In a small coastal town in Southeastern Massachusetts, there is a grocery store selling fresh, hand-rolled sushi for $5.99. The man rolling that sushi has lived an extraordinary life, full of international travel, government positions, authoritarian rises to power, civil wars and evacuations that washed all traces of his old life away. His name is Wai-Pho Thu, and his story is one seldom heard, but many should listen to.
Wai grew up in Burma, now known as Myanmar. The National League of Democracy, or NLD, began to take control of the country and steer what was now Myanmar towards a more westernized, democratic version of itself. Under the leadership of the NLD, Myanmar aligned itself with the ASEAN network and began to play a role in the global trade network.
Wai lived with his mother, brother and sister as he studied marine engineering, earning contracts that would bring him to Germany, Scotland, Japan and, most recently, Italy.
Wai returned to Myanmar in 2019 and worked for the Department of Marine Administration until 2021, when the Military Junta staged a coup against the still-developing democratic government.
Wai and many of his friends had grown up in an era when the military Junta still had a major hold over much of Myanmar, and remembering what an oppressive force looked like motivated them to protest the violent regime, taking to the streets and fighting against the military in any way they could. On Feb. 18, villagers took to the streets. Only a week later, the leader of the protests was arrested.
From there, the protests turned deadly as the military fired shots into the crowds, and access to power & internet was restricted. In mid-March, he took part in a bloody protest.
“The Military Council fired guns to disperse the group, and the group fled into their homes. My brother and I hid while the police and army searched and searched, but we were in a safe place,” said Wai.
Wai lost many of his friends during the protests, killed by the military or taken prisoner. As the new government took power, the regime began to round up any former government officials and perceived opposition for extermination. Wai, being an official for the old government, knew he was in trouble, so with the help of the remnants of the old government and his mother, he fled the country.
“[My] mother of my family fled to Rakhine State. We stayed in the house of a couple we met in Kyakphyu township, Rakhine State,” said Wai. “On June 2, I arrived at Yangon Airport. I arrived in Italy on June 3. From there, I was transferred to another ship Oct. 21 and then sent to Virginia airport from Baltimore on Dec. 12.”
Wai has lived in the U.S. since his evacuation in 2021 and began work for a New York-based Sushi Company, currently stationed in Marshfield, Massachussetts, at the local Star Market. His brother and sister have also fled the country, leaving only his mother as the only member of the family still in Myanmar.
As Wai explained, the border is shut, and with no way to escape the country, citizens such as Wai’s mother are trapped. The government has limited access to electricity, leaving only five-hour windows where the country’s citizens have power. There is no internet in Myanmar, meaning that unless citizens take the risk of buying a VPN, there is no way to access social media, read the news or communicate with the rest of the world.
“My mom said to me, nowadays in Burma, people feel the hell of suffering,” Wai said, recounting one of the last times he and his mother spoke.
The two have not seen each other since 2021, but with limited flights out of the country for Wai’s mother to take, and the constant fear of death or worse keeping Wai from returning to Myanmar, he isn’t sure when, or if, he’ll see his mother again.
This is a reality that is faced by refugees and immigrants worldwide, but at the same time, it’s sometimes hard to connect to overgeneralized or vaguely described stories of hardships faced around the world when there isn’t a face to the names.
What Wai hopes to accomplish in having his story told is to have people recognize the struggle faced by people living in countries that, to most of the world, may slip below the surface of what some people consider to be marginalized, and to inspire the courage needed to stand up to the people who want to take liberty and democracy out from under us.
