Former bomber of the South Vietnam Air Force, Ly Tong in 2003. (APICHART WEERAWONG/AP)
Ly Tong, who hijacked planes to fight communism in Vietnam, dies at 73
April 7, 2019 at 8:27 PM
Officially,
the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, when North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong forces swept through Saigon and gained control of the U.S.-backed
South. But for Ly Tong, a former South Vietnamese fighter pilot, the
struggle against communism would last for decades more.
As younger generations came of age in a world
where Saigon was known as Ho Chi Minh City and the war had receded into
the past, Mr. Tong continued his fight, dressing in a military jumpsuit
and bomber jacket with his jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Dubbed
“the Vietnamese James Bond,” he drew on his military training to hijack
planes, twice dumping tens of thousands of anti-communist pamphlets
over Ho Chi Minh City. Urging residents to take up arms against the
government, he performed a similar pamphlet drop above Havana, where his
rented Cessna was shadowed by Cuban MiGs as he flew back toward South
Florida.
Mr. Tong, a self-described “freedom
fighter” who made a daring escape in 1980 from a communist “reeducation”
camp, was 73 when he died April 5 at a hospital in San Diego. He was
suffering from lung disease and had drawn hundreds of well-wishers in
recent weeks, including many South Vietnamese veterans who sought to pay
homage to a man who was variously regarded as a terrorist, a
revolutionary and a misguided idealist.
“Only
people who suffered under Communism will understand what he did, and why
he did it,” one of his supporters, Mai Nguyen of San Jose, told the
Mercury News in 2012.
“We will never forget our history. The younger generation that was born
here, they don’t understand. He’s a hero. Nobody else will do what he
did.”
Among
Vietnamese Americans, Mr. Tong’s reputation largely stemmed from his
actions on Sept. 4, 1992, when he boarded an Air Vietnam flight carrying
155 passengers from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. Placing a noose around
a flight attendant’s neck and wielding a plastic knife, he soon made
his way into the cockpit, according to news accounts and the Aviation Safety Network.
Mr.
Tong said he had a bomb strapped to his body — it was actually a set of
binoculars taped to his leg — and forced the pilot to descend to 500
feet, reduce speed and circle Ho Chi Minh City. He spent half an hour
throwing sacks of pamphlets out the cockpit window.
“People
of Saigon — fill the streets!” they read, according to a translation in
the Philadelphia City Paper. “Occupy the radio and television stations!
Ask the police to join the revolution or return to their barracks. An
overseas invasion force is on the way! I will soon be there to lead the
fight. Await instructions!”
Mr. Tong eventually
threw himself out the window, using a secondhand parachute he had
purchased in Bangkok to land safely in a swamp. None of the passengers
or crew were injured, and Mr. Tong was arrested within two hours.
“Put
me on trial,” he told interrogators, according to a Wall Street Journal
profile. “I want to be sentenced to death.” Instead of martyrdom, he
was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released early in 1998 as
part of a general amnesty.
He returned to the
United States a folk hero: A Vietnamese magazine in Houston had
solicited poems written in his honor, and a California radio station
held daily readings from his 300-page autobiography, “Black Eagle,”
which took its name from the fighter squadron he served in at the close
of the Vietnam War.
An unchastened Mr. Tong went on
to broaden his fight against communism, dropping leaflets over Havana
on New Year’s Day 2000 that urged Cubans to rise up against “the old
dinosaur Fidel Castro.” They were signed, “Commander in Chief of the
Revolutionary Anti-Communist Forces of the World.”
Two
American planes had been shot down off the coast of Cuba in 1996, but
Mr. Tong returned to Florida unscathed. He lost only his pilot’s license
as punishment and later that year traveled to Thailand, where he
hijacked a twin-engine plane and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. Again, he
dropped anti-communist pamphlets, this time on the eve of a visit from
President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Tong said he had hired
the plane, not hijacked it, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
No matter, he told the New York Times from jail in 2006, one year before his release: He was merely doing his duty.
“The
only thing that matters is, the Communists still control my country.
I’m a pilot. This is what I can do,” he said. “You cannot enjoy yourself
when your whole country is in pain, in torture.”
Le
Van Tong was born in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam, on
Sept. 1, 1945. His father was a farmer who was killed during the war
against the French, when Mr. Tong was 2, according to the Los Angeles
Times.
By
age 17, Mr. Tong had joined the South Vietnamese air force. His A-37
attack plane was shot down near Nha Trang shortly before the end of the
war, and Mr. Tong was captured and sent to communist prisons. Some of
his toenails were ripped out, he was placed in solitary confinement
inside a cargo container, and he was hung by his feet and beaten.
Mr.
Tong escaped in 1980 and embarked on a 17-month trek through Cambodia,
Thailand and Malaysia, traveling by bike, bus, rail and foot. He
eventually swam at night across the Johore Strait to Singapore, hailed a
cab and arrived at the U.S. Embassy to request asylum.
He
became an American citizen and studied political science at the
University of New Orleans, where he received bachelor’s and master’s
degrees as well as encouragement from historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who suggested he pursue military history.
“He
said, ‘No, I want to learn how to make a revolution,’ ” Ambrose told
the Houston Chronicle in 1993. “He always thought big. Even if he didn’t
always think very straight.”
Mr. Tong had nearly
completed work on a PhD when he left for Thailand, where he said he
tried to steal a Royal Thai Air Force plane to bomb Vietnam, before
settling on his hijacking plot. He was later foiled in a plan to drop
anti-communist leaflets over Seoul during a visit from China’s
president.
Survivors include three daughters, a half brother and a half sister. His death was confirmed by a niece, Loc Xuan Le.
In
recent years Mr. Tong lived in Southern California, where in 2008 he
went on a month-long hunger strike in front of San Jose City Hall,
seeking to get a stretch of Vietnamese shops recognized as Little
Saigon. Two years later he embarked on perhaps his most unusual action,
donning a brown wig, print dress and high heels for a concert in Santa
Clara.
Approaching
a Vietnamese singer viewed as an ally of the communist government, he
offered the performer a flower and allegedly squirted him in the face
with pepper spray. Mr. Tong later testified that the spray was a mixture
of fish sauce and perfume, and that he had intended to jump onto the
stage and pull up his skirt, revealing slogans pinned to his underwear:
“Down with Ho Chi Minh,” “Down with communism.”
“It
is humiliation to [communists] to put it in underwear,” he explained
during the trial in halting English, before being sentenced to six
months in county jail. “Fish sauce is a kind of humiliation.”
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