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[ndlr] A lire ou à voir sur U-T San Diego. Article de Jeanette Steele. Entretien avec Minh Nguyen.[caption id="attachment_14343" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Minh Nguyen escaped with 40 relatives aboard a South Vietnamese Navy vessel, shown, during the fall of Saigon in April 1975. He grew up mostly in Orange County before coming to San Diego as a Navy doctor. He is now a vice president for US HealthWorks. — John Gastaldo[/caption]A boat was at the pier. That’s all Minh Nguyen’s family knew on April 29, 1975, the frantic final day before the fall of Saigon.Nguyen, just 2 years old at the time, clung to his father’s back as the entire extended family scrambled and clawed their way onto the barricaded pier and up cargo nets into that ship.The vessel, loaded almost to the sinking point with fleeing South Vietnamese, delivered them to safety and freedom.Nguyen knew the general outline of his family’s evening escape. The detail he didn’t know was the ship itself.That South Vietnam-flagged vessel started a thread that would run through Nguyen’s life without him realizing it.It’s a uniquely Southern California story, bound up with the U.S. Navy in San Diego and Orange County’s large Vietnamese-American population.Read more : U-T San Diego, 30/04/1975