Interviewer: Could you tell us what happened on the night of the bombing?
Pham Van Thu: I am Pham Van Thu.
Pham Van Thu: I live on 151 Kham Thien.
Pham Van Thu: At around 10 pm on the 26th of December, I heard the siren as I was sitting there sipping tea.
Pham Van Thu: The radio announced that the American airplanes were about 100 miles from Hanoi.
Pham Van Thu: I put on my helmet and a red arm band.
Pham Van Thu: When I walked out of the house and looked into the sky, I saw streaks of light all over the sky and heard rumbling noises.
Pham Van Thu: I went into the shelter.
Pham Van Thu: A moment later, a flash of light entered the shelter and there was dust everywhere.
Pham Van Thu: I fell unconscious then.
Pham Van Thu: It rained, and I came to my senses again, feeling cold rain on my head.
Pham Van Thu: I heard people crying and moaning, and climbed out of the shelter.
Pham Van Thu: I ran into a woman who was screaming and moaning and told her to get settled down to allow me to go on with my work.
Pham Van Thu: Then I heard people yelling for help.
Pham Van Thu: I asked the woman whose house had been there, and she said that the house belong to Brother Chi.
Pham Van Thu: So I went straight there, and under a big pile of rubble I felt the corpse of somebody.
Pham Van Thu: I could not pull the body out so I called on six other men to come and help.
Pham Van Thu: We picked the rubble apart with our bare hands and found out that, below the dead body and in the shelter, water had come up to the necks of the rest of the members of his family.
Pham Van Thu: When we pulled Mr. Chi out, blood had come out of his mouth.
Pham Van Thu: We carried him out into the street and put him on an ambulance for emergency treatment.
Pham Van Thu: We then went back to work and were able to pull out 8 other persons in the next house.
Pham Van Thu: After that we met with the self defense unit leader who told us to go and get rested since we all looked dead tired.
Interviewer: Please give us a little more detail on how you rescued other people besides the Chi's family.
Pham Van Thu: After rescuing the Chi family, I went next door to the neighbors' and, together with my six other friends, pulled away the beams, the pieces of the wooden walls, the bricks and slabs of concrete to expose the entrance to the shelter and was able to pull out five members of the Cao family.
Pham Van Thu: We all felt almost suffocated, but we came out alright.
Interviewer: Please tell us how you went home get your rest.
Pham Van Thu: I had nine persons living in my house in a space of twenty-four square meters.
Pham Van Thu: When I went home, there was only smoldering ash.
Pham Van Thu: Everything had been flattened to the ground.
Pham Van Thu: I felt not too outraged at the time because I had lost only material things, things that I have been able to replace somewhat ever since, thanks to the help of the government.