#when in bataan

The Real Highlight of the Bataan Day Trip (though not initially planned) - Revisiting the Boat People Museum

At 11:00 a.m. on June 4, 1981, a group of nine men and three women, led by Dien La Tan, left Nha Trang, South Vietnam aboard this vessel in ten days, they negotiated 850 kilometers of rough, open seas.

At 8:20 a.m. on June 14, 1981, they were sighted drifting aimlessly off Napot Point, Morong, Bataan. Their vessel (the actual one seen in the photos) was first mistaken for a piece of floating debris since all its passengers were too weak to stand, having been without food and water for two days.

--

From then on, Philippines had been accepting 20,000 Vietnamese refugees seeking for relief per batch. All in all, our Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) had helped almost 400,000  refugees by providing them different sorts of training for six months. These were done to train them to become more responsive and independent as they will be relocating to the USA or to other financially stable EU countries.

According to our tour guide, Sir Clemens, UN had awarded the Philippines for dedicating the largest rehabilitation center for these refugees despite the onset of political crises at that time. By the way, to date, we only have these artifacts and photographs to prove that once in history, they landed in one of our peninsulas. Actually, some are currently living in Palawan but has no definite report on how they had thrived after the period of six months of rehabilitation.

Please let's plea for the preservation of this national heritage which was almost forgotten after the Marcos' Administration.