I used to think it was my re-memory, you know?

Some things you forget, other things you never do, but it's not.

Places, places are still there.

If a house burns down, it's gone.

But the place, the picture of it stays, and not just in my memory, but out there in the

world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't

think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did or knew or saw is still out there.

Tony Morrison, 11.

My own memories began very concretely in a refugee camp.

A few weeks after the fall of Saigon,

we were actually boatlifted out of Saigon

and then airlifted from Guam to Pennsylvania

and ended up in a military base,

Fort Indian Town Gap in Harrisburg.

And that's where my memories begin.

Viet Tanwin was four years old when his family escaped from the Vietnam War, boat lifted out of Vietnam, then airlifted to a new life in the United States.

The war fundamentally defined his life, even though his memories of it are hezy.

Before the end of the war, all I remember, because I was four years old, are just these fragmentary images,

which I don't even know whether they really happen.

For example, being on a boat and seeing sailors shooting at a smaller boat approaching us,

my brother, who was seven years older, is that never happened.

So I have to trust that his memory is right and my memory is wrong.

...