A 63-year-old man who fled Vietnam 45 years ago by boat thanks Japan for helping him survive and rebuild his life without fear of a war.
The native of former South Vietnam, whose Japanese name is Takashi Hashimoto, boarded a small bamboo boat crowded with 24 people, including children, in the central city of Da Nang in March 1980, after the Southeast Asian country was reunited by North Vietnam following the fall of Saigon, the then-capital of the U.S.-backed South, to mark the end of the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975.
"My father was jailed (after the war) as a political criminal, and I couldn't go to school much," he recalled. "I had no human rights or freedom."
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