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The people of the fall: refugee nationalism in Little Saigon, 1975-2005

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The people of the fall: refugee nationalism in Little Saigon, 1975-2005

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THE PEOPLE OF THE FALL:

REFUGEE NATIONALISM IN LITTLE SAIGON, 1975-2005

by

Phuong Tran Nguyen

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)

August 2009

Copyright 2009 Phuong Tran Nguyen

ii
Dedication

To Mom and Dad

iii
Acknowledgements

The genesis of this dissertation is professional in nature but its completion is
mostly personal. On June 22, 2005, the day I barely proved my competency in
everything from political economy to cultural hegemony, Jane Iwamura had the
foresight to suggest I conduct research in Little Saigon. “The belly of the beast” is what
she called it. For my committee it seemed a natural fit, but I had yet to find a suitable
entry point into this emerging field of Asian American Studies. Karin Aguilar-San Juan
generously gave me a copy of her paper for the 2000 American Studies Association
conference in Detroit, but studying anti-communist protest did not excite me. The
following year at the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Toronto,
the always-supportive Linda Võ told me about a special Vietnamese American Studies
edition of Amerasia Journal she was editing, but alas, I had nothing to contribute.
After all, I had just recently committed myself to learning the historian’s trade, so
I spent the first two years of grad school figuring out the difference between one
discipline and the next. In this regard, I am indebted to the instruction I received from
talented scholars such as Lisa Duggan, George Yudice, Toby Miller, Phil Harper,
Arlene Davila, and Tricia Rose. Friday seminars with Vijay Prashad never failed to
deliver laughter and inspiration. Manthia Diawara’s core seminar on Black Culture and
Politics, and the Africana Studies Center in general, provided us with one of the most
welcoming and intellectually stimulating spaces at New York University. I will never
iv
forget the day Manthia treated the whole class to a meal at the Torch Club right before
Thanksgiving. Just across the hallway I could find Jack Tchen, a man capable of
distilling the intricacies of academia into sentences of unrivaled clarity.
It was on this floor that I first met Gary Okihiro at the Communities of Interest
symposium and discovered another community East of California. Being the devoted
teacher he is, Gary graciously volunteered his time, his food, and his Columbia
University office space to lead graduate seminars in Asian American Studies. During
the Spring of 2002, it was quite a sight having four NYU graduate students taking the
subway to Broadway and 116
th
for another class with Gary.
The fact that my undergraduate professors—leading minds like George Lipsitz,
Jane Rhodes, Yến Lê Espiritu, Lisa Lowe, and Leland Saito—bothered to answer the
emails of a lowly, frustrated graduate student proves that faculty can indeed balance
teaching with scholarship. Neil Gotanda, the closest thing I had to family in New York,
deserves much love for allowing me to audit his Asian American Jurisprudence course
at Columbia Law School.
I have been told countless times that I would learn more from fellow graduate
students than from professors, but I did not come to believe it until I enrolled in the
Program in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
One of my first seminars introduced me to four of the most amazing friends—all first-
generation college students like myself—that anybody could ask for. Their
contributions to my academic career are too numerous to list on these pages, but here
are a few. Claudia Martinez impressed me with her knowledge of European history and
gift for listening. Gustavo Licon possessed the uncanny ability to lead an intellectual
v
discussion one minute and crack a stomach-pounding joke the next. Alexander Aviña
demonstrated a work ethic second to none and constantly challenged me to raise my
game another notch. More than anybody in this group, Jerry Gonzalez embodied the
spirit of community and connectedness. Through his example, I realized that none of
us could succeed without each other’s support and friendship.
Speaking of support and friendship, I would not have gotten this far without an
advisor as patient and dedicated as Lon Kurashige. Though possessed of a razor sharp
intellect, he has no need to show it off in front of students. As one colleague told me,
Lon epitomizes the very definition of “unpretentious.” During a meeting in the fall of
2005, Lon convinced me that a social history of Little Saigon needed to be written and
that I should be the person to write it. He exhibited more confidence in me than I
deserved, while simultaneously keeping my ego in check. As meticulous a reader as any,
he has edited many more drafts than I care to admit and never allowed me to make
unsubstantiated claims in my scholarship. During these last seven years, Lon knew that
pushing one more draft out of me—when I did not want to write anymore—was the key
to more efficient writing and more friendly prose. The mini-community that Lon
created by organizing basketball games at the Lyon Center proved E.P. Thompson’s
point that social cohesion goes hand in hand with political cohesion.
Over the past several years, I discovered an exciting new community of people
doing Southeast Asian American Studies. Thúy Võ Đặng showed how it was possible to
fuse Ethnic Studies and Vietnamese American popular culture. The annual Tết get-
togethers she organized introduced me to some of the brightest and most generous
young minds in Southern California. Mariam Beevi Lâm happily walked me through
vi
the promises and pitfalls of doing work in this field and convinced me that there was an
audience for refugee studies. And Mark Padoongpatt, a fellow USC grad student in
American Studies, possessed no shortage of valuable insight on the intersection of Area
and Ethnic Studies.
In the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity, I found a nurturing and
collaborate environment for generating interdisciplinary research. I think I spent more
time in the American Studies Center my first year than I did at my apartment. Kitty
Lai, Sonia Rodriguez, Sandra Hopwood, and the rest of the staff deserve a well-
deserved thank you for putting up with my constant presence. Jujuana Preston never
broke a sweat sending letters of reference on my behalf. I will never forget the good
times in the Center exchanging ideas with my fellow graduate students. Even in the age
of email, cell phones, Skype, and Facebook, nothing beats an old-fashioned physically
grounded space for creating a sense of community.
After space comes people and ASE had no shortage of quality peeps. During my
first visit I met tremendously down-to-earth faculty such as Janelle Wong, Roberto Lint
Sagarena, Jane Iwamura, and Laura Paulido. Basketball on Fridays were much more
fun when Ricardo Ramirez brought his tenacious defense and patented hook shot onto
the Lyon Center courts. Off the courts, he taught me to visualize where I want to be five
years from now and work backwards from there. My committee members mastered the
art of delivering tough criticism in the most gentle and dignifying manner. Any
knowledge I have of theory in general and economics in particular likely bears the
imprint of Ruthie Gilmore. She was also one of the first to insist I acquire the skills to
access Vietnamese-language sources. Việt Thanh Nguyễn exuded positive energy and
vii
laser sharp focus no matter which direction I decided to take my project. He knew the
theoretical and political trajectory of any argument before I had finished explaining
about it. William Deverell generously offered to serve as the outside member on my
committee and pointed out valuable sources on anti-communism in Southern
California. And George Sánchez, the heart and soul of American Studies, saw the value
of refugee nationalism early on and encouraged me to see its relevance to Cubans and
other groups as well. His seminar on Los Angeles ranks as one of my favorites of all
time. I promise I will not wear any tank tops when it is my turn to teach.
My interest in the historical method picked up speed when I discovered the
treasure trove of primary sources in Southern California. In the fall of 2005, I paid my
first visit to the Southeast Asian Archives at the University of California at Irvine. Its
librarian, the now retired Anne Frank, treated a complete stranger like a familiar face
and drafted more than a couple important letters of recommendation on my behalf.
Inside a humble 12’x18’ space were enough books, periodicals, multimedia, and
ephemera for a dissertation many times larger than this one. One of the Archives’
advisors, Jeffrey Brody, a Professor of Communications at Cal State Fullerton, kindly
met with me and shared his vast knowledge of Little Saigon acquired from his days as a
beat writer for the Orange County Register. Stephanie George, the archivist at Fullerton’s
Center for Public and Oral History, put up with my presence for an entire week and
hooked me up with interviews and books relevant to my project. Cornell University, all
the way in Ithaca, had one of the best collections of Vietnamese American periodicals
around. Derek Chang and Maria Cristina Garcia offered to meet with me on short
notice and lend sage advice about finishing the dissertation. Oiyan Poon referred me to
viii
a friend in possession of valuable documents related to the flag resolutions in Little
Saigon. The Vietnam Library in Garden Grove, an archive I discovered by accident,
housed some of the earliest issues of the refugee press and donated to me an impressive
stack of extra periodicals. Thanks to the virtual archive otherwise known as the
interlibrary loan system I obtained refugee camp newsletters, organizational literature,
and rare books without having to travel all over the world.
I found the greatest pleasure mining the memories of the refugee generation.
Songwriter Lê Quang Anh opened the door to a flood of interviews. His friend Nam
Loc Nguyễn was the central directory of an amazing roll-call of contacts such as Việt
Dzũng, Trình Hội, Nhật Ngân, Lê Văn, Hồ Xuân Mai, and Ngô Thụy Miên. I had the
fortune of meeting my research assistant Yvonne Huynh on the first day of Vietnamese
class at Goldenwest College. She introduced me to Pastor Nguyễn Xuân Bảo, Tony
Lâm, Rep. Loretta Sánchez, and Nguyễn Cao Kỳ. The rest of the interview subjects
must remain anonymous, but I owe them all a humongous debt of gratitude for opening
up their lives to me.
Gaining fluency in the Vietnamese language gave me the skills and confidence to
interview people and read documents. For that I credit the Southeast Asian Studies
Summer Institute (SEASSI) held annually at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Bắc Hoài Trần and his talented staff promised fluency—provided we put in the work—
and I’ll be damned because they were right. My classmates—most notably Hải-Đăng
Phản, Graham Hiệp Hallman, Chau Quach, and Carolyn Ly—along with the friendly
people of Madison made me feel at home in the Midwest.
ix
Writing multiple drafts requires much time—including time just to think about
writing—and I am grateful to have been the recipient of generous funding throughout
my seven years at USC. An Irvine Foundation Fellowship package got me through the
first five years at USC, enough time to complete a chapter and design a course on Asian
American history. A John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation dissertation writing
fellowship afforded me the time to draft two chapters and an introduction. A USC Final
Year Dissertation Year Fellowship gave me the opportunity to complete the rest of my
dissertation with just enough time to spare.
The brave and loyal USC colleagues who put their red pens to these chapters
deserve recognition. My partners in the Los Angeles Studies Dissertation Reading
Group—Hillary Jenks, Michan Connor, Jerry Gonzalez, Daniel HoSang, and Sean
Greene—performed like alchemists, helping turn my desiccated prose into something
worth reading. If there is anything resembling quality interdisciplinary work in these
chapters, they should feel free to take some of the credit. Cam Vu and Viet Le took time
out of their furiously busy schedules to critique all five chapters while also socializing
me into the growing network of Vietnamese American scholars in Southern California.
All their adult lives, Mr. Danh Xuân Nguyễn and Mrs. Bảo Thị Trần worked
low-paying manual labor jobs in hopes my brothers and I would enjoy opportunities
they never had. My parents occupied spaces in Vietnamese and American society so far
removed from the Ivory Tower that they only recently learned the Vietnamese word for
Ph.D.—tiến sĩ. My mother named me Phương—direction—because I symbolized their
hopes for the future. They named their second child Đông—east—a person who is,
pound for pound, the best basketball player I have ever seen. My youngest brother
x
Nam—south—exhibits a modesty and minimalism that I have always aimed for but
have yet to achieve. And I cannot forget Woody, the beloved Boston Terrier mutt we
credit with bringing our family closer together since he entered our lives in early 1998.
We came together in collective and profound sadness on June 5, 2009, the day Woody
passed away, less than a month after graduation day at USC. Woody was the only family
member unable to vote for Barack Obama, but he has the distinction of being the sole
witness present when I popped the question to the love of my life.
My best friend and love of my life, Betty Châu Nguyễn, is a person who defies
categorization. Born in a refugee camp, raised in Canada, and influenced by a multitude
of cultures, she nevertheless has a phenomenal knowledge of her Vietnamese heritage.
While I spent far too much time wondering if I had chosen a sexy enough topic, she
wisely reminded me that future generations of Vietnamese Americans do not need their
heritage validated by a bunch of snobby academics. She processed every new idea
before I started writing and willingly perused through draft after draft of my
dissertation. A talented singer and dancer, she interpreted Vietnamese popular culture
in ways an academic like myself never thinks to do. Only someone as patient and
understanding as Betty could put up with a bookworm like myself, for which I am
eternally grateful. When people tell me that we make for a beautiful couple, I know
they’re really saying that she’s beautiful and I’m lucky. I could not agree more.

xi
Table of Contents

Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract xii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: The Origins of Refugee Nationalism 25
Chapter 2: Culture, Space, and Place in Little Saigon 79
Chapter 3: The Anti-Communist Việt-Cộng 130
Chapter 4: Racism and The Rise of the Cultural Brokers 171
Chapter 5: Becoming Refugees in the Post-Cold War Era 221
Conclusion 268
Bibliography 278

xii
Abstract

Throughout history refugees have formed their own communities in new lands
while holding on to memories of exile and harboring aspirations for reclaiming their
lost nations. These memories and aspirations are part of a process I call “refugee
nationalism,” and this dissertation studies its origins, development, and persistence
within Southern California’s Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese community outside
of Vietnam. Most studies of Vietnamese Americans have marginalized the refugees’
attachment to the fallen country of South Vietnam, focusing instead on their
transformation from refugees to immigrants in the process of shedding their old-world
identities and adapting to their American surroundings. This perspective fails to
appreciate the fact that refugee nationalism has flourished in conjunction with
becoming American. Like prior generations of stateless people, the former South
Vietnamese had to come to terms with a refugee cultural identity without precedent in
their own cultural history. Only later would they come to embrace refugee nationalism.

1
Introduction

Throughout history refugees have formed their own communities in new lands
while holding on to memories of exile and harboring aspirations for reclaiming their
lost nations. These memories and aspirations are part of a process I call “refugee
nationalism,” and this dissertation studies its origins, development, and persistence
within Southern California’s Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese community outside
of Vietnam. Most studies of Vietnamese Americans have marginalized the refugees’
attachment to the fallen country of South Vietnam, focusing instead on their
transformation from refugees to immigrants in the process of shedding their old-world
identities and adapting to their American surroundings. This perspective fails to
appreciate the fact that refugee nationalism has flourished in conjunction with
becoming American. Like prior generations of stateless people, the former South
Vietnamese had to come to terms with a refugee cultural identity without precedent in
their own cultural history. Only later would they come to embrace refugee nationalism.
Becoming refugees was not easy. It entailed unconditional indebtedness towards
the nation credited with rescuing them from a life under communism. And considering
all the wrongs the United States had committed during the Vietnam War, the 130,000
evacuees of the first wave had plenty of reason not to express unconditional gratitude
towards their new adopted homeland. In the mainland refugee camps, the newest
Americans developed paternal bonds with the United States by highlighting only
2
memories of U.S. rescue after the fall of Saigon. Thus Americans, especially in the
aftermath of the Vietnam War, had an interest in refugee identity if only to redeem the
humanitarian image of the United States that had virtually vanished by 1975. As
thousands emigrated illegally from Vietnam over the next few years, Vietnamese
Americans actively embodied the role of the helpless yet grateful refugee in hopes the
United States would take pity on the boat people by granting them asylum. During the
1980s, ultra-nationalist groups envisioned refugees as heroic exiles working in
solidarity with other so-called freedom fighters of the Ronald Reagan era to liberate
their respective homelands from communist rule. By the time Washington and Hanoi
officially ended Cold War hostilities, Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon had
latched onto an eternal refugee identity as their rationale for living so far from home.
Vietnamese American popular culture also made it easier to identify as a refugee.
The former South Vietnamese learned to find virtue in being part of the first mass
exodus in their nation’s history because to them it underscored the oppressive
conditions which communist rule had imposed on the people. “Only for freedom do I
live in exile,” one refugee song declared. Refugee nationalism, rather than seeing its
members as a shameful footnote in the nation’s long history, instead viewed the refugee
as the central figure in modern Vietnamese history. This popular culture was grounded
in space, place, and personal relationships on an everyday level that made refugee
nationalism an ethnic identity both Vietnamese and American in nature.
Of course, not all Vietnamese Americans identified with refugee nationalism.
Some had seen too much death in their country and their own families to bother with
gratitude towards the United States. Others, while appreciative of U.S. intervention
3
after the fall of Saigon, knew better than to express unconditional fealty to any state. In
addition, a large segment of Vietnamese Americans born after 1975, especially in
regions devoid of a large ethnic community, chose to identify as American rather than
Vietnamese. But just like any other nationalism, refugee nationalism must be noted for
the voices it marginalizes as well the voices it amplifies.

Nationalism and Collective Memory
Refugee nationalism derives from the premise that nations are seen as a natural
and necessary part of the global political landscape. Influential political theorist
Benedict Anderson famously described nations as “imagined communities” whose
diverse members profess sharing a “deep, horizontal comradeship” that millions have
willingly died for.
1
Because the members of a nation, no matter how small, will never
meet face to face, the basis of their “fraternity” is imagined and subject to change over
time. According to Anderson, the democratization of knowledge initiated in 17
th

century Europe by print-capitalism’s appeal to non-Latin vernaculars led to “the
erosion of the sacred imagined community” in favor of separate nation-based imagined
communities throughout the continent.
2
Nationalism’s origins in the triumph of
regional diversity over universal Vatican doctrine reminds us that nationhood is a

1
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York:
Verso, 1982) 7.

2
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York:
Verso, 1982) 39-41

4
matter of becoming—that there was a period when nationhood did not yet exist—
rather than an essential ahistorical identity.
3

But recognizing that nations were products of a particular historical age has not
stopped scholars from identifying ageless core components of an imagined community.
For instance, Czech theorist Miroslav Hroch argued that every nation has three
“irreplaceable” features, the first of which was, “a 'memory' of some common past,
treated as a 'destiny' of the group—or at least of its core constituents.”
4
Because people
have willingly given their lives for nations, it follows that defining what kind of nation
they should die for lies at the heart of political struggle. Antonio Gramsci emphasized
the importance of grassroots struggles in building popular support for any regime, but
national unity also requires coercive measures, whether it is Marxian class conflict or

3
Other studies of note include Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins (New York: The
MacMillan Company, 1944); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, editors, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983); John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1986); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990); David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless
Nation (New York: Routledge, 1992); Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1997); Paul Gilbert, The Philosophy of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1998); Montserrat Guibernau, Nations Without States: Political Communities in a Global Age (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1999); Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003); Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese
Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Andres Resendez, Changing National Identities at
the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Serhii
Plokhy, The Origins of Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).

4
Miroslav Hroch, “From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-building Process
in Europe,” in Balakrishnan, Gopal, ed. Mapping the Nation (New York and London: Verso, 1996) pp 78-97,
See esp. p. 79. The other two “irreplaceable” features of nationhood are, (2) a density of linguistic or
cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it; (3) a
conception of equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society.”

5
top-down authoritarian power. Thus memories of a national past have both popular and
prescriptive characteristics to them.
But what do shared memories often consist of? When sociologist Maurice
Halbwachs introduced the concept of collective memory in 1925, he asserted that
present conditions play a vital role in reconstructing the past.
5
Memorials perform this
kind of work, as Pierre Nora discovered in his groundbreaking study on 20
th
century
French nationhood.
6
By presenting the past in unambiguous terms, memorials and
other vessels of collective memory enable one generation to more easily transmit their
interpretation of essential national heritage to future generations, outliving its founders
and their critics.
7
According to historian Peter Novick, “a collective memory, at least a
significant collective memory, is understood to express some eternal or essential truth
about the group—usually tragic. A memory, once established, comes to define that
eternal truth, and along with it, an eternal identity, for the members of the group.”
8

If imagined communities are constantly grappling with how the past is
remembered, it then becomes more apparent why, after all these years, Vietnam and the

5
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A.
Coser. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);

6
Pierre Nora, Lieux de Mémoire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

7
For more about the importance of memorials and the nation see Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory:
Rethinking the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History,
Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006); Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between
Memory and History in the 20
th
Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); and John Bodnar,
Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993); Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries
Shape Public Memory (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005);

8
Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) 4.

6
United States still obsess over the outcome of the Vietnam War. Resiliency has been the
hallmark of Vietnamese nationalism. Lacking the spectacular technical advances of
China or Japan, the Vietnamese proudly reminded themselves that even a thousand
years of foreign rule—at the hands of the Chinese and French—could not extinguish
their indomitable thirst for national independence. According to the Hanoi
government, that long awaited “Liberation Day” took place on April 30, 1975, when the
fall of Saigon unified all of Vietnam under one flag. In North Vietnam, joyous crowds
celebrated the end of the Vietnam War, a war that Hanoi’s historians had long depicted
as a revolutionary struggle between the heroic Vietnamese and the imperialist
Americans. Any references to Hanoi’s communist ties or the sovereignty of the old
South Vietnamese regime were omitted.
9

In stark contrast, the Vietnam War marked a new low point for the United States.
The first war America lost lay to waste the twin myths of United States military
supremacy and moral leadership in the world.
10
Appalled by what they perceived as an
endless war, a new generation of American youth vigorously opposed the U.S.

9
Patricia Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2002)

10
Some of the canonical texts on the Vietnam War include David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
(Boston: Penguin Books, 1972) Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983);
Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown
and Company, 1972); David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Boston: Penguin Books, 1983); Neil
Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1989); and
Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1985); Whereas earlier studies focused more on passing judgement on the United
States only, recent revisionist histories put more effort into critiquing all sides. Examples include Michael
H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade Vietnam (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996);
and Michael Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military
Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1999).

7
Government’s war in Vietnam while their brothers in uniform were shunned as pariahs
upon their return. As one dismayed veteran concluded, “There were really two wars in
that era: the first was a military war fought in Vietnam where 57,000 Americans died
and…the second was a political war waged here at home.”
11
Sensing a nation desperate
for redemption, the New York Times editorial page declared the “rescue” of 130,000 of
their South Vietnamese allies “one of the few shreds of glory that the United States has
been able to retrieve from the closing days—or years—of the Vietnam war.”
12

But these are national collective memories, which have the blessing of the state.
Refugee nationalism—the culture of the stateless exile—has to find ways to survive in
foreign countries, thus inevitably changing over time in relation to the host society.
Because of the narrative of rescue inherent to refugee identity, there exists a strong
dependence on the goodwill of the new homeland to support the interests of the exile.
The gratitude of those South Vietnamese families did as much to resuscitate the
American people’s belief in the nation’s universal and unparalleled moral virtue—
otherwise known as American Exceptionalism.
13
In the absence of this powerful myth,
the United States was little more than another empire that would come and go in the

11
Tom Carhart, “Insulting Vietnam Vets,” New York Times, 24 Oct 1981, 23.

12
“We Have No Choice,” New York Times, 5 May 1975, 30.

13
For more perspectives on American Exceptionalism, see Seymour Martin Lipset, American
Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996); John Carlos Rowe, “Introduction,”
in John Carlos Rowe, editor, The Post-Nationalist American Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2000); Charles Lockhart, The Roots of American Exceptionalism: History: Institutions, and Culture (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Gerald D. Nash, The American West in 2000: Essays in Honor of Gerald D. Nash
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003); Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of American Power:
The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008).

8
long arc of history. But in its presence, the nation could fulfill a variety of policy
objectives under the aegis of the world’s savior.
United States resettlement authorities initially paid little attention to South
Vietnamese memories of war and exile because they wanted the 130,000 refugees of the
first wave to assimilate as quickly as possible. From the onset, government authorities
assured a skeptical public that Saigon’s middle class refugees were westernized enough
to become productive members of American society. The Euro-American influences
that rendered the refugees less than authentic Vietnamese in the minds of some was
interpreted just the opposite by the refugees themselves. As citizens of a developing
country, they assumed that adopting Euro-American attributes necessarily preceded
Vietnam’s long awaited entry into the modern world alongside China, Japan, and other
Asian powers. But in a matter of days, the South Vietnamese went from being members
of an exclusive Asian fraternity to a stateless people stripped of their dignity, absent
material wealth, and separated from their loved ones.
Considering that no one expected any further mass migration out of Vietnam
after the fall of Saigon, the small cohort of 130,000 Vietnamese refugees did not know
how to make sense of their exiled status. Near the bottom in both American and Asian
racial hierarchies, they initially hesitated to endow their common past with a hint of
national purpose. But their exodus out of Vietnam was only the beginning.
Most of the two million post-1975 Vietnamese émigrés did not migrate by choice
or have family living abroad. Life-threatening persecution compelled them to brave the
dangerous South China Sea in search of safety. At sea for days and waving the white
SOS flag, these stateless people now put their fate at the mercy of the international
9
community. Death or rape at the hands of pirates occurred frequently. Refugees,
dependent on the goodwill of other nations, had a vested interest in praising the United
States at every opportunity available. And unlike the process where immigrants—one
part of the majority group in their country of origin—learn to become minorities in
their new homeland, refugees have the opportunity to practice in exile a culture that is
usually criminalized in their country of origin.
14

The Perspective of Ethnic and Immigration Studies
Back in 1975, the exploits of Florida’s Cuban exile community were already well
known, and scholars naturally assumed that the first wave of Vietnamese émigrés would
have similar problems transitioning from refugees into immigrants. After conducting
fieldwork at a Pennsylvania refugee camp, social scientist Gail Paradise Kelly believed
that the tragedy of forced migration had produced a delusional preoccupation with
finding a way back to Vietnam, explaining the refugees’ reluctance to speak English
and adapt to American customs. A visit by folk musician and fellow traveler Phạm Duy
(fam zwee) reignited old nationalist emotions that weeks of Americanizing classes were
designed to suppress. Americans attending the concert did not realize that behind the
beautiful melodies were lyrics imploring the Vietnamese to honor their ancestors, who
never gave up their ethnic ways despite “One thousand years of Chinese, one hundred
years of French rule.” This spectacle led Kelly to conclude that, “Thousands of

14
For more on the refugee condition, see Peter I. Rose, “Tempest-Tost: Exile, Ethnicity, and the Politics of
Rescue,” Sociological Forum, vol. 8, no. 1 (March 1993), 5-24; and Peter I. Rose, Dispossessed: An Anatomy of
Exile (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).

10
Vietnamese in American refugee camps shared Phạm Duy’s illusions—the illusions of a
refugee.”
15

Twenty years later, Vietnam War expert Stanley Karnow still questioned the
mental health of those clinging stubbornly to their refugee mindset. “Unable to
acclimate to what they regard as exile,” he wrote, “many older ones cluster in the Little
Saigons of Southern California or Northern Virginia, and dream of somehow returning
to Vietnam.”
16
For Kelly and Karnow, refugee mentality functioned like post-traumatic
stress disorder, except this barrier to normalcy was self-imposed by an older generation
unwilling to step outside of their nostalgic sanctuary. It did not help that most studies
and personal narratives in existence treated the Vietnamese as sympathetic figures in
need of rescue.
17
On the other hand, the impressive scholastic and vocational
achievements of the younger generation of Vietnamese Americans, many too young to

15
Gail Paradise Kelly, From Vietnam to America: A Chronicle of the Vietnamese Immigration to the United States
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977) 2-3. Studies in the same vein include Walter Liu, Transition to
Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979); and Darrel Montero, Vietnamese
Americans: Patterns of Resettlement and Socioeconomic Adaptation in the United States (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1979).

