25 Hawkins Road: Home to Vietnamese Refugees

Rebecca
So it's really a very random story. I was reading a post on Reddit, and I saw a comment that Tila Tequila, who is an American model and social media personality, was born in Singapore to refugee parents from Vietnam. So that really intrigued me because I thought, “Wow, we had refugees?” We took in refugees at one point; I didn't know that we ever did. 

So it was really unexpected that someone might have been born here to parents who came here as refugees. That really just made me google “Singapore refugee camp”. And then to my surprise, there were results. So were the results about the Hawkins Road camp. 

I did go and conduct more primary research so that they involved talking to people who lived in a refugee camp previously, as well as those who had volunteered in the camp, such as by teaching English. So I would say those were really very useful in terms of finding out more about what they thought of the camp, and what their life was like day to day and their eventual resettlement. 

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past. Some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating. 

Mention Hawkins road to most Singaporeans today and you're likely to get a blank look. The road used to be in Sembawang, but it doesn't exist anymore. Few people remember that from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, Hawkins road (opens in new tab) had a camp [for] Vietnamese refugees who fled the country after the fall of Saigon. 

The event triggered a massive outflow of people escaping Vietnam in tiny boats, resulting in what was then known as the Vietnamese refugee crisis. Singapore took in some of those refugees belonging to a particular category. However, some of those refugees ended up stranded at Hawkins Road Camp for years, much, much longer than anticipated. Rebecca Tan is here today to tell us more about the Hawkins Road refugee camp. 

A digital preservation archivist with National Archive Singapore, Rebecca wrote about a camp in BiblioAsia. Welcome to the show, Rebecca. How are you? 

Rebecca
I'm good. Thank you. 

Jimmy
Thank you for joining us and actually, we’re joining you, right? Because actually, this is your this is your hood, we are at the National Archives. 

Rebecca
Yes, yes, we are in a recording studio. 

Jimmy
Yes. It's a lovely recording studio, I hope. I wish everybody else could see this. So tell me more, actually, about the Hawkins Road refugee camp, you know. When did it start up and how many refugees could it hold? 

Rebecca
So the camp was actually started in 1978 because shortly after the fall of Saigon in Vietnam, there were thousands and thousands of refugees fleeing Vietnam. So there was a huge demand for the camp. And in fact, this refugee camp wasn't the only one in the region. There were others in other places like Malaysia and Indonesia as well. 

So the camp was meant to hold about 1,000 refugees. So the government meant for all the refugees, each time after they came in, to leave within three months. 

Jimmy
But that didn't happen, right? 

Rebecca
So they were actually coming to the refugee camp [that] was really extremely full. And some people ended up staying in the camp for maybe even six months, or even close to a year or years at a time. 

Jimmy
Yeah. Okay. We'll get back to that a little bit later but what was life in the refugee camp like? 

Rebecca
At first I thought maybe people would just go about their daily lives doing chores, but the refugees actually found ways to make life more pleasant and enjoyable. So they actually got to undergo vocational and even language training. 

Jimmy
Okay. 

Rebecca
So in the camp, there were actually volunteer English teachers, both Singaporean and foreign teachers who help to give language classes to the refugees living in the camp. And in fact, some of the refugees every now and then also got to go out and explore different towns, especially those in northern Singapore, like Sembawang or Marsiling. And there were a few trips for the kids. 

Jimmy
Oh okay, where did the kids go to? 

Rebecca
There were different places that they went to. So one of the refugees that I interviewed for this article actually mentioned that he remembered going to the Singapore Zoo. 

Jimmy
Okay, everybody goes to the zoo. What did you find surprising about your research into the Hawkins Road refugee camp? 

Rebecca
Some refugees got to take up employment in Singapore. 

Jimmy
Oh, okay. 

Rebecca
So, specifically, those are the refugees who ended up staying really much longer than expected. This didn't make it into the article, but I read in a June 1996 Straits Times article that a UNHCR representative or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. 

Jimmy
Yeah, that's right. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 

Rebecca
Yes. So he mentioned that the camp was not [a] closed refugee camp. In fact, those who had to stay in the camp for a really long time, I think towards the end of the camp’s operation, were actually able to go and find jobs outside the camp within Singapore. So they worked as cooks, as waiters, movers or other occupations like that, and they earn money. 

In fact, when some of these refugees left, they actually had some money saved up already that they could bring with them. 

