Navy's first Vietnamese admiral survived massacre of his family by man who was ... trends now
The Navy's first Vietnamese admiral almost lost his life as a young boy during the Vietnam War and was forced to play dead in order to survive and ultimately escape the country of his birth.
Huan Nguyen was just nine-years-old when in 1968 he became caught up in an incident which was captured by a photographer whose picture became famous the world over.
Photographer Eddie Adams took an image of Viet Cong guerrilla Bay Lop being executed by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.
The picture was published in newspapers around the world in 1968 with the photo serving to fuel the anti-war movement in the U.S. which saw the image as clear evidence the war was an unjust one.
But Adams, a former Marine Corps photographer has said there is more to the photo than meets the eye.
South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the National Police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street in February 1968, early in the Tet Offensive
Nguyen was promoted to rear admiral in October 2019 and at the age of 60 became the highest-ranking Vietnamese-born officer in the U.S. Navy at the time to hold an admiral's rank
Brigadier Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Director of the National Police - South Vietnam, who killed most of Huan Nguyen's family , lived until the age of 67 in 1998. Pictured in 1967
Bay Lop, the subject in the photo, had been executed in Saigon after carrying out the mass murder of Huan Nguyen's father - South Vietnamese Lt. Col. Nguyen Tuan, along with the officer's wife, mother, and six of his children, five boys and one girl.
Huan Nguyen, managed to survive despite being shot three times through the arm, thigh, and skull. The youngster stayed with his mother's dead body for two hours following the cold-blooded murder according to Military.com.
When night fell, Nguyen then escaped managing to avoid the communist guerrillas, and went to live with his uncle, a colonel in the South Vietnamese Air Force.
Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, the officer and Nguyen, his nephew now 16, escaped to the United States.
They were just two of around