16
Stanley Karnow, “Preface,” Once Upon a Dream: The Vietnamese-American Experience, edited by De Tran,
Andrew Lam, and Hai Dai Nguyễn (Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1995)

17
Studies and personal narratives of the period includes include Barry Wain, The Refused: The Agony of the
Indochinese Refugees (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981); Paul Strand and Woodrow Jones, Jr., Indochinese
Refugees in America: Problems of Adaptation and Assimilation (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985); James
Freeman, Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Joanna
C. Scott, Indochina’s Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland,
1989); David W. Haines, Refugees as Immigrants: Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese in America (Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1989); James Paul Rutledge, The Vietnamese Experience in America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); and Le Ly Hayslip, Child of War, Woman of Peace (New
York: Doubleday, 1993).

11
remember the war, suggested that this ethnic group would adjust to American life as
previous immigrants have.
18

If one set of scholars have been concerned about refugee problems, another has
focused on their treatment in American society. Scholars of Ethnic Studies have argued
quite effectively that racial and ethnic categories are inseparable from American life.
19

Because “relatively few (immigrants) would be classified as minorities in their own
countries,” says sociologist Peter Rose, it follows that “Most migrants became
“minorities”—and “ethnics”—after they arrived here.
20
Echoing that sentiment, historian
Ronald Takaki has argued that Asian immigrants remained outside of the mainstream
because a racist society viewed them as “strangers from a different shore.” But rather
than giving up on the United States and contemplating repatriation, the majority of
them became Asian American.
21
Takaki fully expected future generations of Vietnamese
Americans to break away from old world politics and adapt to United States society just

18
Studies in this school include Nathan Caplan, John K. Whitmore, and Marcella H. Choy, The Boat People
and Achievement in America: A Study of Family Life, Hard Work, and Cultural Values (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1989); and Nathan Caplan, Marcella H. Choy, and John K. Whitmore, editors, Children
of the Boat People: A Study of Educational Success (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991).

19
Plenty of scholars deserve mention, but one of the most frequently cited texts in this regard is Michael
Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge,
1994).

20
Peter I. Rose, “Tempest-Tost: Exile, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Rescue,” Sociological Forum, vol. 8, no.
1 (March 1993), pp. 5-24, 10.

21
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Penguin Books,
1989); Other general Asian American studies of note during this period include Sucheng Chan, Asian
Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991); Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity:
Bridging Identities and Institutions (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins
and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994);
and Karin Aguilar-San Juan, The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s (Boston: South
End Press, 1994).

12
as previous Asian Americans have. But concentrating on anti-Asian racism, they
underestimated the extent of American compassion on the Vietnamese American
experience. The refugees from South Vietnam saw themselves as survivors who owed
their lives to the nation that offered them final asylum, a type of social obligation rarely
seen in the immigrant experience, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Paternalism and the Asian American Experience
Refugee nationalism’s paternal overtones hearken back to the early 20th century
when missionaries opposed the anti-Asian racism that was the dominant view in
America. The liberal missionaries believed that Christianity could bridge the great
chasm between East and West. “Since the first anti-Chinese riots of the 1870s,” wrote
historian Henry Yu, “Protestant missionaries were among the few allies of Asian
immigrants in the United States.”
22
As working class whites searched for opportunity in
California, their desire for a free labor utopia pitted them against contract labor
brought in from Asia. During a time period when the dominant theories of race
insisted that even Catholics and Jews were an inferior subspecies of whites, the

22
Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 21; In Gary Y. Okirhiro, The Columbia Guide to Asian American History (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001), historian Gary Okihiro has identified the missionaries as belonging in
the “Liberal” tradition of scholarship. Some studies include Eliot Grinnell Mears, Resident Orientals on the
American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928);
William Carlson Smith, Americans in Process: A Study of Our Citizens of Oriental Ancestry (Ann Arbor, MI:
Edwards Brothers, 1937); Romanzo Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii (New York: MacMillan, 1938);
and Milton R. Konvitz, The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1946); and Robert Park, Race and Culture (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950). Liberals, confident in the
universal humanity of all, generally took unpopular stances against anti-Asian racism. The major weakness
of their work, as Okihiro sees it, is the lack of attention paid to the voices and feelings of the Asians being
discriminated against. In other words, the works of the liberal tradition constitute a critique of white
American prejudices and still leave us knowing very little about Asian Americans.

13
missionaries saw firsthand how Asian immigrants overcame their so-called genetic
limitations through early education.
23
If Chinese and Japanese, the most supposedly
foreign of all groups, could assimilate, the thinking went, so could any other group.
24

The spirit of rescue found a modern day parallel in the sudden arrival of 130,000
Southeast Asian refugees in 1975. This time, liberal pro-refugee voices matched the
anti-Asian hysteria gripping the populace. Even the ultra-conservative Orange County
Register penned an editorial in favor of admitting the refugees, regardless of cost. At
stake for this unlikely coalition was the salvation of an America that had lost much of
its honor in the Vietnam War and most of its credibility in the midst of Watergate. The
resettlement experience promoted a new paternal relationship between Americans and
the South Vietnamese based on a post-1975 rescue narrative. For the duration of the
1970s, until Ronald Reagan’s militaristic brand of nationalism gained popularity,
United States credibility had only humanitarian leadership to be proud of. Church-
based volunteers served their country by willingly opened their hearts and homes to
complete strangers.

23
Many books discuss the significance of eugenicists like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard on
American intellectual life. One of the most recent books that traces its spread into early 20
th
century
popular culture is Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the
Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)

24
Liberal intellectuals, as historian Gary Okihiro calls them, argued that solving the so-called Yellow
Problem required that whites overcome their own racial prejudice. Unfortunately, dominant racial
attitudes preaching the unholiness of racial mixing prevailed and Congress passed the 1924 Immigration
Act, ensuring that almost no more immigrants from Asia and Central Europe would be allowed into the
United States. For more about the racialization of Asians in this era, see Mai Ngai, Impossible Subjects:
Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Also of
importance is the theoretical work of Lisa Lowe, especially her book Immigrant Acts: On Asian American
Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996)

14
The main criticism of Asian American Studies in the liberal tradition is that
scholars often excluded Asian voices and perspectives from their work. In this study,
we have the benefit of the Vietnamese-language ethnic press, oral interviews, memoirs,
and personal narratives that chronicle the origin, evolution, and contradictions of
refugee nationalism. Any mention of paternalism tends to evoke histories of slavery,
colonialism, or other exploitative relationships.
25
While exploitation is present in
Vietnamese American history, I am more interested in how refugee nationalism shaped
the formation of community and determined the manner in which Vietnamese refugees
could negotiate the racial and political landscape of Southern California. Feeling
indebted as they did to white Americans strongly affected how they could address
racism and what kinds of coalitions they could form.

Little Saigon in Orange County
Little Saigon in Orange County, California has served at the front line in the
formation of refugee nationalism. This ethnic community of over 200,000 is the largest
and most well known of its kind within the Vietnamese diaspora. A combination of
sunny weather, an initial critical mass of 20,000 refugees—out of 130,000—a
disproportionately high concentration of musicians and intellectuals, and a supportive

25
Two studies to come to mind in this regard are Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death: A
Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) and Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll
(New York: Vintage, 1976). Patterson, a sociologist, identifies slavery as an institution rooted in the spoils
of war. Slaves understood their condition as a substitute for death since the conventions of warfare allowed
the victor the option of doing as he pleases with the vanquished. Refugee nationalism works similarly in
that refugees embrace a discourse of perpetual gratitude and deference to mainstream America in return for
having been rescued. Genovese’s historical monograph of the Old South examines how white slave owners
used paternalism to keep African American slaves content with their condition.

15
enough Southern California political economy helped make it the unofficial capitol of
the overseas Vietnamese. By the early 1980s, those not relocating from east of California
were at least making self-described pilgrimages to Little Saigon.
Their objective was best accomplished by explaining how refugee nationalism
benefited the United States. Through daily interactions and special occasions, they
learned that becoming more American actually helped advance their interests as exiles
and ethnics. Historical circumstances led to refugee nationalism discovering in
American neoconservatism the closest thing to an ideological soulmate.
26

Most scholars underestimate how much Orange County’s political culture and
the politics of rescue influenced refugee nationalism. That these and other events—like
the unveiling of the first memorial honoring South Vietnamese veterans—took place in
Orange County must be taken into account. Vietnamese refugees entered a host society
with a rich history and political tradition. A bastion of American conservatism long
before Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan entered the White House, Orange County
has not voted for a Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. As
post-World War II developers converted farmland into suburbia, Orange County
became a premier destination for white flight and capital flight from Los Angeles. In
1989 alone, economic production in Orange County exceeded $60 billion, making it the
tenth largest economy in the nation and among the top thirty in the world.
27
And while

26
Neoconservatives comprise a collection of post-1960s thinkers who abandoned their prior ties to the Left
and dedicated their political lives to protecting the sovereignty and future existence of the United States at
all costs. For a primer on neoconservatism, see Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are
Changing America’s Politics (New York: Touchstone, 1979).

27
Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster, editors, Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange
County since World War II, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 1.
16
the freeway system made Orange County accessible to the rest of the Southland, L.A.
County would not profit from all the high tech firms and their well-paid employees
locating to Orange County.
What was missing from the literature on Orange County was a good social
history explaining its political culture. In her social history of the conservative
movement of the 1960s, Lisa McGirr unearthed the day-to-day activities behind the
mass conversion of New Deal Democrats into neoconservatives–or New Republicans.
28

These Orange Countians professed finding refuge in the Republican Party, thereafter
embarking on a self-righteous crusade to save the American family so that America
could save the rest of the world.
29
While Barry Hatch will always be known in academic
circles as Monterey Park white racist city council member, Frank Fry managed to shed
his racist image, eventually banking his political career in Westminster on pandering to
Vietnamese Americans. In addition to an affluent white majority, there exists a sizable
and less affluent Latino minority that has its own history in the region, as indicated in
the separate works of Lisbeth Haas and Gilbert González.
30
This unique social,

28
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2001); For more on Orange County see Karl Lamb, As Orange Goes: Twelve California
Families and the Future of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1974); Edward Soja, “Inside
Exopolis: Scenes from Orange County,” from Michael Sorkin, editor, Variations on a Theme Park: The New
American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992); Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and
Mark Poster , editors, Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Gilbert G. González, Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus
Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

29
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2001).

30
Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995). Gilbert G. González, Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern
17
economic, and racial context makes Orange County all the more central in the analysis
of the Vietnamese American experience in Southern California.
Treated like family by their compassionate and conservative church-affiliated
sponsors, the early Vietnamese refugees knew another side of Southern California—and
conservative America—that prior studies have not accounted for. The stories of
generous sponsors handing over keys to house and car nearly free of charge
overshadowed the horror stories of exploited refugees. During the early 1980s, when
one racial panic after another followed the Vietnamese in Orange County, Republican
politicians risked their careers by defending their unpopular Vietnamese constituents.
Under the circumstances, Vietnamese Americans repaid their debt by gravitating
towards the proudly hyper-American Republican Party. Of course, membership in the
staunchly anti-communist GOP appealed to their new identity as exiled United States
allies still fighting the Cold War so they may one day reclaim their lost nation.

Method and Sources
Being refugees differentiates the Vietnamese American experience from the rest
of Asian America and other immigrants, but few studies have seriously interrogated the
dynamics inherent to refugee identity. Without an in-depth breakdown of the origins
and day-to-day experiences shaping Little Saigon’s formation, along with the paternal
bonds between Vietnamese and the host community, many scholars will continue to
assume that refugee identity is merely a vestige of the old world because refugees

California County, 1900-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

18
involuntarily left their homeland. That is why social history is necessary for explaining
the significance of refugee nationalism—particularly the politics of rescue—in the
Vietnamese American experience.
Some of the latest scholarship on Vietnamese Americans—which now includes
work written by Vietnamese Americans—continues to ignore the influence of
paternalism, rescue, and guilt. Influenced by theories of transnationalism, younger
scholars like Caroline Kiều Linh Valverde and Nhi Liêu have concentrated on cultural
production among overseas Vietnamese—or “the exile as the authentic,” as Liêu calls
it. This theoretical framework has the advantage of keeping the authors outside the
internecine conflicts within academia over one’s political views vis-à-vis the Vietnam
War and the conservative politics of many Vietnamese Americans. Instead another
intellectual problem arises. Their dissertations make such a strong and intelligent case
for transnationalism based on internal psycho-analytic issues that they neglect how
material factors like anti-Asian racism, the Southern California political economy, and
paternalism determined the expression of refugee nationalism.
31
Without taking into
account how cultural production is rooted in material conditions and local community,
it becomes all too convenient to conclude, as Liêu and Valverde do, that refugee
nationalism constitutes either “colonial nostalgia” or “culture in a bubble” transplanted

31
Transnationalism refers to imagined communities that transcend traditional national boundaries. The
concept also challenges zero-sum game paradigms that assume that people assume one nationality at a time,
thus an emphasis on letting go of past ties. Transnationalism’s most ardent proponents, partly because they
study large corporations or elites, often argue for the decreasing relevance of the nation-state, but these two
concepts are not inherently contradictory. For more on transnationalism see Linda G. Basch, Nina Glick
Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and
Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994); Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at
Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Aihwa Ong, Flexible
Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

19
directly from pre-1975 Saigon.
32
They can make sexy claims about how Vietnamese
culture traveled back and forth across the Pacific without informing readers of the
specific role radio stations like the Voice of America and British Broadcasting
Corporation played in that global circuit.
In an effort to bridge ethnic studies with new theories of transnationalism,
sociologist Yến Lê Espiritu has proposed a critical refugee studies framework that places
Vietnamese American history and the politics of rescue—another term related to
paternalism—in the context of American imperialism. She hints at the critical but un-
credited role the rescued South Vietnamese played in redeeming their American
rescuers faith in American Exceptionalism.
33
Nevertheless, her critique of American
empire avoids the issue of refugee nationalism altogether. In all fairness, the field of
Asian American Studies has chosen to deal with the refugee experience by focusing
instead on a top-down critique of American racism and foreign policy. To paraphrase
Benedict Anderson, it would seem that refugee nationalism has proved an uncomfortable
anomaly for Asian American historiography and, precisely for that reason, has been largely
elided, rather than confronted.
34

32
Nhi T. Lieu, Private Desires on Public Display: Vietnamese American Identities in Multi-Mediated Leisure and
Niche Entertainment (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004); Caroline Kieu Linh
Valverde, Making Transnational Viet Nam: Vietnamese American Community—Viet Nam Linkages through
Money, Music and Modems (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2002)

33
Yen Le Espiritu, “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in US
Scholarship,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1-2 (Feb/Aug 2006) 410-433.

34
The original quote reads as follows: “It would be more exact to say that nationalism has proved an
uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory and, precisely for that reason, has been largely elided, rather
than confronted.” Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1982) 3. Ironically, one of the first Ethnic Studies dissertations that
attempts to give voice to refugee politics was written by Yen Le Espiritu’s student. See Thanh-Thúy Võ-
20
One of most important lessons comes from María Cristina García, one of the first
historians of refugee community from a transnationalist perspective. In her history of
Cuban refugees in Miami, García argued that, “The political culture of the exile
community in south Florida evolved in response to events in both Cuba and the United
States.” Like the Cuban émigrés, the former South Vietnamese tried to influence the
course and writing of history in their old and new surroundings, often blurring the line
between exile and ethnic politics.
35

The story of how the South Vietnamese became refugees remains hidden in the
memories of Vietnamese Americans, the documented stories of the refugee press,
memoirs and personal narratives written in the Vietnamese language, and the scattered
articles in mainstream media. No one has yet to assemble the big puzzle using all these
pieces. This study tries to strike a balance between top-down changes and bottom-up
dynamics, between internal politics among the Vietnamese and the external politics
between Vietnamese Americans and their local community. For example, the tendency
for Vietnamese Americans to vote conservative must take into account how anti-
communism was sublimated into a more acceptable United States political discourse:
through a desire to reunite with loved ones, narratives of victimhood, their interactions
in Orange County, and the rise of neoconservative ideology through Ronald Reagan.
English-language newspapers provide an excellent overall picture of this history,
including American attitudes and political history. Secondary sources make readily

Đặng, Anticommunism as Cultural Praxis: South Vietnam, War, and Refugee Memories in the Vietnamese
American Community (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 2008).

35
María Cristina García, Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 120.

21
available data from the United States Census, surveys, and the political economy of
Southern California necessarily to contextualize changes in refugee nationalism to
material grounded conditions. But it is sources like oral interviews, oral histories,
organizational literature, memoirs, and Vietnamese-language media that put on full
display the diversity of the refugee community. My first chapter, for instance, relies
heavily on refugee camp newsletters, personal narratives from the Vietnamese-language
Writing on America series of books, and oral interviews I conducted. Much of these
sources are housed mostly at the University of California, Irvine; California State
University, Fullerton; Cornell University; and the Vietnamese Library in Garden
Grove. In addition, I have conducted interviews with approximately 20 Vietnamese
Americans in the Orange County area. Accessing these sources requires both a fluency
in Vietnamese and a willingness to look at the Vietnamese as both exiles and ethnics.

The Development of Refugee Nationalism in Little Saigon
Since the fall of Saigon, refugee nationalism in Little Saigon developed across five
contexts. The first was the transition from being South Vietnamese citizens to refugees
among the first wave in 1975. Chapter One explains how new paternal bonds between
Vietnamese and Americans made refugee identity instantly opposed to Hanoi’s official
version of Vietnamese nationalism. Anticipating a lonely, hostile, and impoverished
future outside the United States mainland refugee camps, many of the South
Vietnamese had cultural and economic incentives to stick it out with their fellow co-
ethnics and friendly camp authorities for as long as possible. The origins of refugee
nationalism stemmed from Vietnamese gratitude for being rescued and cared for by the
22
United States. At the same time, the rescue of 130,000 refugees gave American
Exceptionalism a much-needed boost to compensate for military defeat in Vietnam.
Interestingly, Vietnamese American gratitude required refugees to strategically block
out negative memories of the United States in war and peace.
Chapter Two investigates how the emergence of a semi-autonomous Vietnamese
community and a second wave of refugees from Vietnam inspired the formation of a
community noticeably more proud of its refugee roots. By moving to California and far
away from their protective sponsors, refugees now had to depend on an ethnic political
economy and a strong welfare state to keep them economically afloat. Underpaid
cultural workers at music venues, newspapers, and protests appealed to a refugee
identity and found receptive audiences. Ongoing paternal relationships with American
sponsors and friends cultivated a political identity as helpless victims of communism.
And as much as they hated the Communist, refugees also felt compelled to secretly root
for Vietnam during its war with China and Cambodia.
Chapter Three looks at how Little Saigon became home to an anti-communist
militia movement in the 1980s. The rise of a masculine heroic strain of refugee
nationalism was partly rooted in Reagan-era policies favoring anti-communist guerilla
“freedom fighters” such as those in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Economically, high
levels of male refugee unemployment and female breadwinning coincided with the
increasing popularity of this movement to reclaim Vietnam by guerilla warfare. And its
violent tactics compelled Vietnamese critics to keep silent for fear of their own safety.
In order to defeat the Việt-Cộng, the refugee community created their own anti-
communist version of the Việt-Cộng: equally guerilla and repressive.
23
Chapter Four highlights how ethnic entrepreneurs stepped into leadership
positions in Little Saigon. With their bilingual abilities and awareness of racism’s
reach, these so-called cultural brokers were best qualified to help ease tensions between
refugees and the Anglo community in Orange County. As long as white politicians took
pity on the Vietnamese, the cultural brokers could afford to address anti-Asian racism
without forming alliances with other racialized minorities. But contrary to assumptions
that the entrepreneurial class had left the past behind, they and nearly everyone else in
Little Saigon sent enough remittances to account for half of the ethnic economy.
Chapter Five explains the intensification of refugee nationalism during the post-
Cold War era. Little Saigon now had the demographics to lean on local politicians. At a
time when they could safely return to Vietnam, activists in Little Saigon equated their
refugee nationalism as an endangered minority voice vis-à-vis the Vietnamese nation-
state and demanded that Orange County politicians help preserve their minority
discourse in the form of memorials, flag resolutions, and a refugee-friendly school
curriculum. Ironically, critiques of authoritarianism in Vietnam ignored the fact
diasporic Vietnamese could find alternative forms of “liberation” there. As citizens of a
western nation, they could enjoy economic privileges and sex symbol status unavailable
to them outside of Vietnam.

Becoming Refugee American
Since 1975, most people have assumed that Vietnamese American exile identity,
what I call refugee nationalism, would not afflict future generations living in the
24
United States. Observers like Gail Paradise Kelly and Stanley Karnow wanted refugees
to forget the pain of exile so they could move on with their lives. Others like Ronald
Takaki and Yến Lê Espiritu felt that Vietnamese Americans, whose debt of gratitude to
the United States was paid in full long ago, did themselves a disservice by playing along
with the politics of rescue. What they did not realize was that refugee nationalism
represented not a refusal to assimilate, but rather a different mode of becoming
American. Their forced migration and eventual “rescue” by the United States
compelled many Vietnamese Americans feeling indebted to American, which was a
drastic improvement from feelings of shame, trauma, and loneliness.
In the case of the Vietnamese refugee generation, feelings of perpetual gratitude
made them more receptive to overtures from conservatives. After all, the Việt-Cộng had
made anti-Americanism a cornerstone of official Vietnamese nationalism, which made
it harder for the refugees to take nuanced stances in relation to their adopted homeland.
Redbaiting politics in Little Saigon turned refugee nationalism in the lingua franca, if
not he civil religion, of the community. They—and many of their American rescuers—
engaged in selective forgetting of American failures in Vietnam prior to 1975.
Ironically, those Vietnamese Americans who found it easier to critique the United
States have done so by marginalizing the rescue narrative in their collective memory.
This alternative Asian American experience compelled many Vietnamese Americans to
believe that the paternal Cold War bond forged between the United States and South
Vietnam would never vanish.

25
Chapter 1
The Origins of Vietnamese Refugee Nationalism

From the moment they landed on American soil in 1975, the Vietnamese refugees
faced an uphill battle to forge an imagined community. The American-run refugee
camps planned to disperse the 130,000 refugees throughout the country.
1
From the
perspective of camp administrators, Phạm Duy (fam zwee) and family embodied model
refugees. Vietnam’s most renowned folk musician, though penniless and already 55-
years-old, did not cling furiously to camp life when a suitable sponsor was found in less
than two weeks time. “The further from home the better,” he wrote in his memoirs,
hoping the solitude of Florida’s panhandle would help bury the pain of losing his
country and the four sons still trapped there.
2
Unbeknownst to camp administrators,
the problem went beyond the will to assimilate: How was American identity a suitable
consolation for a people who had lost their country, their loved ones, and their
dignity…due in large part to American intervention in the Vietnamese civil war?
3

1
Nick Thorne, a State Department immigration coordinator for the Vietnamese, was quoted at the time as
saying, “there will be no heavy concentrations of placements…rather a leavening.” Eleanor Hoover,
“Vietnamese Settlers: Can They Adapt?” Los Angeles Times, 27 May 1975, 22.

2
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký, Memoirs vol. 4: Living in Exile (Midway City, CA: Pham Duy Productions, 1999) 4.

3
For more on the refugee camp experience in 1975 see Gail Paradise Kelly, From Vietnam to America: A
Chronicle of the Vietnamese Immigration to the United States (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977); Walter Liu,
Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979); and Darrel
Montero, Vietnamese Americans: Patterns of Resettlement and Socioeconomic Adaptation in the United States
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979).

26
The tension between giving up one past in exchange for another—retaining an
old Vietnamese identity versus becoming American—foreshadowed the emergence of a
another identity: Vietnamese refugee nationalism. Similar to Benedict Anderson’s
conception of nationalism, refugee nationalism was an imagined community rooted in
the collective memory of exile from Vietnam, implying a righteous migration and a
future return to reclaim their lost nation. The first step to identifying culturally as a
refugee was overcoming the shame of losing their country and loved ones, which
tempted them to think only of their individual survival.
4
The change of scenery
instantly transformed the South Vietnamese from big shots to beggars at the mercy of
American charity and public opinion. Homesickness, combined with initial reports of
relative calm in postwar Vietnam, prompted many to consider repatriation. As people
stripped down to little more than instinctual biological existence, the South
Vietnamese refugees were the living embodiment of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of
“naked life.” While Agamben argued that a standard feature of modern governments is
the right to invoke the state of emergency to strip away rights once thought inalienable,
statelessness as a result of exile produced the same naked life effect.
5

4
When 63 refugees at Camp Pendleton, CA were asked to name the “most unforgettable event” since
leaving Vietnam, 36.5% responded “lack of food,” 22.2% responded “seeing misery and defeat,” 12.7%
responded “lost relatives,” and 22.2% responded “uncertainties.” See, Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere:
Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 75; Fox Butterfield, “In Saigon, It Is Every
Man For Himself, Nobody for Thieu,” New York Times, 20 April 1975, 199.

5
Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000). Indeed, this is what happened in Communist-run Vietnam as the new regime rounded up loyalists of
the old regime into re-education camps so they could be, in effect, stripped of their prior operating system
and reprogrammed to function properly in a Utopian society.

27
The American-led resettlement efforts pushed a diverse cohort of South
Vietnamese to identify as a community of refugees united in their undying gratitude to
their American saviors.
6
The erosion of traditional hierarchies among Vietnamese in
the U.S.-military-run camps helped to restore the communal bonds that were lost in the
chaotic scramble to escape Vietnam at any cost. These new communal bonds were
strongest among non-English speakers, camp volunteers, and unaccompanied
refugees—those who benefitted most from the company of their co-ethnics. A
combination of American paternalism and propaganda inspired more and more
Vietnamese to express undying gratitude to the United States for rescuing them from
certain doom. In order to do this, both sides had to put aside memories of the United
States and South Vietnam that contradicted the narrative of rescue and benevolence.
Additionally, the politics of rescue was very much a two-way street.
7
The evolving
paternal paternalistic relationship went a long way towards helping refugees and
Americans come to grips with losing the Vietnam War.
8

6
Peter I. Rose, “Tempest-Tost: Exile, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Rescue,” Sociological Forum, vol. 8, no.
1 (Mar 1993) 5-24; Yen Le Espiritu, “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in
US Scholarship,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1-2 (Feb/Aug 2006) 410-433.

7
Combing through newspaper articles, personal interviews, memoirs, photographs, and secondary sources
published in Vietnamese and English, I discovered refugee and American voices that covered the gamut of
emotions. One interviewee, accompanied by family members, casually described the days at Camp
Pendleton spent eating, sleeping, showering, and watching films. Another interviewee, an adult male on
his own, used more dramatic language to point out that family was the first concern on everyone’s mind.
Writing years later, one former military man recalled how he was miraculously reunited with his wife at
Subic Bay not too long before the cargo ship Thương Tin I was to set sail for Vietnam at the request of 1,600
homesick refugees, mostly soldiers. American public opinion of the Vietnamese ranged from the high-
minded to the outright racist.