Jimmy
Okay, that’s fantastic. So what was the compound that held the refugee camp? What was it used before? The refugees were occupying it. 

Rebecca
It hosted a British Army barracks. So basically, it was used for military housing. 

Jimmy
Okay. They had food and shelter. They had vocational training. What did the people do to sort of entertain themselves when they were there? Well, maybe not entertain, entertain is not the right word, but, you know, what did they do with their time when they were there? 

Rebecca
There were some normal things they did, like just talking to one another, resting, especially after they had just entered the camp, they were understandably quite shaken or had to adjust to a very new environment because they had gone through a lot. But of course, after the initial phase of adjustment, they found other things to do. 

So some of the refugees, in fact, even started a magazine to talk about their experiences escaping from Vietnam. So the magazine was called Nhan Chung or Witness, and it was meant to be a monthly publication. So they really got together to organise it. They had both Vietnamese and English versions, and they shared the feelings and experiences they had, even including things like their encounters with sea pirates. 

Jimmy
Wow. Okay. But you know, these refugees, you know, you were saying that some of them, they were not supposed to be in Singapore for very long, right? So they were only supposed to be in Singapore for like maybe a few months? You know what happens to them? Where would they end up going to? 

Rebecca
So for the refugees who were really able to leave Singapore within a few months, they would be resettled in other countries which had agreed to take them in. One of the conditions for them even being accepted into the Hawkins road camp in the first place was that there had to be a third country which would agree to receive them for resettlement subsequently. So there were really various different countries. 

Some of the countries which I know the refugees went to after that included the United States, Australia, as well as Germany. So that’s where they went. 

Jimmy
Okay. But then for some reason, you know, some refugees stayed in Hawkins Road camp for much, much longer than they had planned, what happened? 

Rebecca
So those were, unfortunately, the refugees who did not get resettled as they thought they would. This is because the countries which had previously agreed to take them in and thought they could take them and changed their minds about taking them in, and to be precise, there were seven of these countries. The countries made the promises to take the refugees in when they felt that their economies would improve, that they will be able to host the refugees. 

But later on, things did not turn out as planned. And so these countries classified the Hawkins Road refugees as people who were seeking economic and not political refuge. And so they deemed these refugees ineligible to be resettled over there. 

Jimmy
Okay. So that's why the refugees ended up staying in Singapore for much, much longer. So what happened then, you know, because obviously the Hawkins Road refugee camp is no longer in existence. How did Singapore deal with the fact that they were now hosting people that they were not planning to host for the long term? 

Rebecca
So the Hawkins Road camp actually received several lease extensions. There were certain times when the lease was supposed to be, in fact, the land that the camp was sited on was slated for industrial development. Obviously, that didn't quite take place as quickly as one might have thought it would. So if I'm not wrong, there was a first lease extension a few years after the camp opened. 

And then after that there was a second extension, and then a third lease extension was requested by the UNHCR, which was administering the camp as well, so the camp kept operating, so the refugees were able to keep living there. But with that said, of course things did come to an end and as we know, the camp did close. 

So the way that happened was eventually, around June 1996, the last remaining refugees were sent back to Vietnam. In fact, the departure ended up being quite a peaceful and amicable one. The refugees got to leave with the money that they had saved up, and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority staff were there to see them off as well. 

Jimmy
Okay. Did they protest about having to go back to Vietnam? 

Rebecca
So earlier on, before their actual departure from the camp, yes. There were protests about having to go back to Vietnam, as well as just the shock of finding out that they wouldn't be resettled in another country like they thought they would be earlier. In fact, in 1992, there were some camp residents who participated in a hunger strike upon finding out that the seven countries which they thought they would be resettled in were not going to accept them. 

So this was really quite serious. There were people who overdosed on anti-stress pills, as well as others who lost consciousness and were taken to the hospital. 

Jimmy
Okay, so it sounded pretty serious, but in the end, a solution was found in that they were sent back to Vietnam and they did have, and they went willingly. 

Rebecca
Yeah. Based on the news articles, the reports that came out at that time, in the end, the departure went quite peacefully and the refugees already had some money saved up to bring with them back to Vietnam as well. 

Jimmy
Okay. For the refugees who were resettled, you know, what did they say about Singapore? 

