Historical Background
Duc Nguyen is a documentary filmmaker and former Vietnamese refugee who directed and produced the film Bolinao 52 . Nguyen was rescued as a child in 1980 from the South China Sea by the USS Long Beach . Nguyen was interested in the history of "boat people," Vietnamese refugees who escaped Vietnam by sea in small, often unsafe boats after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Bolinao 52 tells the story of a group of Vietnamese boat people who were stranded in the Pacific Ocean for 37 days in 1988. The original 110 refugees were refused by multiple passing ships, including the USS Dubuque, and many starved and were forced to resort to cannibalism. The 52 remaining survivors were rescued by Filipino fishermen, who brought them to the Philippine island of Bolinao in the province of Pangasinan. In the documentary, Duc Nguyen interviews Bolinao 52 survivors Tung Trinh and her son Lam Phan, eyewitness and retired US Navy officer William E. Cloonan, and rescuer Carlos "Caloy" Cagusaan. Bolinao 52 premiered on March 19, 2007 in San Francisco and on March 27, 2007 in San Jose at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The film won two Emmy awards (Outstanding Achievement in Documentary and Oustanding Music Composition) for the Northern California region by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2009.
From the guide to the Duc Nguyen video footage for, Bolinao 52, 2004-2005, (Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries)
