Back to business: Dr Hung Nguyen, who now lives and works in Los Angeles, with his family. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer After the success of the California reunion, Quan organised a follow-up in London five years later. Growing up in Peterborough Id often wonder where the crew were now, she said. It was a very emotional event to meet all these people at last. For us, they were heroes. We wanted to show them our children. We wanted to say: Look, they wouldnt be here if you hadnt been there for us. It was a huge thing that they did. They could have chosen to turn a blind eye like the other ships. But they didnt and they risked a lot to rescue us.
Holmes said he was uncomfortable at the outpouring of emotion from the survivors. The MBE didnt sit comfortably at all with Hector Connell, he said. He didnt think of himself as a hero. None of us did. The reunion was at a restaurant in Little Saigon. They presented me with a glass with a map of the South China Sea: In appreciation of your heroic and humane act for giving 346 people a second chance in life. I told them anyone would have done the same thing. We just happened to be there at the time. But they wouldnt hear it.
The reunion was also a chance for the Wellpark refugees to compare the different paths their lives had taken since the rescue. A consensus emerged that the US was the place to end up if you wanted to make money, but that Americans spent too much time working. Hung Nguyen, who has become a millionaire and drives a Mercedes-Benz, said he sometimes envied his brother Huys lifestyle in London. Life there is much better. Here in America we work very hard. He has long vacations, goes on holiday to the Philippines with his wife. It kills me.
Huy has no regrets about staying in London. The British gave me everything its now my time to pay back, he said, speaking after a day of jury duty at Croydon Crown Court. When I pay tax I dont complain.
Few of the people rescued by the Wellpark imagined ever returning to Vietnam, but in recent years the country has opened up and many of the thousands who fled have visited their homeland. They recount similar experiences of being stunned by the scale of change and the difficulty of finding former homes.
Hung Nguyen has gone back to Vietnam twice. Theyre not communists any more. Theyre capitalists! We call them red capitalists. Lots of rich people. Filthy rich. Lots of poor people.
I went to visit my friends from high school. They all looked a lot older than I do. Were the same age, but its a harder life there for them.
Paul Tran was four years old when he was rescued by the Wellpark and had no memory of Vietnam. But he has returned repeatedly and developed a close attachment to the country he was born in. My parents left the country because of that regime. Yet Im going back of my own choice to understand my roots a bit better and meet guys about the same age as me and hear their stories and histories. I keep going back because I like our culture. I like our country. Ive had thoughts about whether it would have been better if my family had stayed. But Im comfortable in my own skin here. I could have been a right dickhead over there. I could have been a spoilt kid, I could have been a gangster. Now Im well British, but with a Vietnamese culture.
Quan organised an extended family holiday to her birthplace in 2012. Eighteen people, including her husband and their daughter, who had never been to Vietnam, travelled around the city she knew as Saigon in a minibus. She said that by the time the visit was over she knew she belonged in London more than Vietnam, even if that was her history. But she suspected her father felt differently.
I think my dad never wanted to leave, said Quan. He lost everything. I think it broke him in lots of ways. I dont think he ever recovered from it. Not just from a money perspective. I think it broke him as a person.
My sisters say: Were the age our dad was when he left. What if I now had to lock my front door and get on the boat and head down the estuary? Dont know where Im going, but I cant stay here. What would make you so afraid? What would scare you so much that you would do that? You lose everything. Its quite hard for someone to imagine that.
Which is why the flow of refugees from Syria to Europe has resonance for the former boat people. I cried when I saw the news about Germany taking all those refugees, said Huy. I was quite surprised they were that open to that many people. I was really moved by what the Germans did. I think the British could have done more.
Quan is frustrated by what she describes as a lack of compassion for the Syrians, even if she understands it is at least in part driven by fear of terrorism.
Tran said he saw himself in the pictures of Syrians marching across Europe. When I saw the footage, I put myself in their position because I was in that sort of position. I started having all these questions. Were they forced to leave? Were they kicked out? And then I thought, were we forced to leave? No. It was our choice to leave. And I thought, Maybe for some it was their choice to leave and maybe others had no choice because of war, he said. What do I feel? Its like what most humans would do. Theyre very desperate people to want to leave. Like our families were.
Vietnam: the exodus
Two million people fled Vietnam between the end of the war in 1975 and the opening up of the country in the mid-1990s. Almost 800,000 left by sea, most headed for Hong Kong, Malaysia or Indonesia. Widely known as boat people, the majority left in the late 1970s, often not surviving the treacherous journey because their boats sank or were attacked by pirates. Those people who reached land usually found themselves in refugee camps, as other countries in southeast Asia were reluctant to accept them. The majority were eventually taken in by the US, though Australia and Canada also welcomed substantial numbers. Although the boat people never expected to return to Vietnam, at least while the communist government was in power, many have since visited their homeland. Katie Forster