Rebecca
So generally, they all spoke very positively of their experience in Singapore and in the refugee camp. One of the refugees that I interviewed actually lives in Singapore again now because he was posted here for work and then later ended up meeting his wife, who is Singaporean. And he does recall some of his experiences when he lived in the camp as a child. 

He noted that honestly compared to what he had left behind in Vietnam, everything was just much better and in fact, quite exciting because it was still a new environment. If you remember being taken on outings to places like the Singapore Zoo and overall being treated quite well. In fact, Channel NewsAsia recently published an interview with another one of the refugees who lived in the camp, he is Mr Thao Dinh. 

And in that separate article, he actually noted that the Hawkins Road camp in Singapore was actually, from what he heard of others’ experiences, more like a refugee haven compared to the conditions in some other camp. 

Jimmy
The whole experience that Singapore had with the Hawkins Road camp actually had an impact further down the road, right. In terms of Singapore's policy towards accepting refugees. 

Rebecca
Correct. So that experience made Singapore decide that they will just not accept refugees in the future, because we are really a small country with limited resources. In fact, the then Home Affairs Minister, Mr Wong Kan Seng spoke in Parliament about this previously, and he noted that of the Vietnamese refugees that we took in, were actually accepted on the basis, on the belief that there would be a third country that would eventually take them in, that the refugees would be able to leave in due course. 

But as we now know, this really didn't happen as they planned and there were many refugees who had to stay in Singapore in the Hawkins Road camp for a much longer time than expected. He commented that it was like a lesson learned and that we would not accept any refugees in the future, even if there were promises from other countries to take them in later on. 

Jimmy
Okay. You know, what were the other Southeast Asian countries that accepted the refugees? I think you mentioned Malaysia and Indonesia? 

Rebecca
If you're referring to the countries which also had refugee camp, those included the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Some of the refugees in the Hawkins Road camp, including those I interviewed, actually had relatives or family members who also left Vietnam but were sent to refugee camp that were not in Singapore. So for a while they were separated from their family members, and it was only upon resettlement that they all got to reunite again in the third country. 

Jimmy
Actually Rebecca, you know, before Singapore started accepting refugees, they actually once turned them away. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happened? 

Rebecca
So this was a few years before the Hawkins Road camp started. This was in 1975. So back then there were, of course, also tens of thousands of Vietnamese who were fleeing the country in boats. But the Deputy Prime Minister at the time, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, commented that even though a lot of these people reached Singapore and really wanted to come to Singapore, Singapore could not take them in because it would have been swamped by the arrival of even more refugees. 

And in fact, that was actually action taken to address this situation. This was known as Operation Thunderstorm, where members of the Singapore Armed Forces were deployed to meet with the refugees, a lot of whom were already quite unwell and very desperate for a safe place to be. So the SAF provided them with fuel, with food and water, but then helped to repair the boats and just send them on their way instead of taking them in. 

It was only later on that the Hawkins Road camp was started, after the Singapore government had this past with the UNHCR and reached an agreement. 

Jimmy
Okay, so I guess the Hawkins Road camp came up as a result of discussions with UNHCR? 

Rebecca
Yes, because the UNHCR was the organisation that was administering the camp and even when they wanted lease extensions for the camp so it would continue operating, they had to go and talk to the Singapore government and explain that it was because the arrival pattern of refugees was continuing. So there would be a demand for the camp to continue operating. 

Jimmy
You couldn't have been born when Singapore first started hosting these refugees. Sadly, I was already born, and, you know, and I was not a newborn baby at that point, but yes, tell me, how did you come to know about the refugee camp? 

Rebecca
So it's really a very random story. I was reading a post on Reddit, and I saw a comment that Tila Tequila, who is an American model and social media personality, was born in Singapore to refugee parents from Vietnam. So that really intrigued me because I thought, “Wow, we had refugees?” We took in refugees at one point; I didn't know that we ever did. 

So it was really unexpected that someone might have been born here to parents who came here as refugees. That really just made me google “Singapore refugee camp”. And then to my surprise, there were results. So were the results about the Hawkins Road camp. That really got me more interested in the topic. And I wanted to do more research into it and write this article. 

Jimmy
Okay, so tell me about the research. What was it like? Was it easy to find the information? What did you have to do? 

