national level, they were at the center of a broad coalition of groups, pressing the federal government to admit more Southeast Asian refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: At the state and local level, they were vocal supporters of refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They wrote letters to the editor and held community events.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And at the congregation level, they urged church members to get involved in overseas relief efforts and local resettlement projects.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They gave explicitly religious reasons for why they cared about refugees so much.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Some argued that accepting refugees were resettlement was a chance to be peacemakers and to do penance for America's students in Southeast Asia.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Take, for example, Joanne Carvinon, a Lutheran woman who led her church's refugee resettlement committee in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She wanted to help Vietnamese refugees because the United States had caused so much of their suffering in the first place.
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[SPEAKER_10]: Or at least I was horrified at the Vietnam War in the fact that that had had that country.
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[SPEAKER_10]: And so getting involved with the refugee program here was one little thing.
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[SPEAKER_10]: that I could do.
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[SPEAKER_12]: After so many years of feeling helpless about stopping the war, she appreciated how she could do tangible and direct work to fulfill America's moral responsibility.
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[SPEAKER_10]: I think a lot of people felt that this was something they could do in response to the horrors of the Vietnamese war.
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[SPEAKER_10]: And it was a very concrete thing that they could do.
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[SPEAKER_10]: You know, here was a woman with these dependent children and she had no means of support and she didn't speak English and, you know, it was just so obvious that she needed help and it was also so obvious that her plate was a result of something that our country had placed on her poor country.
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[SPEAKER_12]: It was a chance to live out Christian teachings to be a good Samaritan, and to love your neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_12]: This is what motivated Dorothy Knight, another church volunteer in Saint Paul.
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[SPEAKER_10]: Well, it's biblical, love that I neighbor.
25:32.221 --> 25:33.403
[SPEAKER_11]: And who is my neighbor?
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[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_11]: Well, look around.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Refugee advocates also frequently reference the Bible passage of Matthew chapter 25.
25:44.802 --> 25:56.698
[SPEAKER_12]: Catholic parishes often called their refugee groups, Matthew 25 committees, and Mary Mergenthall, who attended the same Lutheran church as Joanne, also talked about how this passage inspired her work.
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[SPEAKER_08]: I'm reading more and more about the general need in refugees in this country, and here there were going to be some on our doorstep, and again, that was following, you know, as I do as the least of these, you do it on to me, and it seemed to be no question in my mind,
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[SPEAKER_12]: For many others, refugee resettlement was an extension of their missionary work.
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[SPEAKER_12]: About history, Christians of all denominations have prioritized teaching people about Jesus and their Christian faith.
26:27.935 --> 26:38.437
[SPEAKER_12]: missionary work has meant different things to different types of Christians, but some groups, evangelicals especially, have taken the biblical call to make disciples of all nations very seriously.
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[SPEAKER_12]: For them, the work of sharing the gospel and saving souls was their highest responsibility.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Could they save souls of these Asian refugees?
26:57.331 --> 27:00.736
[SPEAKER_12]: One woman I interviewed had always wanted to be a missionary.
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[SPEAKER_12]: For privacy sake, she asked me not to use her real name, so let's call her Pearl Jones.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Pearl was working as a secretary at her Southern Baptist Church in the Twin Cities area when her church's pastor received a surprise phone call.
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[SPEAKER_12]: A moment, a refugee, was calling to ask that the church could help him bring his cousin and who two daughters to the United States.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Pearl saw the phone call as an act of God.
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[SPEAKER_11]:
I said, let's go far because they believe in Saint Paul and because that's where God had always said that's where what you'd work.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She believed that God was commanding her to do missions with the refugees, not overseas, but right there in Minnesota.
27:44.213 --> 27:51.081
[SPEAKER_11]: And I never thought that God would pick up a whole people and move them to our country so we could do missions with them.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In some instances, church volunteers were interested in resettling Southeast Asian refugees because they actually knew these refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They had met them during overseas missions in Asia.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Malcolm and Helen Sawyer, for example, had done a mission in Lousen, Thailand through their denomination, the Christian and missionary alliance.
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[SPEAKER_12]: They later lived in Wheaton, Illinois, where they aided Mung Refugees resettled in the area.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Helen recalled one Mung Refugee man, who later served as a pastor in Wheaton.
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[SPEAKER_09]: We've done it for four years in Bible school.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It's kind of mind-boggling to realize it is right down the street from the Sierra Wheaton, you know?
