Some of the articles that I composed during my "first days of freedom", about my own hurried exodus from Vietnam, were simply sad diary pages, forgotten for nearly 50 years until after my retirement - when I came across them and took the opportunity to do something much more useful with them. To tell my life story in a way for others to read and understand my experiences, in addition to including what I personally saw during the Vietnam War and lived through while escaping Vietnam, I wrote about my experience during my many years living in the United States. It took more than a year to complete the Vietnamese-language version of my life's story, an account at once typical of any Vietnamese who had to abandon his homeland during the last hours of the Vietnam War, by evacuating and taking refuge in the faraway United States - and unique, since it is about me, my journey and my destiny.