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The Saigon lawyer and politician resisted all pleas from family members and friends to flee. He was sure that he and others like him would survive. He explained: "I have been vanquished and will no doubt be subjected to the victor. I have no illusions. But I frankly believe that any Communist rule will be a different one if many of us stay. They will have to consider our case or kill us all, which would produce a different reaction among the people than they might like."
The second-year student at Saigon University's medical school speaks impeccable English, which she learned while studying for a year in the U.S. Her married sister, who has just become an American citizen, could legally bring her to the U.S.—if the papers are processed in time. An alternative is a marriage of convenience to an American. If neither way works, she says calmly, she will kill herself with an injection.
She was not the only frightened South Vietnamese who was contemplating suicide. Some of her classmates said that their parents had asked them to bring home large quantities of sleeping pills. Others considered poison or an overdose of tranquilizers. Even many Catholics spoke of suicide. One, the wife of a civil servant and mother of nine children, fled Hanoi when the Communists took control of the North in 1954. She explained: "We cannot live with them. Since there is no longer any place left to run, the only option is death." Otherwise, she believed, the Communists would execute the children before her eyes.