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[SPEAKER_12]: Malcolm emphasized these international missionary connections when appealing to others to support Southeast Asian refugee resettlement.
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[SPEAKER_12]: These appeals to help refugees work.
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[SPEAKER_12]: In 1975, President Gerald Ford gave the green light to admit, or parole in, 200,000 Vietnamese refugees.
28:53.854 --> 29:01.425
[SPEAKER_12]: Simon Hoafon, the Vietnamese boy who has escaped Saigon by helicopter in the beginning of this episode, was one of these refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: He and his family ended up coming to the United States, where the Catholic
29:11.791 --> 29:15.976
[SPEAKER_03]: Finally, my father decided that he wanted to go to Denver, Colorado.
29:16.437 --> 29:23.805
[SPEAKER_03]: The bishop charged evidence and the diocese there wanted to sponsor the Vietnamese refugees.
29:25.607 --> 29:33.597
[SPEAKER_03]: So, we went to Denver, caught them on the airplane, landed at Denver Airport around a block at night.
29:34.319 --> 29:37.884
[SPEAKER_03]: It was August, August, night, so it was pretty dark.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So from the airport, we got on two or three cars.
29:42.270 --> 29:44.093
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember the mission was there with us.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Looks like some of the parishioners from the nearby church wanted to get to drive.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so I remember getting on the car and drove to the apartment near Central Denver.
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[SPEAKER_12]: When you walked into the apartment, he couldn't believe it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And we ran around and explored the apartment in two stories, three team room, one, only one that room.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, and I say, this is our house now, and to my parents and parents, yes, I didn't speak English then.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm very sure it's the refrigerator.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember open the refrigerator.
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[SPEAKER_03]: and it was packed full of food and I said, is this ours, too?
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[SPEAKER_12]: No, no, no, no, no.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The next morning, he was excited to explore his new home.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So the new morning I ran down and I opened the door and I explored this surrounding it and the first thing I noticed was glass, green glass, right, and a glass block, yeah, it's just beautiful green glass and sidewalks, so clean, big buildings, a fumb and muted buildings,
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[SPEAKER_12]: for her part, Kathleen Vellenga did make it out of the hospital and when she did, she called the International Institute, a voluntary agency that resettled refugees.
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[SPEAKER_12]: She learned about opportunities where her church to help refugees coming to Minnesota, but she had to wage her own advocacy campaign.
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[SPEAKER_12]: The people at her church, or a little
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[SPEAKER_09]: I went to my church, I said, we're a little mission church.
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[SPEAKER_09]: We can't take on someone from some other country.
31:25.605 --> 31:26.126
[SPEAKER_09]: You're crazy.
31:26.787 --> 31:28.269
[SPEAKER_09]: I was just saying, yeah, but how are you going to do it?
31:28.450 --> 31:29.792
[SPEAKER_09]: And I said, well, we'll get another church.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Eventually, she assembled a team of volunteers from three different congregations in the city and they began to prepare.
31:37.404 --> 31:39.207
[SPEAKER_09]: And so we had a place for the family to stay.
31:40.008 --> 31:40.789
[SPEAKER_09]: It was a townhouse.
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[SPEAKER_09]: We furnished it basically with donations.
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[SPEAKER_12]: things were going well, except some big questions remained unanswered.
31:49.850 --> 31:54.759
[SPEAKER_09]: So we not only didn't know who they were, which is most importantly, we didn't know when, if we're arriving.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And then, one cold winter morning, Kathleen got a phone call from the International Institute.
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[SPEAKER_12]: It was 6.30 a.m. We're here already.
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[SPEAKER_09]: So we grabbed all these coats.
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[SPEAKER_12]: After years of war and displacement and refugee camp life, these refugees now face a daunting new adventure, making a new home in America.
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[SPEAKER_12]: How would they do it?
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[SPEAKER_12]: And how would people like Kathleen actually turn these grand ideals of welcoming the stranger into a reality?
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[SPEAKER_12]: That's next time, on 1 million neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_12]: That's it for this episode of 1 Million Neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you so much for listening.
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[SPEAKER_12]: I'm Dr. Melissa Borho.
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[SPEAKER_12]: 1 Million Neighbors was produced by Andrew Gill and Bradley Onishi, original music and audio engineering were by Scott Okamoto.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Carrie Onishi provided production assistance.
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[SPEAKER_12]: 1 Million Neighbors was made possible in partnership with a parry through generous funding from the Lilly Foundation.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Until next time, remember, radical hospitality isn't just for radicals.