A Bond Unbroken

A Bond Unbroken is a film that tells a rare positive story to come out of the anguish of the Vietnam War. Narrated by world-renowned broadcaster Bob Woodruff, and featuring a song written for the film by Grammy winner Rob Thomas, A Bond Unbroken spans a period of war and culminates in the moving reunion of the U.S. Navy SEALS and their Vietnamese combat interpreter Nguyen Hoang Minh. Warriors reunited for the first time in more than 40 years. The film is a penetrating look at how the SEALS and their interpreter, Nguyen Hoang Minh, met and fought together in numerous SEAL Platoons that rotated into the Mekong Delta from 1967 – 1971. Standing alongside them in battle, and wounded twice in combat, Minh earned a membership in the SEAL brotherhood. When the war ended, the SEALs assumed the Communists would have executed Minh for collaborating with the Americans. They believed he was lost to them forever. But nearly 40 years later, a Navy officer went on a global search for Minh. With the tenacity of a detective, he discovered that Minh was still alive but living in abject poverty. The officer alerted Minh’s old SEAL colleagues and they began raising money to support Minh on a monthly basis, including funds that helped rebuild his decaying house. Their assistance improved the standard of living for Minh and his entire family. In 2013 the SEALs brought him to the U.S. for a reunion. The filmmakers were there to capture that event, and a subsequent reunion in Vietnam in 2015. The story is representative of other interpreters and translators who risk their lives alongside the U.S. military. Even today, interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan are left in limbo after being promised visas to enter the U.S. Many, such as Minh once was, are left behind in life-threatening peril. Minh’s story has a painful twist similar to what those interpreters experience.