They crammed their bodies into 30 or 40 foot fishing vessels or as many as the boat would hold. Safety wasn't an issue. All that mattered was getting away.

Madalenna Lai was one of the lucky ones who made it to a neighboring country. She now heads the organization that has toured this 32-foot "Freedom Boat" to 49 of the 50 states so far.

"We bring the Freedom Boat to remind the next generation know how it is," Lai said.

According to Ms. Lai, half a million refugees died in the ocean in the 1970's and 80's. Some starved. Some drowned. Still others were set upon by pirates.

Barry Solywoda was the captain of an Exxon oil tanker in 1988 when he spotted 42 people in a 32-foot boat drifting in the South China Sea.

"When you see them in the water, look at the video that I took at that time. I look at them in the water and I cannot believe these people took this kind of chance. What were they leaving? I mean even the Haitian boat people could almost see where they were going. this is like; they're going out to deep ocean. I can't comprehend it. They were just leaving. There was no destination. The destination was freedom," Solywoda said.

Solywoda rescued the 42 refugees and took them to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

"If we didn't pick them up, I guarantee you they would have been dead. because the storm was picking up. the shallow water, the seas would have been peaking out. A little boat that deep...there's no way they would have made it," said Solywoda.

Thanks in part to the boat people there are a million people of Vietnamese ancestry now living in America, 10,000 in Hawaii.

"The boat people did what they had to do to save themselves and their families. they will forever more remain a source of hope and inspiration to all of us," Suzanne Chun-Oakland said.

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