Rebecca
So just through a basic google search, it was easy to find some basic facts and information about the camp, like when it started, when it closed. But honestly, for the more detailed information about really what happened in the camp, the day-to-day lives, the lives of not even just the refugees, but the volunteers who taught English or helped out at the camp, I would say that was really more difficult to find. 

I went through a bunch of older articles on NewspaperSG, which is NLB’s collection of digitised newspapers. So that was really extremely useful. And from the National Archives to the archives online platform, I also managed to find some old photos of the camp. 

Jimmy
Oh, right. Okay. That's interesting. What about like oral history? Was there any oral history mentioned? 

Rebecca
In terms of the oral history collection we currently have under NAS, I couldn't find any oral history interviews that directly relate to the experiences of people who lived in the camp. But with that said, I did go and conduct more primary research so that they involved talking to people who lived in refugee camp previously, as well as those who had volunteered in the camp, such as by teaching English. So I would say those were really very useful in terms of finding out more about what they thought of the camp, and what their life was like day to day and their eventual resettlement. 

Jimmy
Okay. So how many people did you speak to? 

Rebecca
I spoke to three previous residents of the camp, as well as one person who had volunteered in the camp teaching English to the refugees. 

They did share some interesting things. One of the people was Vinny Nguyen who still lives in Singapore now, so he talked a bit about what it was like to leave Vietnam. And he actually gave an example which I think might help some of us Singaporeans better understand what it was like. So he said he left on a very crammed boat. 

He compared it to about the size of, you know, a Singapore River taxi that you would see in the city area. But he said that on that boat they actually crammed in 200 people. 

Jimmy
Oh my goodness. 

Rebecca
So, one can only imagine how crowded it was over there. And then eventually of course they reached Singapore and then he got to enter the camp. 

Jimmy
So looking back, you know, how has the experience of doing this article changed you? 

Rebecca
I would say it's really been very interesting to hear about the experiences of people who lived in the camp. And [it] actually gives you a lot of perspective as to the importance and power of human resilience, because one of my interviewees is actually much older now, and if I'm not wrong, he entered the camp when he was in his 20s. 

I myself am in my 20s, so it was unimaginable to me to think that at some point someone else in his 20s, decades and decades ago had to become a refugee and enter a camp and lived through such a hugely challenging and uncertain experience. 

Jimmy
Well, I can imagine it was, you know, very harrowing, to be a refugee. 

You're now working with the National Archives as a Digital Preservation Archivist. What do Digital Preservation Archivists do? 

Rebecca
So I think everyone has some basic idea of what digital preservation is. Basically keeping things that are important so that they can be digitally accessed years down the road. But in fact, there is actually quite a complex and long process behind this. So we have to ensure that government records, so basically those from government agencies that are of historical and national significance, are transferred to the National Archives and then preserved in our system. 

This actually involves working quite a bit with our colleagues in IT, thinking about how we can enhance our existing technical systems to preserve these materials. And of course, liaising with stakeholders like the various government agencies, to make sure that they transfer their records to us as well, so that all the different processes involved in digital preservation can be carried out successfully. 

Jimmy
Okay. So I guess it means like digital. Does it mean digitising old photos and old documents? 

Rebecca
Of course, digital preservation involves digitising all these old photos and documents. So that is really one part of the process as well. But of course a lot more materials today are in born-digital format. Things like emails or word documents. So there is no need for digitisation of these things but a more important thing is to ensure that they are transferred to NAS and eventually they are arranged in a format that is suitable for preservation in our system. 

Jimmy
Okay, actually I'm interested in digital preservation because I know that technology tends to advance and all. You know, if you look at movies taken on old cameras or old photos and old movies, you know, have a much lower resolution than current technologies, technology keeps moving forward. How does the NAS sort of, you know, keep a hold of all these technologies? 

Rebecca
So we have different departments in NAS that deal with different formats of items that we receive. So of course when you were talking about say movies or videos, photos, there is the audiovisual archives as well as a sound and moving image lab, which help in working with these materials. But with that said, of course we as the National Archives are also always reviewing the different formats that we accept for preservation as well, and sharing these with government agencies so that they know the best formats to stock their records in or their different materials in before transferring them to us. 

Jimmy
Okay, what about AI? Is AI helping or not helping, or you're not thinking about AI at the moment? 

