Bataan Philippine Refugee Processing Center

" PRPC, located in the mountains of Bataan, was about a 3-hour bus ride from Manila. The PRPC opened in 1980 and closed around 1995. I worked there from 1984 to 1988. More than 400,000 Indochinese refugees (Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, ethnic Chinese, and some other minority groups) passed through its gates. Almost all of them had already been accepted for resettlement in the U.S., and almost all of them had already spent months and years in first asylum camps in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. During their stay in the PRPC, the refugees underwent final processing, health screenings, and studied English and U.S. culture. Most of the photos in this album were taken on one day...the day before I left. They're not the most beautiful, and they don't include ceremonies or friends' faces. I took the photos to remember the look of the camp. What the photos can't express is what the PRPC felt like...the amazing mix of languages, backgrounds, and cultures, the old hatreds and loyalties, the night sounds from the forest, the steam rising from the earth after a sudden downpour, the sound of students repeating an English phrase, the sound of prayers from a temple at sunset..."
~Gaylord Barr~

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