This
Vietnamese Refugees boat carried around twenty-seven refugees and sailed across the China Sea from South Vietnam. It landed on Palawan Island sometime during the late 1982 and early 1983. The boat may have been
brought close to the camp by the French ship Le Goelo. It may have been too big to pick up and place
on the ship, but it reached the refugee camp anyway.
DWIGHT RUSSEL says,
"We moved it by rolling it on pipe into the camp and I think it was
placed next to the IOM Office almost across from the UNHCR building and not very far into the
camp and on the left-hand side as you enter the camp from the VRC Main Gate."
"It was a lot of work to move it. We were glad
though that Eleanor Stewart, Dr. Erick Abbot, and some energetic Vietnamese
refugee volunteers were there to lend their helping hands."
The boat stayed near
IOM Office until 1985.The following year, it was moved somewhere. Or was it damaged? Was it used for the filming of the French television film "CHINA SEA?
Where
is this boat now? What has become of it?
Could this be the boat that was brought to Washington DC in 1985 to
commemorate the struggles and sufferings of the Vietnamese refugees?If you have any information about what actually happened to this boat or where it is now, please drop us a line.
(Thank you very much Mr. Dwight Russel for sharing these photos with us.?)
