Three decades on, Talbot Bashall retains many horrific memories of his 31/2years spent among the thousands of boatpeople who poured into Hong Kong from communist Vietnam. But one case stands out for sheer 'awfulness', says the former controller of the Refugee Control Centre, the body created in early 1979 to handle the developing crisis. The tale involves a boat that arrived in 1981 with a handful of refugees, including a youth - aged about 15 - who was tied to the mast. 'Interrogation of the boy revealed that he had been due to be eaten,' recalls Bashall, now 84 and living in Perth, Australia. 'His life was spared, he said, only because their boat arrived in Hong Kong territory.' The youth, Dao Can Cu, told the authorities how, a few days earlier, the others pulled his shirt over his head and tied his legs before the captain's nephew struck him on the head with an iron bar. As he lay bleeding, he heard talk of his throat being cut. 'They wanted to eat me and had a large pot of boiling water ready,' said Dao, who pleaded for mercy. But no one stepped forward to kill him and he was left lying in the bow. Instead, an ailing companion who died the same day became an easier alternative for the cannibals. Threats continued to be made against Dao, however. 'I later found out that he'd been tethered to the mast because they were afraid he might jump overboard and deprive them of their food supply,' says Bashall of the incident, which was reported in The New York Times on August 13, 1981. Bashall's account, with other compelling extracts from his desk diary, appears in a new book, Boat People: Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus 1975-1996, which is being released this month. Boat People was edited and published by Carina Hoang, a 47-year-old former Vietnamese boatperson, also of Perth. It presents the harrowing, yet also inspiring recollections of 38 people with direct experience of the mass exodus, including former refugees and people who helped them along the way. 'Their importance is that they are living witnesses,' Hoang says of the storytellers. The Vietnam exodus was the largest mass movement of refugees in modern times. About 1.5 million people, mainly from southern Vietnam, fled in small, overcrowded, wooden craft that were unsuitable for the open sea. Some 500,000 died, mainly due to bad weather, starvation, thirst and attacks by Thai pirates. The cover of Boat People features the haunting eyes of a Vietnamese woman photographed after landing in Hong Kong. The photo was among many the Hong Kong government provided to Hoang. Historic images also came from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Switzerland; the US Department of Defence (US Navy ships saved many boatpeople); and former refugee workers. The foreword for Boat People was written by Malcolm Fraser, Australia's prime minister from 1975 to 1983. In a message that is still relevant, Fraser says: 'It is enormously important that the genuine values of people fleeing danger and terror in their own lands be heard and understood.' The former conservative leader has gained a reputation as a fierce defender of human rights and of refugees, in particular. Hoang was 16 when she escaped Vietnam in July 1979. She met Bashall at a symposium on boatpeople in Perth two years ago and they became friends. Only by chance did she discover this year that he had kept a daily diary since 1961, covering his time in Hong Kong. 'Talbot's story is very valuable because he worked with the refugees 24/7. He knows exactly what they went through and what the government had to go through to help them,' Hoang says. A former British Army lieutenant, Bashall moved to Hong Kong in 1953 to join the prison service. This led to other senior government jobs before moving to the Refugee Control Centre. 'It was like nothing I had ever experienced before,' he says of the position. 'There was no rule of thumb for dealing with events as they unfolded.' And as much as he, and the other workers, tried to avoid emotional involvement that could affect their performance, it was impossible not to feel great pity for the refugees. For instance, the time when a woman staggered from a boat and came slowly towards Bashall, with her three young children 'crying copiously and clinging tightly to her almost lifeless body'. Only when she was close did he see the real reason for her despair: 'A dead infant lay in her arms, limp and lifeless, as if he had drowned in his mother's tears. The desperation I saw in that woman's eyes will stay with me forever. Far from being unique, her situation epitomised the plight of the thousands of refugees who had been stumbling past me every day.' Bashall's office was in the then Victoria Barracks. His initial orders were just to 'get on with it'. His duties included liaising with the UNHCR, other aid agencies and foreign consulates. But for all of his efforts, and those of his staff, he says the police and immigration service bore the brunt of the rapidly developing crisis. He says they deserved the highest praise for their 'heroism, doggedness and unparalleled commitment'. Boatpeople approaching Hong Kong were intercepted and escorted to the western quarantine anchorage for health and security checks. There, 'these poor, wretched, bewildered and totally traumatised pieces of human flotsam were provided with basic medical help and fed and watered', Bashall says. 'Then, after seven days they were towed in and disembarked at the government dockyard [at Yau Ma Tei]. This comprised a landing jetty with a huge dilapidated go-down behind it that had been earmarked for demolition, until the crisis began. 'To give some idea of the vastness of our problem, I note that on 12 July 1979 this site held 12,179 men, women and children.' But despite the crowding and 'generally primitive conditions' at the dockyard, the boatpeople were happy they were not pushed back out to sea, he says. 'I believe it is to Hong Kong's eternal credit that this policy was adopted and I know that those of us who were in the front line would not have had it any other way,' Bashall says. Taking flight The number of boatpeople to flee Vietnam in the '70s and '80s: 1.5m