8
Yến Lê Espiritu has argued that the politics of rescue actually cuts both ways in her two articles about
Vietnamese American Studies. Yen Le Espiritu, “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese
Refugee Subject in US Scholarship,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1-2 (Feb/Aug 2006) pp 410-
28
The Country They Left Behind
For 20 years, the South Vietnamese weathered international criticism of their
less-than-ideal government. Their fledgling nation had barely stepped out of the
shadow of French colonialism when, in 1954, the superpowers divided the country in
two. With substantial support from the United States, the Republic of Vietnam (South
Vietnam) aspired to follow in the footsteps of Taiwan and South Korea. Mao Tse
Tung’s Revolution of 1949 drew mainland China into the Communist bloc. The West
and their non-communist Asian allies responded by transforming the formerly feudal
and insignificant territory of Taiwan—and later South Korea and South Vietnam—into
what General Douglass MacArthur called “an integral part” of the "western strategic
frontier.”
9
Taiwan expert John Garver commented that, “U.S. leaders invested
considerable resources in making that model successful, in the expectation that the
Free China model would play a significant role in the struggle against Communism
throughout the developing world.”
10

433; Yen Le Espiritu, The "We-Win-Even-When-We-Lose" Syndrome: U.S. Press Coverage of the Twenty-
Fifth Anniversary of the "Fall of Saigon" American Quarterly - Volume 58, Number 2, June 2006, 329-352.

9
Hạ Lệ Hương, “Thương Con Kiểu Việt Nam,” Viết Về Nước Mỹ tuyển tấp 1—Writing on America vol. 1
(Westminster, CA: Viet Bao Publishing, 2000) 66-68.

10
John Garver, The Sino-American Alliance: Nationalist China and American Cold War Strategy in Asia
(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997) 66. Garver cites as his evidence an article, “Formosa Today,” in the July
1952 issue of Foreign Affairs, NSC 146/2 of November 1953, and NSC 5503 of January 1955. Relatively
peaceful conditions in Taiwan and South Korea made it feasible for the United States to pour billions into
nation-building. An infusion of American dollars and bureaucrats, what seemed like an Asian version of
the Marshall Plan, successfully helped create a middle class in these countries. But of course those billions
of collars came with strings attached. For instance, the United States continually pressured Korea to
balance its budget by raising taxes and reducing government spending, to retool its exchange rate, and to
liberalize its markets to foreign investment.
10
There was even a provision stipulating the end of United
States aid if Communist party members were allowed to enter government.
10
As a result, single-party
authoritarian rule endured while the economy underwent a drastic transformation. See Eul Young Park,
29

An ongoing war between north and south made it virtually impossible for South
Vietnam to follow the same path as Korea and Taiwan. Over $150 billion in economic
and military aid produced rampant corruption at the top, an economy dependent on
American dollars, and a grinding civil war dependent on American troops.
11
At the
same time, there were discernable signs of industrial progress.
12
South Vietnam entered
the automobile business with the introduction of Đà Lạt Motors, and even had its own
movie industry. The country’s rapid industrialization did much to curb the Vietnamese
people’s chronic insecurity in relation to their Asian neighbors. The bourgeois
cosmopolitanism taking shape in the cities gave the South Vietnamese the option of
turning their noses at the poor and developing countries of Southeast Asia. After the
fall of South Vietnam, the tables were turned.

“From Bilateralism to Multilateralism: Korea’s Economic Relations with the United States, 1945-1980,” in
Youngnok Koo and Dae-Xook Suh, editors, Korea and the United States: A Century of Cooperation
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984) 246; and Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich, Immigrant
Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 39.

11
The literature on the Vietnam War is vast and multi-faceted. Some of the canonical texts from the U.S.
perspective include David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Boston: Penguin Books, 1972) Stanley
Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983); and Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War:
Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985); Whereas
earlier studies focused more on passing judgement on the United States only, recent revisionist histories
put more effort into critiquing all sides. Examples include Michael H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War:
America’s Cold War Crusade Vietnam (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996); and Michael Lind, Vietnam: The
Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1999).

12
For more on the relationship between U.S. aid and economic development in South Vietnam, see the
following: Douglas C. Dacy, Foreign Aid, War, and Economic Development: South Vietnam, 1955-1975
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Nguyễn Anh Tuấn, South Vietnam Trial and Experience: A
Challenge for Development (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1987).

30
April 30, 1975
It was a Wednesday when the North Vietnamese tanks rumbled uncontested into
Saigon. The last American combat troops had withdrawn two years earlier. The photos
from that day, April 30, 1975, dramatically captured a swarm of South Vietnamese on
the streets enthusiastically welcoming their supposed communist liberators from the
north. But who in a city of three million would dare resist now? Hundreds of thousands
had spent the past few days frantically scrambling all over town, attempting in vain to
hustle their way onto the short list of Vietnamese to be evacuated by the United States.
Resigned to defeat, many South Vietnamese military personnel burned their uniforms
and documents to avoid being rounded up by the Communists. Now in the midst of the
final invasion, and out of fear for their own livelihood, all they could do was feign
allegiance to the new regime. In the end, many in the international community
concluded that the Vietnamese national independence had finally arrived.
13

The United States had entered the Cold War thinking they could contain the
spread of communism by making a stand in Vietnam. As early as 1954, President
Dwight Eisenhower laid out the principles of the domino theory—that as Indochina
falls into communist hands, so would the rest of Asia. Over the next decade, the U.S.
government took hands-off measures to undermine Soviet-backed North Vietnam or to
bolster South Vietnam. Unable to sustain political stability in South Vietnam—as

13
For more English-language texts on the fall of South Vietnam, see David Butler, The Fall of Saigon (New
York: Dell Books, 1985); Alan Dawson, 55 Days: The Fall of South Vietnam (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1977); William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1981); Stephen T. Hosmer et al, The Fall of South Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese Military and Civilian
Leaders (1980); and Larry Engelmann, Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

31
evidenced by the coup d’etat against President Ngô Đình Diệm (ngoe dinh ziem) in
1963—the United States opted for direct military intervention against Vietnamese
communists starting in 1965. After years of carpetbombing did not send Hanoi into
submission, President Richard Nixon negotiated a withdrawal in 1973 that left an
underdeveloped South Vietnamese government on its own.
During the final months of the Vietnam War, individuals in South Vietnam had
little choice but look out for their own self-interest. The Việt-Cộng’s well-documented
intolerance of non-believers left little doubt among the South Vietnamese that
reconciliation was not on the horizon. While the U.S. preferred to distinguish between
communist guerillas and the Hanoi Government, the South Vietnamese used the term
Việt-Cộng to reference all Vietnamese communists. In 1954, over a million North
Vietnamese fled to South Vietnam to escape the Communist-led purges that also
claimed the lives of those once loyal to Hồ Chí Minh. According to former North
Vietnamese officers, the Communists had scores to settle with the three to five million
South Vietnamese on their “blood debt” list.
14
Multiple United States presidents relied
on the bloodbath theory to justify staying the course in Vietnam. During the final
months of war, like a gathering storm, the terrified refugees kept pouring southward in
increasingly larger waves, from Huế to Đà Nẵng to Nha Trang, eventually leading all
the way to Sàigòn.

14
Blood Debt Lists, Robert F. Turner, Letters to the Editor, The Washington Post, Times Herald, 3 Oct 1972,
A19; Communist Atrocities in Vietnam, Robert Thompson, New York Times, 15 June 1972, 41; William
Touhy, “Saigon Fears Bloodbath Under Reds,” Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1975, A1.

32
Despite dire predictions of a communist bloodbath, President Gerald Ford
inexplicably hesitated until the last minute to evacuate only 130,000 South Vietnamese
allies out of the country. In early April, the Voice of America radio service was ordered
to cease broadcasting bad news from the battlefront so as not to “contribute to
apprehensions amongst Vietnamese and Americans.”
15
Seventy-five percent of the
evacuees from Saigon left by United States transport on April 29 and 30 alone.
16
The
scene at the United States Embassy by day was heartrending. An American
correspondent noted how the crowds “literally tried to storm the gates each time one
was so much as cracked.” From the embassy rooftop, overstuffed helicopters whisked
away the last few thousand Vietnamese to safety as frantic crowds below drowned in a
sea of despair. Inside the Embassy, one diplomat described the grizzly scene in terms
usually reserved for crimes against humanity: “I hope the Lord spares me from ever
seeing anything like this again. It is heartbreaking. It is seeing people naked—without
any dignity left.”
17

Military transports left Tân Sơn Nhất (thun sun nhut) Airport under the cover of
darkness, allowing the United States and South Vietnamese governments to avoid
extensive press coverage of the evacuation. Phạm Duy was among those evacuated.
18
He

15
“2 Envoys Sought Asia News Curbs,” New York Times, 21 May 1975, p. 16; Richard M. Weintraub, “VOA
Coverage Limited On U.S. Evacuation,” Washington Post, 15 April 1975, A12.

16
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 16.

17
Crowds Besiege Embassy, George McArthur, Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1975, B5.

18
The popular folk musician left behind the fortune he made composing and performing over 500 songs of
every genre—songs the communists had every intention of banning—including “Vietnam, Vietnam,” the
unofficial anthem of his people.

33
barely had enough time to round up only his wife and two daughters. That was it. No
parents. No siblings. Like many others, he filled suitcases with clothes and cultural
mementos. With little time left he entrusted a friend in the CIA with getting his four
sons safely out of Vietnam.
19
On April 28, 1975, two days before the war came to an end,
his B52 took off for the Philippines. As expected, none of the families on board the
outbound flights were overjoyed. They, too, had said their last goodbyes to kin and
country. Former restaurateur Nguyễn Van Quon (ngwen van kwon) waited too long to
put his house and business up for sale, and left Saigon empty-handed. “I lost
everything. Even three of my daughters who stayed behind to take a later plane.” That
later plane never showed up.
20
“Considering the size of the Soviet empire at the time,”
said one Saigon evacuee, “we assumed we would never see Vietnam again.” According
to Phạm Duy, who slept not one wink for the next 24 hours, “Everybody among us
agreed it was the darkest, longest night of our lives.”
21

The Refugees
The U.S. State Department’s list of 130,000 consisted most prominently of
political and military leaders, industrial elite, contract employees, and relatives of
United States citizens. They were the “upper echelon” in a country populated by

19
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký, Memoirs vol. 4: Living in Exile, 4.

20
Andrew H. Malcolm, “Guam Refugees Mourn for Saigon, Then Face Future,” New York Times (1 May
1975) 21.

21
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký, Memoirs vol. 4: Living in Exile, 1.

34
farmers and fishermen.
22
One skeptical writer described South Vietnam as a society
“alienated from the roots of its own civilization by decades of dependence on the
Americans.”
23

A cursory evaluation of the record suggests that the 1975 refugee cohort was more
or less a young, educated, middle class, cosmopolitan wave that stood out from the rest
of Vietnam. Males outnumbered females by a 55:45 ratio. Over 80% were under the age
of 35, with the largest concentration in the 18-34 year-old group.
24
When heads of
household were surveyed, 22.9% of this overwhelmingly male demographic had earned
a college degree and 72.9% could speak at least “some” English. When all adults were
included, 16.7% had college degrees. Only 35.3% of all the first wave refugees spoke at
least “some” English.
25
In comparison to the American workforce at large, the 1975
Vietnamese refugees had nearly similar ratios of white collar, blue collar, service
worker, and farm worker backgrounds.
26
While most Vietnamese traveled on two
wheels, an amazing 32% of refugees had owned a car. While 90% of Vietnam was

22
In the canonical anthropological study, Understanding Vietnam, Neil Jamieson gives short shrift to the
refugees of 1975, reducing them to little more than the same Catholic cohort who left North Vietnam in
1954 when the superpowers divided Vietnam in two, as had been done with Korea and Germany prior to
the end of World War II.

23
T.D. Allman, “Evacuating Refugees: More Self-Deception?” Los Angeles Times, 20 April 1975, G1.

24
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 44;
Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Task Force, 21 March 1977)
26.

25
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 49,51;
Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Task Force, 21 March 1977)
30.

26
Evacuee Master File, 1975; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1981, Table 29. Printed in Reginald
P. Baker and David S. North, The 1975 Refugees: Their First Five Years in America (Washington, DC: New
TransCentury Foundation, 1984) 28.

35
Buddhist, at least 34% of the refugees were Catholics.
27
And at least 40% of them were
born in North Vietnam before moving south to Saigon.
28
In socio-economic terms, this
select cohort did not resemble the stereotypical impoverished refugee at all.
But a closer look at the demographic data reveals that the 130,000 refugees in
United States custody did not match the 130,000 on the actual short list of evacuees.
The fact that 44% of all households in that cohort consisted of single individuals
reflected a chaotic evacuation in which many scheduled rendezvous never occurred.
29

Some of Saigon’s richest managed to bribe their way out of the country while those
actually on the short list were suddenly left stranded.
30
Though not representative of
the country as a whole, the 1975 cohort was reasonably representative of the population
of Saigon and its outskirts.
In the refugee camps, former millionaires from a now defunct country “were still
addressing each other as ‘Mrs. Lieutenant General’ or ‘Mrs. Vice Chairman.’” One

27
Reginald P. Baker and David S. North, The 1975 Refugees: Their First Five Years in America (Washington,
DC: New TransCentury Foundation, 1984) 29; According to William T. Liu’s survey of 202 refugees in
Camp Pendleton, a whopping 55% identified as Catholic, 27.2% as Buddhist, and 10.9% as Confucian. See
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 60.

28
Based on a survey of 202 Camp Pendleton refugees. Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: VietnameseRefugees
in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 58.

29
Based on Interagency Task Force data on 124,493 refugees back in June 1976. This number of single-
person families topped the list. 13,502 of those 16,819 single-person families were male. Two-person
refugee families finished a distant second with 4524 families. See, Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report
to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Task Force, 21 March 1977) pp. 28-29. Over 100,000 in the first wave
had no relatives in the U.S. to sponsor them, another indication that many non-authorized people had
made it out of Vietnam. See, Interagency Task Force on Indochinese Refugees, Report to Congress, 15 June
1975, 33.

30
Fearing for the safety of her brother who worked as an interpreter, Mrs. Yen Lindsey, a U.S. citizen since
1950, lashed out at Saigon elites who bribed their way out while her own brother was denied passage. Bella
Stumbo, “Idleness, Frustration in a Refugee Camp,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1975, 23.

36
reporter in the camps noticed a pretty thirty-something Vietnamese lady wearing
enough diamond jewelry “to cause a Tiffany clerk to swoon.”
31
There was General
Trang Si Tan , a clean-shaven man of atypical plumpness, who was rarely seen without
“his hair well-groomed and clothes immaculately pressed.”
32
And who could forget
South Vietnam’s former prime minister, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (ngwen gao kee)? The forty-
something fighter pilot with the trademark Clark Gable moustache boarded a United
States navy ship less than a week after announcing over Saigon radio that only
“cowards” would flee with the Americans while “those who love South Vietnam” will
“stay and fight.”
33
Despite promises of equal treatment, the U.S. government still gave
VIP treatment to Saigon’s millionaires by expediting their processing and housing
them in separate quarters. One former officer admitted “living better than I ever did at
home”—at least materially—in a trailer complete with air conditioning, refrigerator,
and telephone.
34

Though the media focused on the wealthiest of evacuees, the 1975 cohort, almost
by accident, included a large share of civil service workers and rural refugees. Tens of
thousands of primarily illiterate, tight-knight farming and fishing families had nothing
to lose by casting off towards the South China Sea in hopes that a friendly ship would
pick them up. Middle class families also boarded larger cargo ships with the same goal.

31
Eleanor Hoover, “Vietnamese Settlers: Can They Adapt?” Los Angeles Times, 27 May 1975, B1.

32
John Nordheimer, “Even in a Refugee Camp, a General is Still a General,” New York Times, 12 May 1975,
16.

33
Ky Denounces S. Viet Evacuees as Cowards, UPI, Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1975, 2; Ky Flees to Safe
Haven on U.S. Navy Ship, UPI, Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1975, 2.

34
Dan Oberdorfer, “Refugees Uncertain About Future in U.S.,” Washington Post, 24 April 1975, A10.

37
The original boat people, these seafaring refugees often left with the largest of families
in tow. In a tale of daring and tragedy, 109-year-old Trần Thị Nam (trun tee nam) and
14 of her family members left by motorboat from Phủ Quốc Island before being picked
up by an American vessel. When she made it to California in June 1975, the woman
born on the 4
th
of July proudly told the media through an interpreter, “I’d rather die
somewhere else than die in Vietnam in the hands of the Viet Cong.”
35
Tragically, she
passed away on July 30, before her family could leave the camps.
36
American ships
rescued as many as 50,000 boat people during the 1975 evacuation.
37
When it was
realized that the US failed to account for thousands on their original list of 130,000
President Gerald Ford granted admission to the 1975 boat people, citing a “moral
obligation to help these refugees who fled from the Communist takeover in Vietnam.”
38

The profile of the 1975 Vietnamese cohort, especially the elites, drew
comparisons to the Cubans who fled their homeland after Fidel Castro ousted the
Batista regime in 1959.
39
But gradually deteriorating U.S. relations with the Castro

35
Kathy Burke, “Newest Pendleton Refugee,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1975, OC-1.

36
“Just Turned 110,” Los Angeles Times, 31 July 1975, B3.

37
A flotilla of twenty-six South Vietnamese naval vessels, carrying perhaps as many as 35,000 refugees, was
spotted heading east towards the Philippines. On April 30, over 5,000 along the coasts boarded the
American Challenger, a US military cargo vessel, and almost 10,000 found passage aboard the Pioneer
Contender. “30 Viet Navy Ships Escape,” Paul E. Steiger, Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1975, 1; Ford Admits
30,000 More, Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1975, A1; Last U.S. Warship from S. Vietnam at Subic Bay, UPI,
Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1975, 19. Chân Trời Mới (New Horizons, Guam) no. 5, 8 May 1975, 1-2; First of
Seaborne Refugees Hit Guam, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1975, 20.

38
“Ford Admits 30,000 More,” Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1975, A1.

39
On January 1, 1959, the exodus began as elites, middle class professionals, and Batista loyalists left en
masse. Cuba’s regime change, while worrisome to the American government, was not officially a
communist revolution. It was not until January 1961, when Castro allied with the Soviets and only a few
38
regime bought enough time for over 200,000 Cubans to exit through legal and semi-
legal channels.
40
As a result, Cuban émigrés from 1959-1962 set new standards for
selective exile migration. The white-collar workers who made up 22.9% of Cuba’s
population constituted an astonishing 68.1% of its pre-1963 exiles. In comparison,
white-collar workers constituted 41.7% of the earliest Vietnamese refugees and 49.8% of
the overall United States workforce in 1970
41
Lawyers and doctors could restart their
careers after enrolling in government-subsidized refresher courses. Without a Saigon-
style last minute rush to the United States Embassy when Havana fell to Castro in 1959,
tens of thousands were able to leave the country in a relatively calm and orderly
fashion. Exiles could transfer their wealth to American financial institutions. Cuban
families, unlike their counterparts from Vietnam, had a better chance to flee together,
settle together, and mobilize a critical mass in Miami.
Because the U.S. never established a Cuban refugee program prior to 1962,
hundreds of thousands of Cubans avoided the mandatory registration and resettlement
process to which the Vietnamese were subject.
42
These circumstances allowed Cubans

months before the CIA’s failed assault at the Bay of Pigs, that the US cut off diplomatic and economic ties
with Cuba.

40
María Cristina García, Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 16. For more on Cuban Americans see Antonio Jorge,
Jaime Suchlicki, and Adolfo Leyva de Varona, Cuban Exiles in Florida: Their Presence and Contributions
(Coral Gables: Univeristy of Miami, North-South Center Publications for the Research Institute for Cuban
Studies, 1991); and David Rieff, The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1993).

41
Richard R. Fagen and Richard A. Brody, “Cubans in Exile: A Demographic Analysis,” Social Problems,
11:4 (Spring, 1964), 389-401, 391.

42
For a period of time, the U.S. government saw the terms “refugee” and “Cuban” as one and the same.
When it came time to admit to the Vietnamese in 1975, the existing Form 2040 states and agencies used to
seek federal reimbursement for refugee assistance had “Cuban” permanently printed on it. The
39
to concentrate in the Miami area quickly and build an ethnic community complete
with institutional spaces. The preservation of old wealth meant their refugee
nationalism reflected the influence of distinct pre-Castro factions anxious about
assuming power in the event of Castro’s ouster. Many Miami residents resented this
transformation of their coastal city into the very visible worldwide headquarters of the
anti-Castro resistance.
43

In contrast, the rushed nature of the Saigon evacuation meant there simply not
enough preservation of economic capital to transplant the older hierarchies onto
American soil.
44
Family members struggled enough to stay together amid the chaos and
over one third complained most about the lack of food.
45
U.S. cargo ships conducting
last minute scouring off the coast of South Vietnam for evacuees wound up rescuing so
many boat people—up to 10,000 per ship—that starvation, filth, and sickness were
inevitable. The refugees who left Vietnam on C-130 cargo planes “were told to sit side
by side on the floor like prisoners.”
46
Individuals accustomed to multistory villas in

Interagency Task Force recommended “striking the word ‘Cuban’ where it appears and substituting
‘Indochinese.’” See, Interagency Task Force for Indochinese Refugees, Report to Congress, 15 June 1975, 59.

43
The Miami-Dade County school system transformed overnight as a flood of Spanish-speaking students
overwhelmed educators unprepared for to meet their needs. African Americans were outraged that dark-
skinned Cubans were allowed in the better public schools not accessible to most of the black community.
Locals feared a shake-up in property values and quality of life if Cubans continued to pack two or three
families into small apartments. For more see María Cristina García’s Havana USA (1996).

44
Obviously, families with human capital had distinct head starts in the U.S. labor market, though the
musically gifted had no idea their skills would make money. Refugees could exchange whatever gold they
had for U.S. currency. At Camp Pendleton, the gold exchange official reported transactions no larger than
“about $8-9,000 in gold,” with the majority exchanging “one or two taels or a few dollars in foreign
currency.” Charles T. Powers, “Notes From a Camp Pendleton Diary,” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1975, 12.

45
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 75-76.

46
New Land, Đất Mới, “The Man With a Mustache,” Le Van Thong, 19 May 1975, 6.
40
Saigon might have “only mattresses, pieces of cardboard or blankets only” once at the
first refugee camp.
47
Just like the now worthless South Vietnamese currency stashed in
their pockets, all their military medals, college degrees, and artistic gifts were certain to
lose their exchange value in the American job market.
From the moment they boarded an outbound American vessel, the Vietnamese
surrendered control of their own destiny. Nearly a quarter of the 1975 refugees worried
the most about the “uncertainties” of the evacuation process.
48
Twenty-nine-year-old
teacher Rene Ngô, a man trained to answer questions, had none for the frightened
children who simply wanted to know where their plane would take them.
49
The same
percentage felt the most shame from “seeing misery and defeat.”
50
In a matter of hours,
they went from being America’s allies in the war on communism to the wretched
hordes of penniless, powerless, and nameless survivors. Political theorist Giorgio
Agamben referred to such bare biological existence as “naked life.” The South
Vietnamese, already afraid of communist reprisals, were also none too pleased with the
U.S. at this point, either.

47
Andrew Malcolm, “Refugee Airlift to Guam Resumes,” New York Times, 28 April 1975, 17.

48
According to a sample of 63 refugees at Camp Pendleton, 14 (22.2%) responded that “Uncertainties” was
the “Most Unforgettable Event” of the evacuation process. Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese
Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 75.

49
Jon Nordheimer, “Confusion Mars Arrival of American and Vietnamese Refugees in California,” New
York Times, 30 April 1975, 18.

50
According to a sample of 63 refugees at Camp Pendleton, 14 (22.2%) responded that “Seeing misery and
defeat” was the “Most Unforgettable Event” of the evacuation process. Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere:
Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 75.

41
Before the Mainland
Their last stop before entering the mainland was usually Anderson Air Force
Base on the US territory of Guam, located 1500 miles east of Saigon. The island that
had served as a housing station for B-52 bomber crews during the Vietnam War was
being readied to house up to 50,000 Vietnamese refugees.
51
Although intended to be a
temporary stop, the Guam camp quickly ran out of available space after opening on
April 25, with a backlog of tens of thousands waiting at staging areas in the Philippines
and Thailand.
“Tent City” was the media’s preferred nickname for the Guam camp because of
all the ad-hoc open-air housing constructed, mostly at the 50-acre Orote Point, the
largest of Guam’s 10 camps. From high above, one could see thousands of closely
spaced tents dotting the base. Each canvas-covered tent housed 35 to 50 people, but was
useless during typhoon season, during which refugees doubled up in the barracks.
The scene at Guam belied the former middle class standing of many refugees.
One refugee, who enlisted for three months as a camp volunteer, remembers the line for
donated clothing often devolved into a gigantic melee.
52
Judging by refugee reactions,
Guam felt like a glorified homeless shelter. A New York Times reporter, perhaps
assuming most of the Vietnamese refugees “lived in far worse conditions” back in
Saigon, assured readers that the refugees found the “steaming hot tents, dribbling

51
David Lamb, “Weary Exiles,” Los Angeles Times, 26 April 1975, A1.

52
Interview with Tony Lam, Westminster, CA, May 2007.

42
showers and crude toilets” more than adequate.
53
Another writer used more stark terms,
referring to the camps as “Ellis Island West,” the place “where refugees pay their dues,
as if they had not paid enough already.”
54

It was humbling enough waiting in long “chow lines” for average meals. One
refugee remembered going hungry after dropping her plate of food. “When I asked for
another one, not only did I not get it, I was almost beaten. That was the most degrading
thing for Vietnamese people.”
55
An unidentified “man with a moustache,” tired of
waiting nearly two hours in the chow lines—which extended over a thousand feet
outside the mess hall—exclaimed to the man behind him, “Son-of-a-bitch! If I had
known that it would be like this I would not have gotten out of the country. It is just
like being a beggar. What do you think when in a civilized world we are received like
beggars?”
56
Contrasting the camps to Saigon, one teenager remembered how the
“outdoor toilets smelled terrible as they filled up with urine.”
57
Refugees were barred
from stepping off base and mingling with the locals. Along with their worldly
possessions, the Vietnamese had lost their dignity. Further evidence of naked life.
Phạm Duy and family arrived by plane at Guam on the 29
th
of April, after a brief
layover at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. As construction workers at Guam

53
Andrew Malcolm, “Refugees Grateful for Guam Amenities,” New York Times, 30 April 1975, 18.

54
“Guam ‘Tent City’—Refugees Keep Vigil for Families,” (reprinted from Chicago Sun Times), Los Angeles
Times, 1 June 1975, 1.

55
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 76.

56
New Land, Đất Mới, “The Man With a Mustache,” Le Van Thong, 19 May 1975, 6, 8.

57
“How it feels to be Asian American,” in Sucheng Chan, editor, The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation:
Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006) 138.

