VHM_0006

A hand-made violin instrument was built in a Re-education Camp 
Written by Lê Trị, translated by Châu Thụy

My name is Le Tri, a former Captain in Unit 101 of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, serving as an intelligence officer. After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, I was required to surrender myself to, and was then imprisoned by, the communists in the so-called "re-education camps" for over 13 years. In June of 1976, the communists transported me to Northern Vietnam and continuously detained me in the remote areas of the Hoang Lien Son mountain range, including areas such as Yen Bai, Son La, Nghia Lo, etc. The other prisoners and I were all serving in the same situation. We were forced to perform hard labor and survive in prison, while North Vietnam was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Each and every day of forced hard labor, we were fed poorly, so we were constantly hungry and thirsty. Our spirits were low, we always felt sad and missed our family, as well as our former lives in South Vietnam. I volunteered to serve my time as a carpenter even though I had no prior carpentry or blacksmithing experience. But thanks to being skillful and willing to learn, I was able to do anything. After a few months, I became a proficient carpenter able to build houses and items such as tables, chairs, beds, cabinets, etc.

On afternoons when we were sad and homesick, some prisoners held logs of firewood pretending they were guitars and secretly sang military songs when there were no prison guards around. The hands move on the piece of wood as if playing a guitar. Witnessing this scene, I immediately planned a way to make a guitar for the prisoners. Initially, I cut wood to make the front and back sides of the guitar body and connected them together using thin pieces of aluminum or tin as guitar sides, but the resulting sound emitted was harsh. I then thought of a way to use wood instead of metal, I thinned out the side wood of the guitar to about 3mm and then heated it near the fire or boiled the piece... Before 1975, when I taught math, physics, and chemistry, I knew that cellulose in wood, when heated, it would soften and become pliable. From there, in just a short time, I completed an entirely wooden guitar. As for the neck, I applied the key (fret) division using a very precise acoustic formula. For the strings, I repurposed from the discarded bicycle brake cables. The small steel strings were used for mi and sol note strings, while the bass note strings I had to wrap with lead wire from neon lights.

As a result, when the prisoners in the art department received a guitar, they then asked me to make a violin. I learned from artists and musician prisoners how to draw the dimensions of the violin: First, I found two pieces of light wood called Vang Tam wood, 1.5 centimeters thick, and cut them into shapes of both faces of the violin. After that, I used a sharp piece of a broken glass bottle to scrape the surface of the wood and thin it down to about 3.0 millimeters into the shape of the violin's front and back. To glue the ribs to the two faces of the violin, I made glue from buffalo or cow hide. Next, I also used a sharp piece of broken glass bottle to shave wood into the shape of the violin's neck. Wanting to make the neck lighter, I hollowed it out and then glued the violin's fingerboard to it. Then, I had to make the bow. Bowstrings are usually made of horsehair, but in prison, how can one find horsehair? Therefore, I had to fashion it out of small nylon wire. Finally, I need a threaded screw to tighten the bow rod hair (strings). A small iron rod was honed into a screw, very elaborate...

When I was released from prison, thanks to the hollow neck of the instrument, I was able to hide documents and letters from my wife and children in the neck and smuggle them out without the warden discovering them. (of which I am donating these documents to VHM).

It took me roughly two weeks to make a guitar, while the violin, being more difficult, would take up to three or four weeks to complete. The handcrafting of these musical instruments had to be done secretly in the afternoon, during lunch breaks, or evenings. Living in prison, everything has to be done in secret because if communist officials caught the prisoner, they would immediately be disciplined. Personally, I was caught twice: The first time I was disciplined, my legs were shackled in chains, my hands were handcuffed, and I was relegated to a dark room for 15 days. The second time, I was beaten by a camp officer with a hammer. One hammer blows to the chest and two to the back, causing an injury to my spine. Currently, my spine is still curved as a result. When I sit, I often lean to the left. I also have difficulty walking, so I have to use a wheelchair to move around.

Many people questioned why, after being disciplined and tortured, I continued to make musical instruments in secret for my peers. The answer is that most of the ARVN officers are intellectual, we are high school and/or college graduates. We belong to various branches of the military, when we went to prison, each showed their many different abilities/talents. In my case, as an intelligence officer, I like exploring and learning new things, adventure and calculated risk. Especially with the notion that making others happy means creating joy for yourself. So even though I knew it was dangerous, I still took the risk to bring joy by fulfilling the requests of the inmates, and even tried to get documents out of prison!