Ba Bar University Village

In 1975 Mr. Thanh Minh Banh and his wife Phung owned several enterprises, including a nail factory and an ice factory, with several locations along the Mekong Delta while living somewhat comfortably in Saigon. Life was good. Business was good. And they had six healthy children to show for it—three sisters and three brothers. But, as many of these stories go, things soon took a turn for the worse. As Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, Mr. Banh was allowed to keep running his factories, but he could see that the future was not so bright. The government was indeed seeking to control the means of production, and it probably wouldn’t be too long before they would completely seize control of Mr. Banh’s business entirely. The very business that he had built by himself from the ground up. So, he started planning his family’s escape to the west. Mr. Banh really wanted an education for his kids, and a good life for he and his wife, and that prospect no longer seemed possible in this new version of Saigon.