43
converted a quiet airbase into America’s largest homeless shelter, the Phạms and others
received their formal “green cards” from the largely Filipino staff at Clark. At each and
every camp they landed on, the new refugees pushed and shoved their way through
massive crowds in search of familiar faces. And likewise, those present eagerly
anticipated that the next day’s arrivals would reunite them with a loved one who’d
gotten out in time. Being in his mid-50s, Phạm Duy used the public address system to
track down the last man to have seen his sons. To his dismay, he learned that his sons
could not force their way into the US Embassy before the last American aircraft left
Saigon. The next day, all heads bowed down in shame as loudspeakers announced
Saigon’s surrender and the end of the war.
Maxing out Tent City’s facilities did little to ease the backlog of refugees in
Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Around 4,000 arrived daily, compared to only
3,000 daily departures. In early May, almost 48,000 refugees had passed through Guam,
with 27,295 currently on the island.
58
Just one month later, the backlog of refugees
swelled to over 40,000, nearly half of Guam’s civilian population of 105,000.
59
Residents
were urged to drastically reduce water usage, partly because there was “not enough
water for bathing.”
60
As a result, thousands were being diverted to nearby Wake Island.
Morale dropped so low that the daily camp newspaper published a front-page article

58
“Today’s Statistics,” Chân Trời Mới (New Horizon) Guam newspaper, May 6, 1975, 4.

59
“Guam ‘Tent City’—Refugees Keep Vigil for Families,” Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1975, A1; “Today’s
Statistics,” Chân Trời Mới (New Horizon), Guam newspaper, 2 June 1975, 3; “Guam’s ‘Tent City’ Calm
Despite Dismal Situation, AP, Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1975, B9.

60
Chần Trời Mới, Guam. 14 May 1975, 1; “How it feels to be Asian American,” in Sucheng Chan, editor,
The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2006) 131.

44
promising that life in the United States would be much improved.
61
Unfortunately, the
average wait at Guam before reaching the mainland was an excruciating 27 days. At
Wake Island, the average wait was nearly twice as long at 49 days.
62

One of the reasons it took so long to empty out Guam and Wake Island was the
lack of a coherent and comprehensive United States refugee policy.
63
The United
Nations defined refugees as victims of persecution, but the camp officials were still
screening the Vietnamese like they did immigrants, trying to weed out those with
“serious criminal records, a history of subversive activity and various health problems
such as insanity.”
64
The U.S. State Department had created a list of 130,000, but most of
those in their custody did not meet the initial criteria of being related to a United
States citizen or employed by the United States or its contractors. Unwilling to merely
dump 100,000 foreigners onto American soil, the Ford Administration set up the Inter-
Agency Task Force (IATF) to recruit refugee sponsors who would serve as short term
“benefactors.”
65
In the U.S. government’s own words, “refugees require sponsors to

61
“Orote Point Không Tiêu Biểu Đời Sống Hoa Kỳ,” Chân Trời Mới. New Horizon guam. 17 May 1975, 1.

62
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 82.

63
There is only a history of admitting people fleeing predominantly from communist countries. The U.S.
and most other nations had little interest in clearly defining refugees for fear it would no longer being able
to regulate global migration and citizenship. For more see Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated
Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1986); Carl Bon
Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees During the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2008).

64
Andrew Malcolm, “Refugee Airlift To Guam Resumes,” New York Times, 28 April 1975, 17.

65
“Benefactor” was the term used by refugees to describe sponsors. The sponsorship role was modeled
roughly after provisions of the 1965 Immigration Act that favored immigrants with jobs or relatives
waiting for them in the United States. Half of the refugees fit the criteria. Surrogates would thus fill in as
sponsors for the rest. The sponsor had a “clear moral commitment” to provide temporary shelter, food,
clothing, spending money, basic health care, counseling, or even a job.
45
insure that refugees do not become public charges, and to help each refugee make the
transition from refugee status to status as a self-sufficient member of his community.”
66

Until a sufficient number of willing sponsors stepped forward, the refugees would
remain in military custody at one of four mainland bases: Camp Pendleton in southern
California, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle,
and later at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania.

American Opposition
Finding sponsors depended partly on convincing a skeptical American public to
open their hearts to migrants during an economic recession. A Gallup Poll published in
the May 19, 1975 issue of Time magazine indicated that, “54% of Americans (were)
opposed to admitting Vietnamese refugees to live in the United States and only 36% in
(were) in favor.”
67
The American people had already seen $150 billion of their tax
dollars go the South Vietnamese, and rallied against spending another $600 million.
When the Los Angeles Times issued an editorial citing America’s “obligation” to accept
the Vietnamese, they were besieged with opinions to the contrary. “Why should we
continue to sacrifice money to place tens of thousands of Vietnamese on America’s
welfare rolls?” inquired one reader from Los Angeles. “These people will be taking jobs

66
Statement issued by the President’s Inter-Agency Task Force on Monday, May 19, 1975, published in
Camp Pendleton Newsletter, no. 33, June 24, 1975, 5-6.

67
Time, 9.

46
from Americans,” added another person. One after another, they made the case for
another group more deserving of government aid. Americans first, they all chanted.
68

The fiscal crisis of the 1970s, partly caused by soaring oil prices, sent the economy
into serious recession. In response to the unprecedented combination of slow growth
and high inflation, corporations did whatever they could to maintain their profit
margins. They lobbied government for enough tax breaks to bring their annual tax to
virtually nothing. Later on, they would move their factories to Latin America and Asia
to take advantage of cheaper labor, lower taxes, and more capital-friendly regulations.
Thus began a new age of class warfare heavily favoring the rich. Thousands of
Americans would lose their high-paying blue-collar jobs that afforded them entrée into
the post-1945 American middle class. New jobs that were created, mostly in the
expanding retail sales sector, paid workers only a small fraction of their factory wages.
And lower incomes also meant a shrinking tax base for governments, which had little
choice but to cut corporate tax rates to appease businesses and to run budget deficits
rather than cut services. In later years, conservatives pushed for privatizing more and
more of the public sphere. The welfare state was under a major assault at the same time
more Americans needed it, and they certainly did not want the United States to add
100,000 more recipients to the rolls.
69

68
Letters to the Times, in response to “The Refugees: an Obligation,” Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1975, C4.

69
For more on the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and its costs see James R. O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973); Roger E. Alcaly, The Fiscal Crisis of American Cities: Essays on the
Political Economy of Urban American with Special Reference to New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1976);
L. Kenneth Hubbell, editor, Fiscal Crisis in American Cities: The Federal Response (Cambridge, MA:
Ballinger Publishing Co., 1979); Eric Lichten, Class, Power, and Austerity: The New York City Fiscal Crisis
(South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1986); W. Elliot Brownlee, Funding the Modern American
State, 1941-1995: The Rise and Fall of the Era of Easy Finance (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center
47
The loudest opposition was voiced among those nearest the refugee camps being
readied at military bases in California, Arkansas, and Florida. Politicians received
letters and calls from thousands of angry constituents at a rate of 10 to one, with some
of the protests resorting to outright racist rhetoric.
70
Fearing “colonies” of ethnic
outsiders, politicians resisted plans to establish Vietnamese “reservations” in Compton,
CA and Arizona.
71
California Governor Jerry Brown expressed lukewarm support at
best for the refugee resettlement plan. As one of Brown’s aides explained in a telegram
to the White House, “America’s 655,000 unemployed Vietnam veterans should not be
forced to compete with refugees for scarce jobs.”
72
Convinced that up to 60% of the
130,000 refugees wanted to settle in California, Brown’s people knew well that local
governments would face a backlash for decisions made at the federal level, especially if
local and state governments wound up footing the hefty bill for Operation New Life.
73

Press, 1996); and Paul R. Verkuil, Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Threatens
Democracy and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

70
In all fairness, the refugee controversy generated much less public interest than the issue of gun control
legislation. Alan Cranston’s office received 30,000 letters on that issue, compared to about 1000 in response
to the Vietnamese refugees. See Bill Boyarsky, “Letters 10 to 1 Negative,” Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1975,
A1.

71
“Arizonan is Cool to Refugee Move,” New York Times, 27 May 1975, p. 11; Tom Gorman, “Compton
Axes Plan to Settle Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug 1975, SE5.

72
George Skelton, “Tunney Accuses Brown Aide of ‘Using’ Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1975, B3.
The initial resistance to the refugee evacuation did not hurt Brown’s job approval rating. In a California
Poll survey conducted in late May 1975, 43% of 1053 adults though Brown was doing “a good job” as
governor. Surprisingly, it was a higher rating than the previous two governors, Ronald Reagan (1967-1974)
and his father, Edmund “Pat” Brown (1959-1966) received. See Mervin D. Field. “43% in Survey Think
Brown is Doing a Good Job,” Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1975, B3.

73
Mervin Field. “43% in Survey Think Brown is Doing a Good Job,” Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1975, B3.

48
In the Sunshine State, where officials at Eglin Air Force Base had erected 170
twelve-person tents to handle the new arrivals, local residents in towns like the
ironically named Niceville collected signatures for an anti-refugee petition. Members of
the conservative John Birch Society scheduled an emergency meeting at the end of
April to vent their outrage. “There’s no telling what kind of diseases they’ll be bringing
with them,” one of their members told the New York Times.
74
When a local radio station
asked their listeners if bringing the refugees to Florida was a good idea, 80% of their
callers said no.
75
One U.S. Senator from Florida cited compassion fatigue after already
receiving 400,000 Cuban exiles since 1959. “We feel like in Florida we did our part on
refugees,” he commented.
76
Negative press coverage eventually shamed some residents
into hanging “Welcome” banners the day after.
77

At Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, anti-refugee protesters held signs and placards that
read: “Only Ford Wants Them” and “Gooks Go Home.” A nervous refugee at Guam,
awaiting a transfer to Fort Chaffee, had read about the protests in the local newspaper.
He asked the American reporter next to him, “Do most Americans feel this way?”
78

74
James T. Wooten, “The Vietnamese Are Coming—the Town of Niceville, Fla., Doesn’t Like It,” New
York Times, 1 May 1975, 21.

75
Francis B. Kent, “Petitions Seek to Bar Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1975.

76
Jack Nelson, “Refugee Plans Draw Protests by the Thousands,” Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1975, A1.

77
William Greider, “Enmity to Refugees Puzzling,” Washington Post, 3 May 1975, A1.

78
David Lamb, “Two Views of the Vietnamese Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 12 May 1975, C5; the article
with the photograph of anti-refugee protesters was likely, “2,500 Refugees Leaving Guam for U.S.
Mainland,” Andrew H. Malcolm, New York Times, 2 May 1975, 17.

49
Even if this Vietnamese gentleman had a legitimate critique of the United States, he
was in no position to deliver it.
Sociologists had their own explanations as to why a nation that welcomed
refugees from Europe and Cuba harbored so much enmity towards the South
Vietnamese. David Reisman, author of The Lonely Crowd (1950), saw a new politics of
resentment at work. “So we have middle America which never accepts ‘furriners’
anyway, then we have the enlightened America which neither has sympathy for nor
knowledge of the South Vietnamese, which regards them all as corrupt
carpetbaggers.”
79
Interestingly, none of them touched on the possibility of racism
against the first “Oriental” refugees entering the United States in large numbers.
80

Even articles in the black press, while sympathetic to the plight of another non-
white group, stuck to an “America first” theme.
81
In a series of articles, National Urban

79
William Greider, “Enmity to Refugees Puzzling,” Washington Post, 3 May 1975, 6. For more on the
Western perception of Asians and Eastern culture as perpetually foreign, and thus permitting Western
imperialism in the name of modernization, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979);
Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).

80
The U.S. government has received much criticism for its refugee policy, including the refusal to
recognize Haitian émigrés as “political” refugees. See, Barbara Koeppel, “U.S. Door Not Equally Open to
All Refugees.” Los Angeles Times, 22 February 1976, H3; Calvin Zon, “The Black Boat People: A Test for
Carter; Plight of 8,000 Refugees from Haiti Could Explode in Presidential Campaign, Los Angeles Times, 27
Feb 1980, D5.

81
“End of a Tragic Drama,” Chicago Defender, 8 May 1975, 9; “Eartha Kitt Blasts Ford,” Chicago Defender,
13 May 1975, 6; “The Refugee Dilemma,” Chicago Defender, 15 May 1975, 17; Benjamin E. Mays, “I Agree
with the President,” Chicago Defender, 24 May 1975, 6; John W. Lewis, Jr, “Caucus Opposes Vietnamese
Aid; Wants Program for American Poor,” New Pittsburgh Courier, 17 May, 1975, 1; Robert Flipping Jr,
“Black Community Has Mixed Feelings About Vietnamese,” New Pittsburgh Courier, 14 June 1975, 24;
“Viet Refugee Flood,” New Pittsburgh Courier, 10 Nov 1979, 6. For books on Afro-Asian relations, see Vijay
Prashad, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2002); Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); and Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black
50
League president Vernon Jordan critiqued the Ford administration for exercising fiscal
conservatism when it came to programs disproportionately affecting African
Americans, like food stamps and GI benefits, while spending liberally, to the tune of
half a billion dollars, to care for the Vietnamese refugees.
82
One professor of Black
Studies at the University of California, in a letter directed at the Vietnamese refugees,
chafed at the idea that African Americans must take the moral high ground on these
issues only to see immigrants adopt anti-Black attitudes as they become American.
83

American Paternalism
The loudest voices in favor of bringing in Vietnamese refugees appealed to
American Exceptionalism, the belief that the United States is the sole beacon of hope
for a righteous and democratic world. For instance, the New York Times editorial page
declared the “rescue” of 130,000 refugees “one of the few shreds of glory that the United
States has been able to retrieve from the closing days—or years—of the Vietnam
War.”
84
Liberal supporters tended to argue that Americans had an obligation to their

and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2007).

82
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr, “Vietnam and the Orphans,” Chicago Defender, 19 April 1975, 19; J.I. Adkins Jr,
“Jordan Criticizees Aid to Viets,” Chicago Defender, 14 May 1975, 10; Vernon E. Jordan, Jr, “To Be Equal,”
Chicago Defender, 24 May 1975, 14.

83
Clyde Taylor, “A Black Teacher’s Agonized Message to the Vietnamese Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 26
May 1975, B5.

84
“We Have No Choice,” New York Times, 5 May 1975, 30. The editorial also argued that the 1975 refugees
were among the most highly skilled wave of migrants ever to enter the U.S., but economic arguments were
less effective than the moral ones.

51
former allies.
85
Conservatives spoke of an abstract moral obligation towards any people
fleeing tyranny in pursuit of freedom.
86
Either way, the American Exceptionalism
argument asserted that America’s very honor, which trumped the economic cost, was at
stake in the decision to evacuate the South Vietnamese.
Some minority politicians used this moment to ridicule opponents of the
evacuation. Wilson C. Riles, California’s superintendent of public instruction and an
African American, alleged that racism was fueling the anti-refugee sentiment. Two days
after Congressman Burt Talcott of Salinas said, “Damn it, we have too many Orientals
already,” he received a scathing rebuke from fellow House member Norm Mineta of
San Jose. Mineta, who spent his teen years in a World War II internment camp,
personally called Talcott out for his “racist statements” in full view of their
colleagues.”
87
Any anti-Asian words against the Vietnamese refugees would not go
unanswered by mainstream figures.

85
Both of California’s U.S. Senators felt the nation had an obligation to assist them “not only as human
beings,” as Senator Alan Cranston put it, “but because our government, wisely or not, led many of them
down the primrose path.” Cranston co-authored Senate Resolution 148, stating that the “Senate welcomes
warmly the latest exiles to our shores—the refugees from South Vietnam and Cambodia.”

Letters 10 to 1
Negative, Bill Boyarsky, Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1975, A1.

86
Even in conservative Orange County, the local newspaper went out of its way to welcome the Vietnamese
refugees. The editorial board of the Orange County Register argued that Americans of good conscience could
not deny the entry of the refugees, regardless of the country’s economic problems: “Breathes there an
American who has not resonated to the legend chiseled on the base of the Statue of Liberty, those words
about welcoming the tired, teaming masses, the refuse, etc.? We have to accommodate them, absolutely
must. Of course they will burden the job market; there is no denying such a consequence. But, as (AFL-
CIO president) George Meany so appropriately barked, we'll think about those practical matters later; right
now we must think of the moral imperative.” See “The Evacuees” editorial in The Orange County Register,
25 April 1975, C6.

87
Bill Boyarsky, “Letters 10 to 1 Negative,” Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1975, A1.

52
Christian Americans played an important role in welcoming the Vietnamese.
Faith-based organizations in the United States found sponsors for almost 75% of the
refugee caseload in 1975.
88
During the first few weeks in May, nearly 20,000 potential
sponsors inundated the Inter-Agency Task Force’s special 800-phone number.
89
The
authorities did their best to screen out “people obviously looking for cheap household
help or from elderly gentlemen looking for one girl.”
90
With their enthusiastic base and
greater resources, the churches were best equipped to meet the economic needs of the
refugees.
91
The American Lutheran Church pledged to sponsor up to 10,000 refugees.
92

Reverend Lester Kim of Los Angeles asked Asian American Christians to welcome
their “sisters and brothers from Southeast Asia.”

88
The combined total of the US Catholic Conference (52,100) Church World Service (17,864), the
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (15,897) and United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (3,531)
amounts to 74.7% of 119,591 total 1975 refugees resettled in the U.S.. From Vietnam to America: A Chronicle
of the Vietnamese Immigration to the United States, Gail Paradise Kelly. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977),
152. For more on the role of churches in receiving refugees see Helen Fein, Congregational Spnsors of
Indochinese Refugees in the United States, 1979-1981: Helping Beyond Borders (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1987); Ann Crittenden, Sanctuary: A Story of American Conscience and the Law
in Collision (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988); and William E. Nawyn, American Protestantism’s
Response to Germany’s Jews and Refugees, 1933-1941 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981).

89
Thong Bao (Camp Pendleton newsletter), no. 13, 28 May 1975, “Washington Telephone Lines Up By
Sponsorship Offers,” 1-2; According to the Inter-Agency Task Force, approximately 21% of the offers of
assistance during May and June came from California residents, followed by Florida and Texas with 7%
each. Interagency Task Force on Indochinese Refugees, Report to Congress, 15 June 1975, 9.

90
Douglas E. Kneeland, “Sponsors Hard to Find,” New York Times, 8 May 1975, 1.

91
John Dart, “Churches Among Most Reliable Refugee Sponsors,” Los Angeles Times, 11 August 1975, B3.

92
“Lutherans to Care for 10,000 Viet Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1975, A7.

53
The churches in Southern California managed to accommodate the largest
families.
93
According to Alice Cooper, who worked for the International Rescue
Committee at Camp Pendleton, the Catholic and Episcopalian churches in Orange
County outdid the rest when it came to accepting refugees. As she recalled, “it was
nothing for a church in Orange County to take twelve or thirteen families.” St.
Anselm’s in Garden Grove reportedly “never said no” to any of the refugees. “It did not
matter if there were two people in that family or twenty people in that family,” said
Cooper. “If you called Father Habibi and said, “I have this family, Father, and I have to
get them out of here by five o’clock tonight or there’s to be serious trouble,” he would
say, “OK.”
94
Because of generous churches and the west coast’s desirable climate, the
refugee center at Camp Pendleton was the first to close its doors on October 31, 1975
despite receiving over 40% of the 130,000 refugees. By comparison, Arkansas’ Fort
Chaffee still had to find sponsors for over 10,000 people at this time.
95

The United States Catholic Conference, which found sponsors for 43% of the
1975 refugees, reprised its pivotal role from earlier refugee episodes involving
Hungarians and Cubans. Citing a generally positive response from Catholics and non-
Catholics in May of 1975, the director of the Los Angeles resettlement effort added, “I
even have Cuban and Hungarian families who were resettled through our office who

93
Out of 24,522 families surveyed at Camp Pendleton, approximately 37% of families—including extended
families—had 5 or more members. Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America
(Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 45.

94
Interview with Alicia Cooper, The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History III: Refugee
Service Programs and Mutual Assistance Associations, (Santa Ana: Newhope Library, 1992) 119.

95
Tân Dân (New People), 24 Oct 1975, 1:153, 2.

54
want to assist.”
96
Indeed, the Los Angeles Cuban Chamber of Commerce visited Camp
Pendleton to donate clothing, toys, and medicine. “We welcome you to this country,
and you can count on the Cubans, because we ran from Communists, too,” said their
spokesman.
97
In June, a Vietnamese family of seven moved into a three-bedroom house
in Chino, courtesy of five Cuban families and the Catholic Welfare Bureau.
98
In the
Hungarian stronghold of Cleveland, “Everybody felt very, very bad for the
Vietnamese,” stated a former refugee from 1956.
99

The first Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas were greeted with a stirring rendition
of the Star Spangled Banner by a local high school band, all punctuated by a personal
welcome from Governor David Pryor.
100
The Governor of Pennsylvania, Army and state
officials, about 300 spectators, and a band playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic
greeted the first 340 refugees sent to Fort Indiantown Gap. Local children carried signs
reading, “May you have love and joy,” and “Welcome to the land of immigrants.”
101

The scene was no different in California and Florida when refugees poured in. The man
with the moustache, who so vehemently cursed the degrading conditions at Guam, was

96
John Dart, Southland Churches Gear Up to Aid Asian Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 10 May 1975, A26.

97
“Your Problems Were Ours…” Myrna Oliver, Los Angeles Times, 2 June 1975, B3.

98
“Refugees Get a Home—From Refugees,” Kathy Burke, Los Angeles Times, 4 June 1975, B27.

99
William K. Stevens, “Hungarians Reflect on Transition,” New York Times, 24 May 1975, 10.

100
“Cheers Drown Out Protests,” Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1975, A1.

101
“Crowds Greet Viet Refugees in Pennsylvania,” UPI, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1975, A2.

55
all smiles after landing in Florida. “Everybody was courteous, generous, and willing to
help the refugees,” he confessed.
102

Most Americans thought of the Vietnamese presence solely as an economic
problem. To ease those anxieties, major newspapers ran stories on how another group of
anti-communist exiles, the Cuban Americans, worked their way back to middle class
status.
103
Vietnamese in the camps also learned about the Cuban success narrative.
104

When asked by a reporter what advice he would give the newly arrived Vietnamese, a
successful Cuban cigar manufacturer replied, “Mucho trabajo—much work. That is what
they must think about if they are to be like Cubans and avoid becoming parasites.”
105

The stories pushed the narrative of individual initiative while downplaying the
importance of community and cooperation.
106
But when the papers interviewed people
outside the business sector, they got a much different response. A senior staffer for the

102
Le Van Thong, “The Man with the Moustache, part 2,” Đất Mới (New Land) Florida refugee camp
newspaper, 21 May 1975, 6.

103
Joan Sweeney, “The Cubans—Making it as Refugees,” Los Angeles Times, 12 May 1975, B1; B.
Drummond Ayres Jr, “Cubans Suggest That the Vietnamese Persevere in Resettlement,” New York Times,
24 May 1975, 10.

104
“Cubans Offer Aid to Vietnamese,” Thông Báo 16 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter) 3 June 1975, 3-4.
“Refugees Get a Home – From Refugees,” Thông Báo 18 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter) 5 June 1975, 2
(originally printed in Los Angeles Times 4 June 1975); An article entitled “Cuba’s Exiles Bring New Life to
Miami,” appeared in two issues of the Camp Pendleton refugee newsletter Thông Báo, no’s. 69-70, 7-8
August 1975.

105
B. Drummond Ayres Jr, “Cubans Suggest That the Vietnamese Persevere in Resettlement,” New York
Times, 24 May 1975, 10.

106
William Liu, the director of the Asian American Mental Health Research Center, disagreed vehemently
with the official policy of dispersing the refugees. “In comparison with all the immigrants from Europe and
from Asia, the Vietnamese people were ‘sponsored’ and scattered all over the country. Where is the
Vietnamese community that they were looking for? Now, after two years, we wonder why there were so
many mental health casualties,” Epigram in Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in
America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 119.

56
United States government’s Cuban Refugee Program acknowledged the benefits of
ethnic community to the mental and economic wellbeing of Cuban Americans. Nearly
fifteen years, the scattered Vietnamese would not be granted those same benefits. “I
think there will be no ‘Little Saigon’ in America,” he lamented.
107

Ethnographic and archival data from the refugee camps indicates that the
administrators had every intention of assimilating the Vietnamese into American
society in thorough fashion. The English-only classrooms, lessons on “American Ways”
and holidays, English-only movie nights, and Western cafeteria menu were deemed
best for their economic survival and mental health. Appeals to forget the past went over
best with the refugees with the money or skill sets necessary to go it alone. Meanwhile,
the rest took advantage of the camp resources to forge whatever refugee community
they could. The U.S. considered camp stragglers to be an economic burden, but this
segment of the refugee population, consisting of non-English speakers and lone
refugees, could not separate community from economic survival.
A stable economic infrastructure courtesy of the U.S. military was the first of five
factors that contributed to the formation of community in the camps. It ensured that
the Vietnamese would not have to tear each other down in order to survive. The second
was the early departure of more withdrawn, homesick, or privileged Vietnamese. They
left behind a camp population of more uniform class status. Third, these refugees, who
never anticipated future waves of Vietnamese Americans, nurtured tight-knit bonds
with kin and non-kin alike, a process the sociologist Nazli Kibria refers to as

107
Epigram in Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House,
1979) 119.

57
“patchwork.”
108
Fourth, the poor English speakers believed that staying in the camps
was the only way to keep up with news about Vietnam. The fifth factor was their fear of
a lonely existence once outside of the camps. All these factors also restored some of the
refugees’ lost dignity and united them in gratitude towards the United States. The
Vietnamese mustered the courage to talk openly about their exiled condition, as
evidenced in poetry published in the camp newspapers.

Some Economic Stability
Camp Pendleton, a California Marine Corps base nestled between Orange County
to the north and San Diego County to the south, was the first and busiest of the
mainland refugee camps. It took the Marines less than a week to ready all the quonset
huts, tents, and other basic facilities in eight separate campsites to accommodate up to
20,000 Southeast Asian refugees at any given time. Things were not running up to
speed at first. One writer rejected the tendency of the American media and camp
administrators to refer to the place as Little Saigon because, “Not a single Vietnamese
at Pendleton calls it Little Saigon, nor would they appreciate the comparison between
their gracious, French-built capital and the dusty, malodorous, olive-drab tent city they
now live in.”
109
Without any form of climate control, the refugees were tormented by
chilly nights and blisteringly hot days. Former Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Ky noted

108
Nazli Kibria, Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995).

109
Jonathan Kirsch, “‘Little Saigon’—Another Misconception,” Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1975, C7.

58
that it was “very cold, even with blankets.”
110
Until the base police extinguished them,
families tried to gather around open fires in their tents. The military eventually
donated thick nylon coats to all takers. Little kids could be spotted wearing the adult-
sized coats.
111
With the money refugees collected from odd jobs or other means, adults
bought hot plates and portable heaters.
At the height of its capacity, Camp Pendleton became, in the words of a social
scientist at the time, “more of a temporary home rather than a facility for transients.”
112

He listed over ten basic services offered, from recreation to education to religion.
Suffice it to say, sanitation was improved compared to Guam and virtually nobody went
hungry.
113
Arriving at the Florida camp in early May, Phạm Duy noted the generally
upbeat mood among his peers. “Many folks enjoyed their stay at Camp Eglin. I do not
recall a time thousands of Vietnamese lived this close together with so much carefree
indulgence. Everything from meals to medical care was provided free of charge.”
114
One

110
Kathy Burke, “Ky Seeking Sponsor to Star Him Farming,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1975, A3.

111
Charles T. Powers, “Notes From a Camp Pendleton Diary,” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1975, F1.

112
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 95,
113.

