“As if they’d never been apart”

Ngày đăng: 29/08/2008 | Lượt xem: 1474

“It’s like a fairy tale come true. I didn’t dare to think that this would ever happen. I had never thought I would be able to see my family again, most of whom I’ve never met before”, in a voice pass4sure 1Z0-517 choke with emotion, Le Thanh Tan, said after being reunited with his sister and other members of his family. Fifty-eight years ago, he left his home in Trang Bom, Đong Nai to join the war against the French in the north without saying goodbye to his mother and sister and had lost touch with them ever since. He had tried in vain on numerous occasions to find them. The reunion took place live on pass4sure 1Z1-868 the VTV1 television show “As if they’d never been apart.”

In a previous edition of the show, Tan, 70, had entreated the producers of the program “To tell the truth, I find the possibility of seeing them again very traumatic.”

He became extremely emotional when discovering that one of the men on the stage was a relative he never ever knew ha had and that he’d finally discovered his missing family.
The talk show premiered on December 1st2007, with journalist Nguyen Pham Thu Uyen as host.

Uyen says that when she was studying in Russia, she had chance to watch a show called “Zdi menhia!” Which helped reunite more than twenty thousand people over a decade of broadcasting. The idea of making a similar show came to her after her return to Vietnam. She has witnessed so many people suffering from the pain of separation on her trips throughout the country.

The show has received nearly ten thousand requests from people trying to find their loved ones, checking information provided in over 7,000 cases, and succeeding in reuniting 53 families, former comrades and friends.

Behind all the requests sent to the program lie stories of despair and anguish: whether parents looking for a child they lost during the war, an overseas Vietnam taken to the US during “Operation Babylift” now wanting to find their parents,, a woman looking for her adopted brother – a soldier who lived for a sort time with her family but still retained a strong emotional attachment to them, a Vietnamese postgraduate in China searching for the family of a young woman looking for her beloved step-mother.

With such inquiries and clues in hand, the research team and part-time volunteers spread out throughout Vietnam, trying to find the individuals involved, allowing the staging of emotionally moving reunions on every episode of the show.

“It’s talk show with the Purpose of reuniting long-lost people. Which so far no other VTV program has been able to do. They are emotionally powerful stories, and there were many times I have had to stop myself from crying.” Says Bui The Anh, the show’s director.

Anh says that he is still impressed by the story of a former American pilot searching for his old Vietnamese rival after a battle.

On the morning of April 16, 1972, over Hanoi a MIG-21 flown by Vietnamese pilot was shot down by US jets. One of the American pilots, Daniel Edwards Cherry, after several failed attempts to shoot down My’s plane, saw him parachuting out before the plane burst into flames. “I have always wondered who he was”, Cherry wrote in the letter asking for help in locating his brave rival who had left him with such a deep impression. Finally, thirty-six years later, American brigadier general Daniel Edwards Cherry met with his one-time enemy, former MIG-21 pilot Nguyen Hong My, in an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation on the program. “Generally, we won the war but you won that particular battle,” My told Cherry with a smile. “Those days are gone,” Cherry said. The two men said they believed their meeting was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

“They used to be rivals, one tried to kill the other. But what is strange is a “killer” Who kept thinking of his “victim” and longing for a peaceful reunion. When they met each other, the behaved as though long lost friends and all the post-war bitterness seemed to have disappeared”, Anh comments.

Uyen says that last reunion on the latest show always moves her. The last show broadcast on August 2 witnessed the tearful reunion of a mother from Pleiku, Gia Lai with her daughter, Vo Thi My Ngoc worked as a physician in Are VI’s (Now in Gia Lai) infirmary. She had brought her two years old daughter, Vo Thi My Phuong to work.

On February 24, 1971, she was assigned to go to take provisions to feed wounded soldiers, and left Phuong with another physician to be looked after. The same day, Southern Vietnam Army troops con ducted a raid on the infirmary and took Phuong away.

She lost all trace of her little daughter, searching for her in vain.

Phuong, after being kidnapped was put in jail and used in a Southern Vietnam Army attempt to blackmail her parents to surrender. However after that she was taken to a Buddhist monastery by a kindly southern soldier. The monks later moved to another monastery in Saigon. Phuong was raised by them until she was adopted by a family living next to the monastery when she was 29.

At the request of Le Thi My Ngoc, Uyen’s team launched a search for My Phuong, and after they hit a brick wall in finding any trace of her, the received a massaged from a woman called Ngoc Due, who worked in Dong Khoi Street, Ho Chi Minh City, confirming that she is the one they were looking for. By a miracle of fate, My Phuong, now named Ngoc Due – the name given to her by the works, had watched the show at the moment that Le Thi My Ngoc had spoken about searching for her daughter. Due said that at that moment her heart had suddenly beat faster, and later she found that she shared the same traits and personal identity as Ngoc’s description of her daughter.

She had always longed for a reunion with her family, and had always believed that her parents had been searching for her.

“I am sorry I left you behind” was the fist sentence Ngoc spoke to her daughter while holding her in the arms after 37 years, 6 months, and 2 days apart. Uyen says that even today, she can’t control her feeling when thinking of that moment.

Uyen concluded the show by saying “The independence of the nation was not only paid for in blood, but also by the many silent pains that still exist even to this day. “ Today, despite the many difficulties and obstacles she and her team face, they are making every effort to bring back happiness to those suffering from the sorrow of separation, easing the pains left behind by two horrific wars.