Each year, I pause on this date to commemorate my father's life and to celebrate the Marine Corps' Birthday with bittersweet irony. Now that my father is gone again, I realize I had joined the Marines for him and for South Vietnam, as much as I did for any sense of patriotism to America. I wanted to relieve him of a loser's guilt, a husband's regret, a father's remorse. I had to backtrack four decades.

I was born a Vietnamese in an old French hospital six months before President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered thousands of U.S. Marines into my country. Growing up amid a brewing war in my own backyard, my childhood dream was to become a pilot and serve my country like my father.

A decade later, before communist tanks rumbled through my hometown, my family, minus my father, was flown to Marine Barracks Guam. At Tan Son Nhut air base, Marines had been flown ashore to evacuate Saigon. A few days after we left, my father rushed the U.S. Embassy in Saigon along with a frenzied mob. A shirtless Marine wearing a flak jacket pressed his M-16 against my father's chest and prevented him from entering the compound as the last choppers departed. Stranded and dejected like Miss Saigon, my father watched with shame as South Vietnamese soldiers ripped off their uniforms and threw their rifles into the Saigon River to evade capture by the approaching communist troops.

My mother raised my three sisters and I in California by herself. When we landed in the United States, she was 39, spoke no English and had never traveled abroad. We spoke French, but I thank God, and Buddha, that we didn't go to Paris to live with my aunt, because there I wouldn't have been able to realize my dreams. My mother, however, could not have predicted the powerful forces pulling me to my calling, even in a foreign country.

My father finally made it to America. But one he arrived on these shores he never received a welcome home, veteran's benefits, or a pension. He had served his country for 21 years, South Vietnam's entire existence, and had survived another 12 years in captivity. After the war, his former allies and their journalistic chroniclers, safely home in the United States, portrayed the South Vietnamese as corrupt, incompetent, shadowy figures who had not been worth backing. (Sounds like the Iraqis?) The communists couldn't break him though they repeatedly tried; they forced him into hard labor in numerous reeducation/prison camps where he nearly died. His captors called him unpatriotic, traitor, American puppet, pirate pilot, and cheap mercenary. Finally, with intervention from the Reagan Administration, they allowed him to emigrate.

In 1999, my father became an American citizen, sworn in by Judge David O. Carter, a Marine veteran who had been seriously wounded in Khe Sanh. I was there to witness the momentous occasion, two heroes and former allies embracing each other, two veterans of the war in Vietnam.

Five years ago today, my father took his last breath. He had lapsed into a ten-day-long coma, resulting from a massive stroke amid radiation therapy treatment for lung cancer. Two weeks earlier, he had cast his first, and only, presidential ballot in a free election. Around the world, in every clime and place, Marines celebrated the Corps' 225th birthday. Except me. I was crying.

At his funeral, my father's old comrades showed up in force to honor him, as did some of my Marine friends. The men who had served with my father in squadrons and in the prison camps had draped a large yellow flag with the three bright-red horizontal stripes over his coffin. The afternoon I gave his eulogy was the hardest day in my life: I had lost my father a second time. I had to eulogize him in English. I had neglected my native tongue far too long for me to speak eloquently of his life and legacy in Vietnamese.

People have told me that with death comes closure. It was the opposite for me. My father's passing away raised more questions and created a greater void inside me, a burning desire to ask him the $64,000 question. "When you think back Dad, were all the fighting and bloodshed in Vietnam worth the price?"

As I began tracing my father's history in the Vietnam War, I came across an old letter he had written me:

Dear Son,

If it doesn't matter to you what I did was a failure, then I will tell you some stories of the past. All I've been doing is to get along with all of you. Things have changed. No one can estimate to what extent. I was a coward. For you guys see me become a loser, my old combat friends will see me with another eye. Another reason, either simple coincidence or you may call it destiny, is you're in the same Marine unit that I used to fly support for and was rescued by in the early days of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

I was floored. I immediately powered up the computer and Googled various key words. This was what I discovered. I almost didn't get to meet my father at all. This was my first connection to the U.S. Marine Corps.

On April 27, 1964, five months before I was born, my father, then Second Lieutenant Pham Van Hoa (pronounced “Hwa”) of the Vietnamese Air Force, was shot down in his Skyraider attack aircraft. He had been flying in support of the largest heliborne assault up to that point flown by U.S. advisers in their secret war. After dead-sticking his stricken plane to a loamy field near Do Xa in central Vietnam, he awaited his fate as the Viet Cong rushed down from the hills and closed in. Luckily, a Marine helicopter had followed his smoky silhouetted plane. The pilot landed his chopper next to the Skyraider and the rest is history.

Forty years after that heroic rescue, I tracked down the Marine pilot-turned docent at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (Smithsonian Air & Space Museum) near Dulles Airport. At age 74, retired Colonel John Braddon still sounded like a tough fighter pilot (he only flew helicopters for one tour). Between leading visitors through the museum, Braddon and I sat down for a quick lunch. We traded war stories, his much longer than mine. He finally shared his memories of that fateful day:

“I do not deserve great credit for my action. Years before, USMC helicopter squadrons supporting Vietnamese units had decided to set aside helicopters to rescue downed crews and that is why I was prepared to rescue Lt. Hoa. Also, Lt. Hoa was supporting Marines. In that capacity he came under the umbrella that 'Marines take care of their own.' However briefly, he supported us and became one of us and we made sure he was cared for.”

Upon hearing those words, my mission came to an end. I had to meet Braddon to complete my filial duties. My father had somehow managed to move on about the Vietnam War before I could. His refusal to blame anyone for the betrayal of South Vietnam, his lack of bitterness for his imprisonment, his avoidance of hatred were his greatest legacies, affecting me more than his military service. Before he went into surgery, he told my oldest sister: “I'm not afraid to die. I've lived a full life, I have no regrets.”

My head is clear, my breaths come free. Thank you Colonel John Braddon. Semper fi (always faithful) Dad. And Happy Birthday Marines!