An Afternoon WalkThere was a dirt alley not too far from our house. One afternoon, Aunt Sung took my brother Vinh and me for a walk in that alley. We had to pass by the Japanese soldiers who occupied the only villa and some houses in the neighborhood. The soldiers looked serious with stern faces, long rifles and swords. They spoke but as if they were shouting at each other. Two Japanese women in their colorful kimonos hurriedly entered the villa. I didn't know who owned that villa and those houses before the Japanese soldiers moved in. Later in life, I learned that many residents of the area had left the mansion. neighborhood to seek refuge in the countryside when American bombers began dropping their payloads on Japanese targets in Saigon. Japan's armies occupied Vietnam in 1940 but allowed the French to continue ruling the country. Japan surrendered to the Allies in August 1945. The dirt alley branched into numerous narrow passages. Vinh and I followed Aunt Sung to one of those. We walked along the smelly sewer line covered with cracked concrete blocks. We didn't have to walk far. There were rows and rows of banana trees in the open field next to the vacant houses. Aunt Sung cut down a couple of bare plants. He cut the leaves and took the trunks home. Once we got home, he used a knife and trimmed the log so it had 5 or 6 flaps at the top. She was careful not to cut the edges completely. The inner end of each flap was still attached to the plant. The flap looked like the top of a duck's bill. Using my left hand, I would lift the plant to shoulder height and parallel to the ground. Then with my right hand I lifted the cut end of each flap to form a right angle... in the center of the paper... those words stayed with me. I can only remember what I saw. The Great Prison was destroyed in the late 1950s and its site was home to the National Public Library. The court that tried Dad remained as such, but those French magistrates were long gone. At the end of the 1950s the Catinat Police Headquarters was also razed to the ground. On its site the main office of the Ministry of the Interior was built. In the 1940s, my father fought for the Viet Minh who later declared independence from France as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He was seriously wounded, captured and beaten by the French. In the 1960s and 1970s, his sons who grew up in the South served in the Republic of Vietnam Army and fought against the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Two of his sons were imprisoned for several years in the victorious re-education camp.