Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan’s Hong Kong links, the ex-policeman who may have played a part in bringing him to a safe refuge and who captured the Vietnamese refugee crisis on film
- Former marine police officer Les Bird bought camera to record history as it unfolded before him and is to exhibit images
- Other Hongkongers with links to Vietnam say Quan’s emotional Oscar acceptance speech struck a chord with them
Ke Huy Quan’s Academy Awards triumph has turned a spotlight on his humble beginnings as a child in a refugee camp in Hong Kong.
And he may well have been met by a former member of the marine section of what was then the Royal Hong Kong Police, who used his camera to capture dramatic scenes of refugee arrivals for posterity.
“It’s brilliant that he made it,” Les Bird, who was on the front line of the refugee crisis, said. “It’s heartening to know what you did back then really helped somebody.”
Bird, 72, in an interview with the Post on Thursday, said he witnessed tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees descending on the city in the 1970s and 80s in his capacity as a marine police officer and also captured the crisis through his camera lens.
As an inspector, and later an operational commander, Bird and his team would sail out into the South China Sea to intercept and save “boatpeople” who arrived in Hong Kong waters on everything from thousand-tonne freighters to wooden rafts.
