How Google Maps Led Me Back to the Refugee Camp I Once Called Home | The Walrus

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What started as casual curiosity turned into a journey to find traces of the father I never got to mourn

A street in Ho Chi Minh City ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in April (Richard Vogel / AP Photo) I ’m unsure when the idea took hold, but when it did, it wouldn’t let go. Finding the refugee camp again became an obsession, wrapping itself around my consciousness like tendrils reaching for the elusive January light. I would lie in bed at night, my eyes closed, and map out the place in my mind. Our family’s cramped living quarters behind a ditch by the red dirt road next to the soccer field across from the commissary. The large trees with hibiscus flowers blossomi

How Google Maps Led Me Back to the Refugee Camp I Once Called Home | The Walrus

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