113
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979)95-96;
the exact quote of services offered is as follows: “post exchange privileges, opportunity to sell gold, bank
services, cafeteria, recreation (sports, entertainment including TV, movies, bingo, dancing, talent shows),
some day care (1,000 children in each of the six main camps), libraries, sewing centers, education (from
survival English to the university level in seventy-two tents with one hundred teachers per day and 70
percent of the refugee population active in the program at any given time), improved sanitation,
communication—telephone, telegraph, and radio message service, camp newspaper in Vietnamese,
English, Cambodian, and Chinese—some Vietnamese food, ten religious programs, especially Roman
Catholic and Buddhist, (as well as Protestant clergymen, organized by the refugee population, augmented
by monks from the local Buddhist temple hired by the chaplain’s office). Over eighty weddings were
performed in camp during a five month period.”

114
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký 4, 8.
59
Pendleton refugee’s summary of camp life as little more than eating, sleeping, bathing,
and films reflected the abundance of free time.
115
Refugee life had taken a turn for the
better, and now it was possible to think camp life was as good as American life could
get. Even with assurances of acceptable economic security for the time being, it was still
up to the refugees to reach out to each other.

Homogeneity by Attrition
As noted earlier, the formation of community hastened once the departure of
elites and repatriates created a more homogeneous camp population. Sponsorship for
the earliest arrivals was usually a matter of being reunited with relatives or old friends.
Some even found jobs with their wartime employers.
116
Bilingual doctors were in high
demand, judging by the deluge of phone calls from small rural towns in need of a
physician.
117
This cohort composed most, if not all, of the 6,600 who left Camp
Pendleton after the first week of May.
118
Even if former South Vietnamese leaders
enjoyed holding court with the media in Camp 8, it was clear that the U.S. military was
in command of the camp situation.

115
Interview with Mr. Le Quang Anh, Midway City, 2007; Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese
Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 101.

116
Brendan Jones, “US Companies Aid Evacuated Vietnamese Employes,” New York Times, 10 May 1975,
35.

117
“Linda Charlton, “Security Check and Need for Sponsors Delaying Refugee Flow,” New York Times, 15
May 1975, 14; William K. Stevens, “Nebraska Recruits Vietnamese Doctors,” New York Times, 17 June
1975, 69; Judy Lee Man, “Many Towns Seek Physician Refugees,” Washington Post, 15 May 1975, A22.

118
“Sponsors Hard to Find,” Douglas E. Kneeland, New York Times, 8 May 1975, 1.

60
For some refugees, nothing short of repatriation would cure their homesickness.
A survey taken at Camp Pendleton indicated that one third of refugees had serious
reservations about leaving Vietnam.
119
By the end of May, approximately 100 refugees
out of 18,000 at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas and 32 out 18,000 at Camp Pendleton,
California had signed up to be repatriated.
120
The situation of Mr. Lê Minh Tàn (lay
minh thun), a military man whose entire family was still in Vietnam, typified their lot.
His group even threatened a hunger strike if their demands were not met.
121
When
pressed about the dangers of going back, one military officer answered, “I’m afraid (of
the Viet Cong), but I cannot live here without my children, my family.”
122
“I am very
confident that the new regime will consider my situation,” stated a Vietnamese air force
sergeant, “because I had no desire to leave my country—it was just an accident.”
Blinded by desperation, these poor men convinced themselves that by saying the right
words, they would be granted clemency by the Communists.
123

Bureaucratic delays only made things worse. Tensions escalated in June when
some of the deportees at Fort Chaffee overtly praised the new communist regime,

119
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 38.

120
Thông Báo, newspaper of Camp Pendleton, 23 May 1975, 4; 27 May 1975, 7; At least one of the elders at
Camp Pendleton believed repatriation would most benefit the refugee children because “so many are
separated from their families, so many have to get accustomed to a new culture, a new life here.” May 15,
1975. Parade, 15.

121
“Viet Refugees Protest Delay in Return Home,” UPI, Los Angeles Times, 20 June 1975, B2; “Refugees at
Chaffee Threaten a Protest,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 23 May 1975, A1.

122
Families Still There, Kathy Burke, Los Angeles Times, 18 May 1975, A24.

123
“Seek Return to Vietnam,” Greg Waskul, Los Angeles Times, 24 June 1975, B3.

61
drawing the ire of their compatriots, and resulting in the arrest of two.
124
On July 3, the
first repatriation flights took off for Guam.
125
After an excruciatingly long wait on the
island, the Thuong Tin 1 set finally sail for Vietnam on October 16 with 1546 on
board.
126
Mr. Hạ Lệ Hương would have been passenger 1547 except for the fact his
missing wife finally arrived at Guam that same day aboard a ship that had left Thailand
a week prior.
127

The refugees remaining in the camps did not stay long enough to form a stable
community complete with ethnic leadership, but at least they took advantage of an
environment mostly free of traditional hierarchies. “If the top people show their faces
here, there will really be trouble,” exclaimed one of the rank and file back at Guam.
“The people here are very angry. They say it is because the generals were corrupt that
we lost the war.”
128
Once the elites had departed, there was no class of refugees left

124
Ngoc Lam, “Viewpoint for Those Who Return,” Tan Dan 117 (People) 9 Sept 1975, p. 2-3; “Ft. Chaffee
Feud Denied as Cause of Refugee Shift,” (originally published in San Diego Union) Thong Bao 35 (Camp
Pendleton newsletter), 27 June 1975, 1.

125
“First of 450 Viet Refugees on Way Home,” Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1975, B1.

126
During the summer, the Vietnamese staged a flurry of demonstrations in September, one of which
escalated into a riot. As September rolled around, approximately 2,000 refugees remained at Guam. Nobody
knows for sure the fate of those on board the repatriation ship headed to Vietnam.

127
Hạ Lệ Hương, “Thương Con Kiểu Việt Nam,” Viết Về Nước Mỹ tuyển tấp 1—Writing on America vol. 1
(Westminster, CA: Viet Bao Publishing, 2000) 66-68.

128
S. Viet Officers on Guam Dodge Angry Refugees, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1975, A2; The
presidency of Nguyện Văn Thiệu, which lasted from 1967 to 1975, would forever be associated with
rampant corruption. See “Firm Confirms It Refused to Fly 16 Tons of Gold Out of Saigon,” Reuters, Los
Angeles Times, 15 April 1975, 14; Keyes Beech, “Fleeings General Called Vietnam’s Biggest Crook,” Los
Angeles Times, 2 May 1975, A2; Kathy Burke, “Ky Seeking Sponsor to Start Him Farming,” Los Angeles
Times, 6 May 1975, A3.

62
receiving gross preferential treatment from the camp authorities. In fact, refugees in
Camp Pendleton turned most often to Vietnamese Catholic priests for guidance.
129

Learning to Socialize Again
Clear lines of new ethnic leadership did not emerge yet because the Americans
were clearly in charge. But the lack of Vietnamese authority in the camps was a basis
for interaction among the refugees. They spent over three hours a day visiting friends
and talking about what the Americans had in store for them.
130
As one Pendleton
refugee recalled, “people were contemplating a future milking cows, picking oranges,
cutting grass, or washing dishes in a restaurant. We openly shared with each other our
concerns about the future. Only in each other did we find comfort and familiarity in a
strange land.”
131

While people spent over two hours a day waiting in mealtime queues, they could
always strike up a conversation over what the military was serving that day. “By far the
most raucous and enjoyable time of the day was spent waiting in line for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner,” remembers one Pendleton refugee. “And if we peered out from our
tent and saw an especially long line outside the mess hall, we knew immediately the
Marines were serving chicken.” Though tolerant of chicken being served, the

129
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 97.

130
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 102.

131
Quốc Thông, “Nhớ Về Trại Pendleton,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2001 (Writing on America 2001),
(Westminster: Viet Bao, 2001) 408.

63
Vietnamese did not find most camp food suitable to their tastes.
132
Consequently, fish
day at the mess hall resulted in super short lines and a hefty pile of leftovers.
133

US authorities encouraged an egalitarian environment by enforcing military-type
discipline and Western communal courtesies. “I think our first lesson in becoming
American was learning how to line-up single file before every meal, recalls one of the
Camp Pendleton refugees.
134
Almost daily, the camp newspapers used cartoons and
warnings from top brass about conducting oneself properly, from not bringing food
into the tents to not urinating outdoors. Women had a difficult time adjusting to
communal showers and families did not want to leave their campsites unattended
during mealtimes for fear of burglary, but living in such close quarters made it almost
necessary to respect the rules.
The kin-like bonds between non-relations helped to bridge the diversity of the
camps. In late July, Camp Pendleton authorities discovered that “250 refugee children
were living with people other than their parents.”
135
At the very least, the Vietnamese
were looking out for the children and the elderly. Mr. Trần Quốc Sỹ (trun kwok see), a
man in his late 20s, arrived there by bus from nearby El Toro air base on Monday, May

132
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 112.

133
Quốc Thông, “Nhớ Về Trại Pendleton,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2001 (Writing on America 2001),
(Westminster: Viet Bao, 2001) 407-408.

134
Quốc Thông, “Nhớ Về Trại Pendleton,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2001 (Writing on America 2001),
(Westminster: Viet Bao, 2001) 407-408.

135
“250 Refugee Children Found Without Parents,” (originally in San Diego Union), Thông Báo (Camp
Pendleton newspaper) no. 63, 31 July 1975, 1. For more comprehensive information on this matter, see
Nancy Schulz, Voyagers in the Land: A Report on Unaccompanied Southeast Asian Refugee Children
(Washington, D.C.: Migration and Refugee Services, United States Catholic Conference, 1984).

64
5, 1975, accompanied by an octogenarian whom he repeatedly called “ngoại”—as in
grandma. In actuality, the two were not related. He was a former military officer
separated from his family. She was a non-English-speaking evacuee with no clue how to
locate her married daughter in the U.S. She moved in with him at Guam and they kept
each other company until Camp Pendleton authorities miraculously located his
grandma’s daughter in Mobile, Alabama. The grandma did not know how to thank Mr.
Sỹ, to which he replied, “Helping each other is what we do.”
136
Refugees took advantage
of their limited time together by socializing as much as possible. From May to
September, over eighty refugee couples exchanged wedding vows at Camp Pendleton.
137

Camp Newsletters and Imagined Community
The language barrier was the fourth factor giving the refugees an incentive to
come together as an imagined community. A former schoolteacher from Saigon
remembered how the Americans at Camp Pendleton mistakenly assumed all the
refugees could read the English-language signs.
138
In fact, less than 15% of the refugees
had the English skills to utilize English-language newspapers, radio, and other

136
Trần Quốc Sỹ, “Chuyện Vui Buồn Trong Đời Tị Nạn,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2001 (Writing on America
2001), (Westminster: Viet Bao, 2001) 109-116.

137
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) 96.

138
Interview with Do Quy Toan, Westminster, CA, May 2007.

65
media.
139
For those who did not have access to the English language, the camp
newspapers had a monopoly on published information.
Refugees wanted news from Vietnam because so many loved ones were left
behind.
140
“I’m afraid of the VC even here,” stated an anonymous former US Embassy
employee, who also refused to have her photo taken by the press. “I have two brothers
in the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and if the VC know I’m here, they’ll
give my brothers trouble over there.”
141
In a cost-saving technique later utilized by
refugee papers, the first half of every camp newsletter consisted of Vietnamese
translations of wire reports. The May 27 issue reported on the cultural transformation
of Saigon, where public loudspeakers aired the same musical and oratorical propaganda
already popularized in North Vietnam.
142
Bookstores emptied their shelves and locked
their doors to customers the day before the censorship campaign began. The wire
reports indicated that thousands of residents, fearing Communist reprisals, burned
their books, magazines, and tape recordings out of.

139
Among the entire refugee population, 14.4% of the refugees had English skills of “good” or better.
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere: Vietnamese Refugees in America (Nashville: Charter House, 1979) p. 51;
Classes in Survival English attracted hundreds of refugees across Camp Pendleton. Each of the 8 camps at
Pendleton held anywhere from 6 to 18 classes per day, with average enrollment as high as 100 per class.

Thông Báo 22 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter) 11 June 1975, 6; One study indicates the classes produced
mixed results. Gail Paradise Kelly, From Vietnam to America: A Chronicle of the Vietnamese Immigration to the
United States, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977).

140
Andrew H. Malcolm, “Guam Refugees Mourn for Saigon, Then Face Future,” New York Times (1 May
1975), 21.

141
Patt Morrison, “No Photos: Viet Refugee Fears for Kin She Left,” Los Angeles Times, 8 May 1975, CS1.

142
According to Liberation Radio in Saigon, the new government installed 48 new loudspeakers in the
city’s 11
th
District alone, in order “to quickly spread news and information of the new regime and provide
workers with a comprehensive understanding of the revolutions.” “NEWS,” AP, Thông Báo Newsletter 62
(Camp Pendleton) 30 July 1975, 1.

66
And in a precursor to future ethnic newspapers, the refugee camp newspapers did
their best to help families and friends reunite. For instance, one of many
announcements for August 2, 1975 read: “Captain Nguyễn Van Vinh MP/HQs wants to
know the whereabouts of his wife Dao Thi Sen and children together with his brothers,
Captain Nguyễn Hoa and Lt. Nguyễn Xuân Hai. Information about them are welcome
and please let us know at Camp 8, tent 20.” Another simply read: “Ngo The Hien, camp
8 tent 40, is on the final processing and would like to meet friends.”
143
Refugees could
also use the search pages to locate acquaintances or neighbors who might know the
whereabouts of a missing son or sister. It was not unheard of for relatives to be split up
at different refugee camps across the country.
Camp newsletter poetry featured compositions dealing almost exclusively with
life in exile, a sign that refugees had grown a little more comfortable broaching the
tragic subject. The first published refugee poem, “My Country and Me,” appeared in
the Camp Eglin newsletter, written by an author “born amid cries of exiles.” It was the
first time the narrator had ever wept for his homeland.
144
The Camp Pendleton
newspaper commissioned a poetry competition that drew at least 31 submissions from
13 different authors. Mrs. Nguyễn Tuyet Ngan’s (ngwen thweet ngan) 32-line ode to
the “Plight of the Refugees” won first place.
145
Living in Connecticut, Tran Ly Le sent
a poem to the Pennsylvania camp mates whom he missed greatly.

143
“Announcement,” Thông Báo Newsletter 65 (Camp Pendleton) 2 Aug 1975, 5.

144
Le Van Thong, “My Country and Me,” Đất Mới 9 (New Land, Camp Eglin newsletter) 25 May 1975, 5.

145
Nguyễn Tuyet Ngan, “Plight of the Refugees” Thông Báo Newsletter 79 (Camp Pendleton) 19 Aug 1975,
3; this version appeared in the English edition. The original Vietnamese version is not available.

67
I left Indiantown, full of sorrow.
When my friends waved to me I softly said:
“Indiantown, do not forget me.”
And I consoled myself not to weep,
But why, am I so moved that my tears
Continued to run over my cheeks.
146

Poems like these at the other camps connected the dots of a unique collective memory
among the refugees. The camps were the closest thing to home they had left.

Camp-itis
As the months dragged on, the remaining refugees grew more reluctant to move
on with their lives. The administrators called it “camp-itis,” an amusing nickname for a
serious “illness” as the camps neared their closing date.
147
This problem was especially
prevalent at the refugee camp in Arkansas. Fort Chaffee coordinator Donald
MacDonald told the Associated Press, “Some refugees are reluctant to leave, many are
just plain scared about going out at all, and some are just very choosy about where they
will take their families,” with some families “really digging in their heels and refusing
to leave.” As another administrator explained, “They’re secure. They’re with their
countrymen. They have access to shopping. They’re getting their driver’s licenses.
They keep hiding out on you when you’re trying to match them with a sponsor.”
148
The

146
Tran Le Le, “Goodbye,” Đất Lành 2:6 (Fort Indiantown Gap newsletter) 22 July 1975, 5.

147
First appeared in Pennsylvania camp newspaper “Gapitis,” Đất Lành (Fort Indiantown Gap newsletter)
2:34, 19 August 1975, 1; reprinted in Florida camp newsletter on August 27, 1975.

148
Douglas E. Kneeland, “Many Refugees Are Reluctant to Leave the Security of 4 Camps and be
Resettled,” New York Times, 22 July 1975, 13.

68
Arkansas camp had admitted 48,499 refugees since May, but by October 11, they still
had 12,569 still living on site.
149
Camp authorities worried about a culture of
dependency among the refugees, but mistakenly assumed that breaking up families and
communities was key to assuring successful economic adaptation.
150

The remaining refugees were often rural fishing families not on the official
evacuation list.

One extended family at Fort Chaffee numbered 89 people, making their
chances of being resettled together nearly impossible.
151
But these larger families
refused to be separated further, especially if it meant living in the colder regions of the
U.S. Instead, they held out for plum sponsorships from a chicken factory or fishing
company that could hire hundreds of Vietnamese at a time.
152
Or just as tantalizing was
a sponsor located in California, Texas, Washington, and Oklahoma, where most of the
Vietnamese were resettled.
153
Camp-itis got so bad that the camp newsletters published
editorials imploring their compatriots to have faith in the American Dream. “Let’s not
forget the future,” they urged.
154

149
Even though Camp Pendleton in California admitted over 49,000 refugees, only 5,238 still remained as
of October 11. According to the report, refugees at Fort Chaffee were refusing one out of every five
sponsorship offers. “Refugees Fear U.S. Life,” Tân Dân (Fort Chaffee newsletter), 3 October 1975, 1.

150
Even after white Americans had stopped relying on ethnic-specific organizations, they still relied on
membership in a number of formal communities to get ahead, whether it was labor unions, churches,
Greek-letter organizations, and other networks.

151
Douglas E. Kneeland, “Vietnamese Refugees Seeking to Stay in a Group Pose Resettlement Problem,”
New York Times, 18 November 1975, 24.

152
“Man Offers Jobs to Aid 300 Refugees,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 27 August 1975; In August, the family-
owned Spence Fishing Company sponsored 300 refugees with the purpose of employing them on fishing
boats in the Florida panhandle region.

153
“Where have the first 92,589 refugees gone?” Tan Dan 140 (Fort Chaffee newsletter), 9 Oct 1975, 1.

154
Tân Dân, 30 Aug 1975, 2.
69
Scholar Gail Paradise Kelly also cited a fundamental conflict of interest between
the voluntary agencies and the U.S. government. While voluntary organizations saw to
it that some of the economic and cultural needs of the refugees would be met by
prospective sponsors, the Inter-Agency Task Force prioritized moving the Vietnamese
out of the camps as quickly as possible.
155
The triumph of government deadlines over
individual welfare landed 24 refugees at an abandoned Fresno airbase, where, in
conditions “not fit for anybody,” they cooked and cleaned while 86 other Vietnamese
received training as security guards.
156
Meanwhile, a large Ventura County egg ranch
hired dozens of Vietnamese refugees to drive a wedge between the Teamsters and the
United Farm Workers of America.
157
With December 31 as the deadline to close shop,
camp administrators and voluntary agencies allowed over 40% of refugees to leave
without first securing a sponsor.
158

Camp officials, preoccupied with economic matters, underestimated the cultural
amenities camp life offered, like Vietnamese mass, Buddhist celebrations, classrooms
with familiar classmates, and access to organizations capable of locating loved ones who
might be at other camps or resettled somewhere in the U.S. Aside from finding work,

155
Gail Paradise Kelly. From Vietnam to America: A Chronicle of the Vietnamese Immigration to the United
States, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), 68.

156
“24 Viet Refugees ‘Rescued’ From Base in Fresno,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 17 October 1975, E10.

157
Frank Del Olmo, “UFWA Says Letter Backs Viet Strikebreaker Claim,” Los Angeles Times, 1 August
1975, B3.

158
Reginald P. Baker and David S. North, The 1975 Refugees: Their First Five Years in America (Washington,
DC: New TransCentury Foundation, 1984), 51, based on data from Evacuee Master File. Refugees likely
left with jobs but no sponsor serving as surrogate family members.

70
refugees worried about the loneliness of exile. Perusing through exile literature,
sociologist Peter I. Rose observed that “loneliness” is an “ever-present companion” in
these works.
159
Once outside the camps, one Vietnamese woman’s loneliness compelled
her to accumulate over $1000 in long distance charges on her sponsor’s phone bill,
which resulted in a prompt eviction.
160
Living in scenic Fort Walton, Florida, former
songwriter Phạm Duy interpreted the drinking habits of his Caucasian sponsors as a
coping mechanism for the loneliness of modern American life.
161
In some respects, the
Vietnamese were expected to adequately adjust to an alienating world of locked doors
and nuclear families that the rest of America had yet to figure out.
162

Vietnamese Gratitude and Selective Memory
Gratitude towards the United States distinguished refugee nationalism from the
anti-Americanism of official North Vietnamese nationalism. The camp newspapers did
their best to assuage refugee fears and encourage gratitude towards the United States by
publishing “Sponsor Success” stories and other testimonials from satisfied refugees.
The refugees at each camp drafted letters of appreciation to the “very open minded and

159
Peter I. Rose, “Tempest-Tost: Exile, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Rescue,” Sociological Forum, vol. 8, no.
1 (Mar 1993) 5-24 (9).

160
Phạm Duy, Memoirs, part 4: Living in Exile. 12.

161
Phạm Duy, Memoirs, part 4: Living in Exile. 12.

162
For more on changing definitions of community in modern society, see Robert D. Putnam, Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Barbara
Arneil, Diverse Communities: The Problem with Social Capital (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); and John Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social
Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).

71
warmhearted people of America” who have given the refugees “hope for a wonderful
new life.”
163
If there was anything resembling propaganda, this was it. There was little
mention, much less criticism, of U.S. intervention in Vietnam outside of the last-
minute evacuation in 1975. If the Vietnamese were exposed to countless testimonials
from happy refugees, how could they possibly make demands of their own? Aware
many opposed their presence in America, the refugees could not afford to criticize the
United States lest they risk being lumped with America’s communist adversaries.
Take, for example, the profile of Mr. Triêu Anh Tuấn (true ann thwun), a former
US Embassy employee and landowner looking forward to working at his sponsor’s
construction firm. “I lost everything in Vietnam—my farm, tractor, house in Saigon—
but I have my liberty,” he said. “Liberty is expensive, but it is good for me. Here we can
sing when we want and complain when we want. I would like to leave [the refugee
camp] as soon as possible so I can work with my sponsor. I hope to buy a farm of my
own some day and raise cattle and hogs.”
164
As with Tuan’s story, gratitude poured from
the pen of Vũ Việt Dương (voo viet zoong), another new arrival who almost lost his
fight with pneumonia until American military doctors and nurses intervened: “I hope
that my children and grandchildren will become good Americans and amongst them
there will be doctors to help other people. It is my only wish.”
165
Requests by some male
refugees to show their gratitude (and earn a respectable income) by joining the U.S.

163
“Letter of Appreciation,” Thong Bao newsletter 17 (Camp Pendleton) 4 June 1975, 4.

164
“Sponsor Success,” Fort Elgin newsletter, May 27, 1975, 7.

165
“A letter from a Refugee,” Đất Mới (Camp Eglin newsletter), July 25, 1975, 6.

72
armed forced received prominent coverage in the camp newsletters.
166
The staff of the
Pennsylvania camp newsletter stated that “becoming self-sufficient and established in
America as soon as possible” is the best way to repay the kindness of sponsors.
167

Reading through the testimonials, it would be easy to assume the U.S. had done no
wrong during the Vietnam War.
Judging by the coverage in the camp newsletters, most of the American people
were teeming with jubilant paternalism as they welcomed the Vietnamese refugees. A
letter from two private citizens assured the Camp Pendleton refugees that “there are
millions of [Americans] who will lend a helping hand” to the “much wanted”
Vietnamese.
168
Despite mangling a few Vietnamese expressions, a pre-xenophobic Pete
Wilson managed to extend “the warmest wishes and greetings” from the people of San
Diego.
169
The implicit message was that Americans were paying very close attention to
how well the Vietnamese adapted to their new homeland, and expecting gratitude from
the refugees in return for their hospitality.
The Vietnamese who found it easiest to criticize the United States were those
with communist sympathies intent on politicizing any evidence of refugee
dissatisfaction. At Camp Pendleton, several pre-1975 Vietnamese Americans, mostly

166
Donald Harrison, “Refugee Enlistments Proposed,” Thông Báo 14 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter) 29 May
1975, 5-6 (originally published in the San Diego Union); “Ky Suggests Base Jobs for Ex-Saigon Troops,”
Thông Báo 28 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter) 18 June 1975, 3-4; “Vietnamese Military Can Join U.S.
Forces,” Thông Báo 58 (Camp Pendleton Newsletter), 25 July 1975, 1.

167
“How to Repay Kindness?” Đất Lành 3:19 (Fort Chaffee newsletter) 22 Sept 1975, 2.

168
“Letter to the Vietnamese Refugees,” Thong Bao 22 (Camp Pendleton newsletter), 11 June 1975, 6.

169
“Letter of Welcome From The Mayor of San Diego,” Thong Bao 24 (Camp Pendleton newsletter) 13
June 1975, 5.

73
exchange students during the Vietnam War, tried to convince the refugees to request
repatriation rather than endure further alleged exploitation at the hands of the
Americans. They were spotted passing out copies of Thai Binh, a 12-page Vietnamese-
language monthly tabloid with articles reprinted directly from Hanoi’s official
newspaper, Nhân Dân (The People).
170
The May 1975 edition featured Camp Pendleton
refugees testifying that the US brought them to America against their will. “There was
panic everywhere, so naturally we joined the stampede,” said a former employee of the
Defense Attaché Office. One woman claimed her American employer forced her to
board the next flight out of Vietnam. Overall, the article avoided criticizing the
refugees and denied reports of persecution in Vietnam, instead blaming the American
government for manufacturing a faux refugee crisis.
171

The failure of both sides to provide balanced coverage of refugee attitudes and
U.S. history meant that refugee nationalism would likely be pro-American. In one camp
newsletter after another, the high-mindedness of Operation New Life was effectively
divorced from the Vietnam War and a long history of questionable U.S. missions into
Asia. According to this narrative, the U.S. accepted 130,000 refugees out of an
obligation to abstract U.S. (or Judeo-Christian) morals, not out of guilt for failing the
South Vietnamese people during wartime. Refugees responded in kind, blaming the
Communists and South Vietnamese leadership for the fall of Saigon. Throughout the

170
Vu Thuy Hoang, “Vietnam Refugee Ideological Battle Expected to Intensify,” Washington Post, 25 Dec
1977, 10.

171
Nguyễn Nguyên Phong, “Trại ‘Tị Nạn’ Pendleton (Pendleton’s “Refugee” Camp)” Thái Bình (Los
Angeles) no. 23-24, May 1975, 11.

74
camp newsletters and in mainstream media, Vietnamese refugee voices were
recognizing the sacrifices Americans had made on behalf of the South Vietnamese.