Rebecca
We are definitely thinking about how to use AI to make certain work processes more efficient. But with that said, of course it's very hard to directly implement or to make AI carry out the process of digital preservation simply because it's a very huge and complex thing involving many parts of a system. Maybe, for example, AI could help us write code or think of ways to troubleshoot certain issues, but ultimately the whole preservation process itself, like thinking about what to accept and what not to accept. 

Jimmy
Oh yeah. Right. 

Rebecca
Scanning or digitising something, thinking about what kind of access rights should be given to it is still a very human process. 

Jimmy
Okay. So you're not worried about being replaced by AI anytime soon? But could AI be useful, for example, in summarising documents? And is that a value that they could do? 

Rebecca
Yes, I definitely think that that's of value and in fact, NLB, not just with NAS, in fact, at NLB, we’ve been using AI as well to complete various other work tasks as well as think about how we can make our library resources more discoverable to the public. 

Jimmy
So, Rebecca, before you joined the National Archives, you actually worked at the Toa Payoh library, you know, what did you do there? Not only that, you also wrote about the Toa Payoh library for BiblioAsia. Tell us about that experience. 

Rebecca
Yeah. So I did work at the Toa Payoh library (opens in new tab) for about two and a half years as a Children and Teens librarian. And yeah, I did write a BiblioAsia article on that. So it’s actually available in the NLB 30th [anniversary] issue (opens in new tab) of BiblioAsia, which just came out recently to celebrate NLB’s 30th anniversary as a statutory board. 

I would say an advantage I had over writing this article was that I already worked in the library, so I could talk more easily to the staff there, take photos of the library where it is today and of course interview other NLB staff about it. So it was a really interesting experience writing the article. 

I even learned things that surprised me. One thing for example, is that I've always thought of libraries as the study spot. It’s where, you know, students go to study when they really need to focus on something. But studying, for a very long time, was just not allowed in the libraries at all. And it was only in 2003 NLB relented on this policy and said, okay, you know, you all can study in the libraries now. 

So that really made me think, okay, so where did people study last time? If they couldn’t go to the library, I guess they would study at home or some other places. And I actually did find the answer while researching for this article. So after I found out that you couldn’t study in the library previously, I found a brochure in the National Library’s collections from the Toa Payoh library and it actually detailed study spots located near the library. So in community centres, other nearby locations. You can actually see an image of this brochure in the online version (opens in new tab) of the article. 

Jimmy
Oh, that's quite cool. And tell me about your work at the Toa Payoh library. What is it like? There must be lots of great food nearby the Toa Payoh library. 

Rebecca
Food there was a lot more affordable. I would say the crowd is also quite different. 

Jimmy
Oh really? In what way? 

Rebecca
I would say it tends to be more of senior citizens or older people. 

Jimmy
Oh, okay. 

Rebecca
Just due to the demographics of the town. So, that was something that surprised me, not the demographics of the current visitors but the demographics of past visitors, which another colleague, Roy, who worked at the Toa Payoh library in the early 2000s shared with me. 

So we all, I think for a good while now, always know of HDB hub as being at Toa Payoh. But of course in the early 2000s, they had just moved to Toa Payoh from their previous location. 

So he said after HDB Hub moved there, along with it came all the HDB employees, the office workers. During lunch time, it was pretty common to see people really dressed professionally or in office attire browsing the library. But when I worked there, that was really just not something I saw very often at all. So it was really interesting to learn about how things were in the past and how things have changed over the years. 

Jimmy
Okay. Wow. It sounds like you had a good time, as a Children and Teens librarian. So Rebecca, complete the sentence. The archives are... 

Rebecca
The archives are repositories of Singapore's history and memories. 

Jimmy
Oh okay, that’s very nice. Nice way to come up with a capsule definition of what the archive does. Rebecca, thank you very much for coming on the BiblioAsia+ podcast. To learn more about the refugee camp on Hawkins Road, you have to read Rebecca's article “Remembering the Hawkins Road Refugee Camp (opens in new tab)” on BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg (opens in new tab). Rebecca, thank you very much for joining us once again on this podcast and thank you as an archivist for allowing us to be here in your studio. 

Rebecca
Oh yes. No problem. It's been great doing this with you all. 

Jimmy
Okay, great. Thanks, Rebecca. 

[Music playing]

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia  newsletter (opens in new tab). Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

Rebecca Tan, "Remembering the Hawkins Road Refugee Camp," BiblioAsia 20, no. 3 (October–December 2024).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Rebecca for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.