Knowing Japanese troops had caused the deaths of her father's parents and siblings in World War II, Japan was about the last place Ha Thi Thanh Nga expected to end up. Today — some 30 years after arriving here as a refugee — Nga, 49, is helping other compatriots make lives for themselves here.
In a recent interview at the Takatori Catholic Church Community Center in Kobe's Nagata Ward, where conversations held in Portuguese, Chinese and Vietnamese mingled with the cries of toddlers at play, Nga talked about her early life and how she became head of an NGO for Vietnamese residents, Vietnam in Kobe.
Nga was born in 1961 in Ben Tre, a small city on the Mekong Delta in what was then South Vietnam. Although in the south, the city reputedly harbored North Vietnamese soldiers and sympathizers, making it a target for U.S. and South Vietnamese military operations (the notorious quote attributed to a U.S. army commander, "We had to destroy the town in order to save it," reportedly referred to the near-daily bombing runs inflicted upon Ben Tre).