Searching for Place Outside the Camps
Once outside the camps, most of the refugees suffered from low wages and
cultural isolation. Starting all over posed a tremendous mental burden for all heads of
household, from the corrupt multimillionaire general to the poor village fisherman.
Most of them probably felt just as helpless as former refugee Steve Menyhart—nee
Istvan Menyhart—did after he left Hungary in 1956 without any money or knowledge of
the English language. “You felt like a baby who do not know nothing,” said Menyhart
19 years later.
172

Their low wages reflected refugees’ helpless condition. Considering that refugee
wages in 1976 were 37% below the national average, Vietnamese women had little
choice but to enter the workforce to help make end’s meet.
173
But even two incomes per
family, the 1980 Census revealed that Vietnamese median family income was 32%
below the national average, with that family income of $12,800 supporting larger
families. To make things worse, 34% of Vietnamese families—three times the national
average—were living below the poverty line.
174
In 1976, approximately 29.8% of

172
William K. Stevens, “Hungarians Reflect on Transition,” New York Times, 24 May 1975, 10.

173
Reginald P. Baker and David S. North, The 1975 Refugees: Their First Five Years in America (Washington,
DC: New TransCentury Foundation, 1984) 146.

174
Jon K. Matsuoka, “Vietnamese Americans,” in Noreen Mokauu, ed., Handbook of Social Services for Asian
and Pacific Islanders (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 120.

75
refugees—nearly four times the national average—took advantage of public assistance.
The figure rose to 34.6% in 1977 while the national average dropped from 7.7% to
7.0%.
175
Press coverage of potential welfare dependency reflected a tendency to portray
the South Vietnamese as a perpetual drag on the American people’s patience, as a
paternalistic project gone awry.
176

The incredible altruism of paternalistic sponsors enabled Vietnamese refugees to
get by on low-paying jobs. It also meant that there was plenty of patience to go around.
A sponsor family in Valparaiso, Florida sold their one-year old Plymouth to their
refugee family for the bargain basement price of $1.
177
Housing and food costs covered
by sponsors allowed well-connected refugees like Phạm Duy to save enough money to
buy a used Volkswagon.
178
Finding a community outside the camps was another matter.
Cultural isolation was also problematic. Living on their own, the refugees
discovered pre-existing Vietnamese spaces that had little in common with what they
had known in the camps. A homesick Northern Virginia Community College student
“went to a movie once (in 1976), hoping to see how life was going in Vietnam, but the

175
Reginald P. Baker and David S. North, The 1975 Refugees: Their First Five Years in America (Washington,
DC: New TransCentury Foundation, 1984) p. 106; As of January 1, 1976, the Governor’s office unhappily
stated that 20,747 Vietnamese refugees—more than half the state total—received some kind of welfare
assistance. See, “Half of Refugees on State Welfare,” UPI, Los Angeles Times, 22 January 1976, A3.

176
It did not help that tight budgets forced social service organizations to use that money to provided
immediate services rather than offer ESL and job-related training for the long term. Social Security
Administration, Office of Regional Resettlement, CIU review: Major Policy Findings, 24 April 1985.

177
“America and a Contractor,” Minh Nhân, Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2000 (Writing on America 2000), Westminster:
Viet Bao, 2000, 160.

178
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký, Memoirs vol. 4: Living in Exile, 13.

76
film was heavy with (Vietnamese communist) propaganda and was very boring.”
179

Vietnamese students enrolled in Professor Sucheng Chan’s Vietnam War class at the
University of California at Berkeley felt betrayed by her criticisms of the South
Vietnamese government.
180

Despite living far from other Asian people, the Vietnamese refugees proved
willing to go out of their way to fulfill their culinary demands. “We miss fish sauce,” a
refugee at Camp Pendleton told the press.
181
A salty condiment derived from anchovies,
fish sauce—or nước mắm—was virtually nonexistant outside of urban Chinatowns.
182

Mỹ-Bình’s family, resettled near West Point, took occasional two-hour trips to New
York City to purchase fish sauce and other Asian foods.
183
Families living in Peoria had
to commute three hours to Chicago’s Chinatown. “Because of the high prices,” recalled
one Peoria resident, “people eventually grew their own herbs and vegetables.”
184

Trips to Chinatown could also potentially reunite Vietnamese with old friends or
fellow Vietnamese. Even though 12,000 Vietnamese lived in Orange County, just south
of Los Angeles, many felt it necessary to brave an hour-long commute to downtown

179
Vu Thuy Hoang, “Vietnam Refugee Ideological Battle Expected to Intensify,” Washington Post, 25 Dec
1977, 10.

180
Sucheng Chan, editor, The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New
Beginnings (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006) vii.

181
“Jonathan Kirsch, “‘Little Saigon’—Another Misconception,” Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1975, C7.

182
Filipinos and Thais also consume fish sauce, but there were relatively few stores carrying these products.

183
My-Binh, personal interview, Santa Ana, April 2007.

184
Bùi Xuân Đáng, “Peoria Có Gì Lạ Không Em,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2002 (Writing on America 2001),
(Westminster: Viet Bao, 2002) 461.

77
Los Angeles for fish sauce and other goodies, especially since Orange County had a
scarcity of Asian markets.
185
As future politician Tony Lâm, in his early 40s at the time,
explained about the early years, “We either met each other in Chinatown or we called
every Vietnamese name in the phone book.”
186

Another place to meet other Vietnamese was through church. A variety of church
denominations sponsored the Vietnamese, and they kindly invited the refugees to join
them every Sunday. “Our sponsors were Lutheran and we did not want to disappoint
them after all they did for us,” recalls Thomas Nguyễn, a teenager at the time. Their
church in Topeka, Kansas helped them find jobs and housing, and even alerted them to
a bigger Vietnamese presence at a sister church in Wichita.
187
Without major public
spaces of their own, the lonely but grateful Vietnamese would have to make do with
pre-existing spaces like college campuses and the streets of Chinatown.
Gratitude was the first feature of refugee nationalism, which reversed some of the
signs of naked life and helped both sides overcome the shame of losing the Vietnam
War. It was based on the recognition of real-life rescue of refugees and the forgetting of
real-life atrocities committed by the U.S. Identifying with the United States ensured
the refugees would remain separate and opposed to communist Vietnamese identity.
But paternalism had its drawbacks. As long as the Vietnamese saw America as their
savior, they had little moral or political cover to criticize the U.S. or praise the South

185
One of the first Vietnamese markets, Saigon Market in Santa Ana, opened in 1975.

186
Personal interview with Tony Lam, Westminster, 2007. The “phone book” anecdote is also mentioned
in Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Creating Ethnic Places: Vietnamese American Community-Building in Orange
County and Boston (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2000) 119-120.

187
Personal Interview with Thomas Nguyễn, Fountain Valley, September 2008.
78
Vietnamese government. On the other side, Americans supportive of the refugees had
their faith in American Exceptionalism restored with little contradiction—instead
pointing proudly to their nation’s enduring status as a beacon for the world. Yet as
Benedict Anderson and others have noted, the formation of community, imagined or
otherwise, requires that members see themselves as abstract equals, an unlikely
arrangement given the hierarchy inherent in paternal bonds forged between refugees
and their American counterparts. Over 100,000 scattered South Vietnamese would have
to find their equals among each other in order to build a community.

79
Chapter 2
Culture, Space, and Place in Little Saigon

In the summer of 1977, Phạm Duy (fam zwee) finally reversed course on his
pledge to steer clear of the Vietnamese people in the United States. The 57-year-old folk
musician and his family had spent the last two years in Fort Walton Beach, Florida
saving enough income from occasional concerts and guitar instruction books to afford a
used car and a place of their own. After only a few months in their new residence, the
Phạms hitched their trailer and, like thousands of their fellow Vietnamese, headed for
southern California, where the largest overseas community was taking shape.
1
Once
settled in “Little Saigon,” Phạm Duy eked out a modest living writing songs that were
promptly condemned by the communist Vietnamese government.
2

The Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. longed to resurrect some semblance of the
homeland they were forced to leave behind, but that did not mean the process occurred
in a vacuum. Scholars like Caroline Kiều Linh Valverde and Nhi Liễu, in their recent
work on Vietnamese American cultural production, rush to employ terms like “culture

1
Coincidently, Vietnamese refugees at the time were leaving Florida at the highest rate (9% of all
secondary out-migration) and entering California at the highest rate (70.9% of all secondary in-migration).
By January 1978, the California Vietnamese population was 42,115 while Florida’s was 4,947. See
Indochinese Refugee Assistance Program: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Office of Refugee Affairs,
31 Dec 1979) 14.

2
Phạm Duy, Memoirs, vol. 4: Living in Exile (online edition, 1999).

80
in a bubble” and “colonial nostalgia,” respectively.
3
Reliance on that type of phrasing
belies the fact that refugee nationalism flourished in the context of events in the United
States and Vietnam after 1975. In the prior chapter, I discussed how post-1975 paternal
bonds forged between Vietnamese refugees and their American counterparts helped
both sides overcome the shame of losing the Vietnam War. Expressions of gratitude for
having been rescued—along with the limits of indebtedness—also distinguished
refugee nationalism from the anti-Americanism of official Vietnamese nationalism
under the communist government. This chapter connects the development of refugee
nationalism with the formation of the largest community of overseas Vietnamese.
4

Rather than live in the past, Vietnamese refugees created an ethnic community
whose cultural institutions—principally music, newspapers, religion, and protest—

3
Caroline Kieu Linh Valverde, “Making Transnational Vietnamese Music: Sounds of Home and
Resistance,” in Shilpa Dave, Leilani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren, editors, East Main Street: Asian American
Popular Culture (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 32-54; Nhi T. Lieu, Private Desires on Public Display:
Vietnamese American Identities in Multi-Mediated Leisure and Niche Entertainment (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, 2004).

4
The debate about whether ethnic culture is more about retention or acquisition has remained a
longstanding topic of debate in Immigration and Ethnic Studies. Ironically, certain schools of thought
have gained currency in opposition to conventional wisdom. During the mid-to-late 1900s, a wave of
progressive Jewish scholars gave credence to the idea that African slaves found ways to resist white
brainwashing and domination. See Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1943); Melville Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958); John
Blassingame, Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press,
1972); George Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972); Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1976); and Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American
Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). In Asian American
Studies, in which scholars combat stereotypes of Asian people forever being loyal to Asia, argue that Asian
American identity is neither Asian nor white, but an original synthesis. The most often cited work in this
vein is Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
Her take on hybridity appears in work on other groups, such as George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican
American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993); and Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1993).

81
demonstrated a newfound pride that alleviated prior feelings of ambivalence about
leaving Vietnam. Four principle reasons explain this cultural shift in refugee
nationalism. First, for cultural and economic reasons there emerged a number of actual
physical spaces where a critical mass of people converged into an ethnic community.
5

Secondly, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of additional refugees, many related to
Vietnamese already in the United States, erased many doubts about the wisdom of
leaving Vietnam behind.
6
Thirdly, there was evidence of popular grassroots support—
and thus potential economic profit—for cultural production portraying the refugee
experience as the most authentic expression of Vietnamese nationalism.
7
And refugee

5
For more about the importance of space and place see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (New York:
Wiley-Blackwell, 1992); Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); Laurence J.C. Ma and Carolyn Cartier, The Chinese Diaspora: Space,
Place, Mobility, and Identity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place; The
Perspective of Experience, revised edition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

6
For more on the so-called boat people of Southeast Asia see Bruce Grant, The Boat People: An Age
Investigation with Bruce Grant (Boston: Penguin Books, 1979); Martin Tsamenyi, The Vietnamese Boat People
and International Law (Brisband: Griffith University, School of Modern Asian Studies, Centre for the Study
of Australian-Asian Relations, 1981); and Mary Terrell Cargill and Jade Quang Huynh, editors, Voices of
Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and Survival (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2000);
and Brian Doan, The Forgotten Ones: A Photographic Documentation of The Last Vietnamese Boat People in the
Philippines (Santa Ana, CA: VAALA, 2004).

7
This section benefits tremendously from the Gramscian school of Cultural Studies. According to this
school, popular culture could play a role in oppositional movements by serving as one of the means by
which communities or coalitions come together. Stuart Hall, one of the best-known Gramscian thinkers,
asked that for analytical purposes we view race and ethnicity as coalitions whose unity is made possible by
ongoing crises or trauma that make other differentiating factors far less important than the issues that
bring them together. The exigencies of the refugee experience pose such a traumatic experience. See
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971); and the following essays: Stuart Hall, “The
Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without Guarantees,” in B. Matthews, ed., Marx: 100 Years On (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1983); Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” in Lawrence
Grossberg et al, editors, Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992); Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s Relevance for
the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Communication Inquiry (1986), 10 (2), 5-27; all reprinted in
David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, editors, Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London:
Routledge, 1996).

82
nationalism reached an international audience via the Voice of America and BBC radio,
which made it easier for people in Vietnam to identify with the refugee community.
8

Yet it was hardly a given that the dispersed exiles and future generations would
ever regard what I call refugee nationalism as a legitimate Vietnamese national identity.
Stigmatized as colonial puppets by the communist regime and routinely marginalized
in American discussions of the Vietnam War, refugees had to rely on their collective
memory to challenge official accounts of their place in history. Vietnamese Americans
in Little Saigon—in Orange County, California—made important gains in this
counterhegemonic endeavor, successfully infusing popular culture with their collective
memory. Only through this cultural and ideological work would Vietnamese Americans
be able to access a past of their own, in which refugee was a cultural identity as much it
was a legal category.
9

Because they spoke little English and worked in low-paying jobs, most refugees
worried more about economic survival than building a Vietnamese community.
Consequently, the unpaid labor of cultural workers laid the groundwork for a distinct
refugee identity that future groups could exploit for political and economic gain. Songs
like “Farewell, Saigon” and “Exiles of a Father and His Son” defiantly provided comfort

8
For more on the Voice of America, see, Laurien Alexandre, The Voice of America: From Détente to the
Reagan Doctrine (New York: Ablex Publishing, 1988); Gary D. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda:
the BBC and VOA in International Politics, 1956-64 (New York: Macmillan Press, 1996); Michael Nelson,
War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Pres, 1997); David Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda battles, 1945-1953 (Columbia,
MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Alan L. Heil, Voice of America: A History (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2003).

9
This point is made most potently in Yen Le Espiritu, “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese
Refugee Subject in US Scholarship,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1-2 (Feb/Aug 2006) 410-433.

83
to the newly conquered South Vietnamese and displeasure to the triumphant Việt-
Cộng, mainly because the 130,000 who made it out in time had formed a refugee
community and consciousness that would challenge official definitions of Vietnamese
nationalism. Vietnamese American cultural production spoke to a refugee audience
and, through the Voice of America and BBC radio service, reached millions in Vietnam
as well. And yet refugee nationalism was without its contradictions, as Hanoi’s invasion
of Cambodia and its border war with China forced fearful refugees to secretly root for
the Việt-Cộng.
10

Vietnamese Music
Most refugees carried little or no money with them. One woman carried her
bible; another refugee his pipe. But music was the most valuable commodity of all—in
terms of use value and exchange value. By the time the Vietnamese reached the
mainland refugee camps, cassette tapes of pre-75 favorites became the stock in trade of
some of the first refugee entrepreneurs. As Việt Dzũng (viet zoong), a teenager in 1975,
recalled many years later, “The only business that was thriving in the camp was making
copies of tapes for $5 apiece, which was a lot of money at the time. You could make a
fortune overnight because everyone was asking you to do it, up to the point the tape was

10
This point is laid out in Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Ta Sông Núi: Hồi Ký 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn
Hóa, 2004).
84
so worn out, where it did not sound original anymore, but people still wanted it, all
kinds of music at that time…whatever they could get their hands on.”
11

Refugee sponsors like Ellen Matthews, for all their generosity and compassion,
struggled to comprehend the totality of refugee needs. Thinking of survival only in
economic terms, Matthews wondered why the family she sponsored had left Saigon
with only clothing, music, and a photo album. “They cannot have seen their situation
as I do, to bring records instead of survival items,” she wrote in her memoir.
12
It did not
dawn on Matthews that most first wave refugees were given less than 48 hours to gather
their belongings and head out to the airport.
13
If the fall of Saigon could be compared to
a burning building, would not survivors usually think first about their sentimental
possessions—rather than a stash of cash—before making their escape? Even celebrated
folksinger Phạm Duy stuffed his pocket with only twenty US dollars while he stuffed
an entire suitcase with music albums, photographs, and other priceless keepsakes.
14

According to songwriter Nam Loc, the two major genres of pop music in pre-1975
Saigon were wartime narratives about love and family, particularly the promises
soldiers make to return home and the anti-war songs composed by Trịnh Công Sơn

11
Việt Dzũng, personal interview, April 2007; In a short interview in April 2007, Vinh Phuc remembered
his days at Pulau Bisar, Malaysia in 1979, where people valued their music collections too much to share
with others. “Qúy lấm,” were his exact words.

12
Ellen Matthews, Culture Clash (Chicago: Intercultural Press, 1983); Virginia Inman, “The
Americanization of a Vietnamese Family,” Wall Street Journal (31 Jan 1983), 28.

13
Walter Liu, Transition to Nowhere (1978).

14
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký 4: Thời Hải Ngoại (Memoirs, vol. 4: Living in Exile) (Midway City, CA: 2000), 2.

85
(trin gong sun).
15
I simply refer to these as melancholy music because of its
unmistakably sentimental lyrics and melodies.
16
A famous melancholy song of 1969,
Xuân Này Con Không Về [I Will not Be Home for New Year’s], was composed on behalf
of troops forced to remain on duty for the Tết (thet) lunar new year to prevent a repeat
of 1968’s infamous Tết Offensive. The song’s theme of not coming home for the
holidays, along with its incredibly sad melody vocal style, resonated equally for exiles.
Nếu con không về chắc mẹ buồn lắm,
If I do not return, mom will be in tears
Mái tranh nghèo không người sửa sang
Who will fix the hut, neglected for years
Khu vườn thiếu hoa vàng mừng Xuân
Where are the blossoms this coming Spring
Đàn trẻ thơ ngây chờ mong anh trai
Anxious children expect me to bring
Sẽ đem về cho tà áo mới
Brand new clothes and other treats
Ba ngày xuân đi khoe xóm giềng
For Tết’s three days, we pack the streets
17

15
Interview with Nam Loc, Los Angeles, April 2007.

16
Vietnamese Americans have no preferred term for pre-1975 South Vietnamese music. People sympathetic
to refugee nationalism simply refer to it as Vietnamese music, but the music’s melancholy tone is
unmistakable to even the untrained ear. Vietnamese Americans refer to North Vietnamese wartime music
simply as Communist Music. In post-1975 Vietnam, the ruling party gave South Vietnamese music the
derogatory label of “Yellow Music.” Vietnamese Americans have begrudgingly tried to re-appropriate its
meaning, choosing to call it “Golden Music.” In Vietnamese, the word “vàng” can mean both yellow and
gold. For more see Philip Taylor, Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam’s South
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000); Dale A. Olsen, Popular Music of Vietnam: The Politics of
Remembering, The Economics of Forgetting (New York: Routledge, 2008); Jason Gibbs, "Yellow Music
Turning Golden," [Delivered at the meetings of the Popular Culture Association, San Diego, CA, March
2005] Translated into Vietnamese as "Nhạc vàng "hóa vàng"," talawas June 26, 2005 by Nguyễn Trương
Quý; and Jason Gibbs, "Nhac Tien Chien: The Origins of Vietnamese Popular Song," Destination Vietnam
online (June/July 1998). [originally delivered at the 1996 meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology,
Northern California Chapter, Davis, California].Translated into Vietnamese as "Nhạc tiền chiến: khởi đầu
của ca khúc phổ thông Việt Nam" talawas March 9, 2006, by Nguyễn Trương Quý.

17
English translation by Phương Nguyễn

86
One of South Vietnam’s most critically acclaimed artists, Trịnh Công Sơn, was
among its most controversial. His poetic anti-war songs marshaled veterans in
collective outrage while simultaneously stirring the souls of widows, the war-weary, and
urbanites who knew little about war. It is doubtful that North Vietnam would have ever
approved his music had it opposed the Việt-Cộng’s efforts.
A much different musical tradition thrived in communist-ruled North Vietnam,
where strict party control resulted in uniformly hyper-patriotic messages. Few if any
sources exist to gauge the actual grassroots popularity of “revolutionary” music during
that time. According to at least two anthologies, one of the most acclaimed
revolutionary songs during the Vietnam War was “Liberating the South,” with its
strident pro-war lyrics and marching tune.
18

Giải phóng miền Nam chúng ta cùng quyết tiến bước.
We march onward to liberate the South
Diệt đế quốc Mỹ, phá tan bè lũ bán nước.
Eliminate the American imperialists, destroy the traitorous hordes
Ôi! Xương tan, máu rơi, lòng hận thù ngất trời.
Bones crushed, blood spewing, guts of our enemies in the sky
Sông núi bao nhiêu năm cắt rời.
Our country divided for so long
Đây Cửu Long hùng tráng.
From the grand Mekong Delta
Đây Trường Sơn vinh quang thúc giục đoàn ta xung phong đi giết thù.
To the glorious Trường Sơn urges us to kill the enemy
Vai sát vai chung một bóng cờ.
Side by side under one shining flag

18
Nguyễn Đình San, editor, 100 Bài Hát Việt Nam Hay Nhất Thế Ký 20—The 100 Greatest Vietnamese Songs
of the 20
th
Century (Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 2007); Nguyễn Đình San, editor, Dư Âm: 100 Ca Khúc Đặc Sắc của
100 Nhạc Sĩ Thế Ký 20—Echoes: 100 Selections from the 100 Greatest Vietnamese Songwriters of the 20
th
Century
(Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 2007)

87
Upon annexing South Vietnam, the communist leadership soon banned most of
the former country’s music, giving it the pejorative label of nhạc vàng—literally “golden
music”—or the downright derogatory label of nhạc ngụy—lackey music—because weak,
effeminate, sentimental—ủy mị—works supporting what they deemed a reactionary
puppet regime had no place in a communist utopia. Southerners were forced to
internalize Communist propaganda about the essential goodness of the party. The Việt-
Cộng enforced their mandates with such overwhelming effectiveness that one
Vietnamese American I interviewed could recite the lyrics to Giải Phóng Miền Nam
(Liberating the South), a song he had not heard for over 30 years.
Nobody knew this better than the hundreds of thousands imprisoned in the post-
1975 re-education camps set up in remote Vietnamese jungles. After long days of forced
manual labor, these South Vietnamese political prisoners drawn from the ranks of
military men and intellectuals endured nightly indoctrination classes designed to “re-
educate” them in the history of Vietnam as told from the communist perspective. If
they did not die from starvation, disease, or landmines, the “students” could return
home once they had demonstrated their allegiance to communist doctrine.
19
As writer
Mr. Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn remembers being told by his re-education camp boss as to why
Southern love songs were deemed antirevolutionary: “We communists respect love. But

19
Very little if any scholarly literature exists on the re-education camps, mostly because communist
countries never documented those events or allowed access to such documents. The closest thing to a
scholarly study is Stéphane Courtois et al, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). The rest consist of memoirs and films. For example, see
Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff, The Vietnamese Gulag (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986); Nguyễn
Ngọc Ngạn. The Will of Heaven: A Story of One Vietnamese and the End of His World, (New York: E.P.
Dutton, 1982); Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh, South Wind Changing (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1994); Paul
Hollander, editor, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in
Communist States (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007); and Ham Tran, director,
Journey from the Fall (Imaginasian, 2005).
88
it has to be the right kind of love—real love. We respect the love of the Party, the love
of Hồ Chí Minh, the love of the Revolution. These are the proper and acceptable
objects of love. The emotion of which you speak [between a man and a woman] is the
basest and most selfish corruption of love: a vile, shallow indulgence of the
bourgeoisie.”
20

Meanwhile, the recently criminalized “golden” music went underground. In the
newly-renamed Hồ Chí Minh City, a young, but heralded, songwriter by the name of
Ngô Thụy Miên (ngoe twee mien) could only hope his fiancé had made it out safely.
While desperate for information, Miên could not rely on official newspapers for stories
on the refugees, whom the Hanoi government had labeled traitors. “There was no
communication whatsoever between us and the outside world,” Miên recalled, “save a
once or twice a day, we listened to, in clandestine settings of course, the Voice of
America or BBC to catch a few comments or a few old songs here and there to soothe
our soul.”
21

After 1975, enjoying old South Vietnamese music could be considered an
exercise in nostalgia for the overseas Vietnamese scattered mostly in the United States.
Mỹ-Bình (mee-binh), a mother of three, remembers working in a sweatshop in Los
Angeles and trading tapes with co-workers during the late 1970s. Before a wave of new
recordings swept the market in 1982, people were limited to buying bootlegged tapes

20
Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn. The Will of Heaven: A Story of One Vietnamese and the End of His World, (New York:
E.P. Dutton, 1982), 189.

21
email communication with Ngô Thụy Miên, April 2007.

89
costing $5 each, not cheap considering that minimum wage was a mere $2.10 an hour.
22

Vietnamese Americans included tapes in their CARE packages to loved ones
languishing in Southeast Asian refugee camps after fleeing Vietnam by boat. “Even
though I was born in North Vietnam, I preferred listening to Southern music,
especially the [country music] vọng cổ sound because it reminded me more of home,”
remembers Mỹ-Bình.
23
Her words echoed with cruel irony because the South
Vietnamese back home were being forced to give up their roots and assimilate an alien,
communist-inspired North Vietnamese nationalism.
Because melancholy songs were outlawed and the communists successfully
installed a culture of fear and distrust in South Vietnam, songwriter Miên told no one
of his most meaningful new piece, “Em Còn Nhớ Mùa Xuân?” [Remember That
Spring?], dedicated to his fiancé. “I had a few songs formed in my heart, but nobody
dared to sing them, play them or even listen to them openly.”
24
While Miên avoided the
re-education camps, he found it hard to adjust to the totalitarian nature of the new
regime. Just like McCarthyism in the United States, people in post-1975 South Vietnam
would rat out their neighbors, if only to get the government off their backs.
While the Vietnamese refugees in the United States played faded recordings of
pre-1975 music, most songwriters among them struggled to find inspiration for new
compositions. Upon landing on American soil for the first time, Phạm Duy

22
For stories of former white collar professionals working in low-paid jobs see, “Vu Thuy Hoang,
“Educated Refugees Hold Menial Jobs,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Sept 1977, B4.

23
Interview with My-Binh, Fountain Valley, CA, April 2007

24
Email communication with Ngô Thụy Miên, April 2007.

90
immediately told the media, “I sing about my country. Where’s my country now?”
25

Indeed, the communist government had banned all his songs, effectively burying his
legacy in Vietnamese cultural history. Reduced to the occasional exhibition concert,
Phạm Duy spent the rest of 1975 hidden away in the Florida panhandle, far removed
from his four sons in Vietnam and the creative inspiration necessary to pen new
melodies. The experiences of Phạm Duy and Ngô Thụy Miên were representative of
life in America and Vietnam, in which people would not or could not bring up the past.
It would take a new cohort of South Vietnamese to break the silence.

