Mr. Pham is founder and an executive of a technology company based in Calif. He left Saigon at age 10 during the evacuation and later served as a Marine CH-46 helicopter pilot in the Persian Gulf War and Somalia. He was an advisor on the original screenplay of Green Dragon.

If you are curious as to what happens to people after they’ve lost their country, then go see the newly released movie "Green Dragon". Lifelong emotions simultaneously discharge over a short period of time at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton refugee camp in 1975. Confusion, panic, denial, shame, regret, betrayal, anger, and then hope.

In his directing debut, Timothy Linh Bui exquisitely provides what "Apocalypse Now" and "We Were Soldiers" did not offer – a movie about Vietnam with South Vietnamese points of view. Even though less then 3 percent of the 2 million Vietnamese living outside of Vietnam went through Camp Pendleton, their collective experience can be seen in "Green Dragon." Its main characters are popular Vietnamese-American actors and actresses from the movies "Heaven and Earth", "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Three Seasons." There are big names in the movie. Patrick Swayze plays a kind Marine gunnery sergeant. Forest Whitaker portrays a caring citizen who volunteers to cook in the refugee camps and befriends Minh, a child who is without his mother.

Ten years after marines went ashore in Da Nang, Vietnamese reciprocated by landing at Camp Pendleton and two other refugee sites. But we did not come to fight in 1975 – we landed in retreat amid pandemonium after a humiliating defeat. Some arrived without their family. Most came in search of freedom like generations of immigrants before them. We came because we had lost our war and our country. Ours was a 20-year struggle, one in which the U.S. played a significant role and sacrificed more than 58,000 American lives. Near the end, there was desperation and there was hope. And there were courageous, caring Marines and civilians. Perhaps there was guilt. "Green Dragon" provides a brutally poignant revisit to that new beginning.

Before humanitarian operations took place in Grenada, Bangladesh, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, there was the evacuation of Saigon. Gerry Berry, an executive and retired Marine colonel living in Florida, flew out Ambassador Graham Martin on one of the last helicopters during the wee hours of April 30, 1975. Looking back 27 years later, Berry reflected on Operation Frequent Wind, the largest non-combatant evacuation operation ever conducted. “The evacuation was 18.5 hours of operational chaos, wrapped in feelings of remorse. We deserted our allies and I lost so many close friends during the war.” Without the efforts of men like Berry during that desperate day, over 6,000 South Vietnamese and another 1,000 Americans would have been left behind.

Some of the refugees Berry flew out landed at Camp Talega, a collection of barren Quonset huts, nestled in the northwest edge of the vast Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Diego. On the road to Talega stands a white statue of a constructed hand bearing children with their arms outstretched. “Hand of Hope” is a testament to those refugees who were processed and those Marines and civilians who served there from April through December 1975.

Not everyone opened their arms for the refugees. “They are better off in Vietnam,” sniffed George McGovern in a Newsweek article. Other Congressional liberals in the forefront of the antiwar movement were not enthusiastic about welcoming the Vietnamese refugees. Concerned Americans and “sponsors” did what they could, including those from Orange County, San Diego, the Red Cross and religious groups. Jane Fonda and those who opposed the war were nowhere to be seen.

In an interview, Bui referred to Camp Pendleton as purgatory but in reality, it was more like a camp of fortune when compared to the fate of those Vietnamese left behind or those who drowned on the high seas trying to escape via boats. Only a few lucky ones were able to sneak out in time because we belonged to the middle and upper class or we knew certain Americans. But those in the “First Wave” had to struggle to live with that legacy – the best and brightest fled first.

For years after the war, no one talked about Vietnam at the dinner table. The way we left Vietnam and the way we arrived in America remained a vague memory until we sat in a crowded theater and saw "Platoon" or "Miss Saigon." Neither version offered the Vietnam that we had briefly known or the Vietnam that we would like to know again. While the pain was buried, so was our identity. We were born in a place that was no longer recognized, in a city now named after an uncle whom we never met. We were neither Vietnamese nor true Americans, opposites on more than the alphabetic spectrum. We had to straddle multiple cultures. Our families were too sad, too poor, too hurt, and too busy to recover our suppressed memories of Vietnam and our exodus.

Now we get to revisit our past plight in a safe and comfortable movie theater. "Green Dragon" will resonate with the large Vietnamese-American population in Southern California. But it will touch much more than that. It is not a movie about the Vietnam War. It is a reminder for a once-divided nation of what happens to people after soldiers cease to shoot, after politicians stop bickering, and after the press loses interest in America’s longest and most controversial war.

When a great country makes a great blunder, the consequences are grave for many. However, it has the capability to rectify its mistake. It cannot do everything it once thought. But a great country did reach out to help the less fortunate and fulfilled a profound moral obligation. Go see "Green Dragon" (www.greendragonmovie.com) and experience the human spirit of never giving up hope. It will also reveal a side of the U.S. Marine Corps a few have seen. It will make you proud to be an American and a human being.
 
Vietnamese refugees exiting a Marine CH-53 helicopter off the coast of South Vietnam, April 29, 1975.