Too few have learned about the horrors of communism. Fewer still have escaped it and lived to tell the tale.

Amy Phan West is one such survivor. In 1984, Phan escaped Vietnam's communist dictatorship by concealing herself in the bottom of one of her father's fishing vessels before it set out to sea.

Escape wasn't a question of political preference for Phan and her family. It was one of survival.

In a recent interview with Young Americans Against Socialism (YAAS), Phan told how her grandfather was shot 16 times while laying on her father's lap.

"My dad told my mom, 'We can't have a future in Vietnam. So we have to leave Vietnam because we will die in the hands of the communists,'" says Phan, an entrepreneur who now lives in America.

Before the communist takeover, Phan's mother and father made a living by fishing. They made enough to feed themselves and put a roof over the heads of their small family, which also included Phan's twin brother and her younger sister. Phan said life was "beautiful and nice" in Vietnam for a time. Things changed quickly, however, under the communist regime.