Hollywood Nights
By the end of 1975, approximately 20,000 Vietnamese refugees found themselves
resettled all over Southern California. With its proximity to Camp Pendleton and its
abundance of altruistic Christian sponsors, Orange County received 12,000 of them. By
the end of 1976, up to 700 low-income refugees had crammed themselves into 75 units
at the Villa Park apartment complex in Garden Grove.
26
This would become the
nucleus of the largest overseas Vietnamese community. In the meantime, the refugees
used Chinatown in Los Angeles as a meeting place. As future politician Tony Lâm
explained, “We either met each other in Chinatown or we called every Vietnamese
name in the phone book.”
27
Another refugee working in Los Angeles stated it even

25
“I Sing for My Country…Where’s My Country Now? Folksinger Has No Country, Vietnamese Singer
Laments Loss,” The Pensacola News-Journal, 11May 1975.

26
Howard Seelye, “Agencies Take Steps to Ease Overcrowding,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Nov 1976, OC1.

27
Interview with Tony Lam, Westminster, CA, April 2007.
91
more emphatically: “Every weekend, people from Orange County drove to Chinatown
or Hollywood. That was their treat…after a hardworking week, go to Chinatown, go to
Hollywood. There was a Vietnamese nightclub and Vietnamese restaurants on
Hollywood Boulevard.”
28
Until an adequate ethnic economy took shape in Orange
County by 1980, it made sense for Vietnamese to commute to Chinatown for the basics.
That Hollywood Blvd became an early nighttime destination for Vietnamese in the
Southland was purely accidental.
Shortly after moving to Los Angeles from Camp Pendleton in the spring of 1975,
former pianist Hồ Xuân Mai (hoe swoon mai) started work as a busboy at the Roosevelt
Hotel on Hollywood Blvd, earning the minimum wage of $2.10/hour.
29
Once a
happening hangout for Hollywood’s elite, the Roosevelt had, by the 1970s, become a
“dying place” as the affluent spent more of their time in Beverly Hills and the Westside
of Los Angeles.
30
One weekend, after being caught playing piano during work hours,
Mai was unexpectedly rewarded with a job at the Cinegrill, the hotel’s music lounge.
With the Cinegrill in need of a new band, Mai contacted friends from Camp Pendleton
and formed a band appropriately named New Life. Mr. Huỳnh Anh (hwin ann) played
drums, Mr. Trung Nghĩa (troong ngia) played the guitar, and his wife Thanh Tuyền

28
Interview with Nam Loc, April 2007.

29
It cannot be emphasized enough how Vietnamese Americans took advantage of a labor market that
catered increasingly towards foreigners willing to work for low wages. For more on the post-industrial
political economy see Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, & Lucie Cheng, editors, The New Asian Immigration in Los
Angeles and Global Restructuring (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1994).

30
Observation of K.D., a frequent Vietnamese patron of the Roosevelt in 1975., Based on phone interview
with K.D., February 2009.

92
(tan thween) handled vocals with Mr. Quang Minh (kwang min).
31
Mai built a strong
rapport with the hotel’s owner, a middle-aged Jewish woman who subsequently
sponsored dozens more families from Camp Pendleton, offering them temporary
housing and work at the Roosevelt. Through this paternal relationship Mai managed to
reserve weekends at the Cinegrill for Vietnamese music, starting in September 1975.
32

“It was probably the most significant cultural hangout for Vietnamese from late
1975 to 1976,” pointed out a frequent guest.
33
Most weekends, it took on the appearance
of a Saigon-style nightclub specializing in the upbeat hippie tunes popular among
urban youth. In November of 1975, a 30-year-old regular at the Cinegrill drove the
audience to tears with an original composition he had penned one sleepless night in his
Inglewood apartment. Nam Lộc (nam lok), a self-described hippie, quickly matured
once in California. An unaccompanied refugee who failed to get his parents, siblings,
and girlfriend out of Vietnam, Nam Lộc knew Phạm Duy’s pain but voted against
withdrawing from his fellow Vietnamese. At Catholic Charities, the largest voluntary
agency tasked with resettling the Vietnamese, the young caseworker helped resettle
hundreds of families.
34
Vietnamese nights at the Roosevelt Hotel gave him an audience

31
Interview with Hồ Xuân Mai and K.D.

32
Interview with Hồ Xuân Mai, April 2007.

33
phone interview with K.D., February 2009.

34
Interview with Nam Loc, Los Angeles, April 2007.

93
with which to share his first original song, and the first one by a Vietnamese refugee,
“Farewell, Saigon.”
35

Sài gòn ơi, tôi xin hứa rằng tôi trở về
Oh Saigon, I will be back, I promise
Người tình ơi, anh xin giữ trọn mãi lời thề
My lover, I will keep my word always
Dù thời gian, có là một thoáng đam mê
Although here love begins at night
Phố phường vạn ánh sao đêm
The city lights are bright
Nhưng tôi vẫn không bao giờ quên.
But you still are on my mind
36

His final stanza acknowledged the ambivalence present in the refugee condition.
With little idea if they would ever again see their loved ones left behind in Vietnam,
many refugees naturally agonized if they had made the right choice to leave their
country. Even band members could not hold back their emotions. In the background,
pianist Hồ Xuân Mai reflected on his last day in Saigon: “I wanted to let more of my
people on that military plane, but the Americans refused to let anyone get out once we
were boarded.”
37
Surprised by the show of tears, Nam Lộc realized the audience had
also left a part of them in Vietnam. “Wait a minute,” he thought, “This isn’t just my
story, my feelings, but everyone’s.”
38

35
The original Vietnamese name for the song was “Sàigòn ơi, Thôi Đã Hết,” (It is over, Saigon) because
another artist, Lam Phương, composed a refugee song with the title, “Sàigòn ơi, Vĩnh Biệt” (Farewell,
Saigon). Over time, the Farewell, Saigon title has become synonymous in popular usage with Nam Lộc’s
song.

36
English translation by Phạm Duy.

37
Phone Interview with Ho Xuan Mai, April 2007.

38
Interview, Nam Loc, April 2007.

94
In a way, the discourse of exile and forced migration counterbalanced the terrible
survivor’s guilt and loneliness that haunted Vietnamese Americans.
39
Sojourners, as
much as they looked forward to returning home, at least entered the United States of
their own accord. The discourse of exile even permeated the letters Irish immigrants
who missed the familiar surroundings of their homeland.
40
They found it more
empowering to describe their migration as involuntary, giving rise to what a writer in
the Vietnamese refugee camps called “a fellowship of countrymen away from their
homes.”
41
At the same time, discourse of exile implies an eventual return to reclaim
their lost nation. In “Farewell, Saigon,” refugees found agency in maintaining their
roots, or thinking of their migration as another chapter in the unfinished struggle for
Vietnamese Independence. Phạm Duy’s first refugee song, “Ta Chống Cộng hay Ta
Trốn Cộng” (Did We Fight or Did We Flee) was one of many attempts to rewrite the
past and turn exile into an easy choice:
Ta chống Cộng, ta không trốn Cộng
We will fight, we will not flee
Ta và cả trăm ngàn đồng hương
We're true sons of our country
Mai này rồi, ta về Việt Nam mến yêu.
Vietnam! O Motherland, we will return and take our stand.
42

39
For more about the cultural condition of exile see Peter I. Rose, Dispossessed: An Anatomy of Exile
(Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 2005).

40
Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988).

41
Ngoc Lam, “Viewpoint: for those who return” Tân Dân (Fort Chaffee), no. 117, 9 Sept 1975. 2-3.

42
English translation by Phạm Duy and Mary Nguyễn.

95
The size and scope of the southern California community enabled the formation
of a Vietnamese public sphere beyond just the Roosevelt.
43
Despite charging $6 per
ticket, musicians sold out two shows at the 1200-seat Wilshire Ebell Theater to
commemorate the one-year anniversary of the “birth of the diaspora.”
44
A week prior,
the newly formed Vietnamese-American Mutual Association in Santa Ana held a
similar-themed event held at Anaheim High School, charging $2 per ticket. With an
overseas Vietnamese population of 200,000 as of 1976, Southern California was one of
the few places with enough Vietnamese to sustain a music concert economy, with the
biggest venues in Los Angeles. It is little wonder that the first successful music video
production in the 1990s was entitled Hollywood Nights.
Because the refugee community was miniscule and mostly working class, most
Vietnamese Americans could not yet afford to make a living performing as they had in
Vietnam, making concert events like this all the more special. Furthermore, people
with prior musical skills and connections—e.g. cultural capital—could most easily
afford to take time off from their menial day jobs to pursue their musical dreams.
45
Mr.

43
Out of 130,000 Vietnamese refugees in the first wave, approximately 30,000 had settled in California.
Texas was a distant second with 11,000. See, Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress
(Washington, DC: HEW Task Force, 21 March 1977) p. 19. In contrast to large-scale events in California,
the communities in Huntsville, Alabama organized April 30 events at two different Protestant churches.
With the help of a Vietnamese professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the local community
put together a small event on campus. In early May, the Vietnamese congregation at St. Nicholas Catholic
Church in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania scheduled a day-long cultural event featuring singers and a film
screening of vintage South Vietnamese fare “Events among the Diaspora,” Trắng Đen magazine, (1:11) 23
May 1976, 27-28.

44
The advertisement for the concert read, “kỷ niệm 1 năm Ngày Xa Xứ,” which literally means, “The 1-
year anniversary of living outside of Vietnam,” which is the same as a diaspora.

45
It would be interesting to find out if the Catholic Church became a more influential resource outside of
Vietnam for Vietnamese interested in music because it provided the infrastructure that the “free market”
lacked to allow low-income outsiders to learn and perform Vietnamese music.
96
Hoàng Thi Thơ (hwang tee tuh), one of the most active music activists among the
diaspora, benefited from the unpaid labor of his talented sons. Ms. Thanh Thúy (tan
twee), a famous young singer in South Vietnam, operated a restaurant on Hollywood
Boulevard from 1976 to 1981. Open until 2 a.m. on Saturday nights, Thuy Restaurant
became a regular destination after a night at the Roosevelt Hotel. Nam Lộc, who had
operated a small music club in Saigon, went to work at the Los Angeles office of
Catholic Charities, the single largest sponsoring agency for Vietnamese refugees.

Getting in Touch
Their persistence in digging up the latest news from their old country led
Vietnamese Americans to network with fellow co-ethnics, which eventually created a
sizable market for ethnic entrepreneurs outside of Chinatown. Desperate to contact
their relatives abroad, refugees soon realized that long lines at the post office were
nothing compared to long waits between correspondences. Mỹ-Bình, a young mother of
three with family in Vietnam, had to wait an entire year before hearing back from her
mother in Saigon. Because the U.S. Postal Service stopped delivering mail to Vietnam
after 1975, this letter was mailed to her uncle in France, who then forwarded it to
Vietnam, using an alias because the family was targeted for persecution, with the father
incarcerated in a re-education camp for what would amount to 18 years.
46
Phạm Duy’s
overall mood took a turn for the better in November 1975, when he finally heard from
his sons after first writing to them five months earlier. “For the next couple of years,

46
Interview with Mỹ-Bình, April 2007.

97
my greatest joy consisted of writing to my sons or sitting down to read their letters.”
47

He learned through a friend that a company in Long Beach, CA specialized in sending
packages to their impoverished relatives in Vietnam.
The refugee community remained divided about remittances because they knew
the Communist government would siphon off a large chunk of those resources for
themselves.
48
As early as August of 1977, Communist radio announced to the citizenry
that, “To encourage and urge relatives abroad to transfer money home is the duty of
everyone. We must not only advise overseas compatriots and create conditions for them
to maintain sentimental links with their families and homeland, but must all help the
government collect more foreign currencies to develop production and industrialize the
country.”
49
Back in southern California, businesses with names like Laser Express,
Vinamedic, Vietimex, Overseas Vina Air Service, and T&D Express International
specialized in this practice by sending monetary remittances, food, and medicine to
Vietnam through Canada, France, and other third countries. T&D claimed the lowest
rate at $2.17 per pound, more than the minimum hourly wage of $2.10. In 1978, the US
government legalized remittances of up to $1200 per person to Vietnam and $2000 to
Cuba.
50
Refugees like Nam Lộc took on multiple jobs to raise enough money to send
home. “I only planned on working one year and going back to school. But at the time I

47
Phạm Duy Memoirs vol 4, Hồi Ký 4, 11.

48
“Xuyên Sơn, “Nên Hoặc Không Nên Gởi Tiền Về Việt-Nam?” (Should we or shouldn’t we send money
to Vietnam?) Trắng Đen magazine (1:5) 9 April 1976, p. 17; “90% of Remittance Money Stolen by
Communists,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:37) 6 Nov 1976, 18.

49
Vu Thuy Hoang, “Viet Refugees in U.S. Aiding Saigon,” Los Angeles Times, 14 October 1977, C8.

50
“Money Sanctions Lifted for Cuba, Vietnam Kin,” UPI, Washington Post, 6 January 1978, A13.

98
started hearing from my family, so I had to work two jobs. All I wanted was to have
money to send.” Some low-income refugees in California even abused their Medi-Cal
healthcare benefits to buy drugs for family in Vietnam.
51

Living in Missouri, a 19-year-old crippled teenage boy named Việt Dzũng paid
close attention to this social history of the Vietnamese community. “At that time,
everybody over here is going to work and saving money, sending it to Vietnam. A lot of
people were telling stories about Vietnam at that time. It is a very dark, very bleak
period. So I just listened to their stories and put it to music.” His live performances of
original songs like his 1978 hit, “Mốt Chút Quà Cho Quê Hương” (A Gift for My
Homeland in Vietnam), moved live audiences to tears, a sure sign of his appeal.
Con gởi về cho cha một manh áo trắng
To my father, I send one white dress shirt
Cha mặc một lần khi ra pháp trường phơi thây
For him to wear on the day of his execution
Gởi về Việt Nam nước mắt đong đầy
For Vietnam, I send all my tears
Mơ ước một ngày quê tôi sẽ thanh bình
In hope that one day, there will be peace
52

Việt Dzũng remembered one time, “When I started singing, they gave me a
standing ovation on every phrase.” Each phrase talked of the possible material things—
from candy to sleeping pills—one could send back to Vietnam to ease, even if only
temporarily, the suffering of family and friends. Việt Dzũng even sang about refugees
sending their wedding rings, which would pay for unauthorized passage out of the

51
Yen Do, with Jeffrey Brody, Yen and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton: Jeffrey Brody, 2003),
45.

52
English translation by Phương Nguyễn.

99
country. One smuggler in Saigon, for example, charged 25 ounces of gold per person for
this service back in 1977.
53
Not living in a coastal city, Saigon’s residents had to pay
exorbitant fees for this illegal service.
Saying goodbye to their sponsors and paternal network they’d established in the
United States, first wavers like Viet Dzũng and Phạm Duy were banking on an ethnic
economy and public benefits to keep them afloat in California. A 1975 law signed by
Governor Jerry Brown exempted Vietnamese refugees from out-of-state tuition charges,
making community college and Cal State education virtually cost-free.
54
Despite
skyrocketing college costs over the years, a $630 per year UC education in 1975 was still
within the average person’s reach. With free childcare services, community colleges
provided incentives for Vietnamese women to enroll as well.
55

California’s vast reservoir of housing and health insurance subsidies for the poor,
along with the assistance of ethnic mutual assistance associations in the area, gave
Vietnamese further incentive to gravitate towards Orange County.
56
One of the most
prominent refugees confessed that gaming the system and pooling resources enabled

53
Peter Arnett, “Refugees From ‘Boat With No Smiles’ Find New Life in U.S.” Los Angeles Times, 23 June
1978, B5.

54
“Education is Bargain at East Los Angeles College,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Sept 1975, K6; Thomas Fortune
and Tracey Wood, “Immigrants to Face Out-of-State Fees,” Los Angeles Times, 21 Aug 1980, OC_A1.

55
Lorraine Bennett, “Vietnam Refugees Go Back to School,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug 1975, OC_B8.
According to the Orange County Child Care Resource Guide, published specifically for Indochinese refugees,
families could find affordable child day care at 45 facilities, 8 of which were located in Santa Ana. See
Orange County Child Care Resource Guide (Santa Ana, CA: Santa Ana College, New Horizons, October
1979).

56
For more on the role of Indochinese mutual assistance associations, see Nguyễn Van Hien, Diana Bui,
and Le Xuan Khoa, Ethnic Self-Help Organizations: Final Report (Washington, DC: HEW Policy and
Analysis, 1 April 1983).

100
Vietnamese to afford houses so quickly: “It may look like fraud, but that’s the way they
survived.”
57
The Refugee Act of 1980, more than just defining refugees as victims of
persecution in accordance with United Nations criteria, gave Vietnamese in California
access to more sources of public assistance than in any other state.
58
In all likelihood,
Medi-Cal, the state’s $2 billion per year health insurance program for the poor, helped
create an ethnic economy in Little Saigon, especially as mainstream doctors were
increasingly denying care to Medi-Cal patients.
59
With thousands of low-income and
limited-English refugees suddenly possessing the means to pay for medical care, Little
Saigon was a potential gold mine for any of the 300 refugee doctors and dentists across

57
Yen Do, with Jeffrey Brody, Yen and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton: CSU Fullerton Dept.
of Communications, 2003), 45.

58
Interview with Walter Barnes, Director, Refugee and Immigration Resettlement and Gain Programs in
California, The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History III: Refugee Service Programs and
Mutual Assistance Associations (Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library, 1992) 26. For more on the 1980
Refugee Act, see Carl Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees During the Cold War
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Amnesty International USA, Reasonable Fear: Human
Rights and United States Refugee Policy (Washington DC: Amnesty International USA, 1990); Gil D.
Loescher and John A. Scanlan, editors, The Global Refugee Problem: U.S. and World Response (Beverly Hills:
Sage Publications, 1983).

59
Robert Fairbanks, “New Reform of Medi-Cal Urged,” Los Angeles Times, 1 Jan 1975, A1.
101
the U.S. willing to set up shop there.
60
And virtually every doctor setting up shop in the
Vietnamese community accepted Medi-Cal patients.
61

Upon his arrival in 1979, one early entrepreneur remembered “only 12 businesses
in Orange County” which included one supermarket and two restaurants scattered all
over the region. Scanning the rest of the business district, one took notice of bean
fields, strawberry patches, and Anglo-owned family businesses. At the very least, the
summer 1976 opening of Saigon Market on 2329 W. First Street in Santa Ana meant
that Orange Countians could buy all their food items without traveling to Chinatown.
If Hollywood Nights consisted of trips to the Roosevelt Hotel, then Orange County
nights at the time, according to musician Quốc Thái, consisted of inviting friends to
garage parties.
62
By 1980, over 100 businesses had sprung up all over Orange County,
and on the verge of transforming a majority-white suburb just as Chinese entrepreneurs
were doing in the San Gabriel Valley.
63
If Vietnamese Americans wanted to find an

60
“HEW Announces $1.3 Million Program to Help Qualify Viet Refugee Doctors,” Los Angeles Times, 8
Aug 1975, B12; As of March 1977, about 299 Indochinese refugee doctors had taken the certification
examination required of all foreign-trained physicians. 141 (the largest proportion) passed the medical
section but lacked the necessary English skills to pass the language section on the first try. Also, there were
nine institutions authorized to recertify Vietnamese-trained doctors and dentists. The only ones in
California were Loma Linda University and University of California, San Diego, both in Southern
California. See, Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Task Force,
21 March 1977) 69, 73.

61
This claim is supported by advertisements in Vietnamese-language newspapers in Little Saigon since
1976. Almost every single ad for a doctor, dentist, or pharmacist indicated that they accepted Medi-Cal—
Nhận Medi-Cal. Doctors have also constituted the largest professional class in the Vietnamese American
population, beating other popular entrepreneurial careers such as restaurants, real estate, mechanic, and
nail salons.

62
Vivian Le Tran, “Getting Little Saigon’s Ear,” Los Angeles Times, 6 January 2001, B11.

63
For more on the San Gabriel Valley’s transformation, mostly by sociologists, see Leland Saito, Race and
Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb (Urbana-Champagne: University of
102
ethnic entrepreneur, the closest thing they had to their own Yellow Pages directory was
advertising in the refugee press.

The Refugee Press
One of the first refugee newspapers, Trắng Đen (the Truth), hit newsstands in
Vietnamese markets and restaurants across the country, including unexpected places
like Saigon Market of Kansas City and Oriental Foods of Minneapolis, back in March
1976. The refugee version of the old Saigon newspaper described itself as the “Voice of
the Non-Communist People,” featuring news from Vietnam, the Vietnamese refugee
diaspora, general U.S. news, and contributions from unpaid guest writers. In the
absence of a large local market, Trắng Đen’s business model depended mostly on its
6,000 subscribers scattered across the U.S. Trắng Đen’s own editor admitted that, “52
cents out of every dollar goes to postage and taxes alone,” and furthermore, “Without
volunteers, this paper would never have gotten off the ground.“
64

Being a largely subscriber-subsidized publication, Trắng Đen served as an
imagined community where like-minded readers could converge and even contribute
articles. The first weekly edition published a refugee song written from the point of
view of a wife left behind in Vietnam, articles about resistance in Vietnam to

Illinois Press, 1998); John Horton, The Politics of Diversity: Immigration, Resistance, and Change in Monterey
Park, California (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995; Timothy Fong, The First Suburban
Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994);
and Wei Li, “Building Ethnoburbia: The Emergence and Manifestation of the Chinese Ethnoburb in Los
Angeles' San Gabriel Valley,” Journal of Asian American Studies - Volume 2, Number 1, February 1999, 1-28.

64
Việt Định Phương, Editor’s Statement, Trắng Den magazine, no. 1, 6 March 1976, 3.

103
communist rule, reports of community activities across the U.S., personals in search of
long lost friends, and entertainment in the form of cartoons and essays. Later issues
featured cartoons mocking the Vietnamese government, a form of agency and power
not available to people in that country because of insult laws. An article on “Super
Refugee” told the story of a 46-year-old man who resettled in Brooklyn in 1975, only to
secretly return to Vietnam a year later to rescue his wife and children.
65

Indeed, reuniting families motivated Vietnamese Americans to collective action,
and newspapers like Trắng Đen furnished the instructions.
66
There was no shortage of
personals to help reunite families and friends. Readers, presumably male and not fluent
in English, were provided a form letter they could send to the International Red Cross,
pleading for help. “I find myself hard to live farther without my beloved (wife) and
children here,” reads the form letter. “But I do not know how to have them here
because the government of VN does not let them leave, and I cannot afford to pay for
their travel tickets supposing they are permitted to, either.” Convincing their

65
“Super Refugee: From Saigon to American and back to VN to Rescue His Family,” Trắng Đen magazine
19, 1 July 1976, 6. Originally published in Viet Nam Tu Do newspaper (Free Vietnamese People).

66
For some reason, the Vietnamese refugee has exhibited a longevity unanticipated by theorists of the
ethnic press. In a 1985 survey of ethnic resources in Orange County, Vietnamese-language newspapers (14)
outnumbered the total of Spanish (6), Korean (4), and Chinese (1) combined. See Francisco Garcia-Ayvens,
Ethnic Orange County: An Ethnic Resources Directory (Orange, CA: Santiago Library System, 1985); For
more on the ethnic press in U.S. history, see Robert Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control (New York:
Harper and Bros, 1922); William Jordan, Black Newspapers and America’s War for Democracy, 1914-1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Charles Jaret, “The Greek, Italian, and Jewish
American Ethnic Press: A Comparative Analysis,” in Journal of Ethnic Studies, vol. 7, no. 2 (1979), 47-70;
Sally M. Miller, ed., The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook, (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1987); Susan Olzack and Elizabeth West, “Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of
Ethnic Newspapers,” in American Sociological Review, vol. 56, no. 4. (Aug. 1991) 458-474; David Yoo,
“‘Read all about it’: Race, Generation, and the Japanese American Press, 1925-41,” in Amerasia Journal, vol.
19, no. 1 (1993), 69-92.

104
sponsors—i.e. American citizens—to join in the letter writing campaign could lead to
“more good results,” readers were told.
67
They also instructed readers how to directly
petition the U.S. State Department to negotiate an agreement to bring the relatives of
Vietnamese Americans over to the U.S.
68
Hardly anybody anticipated the people of
South Vietnam taking matters into their own hands by becoming illegal emigrants. The
exodus of the late 1970s and early 1980s constituted the second wave of Vietnamese
refugee migration.
The second wave of Vietnamese refugees was also known as the boat people. To
quote the Associated Press’ apt description of the second wave: “Vietnamese who
dislike communism cannot escape it by skipping across the border, because opposite
Vietnam’s borders are China, Laos and Cambodia, all Communist. So they leave by
sea.”
69
A repressive government that eventually went to war with China and Cambodia
was sure to create another refugee crisis. The exodus of the so-called boat people from
Vietnam—what a United Nations official called a “modern-day odyssey, sometimes
assuming tragic proportions”—confirmed that the first wave’s decision to forsake their
homeland was not at all capricious.
70
The inherent risks of braving the South China Sea

67
“For Viet Families’ Reunion by Red Cross Int’l,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:11) 1 May 1976, 27; Indeed, 44%
percent of all households from the 1975 refugee cohort were single-person households. 13,502 (80%) of
those 16,819 single-person households were male. Two-person refugee families finished a distant second
with 4524 families. It reflected the chaotic nature of the Saigon evacuation, in which families were split up.
See, Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: HEW Task Force, 21 March
1977) 28-29.

68
“How to Locate Refugees Still in Thailand?” Trắng Đen magazine, (1:6) 10 April 1976, 25.

69
“Odyssey of the “Boat People,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug 1977, B4.

70
“Odyssey of the “Boat People,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug 1977, B4.

105
without much food or water in low-tech village fishing boats testified to the desperation
of people to reach an island of refuge.
71
Even the fear of drowning did not stop women,
most of whom did not know how to swim, from paying for passage out. If fellow South
Vietnamese willingly risked their lives out at sea rather than endure the status quo in
Vietnam, then refugee nationalism had a broad base beyond the initial 130,000 of 1976.
By December 1976, the Los Angeles Times estimated that over 6,000 had made
their way to Thailand alone, where, like undocumented immigrants in the United
States, they faced possible deportation.
72
In August 1977, the United Nations pinned
the number of boat people survivors at 10,000.
73
At the peak of the exodus in January
1979, U.S. television viewers witnessed CBS news correspondent Ed Bradley rescuing
Vietnamese boat people off the coast of Pulau Bidong, Malaysia. Later that year, the
United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees finally announced a comprehensive
plan by which Western nations would receive the Vietnamese, who had sought refuge
in neighboring Southeast Asian countries. In addition, the US and Vietnam reached a

71
For more on the U.S. response to the boat people crisis, see the following: Summary of Findings of Visits to
Indo-Chinese Refugee Resettlement Areas and a Telephone Survey of a Selected Sample of Indo-Chinese Refugee
Heads of Households (Washington, DC: HEW Refugee Task Force, 24 Feb 1976); The Indochinese Refugee
Problem: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law of the Committee on
the Judiciary House of Representatives, March 6, June 19, and July 31, 1979 (Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1980); Review of U.S. Refugee Resettlement Programs and Policies: A report prepared at the
request of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 1979, 1980); Report of Fact-Finding Mission to Refugee
Camps in Southeast Asia: October 24 to November 16, 1983 (Sacramento: California Legislature Joint
Committee on Refugee Resettlement and Immigration, 1983); United States Congress, Senate, Committee
on Immigration and Refugee Policy. U.S. Refugee Program in Southeast Asia: 1985 (Washington, DC: US
Government Printing Office, 1985); Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and
America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1986); W. Courtland Robinson, Terms
of Refuge: The Indochinese Exodus and the International Response (New York: Zed Books, 1998).

72
“The Boat People,” editorial, Los Angeles Times, 14 Dec 1976, D6.

73
“Oddyssey of the “Boat People,” AP, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug 1977, B4.

106
bilateral agreement called the Orderly Departure Program to facilitate the legal and safe
reunification of families. Politically, the second wave refugees discredited Viet-Cong
propaganda portraying the 1975 evacuation as an American-manufactured crisis
uprooting uncooperative brothers and sisters from their communities.

America Reacts
The plight of the boat people started to garner public attention in late 1977, when
the rate of departure exceeded 4,000 per month. By the end of 1978, over 10,000 were
leaving Vietnam each month. The shift in public opinion towards the refugees was
reflected in statements released in early 1978 by representatives of organized labor and
the black community. The fear that a refugee influx would negatively impact the
already tight labor market, as echoed by California Governor Jerry Brown’s aides, was
rebuffed by the AFL-CIO, labor’s largest and most powerful union. In a written
statement, the AFL-CIO called upon the Carter administration “to work with other
countries, using both example and persuasion, to guarantee all these refugees a home.”
They also reminded everyone that, “no one is more concerned about the problem of
unemployment than the AFL-CIO, but that problem will hardly be affected by the
number of Indochina refugees we are talking about.”
74

The statement representing 89 leaders of the black community—including the
likes of Ralph Abernathy, A. Philip Randolph, Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan, and
Coretta Scott King—promoted unambiguous solidarity between African Americans

74
“Statements support admission of boat people,” Dat Moi (Seattle) no. 1 and 2, April 1978, 10.

107
and the Indochinese refugees. They flatly rejected any suggestion of deporting “our
Asian brothers and sisters in the refugee camps” back to Vietnam, a policy that would
“result in almost certain death.” Instead they chose to “call upon President Carter and
the United States Congress to facilitate the entrance of these refugees into the United
States” because their “continuing struggle for economic and political freedom is
inextricably linked to the struggle of Indochinese refugees who seek freedom.”
75
Of the
283,149 Indochinese refugees that had been resettled worldwide up that point, 148,355,
or 52%, were living in the United States, according to the federal Indochinese
Resettlement Task Force.
76
Clearly, the United States would be expected to take the
lead in resettling the Indochinese.
The Vietnamese refugees, for their part, were also putting pressure on the United
States and the United Nations to take affirmative action. On the 30
th
anniversary of the
UN Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1978, Vietnamese across the United
States protested the recent refusal of the Malaysian government to allow safe entry for
over 400 boat people, who eventually drowned when their six boats capsized at sea.
Even more important was protesting the conditions in Vietnam that created the boat
people crisis. Fourteen Vietnamese refugees in Santa Ana participated in a hunger
strike to protest human rights violations in Vietnam while hundreds marched in front
of the White House for the same reason. They demanded that President Jimmy Carter
“reconsider the exclusion of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from the list of

75
“Black Americans urge admissions of the Indochinese refugees,” advertisement by the International
Rescue Committee, New York Times, 19 March 1978, E9.

76
“Refugee Toll Highest Ever,” Dat Moi (Seattle) no. 1 and 2, April 1978, 11.

108
governments practicing repression” that the White House released on December 6. The
refugees agreed their campaign should “inform public opinion as well as the U.S.
legislative members to struggle for human rights for VN,” alongside encouraging
resettled refugees to “take their active part in sponsoring newly-arrived boat refugees.”
77

Carter, elected partly on his promise to heal the wounds of Vietnam and move
America forward, walked a delicate path in dealing with Vietnam. His administration
did not block the entry of Vietnam into the U.N, but the U.S. still continued the
economic embargo. His administration pardoned the draft resistors but refused to pay
any reparations that Nixon allegedly promised to Hanoi. Recognizing the boat people
crisis as a full-blown refugee problem was an indictment of human rights conditions in
Vietnam. But standing on the fence was becoming untenable.
Word of the second wave dominated the pages of the refugee press, but one paper
went out of their way to insert themselves into the process. In September 1976, Trắng
Đen sent checks for $200 to the refugees in Malaysia and $300 each to the camps in
Thailand and the Philippines.
78
As a service to their readers, the paper published the
names of camp arrivals. By month’s end, they sent another check in the amount of
$2000 to their contact person in Thailand.
79
He was a Roman Catholic priest named
Thomas Đỗ Thanh Hà, a fellow boat refugee who had fled Saigon in April 1976 to

77
“Viets protest Malaysia.” Dat Moi (Seattle), December 1978, 6.

78
“Vietnam News,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:31) 25 Sept 1976, 6-7.

79
“4,300 Vietnamese Refugees Remain in Thailand,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:33) 9 Oct 1976, 6-8.

109
avoid imprisonment. Touched by stories of their fellow Vietnamese waiting in limbo,
readers wrote to Trắng Đen volunteering to sponsor families over to the United States.
Pictures from Thailand taken by a Trắng Đen correspondent showed fellow
Vietnamese locked in prison cells.
80
Their compatriots in the United States, as the
paper reported, had taken the initiative to write letters to Congress urging the
government to admit the new refugees.
81
The State Department replied to Trắng Đen,
informing them in January 1977 that “the only way large numbers of Indochinese
refugees will be able to reach America will be through normal immigration when those
already here change their status to resident alien or citizen and can petition for
preferential visas for their relatives.”
82
Pressure from Conservatives to maintain the
embargo against Hanoi actually made it easier for new president Jimmy Carter, an
outspoken advocate for international human rights, to grant refugee status to those
fleeing Southeast Asia, allowing them to enter the U.S. once a sponsor was found.
The idea to open the doors to more refugees was gaining bipartisan support as a
moral issue. From a public image standpoint, the U.S. taking leadership in the boat
people crisis would allow the U.S. to regain much of the international prestige and
credibility it had lost during the Vietnam War. In early 1979, the monthly entry quota
already stood at 7,000 refugees. By June, President Carter doubled the quota to 14,000
per month. For the Vietnamese Americans, they had found an issue in which a majority

80
“A Reporter from “The Truth” Goes to Thailand,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:34) 16 Oct 1976, 7-10.

81
“A Reporter from “The Truth” Goes to Thailand,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:34) 16 Oct 1976, 7-10.

82
“President Ford Responds to “The Truth,” Trắng Đen magazine (2:49) 29 Jan 1977, 5.

110
of Americans sided with them, that was tied to the national character. To do nothing
about the boat people problem was the un-American thing to do.
Trắng Đen’s editorial model may have succeeded, but its economic model
floundered. Management’s dependence on subscription fees and allocations from the
family delicatessen business worked just fine as long as the Vietnamese population
remained scattered throughout the United States. But as thousands of first and second
wave refugees engaged in secondary migration to California and Texas, the more likely
it was for ethnic newspapers to follow a conventional business model dependent largely
on advertising revenue.
83
This meant relocating to Orange County, which Trắng Đen
waited too long to do. Other publications had a larger foothold already, the most
successful of which was a small newspaper started because its owner could not find
steady work in the mainstream job market.
Even an educated man like Yến Đỗ “had to change jobs about ten times.” Living
all over Texas and California, he “worked at everything from a night job doing manual
labor cleaning in a restaurant, to working at a library and as a salesperson.” When he
landed two-year job as a social worker dealing with Vietnamese fishermen in Texas, he
“understood that many of our fellow countrymen needed assistance from the Federal or
State agencies, exactly like the Black folks or the under-privileged in American
society.”
84
Fancying himself an amateur sociologist, Đỗ returned to the profession of

83
Between February 1978 and January 1980, approximately 70% of all Indochinese secondary migrants
settled in California. See, Indochinese Refugee Assistance Program: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 31 Dec 1979), 4; Refugee Resettlement Program: Report to
Congress (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 31 Jan 1981), 7.

84
The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History IV: Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the
Vietnamese Media (Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library, 1992) 32.
111
his Saigon days to provide a new wave of refugees from Vietnam with the human
capital necessary to achieve self-sufficiency.
In January 1979, he moved his brand new fledgling newspaper Nguoi Viet—
Vietnamese People—to Orange County because it was no longer cost-effective to hire
printers in Mexico and then commute as far as Los Angeles to sell 75¢ copies. An
emerging ethnic economy that included affordable printing services and plenty of low-
wage labor resulted in the founding of other Orange County newspapers like Sài Gòn
and Quê Hương. “The first circulation coincided with a demonstration concerning the
Human Rights of the Vietnamese Community in a park area outside the Los Angeles
City Hall,” said Đỗ.
85
By 1986, when Westminster alone had more Vietnamese
businesses than all of Los Angeles County, Nguoi Viet had already transitioned from a
subscriber-based to an ad-based business model.
86
Accompanying ads for restaurants
and doctors were those for brand new tract housing starting at $40,000 and new
shopping centers in need of tenants.
87
These ads reflected a growth potential not
possible in Los Angeles.

85
The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History IV: Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the
Vietnamese Media (Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library, 1992), 37-38.

86
According to the 1986 edition of the Vietnamese Yellow Pages published by the Vietnamese American
Chamber of Commerce, Westminster had 358 Vietnamese businesses while Los Angeles and Long Beach
combined had 215. For info on Nguoi Viet transitioning to an ad-based business model, see The Vietnamese
Community in Orange County: An Oral History IV: Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the Vietnamese Media
(Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library, 1992) 45-46.

87
The ad for Kingsplace tract homes appeared in the 24 April 1980 issue of Người Việt Ca Li. The ad for the
Saigon Shopping Center at the corner of Bolsa and Magnolia, complete with 20,000 square feet of retail
space and 60,000 sq. ft. of parking space, appeared in the Tết 1982 edition (no. 41 & 42) of Người Việt.

112
Đỗ wanted his paper to stand out from prior newspapers, which sometimes read
like broadsides or editorials. As a former social worker, Đỗ wanted to make sure his
people kept informed about basic survival skills. “The Vietnamese community needed
information about how to get jobs, how to apply for welfare, how to apply for a driver’s
license, even how to buy insurance.”
88
After enduring one too many accusations of libel
and slander, his paper aimed for a more sober, albeit pro-refugee, style that relied
heavily on translating articles from the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, and
Le Monde to insulate himself from charges of bias. His paper also utilized an elaborate
grassroots network of sources, including cryptic letters from Vietnam “that arrived
through France or Hong Kong.”
89
Knowing that war and another refugee exodus had
broken out in their homeland, Vietnamese Americans were desperate for any breaking
news on the matter.
A large percentage of the boat people ended up in Southern California and acted
as messengers.
90
They told of the hundreds of thousands rounded up into re-education
camps, of the multitudes of families forced to relocate to New Economic Zones to make
room in urban areas for the Viet Cong, and of the state of fear assuring that even the

88
Yen Do, with Jeffrey Brody, Yen and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton: CSU Fullerton Dept.
of Communications, 2003), 15.

89
Yen Do, with Jeffrey Brody, Yen and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton: CSU Fullerton Dept.
of Communications, 2003), 15.

90
The sponsorship of Indochinese boat people reached a peak between 1979 and 1981. In fact, the
Southeast Asian population of 18 of 58 California counties doubled between January 1980 and March 1981
alone. See, Office of Migration and Refugee Affairs, California Health and Welfare Agency, California State
Master Plan for Refugees: Existing Programs and Policy Recommendations, Volume 1, December 1982, pp 24-25.
Ronald Reagan’s new administration in 1981 implicitly sanctioned a series of destabilizing events across
the globe, ensuring more refugees from other lands, and making the sponsorship of Vietnamese refugees
less of a priority.

113
closest of friends were suspected of spying on each other.
91
Their testimony opened the
world’s eyes to the hypocrisies of the Viet-Cong that even Russian dissident writer
Alexander Solzhenitsyn believed would remain hidden from public view for at least
another two decades. “The boat people rekindled the political spirit of Little Saigon
because they were survivors of the communist regime,” remembers Do Ngoc Yen.
Indeed, between January 1980 and March 1981, nearly 48% of all new Southeast Asian
arrivals to California landed in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
92
Their plight
reassured homesick Vietnamese Americans that exile was the wise choice. As a political
issue, the new exodus mobilized Vietnamese Americans to get involved in the political
process, whether through letter-writing campaigns or editorials. In turn, the ethnic
press and songwriters provided institutional spaces, both real and virtual, for people
united by refugee nationalism to converge.
.
The Catholic Church
Thanks to the assistance of local diocese, Vietnamese Catholics were among the
first to establish institutional spaces once in the United States. Catholic Charities had
taken in their care a number of priests who had fled with the first wave in 1975. Living
in Binghamton, NY, a grateful but lonely priest named Nguyễn Duc Tien collected

91
George McArthur, “200,000 Believed Held in Viet ‘Reeducation Camps,’” Los Angeles Times, 19 Sept
1976, A1; Richard Dudman, “Viet Reeducation Camp is Work, Indoctrination,” Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov
1977, A6; George McArthur, “But For Many South Vietnamese Peace, Like War, Is Hell,” Los Angeles
Times, 17 April 1977, E3.

92
38,309 out of 79,957 total arrivals during this period. Includes primary and secondary migration. See,
Office of Migration and Refugee Affairs, California Health and Welfare Agency, California State Master
Plan for Refugees: Existing Programs and Policy Recommendations, Volume 1. December 1982, 24-25.

114
every newsletter from Vietnamese parishes springing up one by one in Missouri,
Louisiana, and Orange County. In 1979, the Diocese approved Father Tien’s transfer to
Orange County, where he would join three other Vietnamese priests in forming
California’s first Vietnamese Catholic Center.
93

The Vietnamese community in Orange County started out with 3,000 Catholics
but it was not until October 1975 when approximately 200 of them attended their first
post-camp Vietnamese mass at the auxiliary hall of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim.
After working all week, refugees looked forward to socializing with other Vietnamese
on Sundays. Carpooling from as far as Norwalk and El Monte, often with the help of
Diocese volunteers, the Vietnamese soon convinced Monsignor John C. Keenan to
grant them the 9:00 a.m. time slot every Sunday at St. Catherine’s Military School.
Initially, there was only one priest, Father Vũ Tuấn Tú, to serve the Vietnamese
community. By the end of 1977, the Diocese of Orange had three Vietnamese priests
leading prayer at five different parishes.
94
Attendance at St. Barbara’s in Santa Ana
routinely exceeded its 1200-seat capacity despite the inconvenient start time of 6:30
a.m. every Sunday.
Leading the Vietnamese Catholic community was Father Đỗ Thanh Hà, the same
priest who in 1976 served as Trang Den newspaper’s liaison during his six-month stay at
a Thailand refugee camp. Under his guidance, Vietnamese Catholics in Orange County

93
Phone interview with Monsigner Nguyễn Duc Tien, September 2008. Verified by browsing back issues
of Vietnamese Catholic publications mailed to Nguyễn Duc Tien in Binghamton, NY (Vietnamese
Catholic Center, Santa Ana, CA).

94
Monsignor Nguyễn Duc Tien, “The Vietnamese Catholic Community at 20 (1975-1995)” Hiệp Nhất
magazine no. 28, April 1995, 5.

115
engaged in a campaign to both sponsor second wave refugees and to donate Vietnamese
books and newspapers to those still languishing in Southeast Asian refugee camps. In
1979, approximately 37 families volunteered to sponsor new refugees by helping them
find housing and a job. That same year, a team of 50 collected $304 worth of aluminum
cans to cover the postage for 140 lbs of reading material being sent to the camps.
95

Behind closed doors, the Vietnamese Catholic Center’s Family Counseling program
brought much-needed comfort to new refugees who had “lost spouses, children, or
relatives…and feel depressed or have a nervous breakdown upon their arrival.”
96

Of course, growing Vietnamese Catholic demands on church resources left their
relationship with the American majority somewhat strained. “First, (the Americans)
took pity on the Vietnamese who came in poverty, and were only and frustrated because
they left their homeland, empty-handed,” said Father Ha. But American pity devolved
into resentment against a people considered insufficiently “civilized.” Father Ha
pointed specifically to complaints of Vietnamese children leaving a mess in the
classrooms or adults lacking common courtesy in the parking lots, leading to occasional
automobile collisions.
97
As a result, Father Ha initially refused the chance to head St.
Callistus Church. “I worried whether the American parishioners would accept me and

95
Monsignor Nguyễn Duc Tien, “The Vietnamese Catholic Community at 20 (1975-1995)” Hiệp Nhất
magazine no. 38, February 1996, 52-53.

96
“Interview with Reverend Father Do Thanh Ha,” The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral
History II: Religion and Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope Public
Library, 1991) 30.

97
“Interview with Reverend Father Do Thanh Ha,” The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral
History II: Religion and Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope Public
Library, 1991) 32.

116
cooperate with me or whether they would keep their distance from me, making my life
difficult.”
98

In effect, the concentration of Vietnamese Catholic services in Orange County
gave a quarter of the Vietnamese population there, especially the elderly and poor, a
prime incentive to live as close as possible to one of these churches. From the onset,
Diocese officials organized mixers for the refugees, who “cherished every opportunity
to see each other.”
99
Having an accessible network of like-minded people, along with a
space to meet new and old friends, made it all the easier to adjust to American life and
nurture their refugee nationalism. Everyone had a story about their escape, the people
they left behind, and the joy of meeting new friends. To top it all off, churches were one
of the few institutional spaces available for mobilizing political protests.
100

Student Activism and Political Protest
Kiều Mỹ Duyên (cue me zwin) contributed weekly features for various papers
when she was not attending college classes or protesting the Vietnamese government.
Students had the luxury of time and the company of fellow travelers who did not

98
“Interview with Reverend Father Do Thanh Ha,” The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral
History II: Religion and Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope Public
Library, 1991) 28.

99
Phạm Văn Phổ, “A Lot Changes in 20 Years,” Hiệp Nhất magazine no. 28, April 1995, 17.

100
For more on Vietnamese Catholicism and religion in general, see Paul James Rutledge, The Role of
Religion in Ethnic Self-Identity: A Vietnamese Community (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985);
The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History II: Religion and Resettlement of Vietnamese
Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library, 1991); Jesse W. Nash, Vietnamese
Catholicism (Harvey, LA: Art Review Press, 1992); and Douglas M. Padgett, Religion, Memory, and
Imagination in Vietnamese California (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2007).

117
appreciate seeing the South Vietnamese perspective constantly excluded in academic
discussions of the Vietnam War. Lecturing at the University of California at Berkeley
in the late 1970s, historian Sucheng Chan incurred the resentment and frustration of
her South Vietnamese students for criticizing everybody but the communists during
and after the Vietnam War. “Some were so angry,” Chan recalled, “that their faces were
flushed and tears welled up in their eyes. Others called me a Communist. A few even
declared that someone with my perspective should not be allowed to teach at an
American university.”
101

Students comprised some of the most active members of the community. They
organized some of the first concerts—like a January 17, 1976 affair in Long Beach.
102

The Vietnamese Student Associations (VSA) successfully staged the annual Tết lunar
new year festivals, starting with the one day affairs at Santa Ana College and Orange
Coast College in 1978. In the Spring 1980 quarter, they enrolled in the University of
California at Los Angeles’ first class on the Vietnamese refugee experience.
103
In 1980,
the Santa Ana College VSA made plans to establish a nationalist training academy for
1000 students.
104
They also sent letters asking President Jimmy Carter to intervene in
the boat people crisis.
105

101
Sucheng Chan, editor, The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New
Beginnings (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006) vii.

102
Trang Den magazine, 6 March 1976, no. 1, 18.

103
Trang Den magazine, no. 175, 4 April 1980, 34.

104
Trang Den magazine, no. 172, 15 Feb. 1980, 31.

105
Trang Den magazine, no. 173, 7 Mar 1980, 29.

118
In conjunction with the Vietnamese-American Mutual Association in Santa Ana,
students protested all over Southern California. After alerting fellow refugees about
screenings of a few pro-communist films at Cal State Fullerton in October of 1977,
Vietnamese Americans came out in full force for 3 weeks, resulting in 24 arrests.
106

When Prof. Edward Cooperman of California State University, Fullerton organized a
film screening of a recent North Vietnamese film “Vietnam in the Year of the Cat,”
documenting the Northern “liberation” of South Vietnam in 1975, he never anticipated
the opposition it would engender. On the night of Friday, October 21, 1977, protesters
disrupted the presentation by throwing eggs inside and outside the Humanities
building. About 100 had attended the movie. Twenty-four were arrested. Prof.
Cooperman claimed the demonstrators consisted of ex-Saigon military, an euphemism
meant to characterize the them as extremists with no respect for the rule of law.
107
The
following week, 40 protestors showed up, carrying yellow South Vietnamese flags, to
oppose the screening of another North Vietnamese film, “Saigon City at Dawn.” A
spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that, “We do not like the Communists. We want
the American people to know about that.”
108
According to another source, the primary
goal of the protestors was “to make it clear to the American people that the Vietnamese
refugees fled their native land for political reasons, not economic reasons as the

106
“40 Viet Refugees Protest in Fullerton,” Los Angeles Times (OC edition), 29 Oct 1977, OC13; “24 Viet
Refugees Arrested in Protest,” Los Angeles Times, 23 Oct 1977, C6.

107
“24 Viet Refugees Arrested in Protest,” Los Angeles Times, 23 Oct 1977, C6.

108
“40 Viet Refugees Protest in Fullerton,” Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct 1977, OC13.

119
Communists falsely claimed.
109
The protestors expressed similar public anger at the
prospect of a scheduled lecture at University of California at Irvine by alleged
communist sympathizer Nguyễn Hữu Hiếu.
110

It did not take long for the refugee ranks to control the VSA. Because so many
community events became tied to student organizations, the refugee perspective soon
became hegemonic. For example, prominent politicians like a local county supervisor,
the California Secretary of State and a representative for the Governor attended the
1980 VSA Culture Night at USC. Protests became venues for networking, where
student Kieu My Duyen, publisher Yến Đỗ, and Father Thomas Thanh Do all found
common ground. Exile brought about sadness but imposed new bonds based on a
shared desire to return to a liberated Vietnam.
Refugee protesters fell neatly into two visible but unequal categories: the helpless
refugee and the anti-communist crusader. The former encapsulated the paternal
relationship that tried to put moral closure to the Vietnam War while the latter image
invoked a continuation of that war. During the late 1970s, Vietnamese Americans got
maximum mileage with chants of “Free World, Do not Turn a Deaf Ear to the Boat
People” without realizing the degree to which they were circumscribed by that role.
They adopted an historically familiar mode of protest casting themselves as weak
victims appealing to the better angels of America to intervene. In reality, the problem
was American nationalism’s paternalistic tendencies, which resisted seeing minorities

109
Kiều Mỹ Duyên, “Giới Thệu Trung Tâm Ngưòi Việt Quốc Gia,” Ngưòi Việt Newspaper, 28 Oct 1979, 6.

110
Trang Den magazine, no. 174, 21 March 1980, 24.

120
as equals. Ironically, refugee nationalism epitomized strength, courage, and resistance
among its members, a message also transmitted to Vietnam.

The Voice of America
Since 1942, the Voice of America (VOA) has operated as the official international
radio service of the United States government. It was set up as an instrument of airwave
warfare against Nazi propaganda, sending long distance shortwave transmissions in
dozens of languages to select areas of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Once headed by Edward
R. Murrow, the VOA dedicated itself to objectively reporting news in the targeted
country, though its unstated political objective was to portray the United States in the
most positive light. During the Cold War, the station famously countered Soviet
propaganda by cultivating in socialist states a fan base for jazz and other American
music.
111
Listeners in these nations hardly dared tune into the VOA out in the open.
During the early 1960s, the VOA hired a young Georgetown graduate from
named Lê Văn (lay van) to anchor broadcasts to Vietnam. The Saigon native had spent
the war years reporting on events from the battlefronts in Vietnam, though VOA was
barred from reporting too much bad news in the spring of 1975. After the fall of Saigon,
the South Vietnamese went underground to tune into VOA news about Vietnam,
dispatches from Vietnamese Americans, and updates on U.S. foreign policy. When
Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, the VOA and BBC provided much-needed
alternatives to Vietnamese media. Le Van had already traveled to Orange County in

111
For more see Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

121
1976 for the Tết lunar new year, interviewing the new refugees and giving them 15
seconds to wish their relatives in Vietnam a happy Tết. As Lê Văn remembers, “It was
the traditional thing to do, but in reality not that many families were really happy at
that time.”
Facing accusations from U.S. politicians and Vietnamese officials that the VOA
was “recruiting” refugees into the U.S., Lê Vân denied the charge, stating that would-
be refugees interpreted VOA news as they see fit.
112
“If I said the weather would be clear
and sunny for the next few days, somebody might think it is a good time to go.” In fact,
VOA and BBC announcements, such as Jimmy Carter’s decision to pick up any refugee
boats in the South China Sea, merely “encouraged” those already determined to escape
“to think that their chances of reaching safety were enhanced.”
113
A Buddhist monk
who escaped Vietnam 1978 recalled how the VOA broadcast of Jimmy Carter’s
statement on human rights provided a “new gem of hope” for the Vietnamese people.
114

When the United States Committee for Refugees interviewed hundreds of boat people
back in 1983, “almost all indicated that they knew from the Voice of America
broadcasts or other sources that pirate attacks should be expected. They also knew it
was possible, if they landed in Thailand, that they would be interned for a period of

112
Jim Adams, Associated Press, “Huddleston: State Department ‘Recruiting’ Indochinese Refugees,” 29
June 1981.

113
William Chapman, “Carter’s Pledge Was Clincher, Vietnamese Refugees Say,” Washington Post, 4 Aug
1979, A18.

114
Marjorie Hyer, “Buddhist Monk Tells of Repression in Vietnam,” Washington Post, 10 February 1978,
C10.

122
years.” Despite the dangers, only one of those interviewees, a woman who saw her
daughter raped and abducted, regretted embarking on the journey.
115

Before 1976, the VOA did not have a music program on its Vietnamese schedule.
That changed when their broadcaster, Mr. Lê Văn heard about “Farewell, Saigon”
through the singer friend, who at the time worked as a maid in the Washington, D.C.
area. Speaking in 2007 about his thoughts upon first hearing “Farewell, Saigon:” “Hey
this is a very good song. It expresses the feeling of the refugees here. It is so wonderful
in the tune, the words, the lyrics, and so I said I should bring these songs to the people
in Vietnam.”
116

For those in South Vietnam without relatives abroad, hearing “Farewell, Saigon”
for the first time gave voice to memories and emotions they were not allowed to express
publicly in their own country. Nam Trần heard many refugee songs between 1976 and
the day he left Vietnam in 1991, but “Farewell, Saigon,” held a special place in his
heart: “How can one forget a day like April 30, 1975? Once we knew the war was lost,
we all cried. In the streets, we saw soldiers running for their lives, tearing off their
uniforms, and begging for civilian clothes from anybody nearby. Without a military, we
were helpless. I remember when it only took one North Vietnamese soldier to round up
500 of us college students. He did not even carry his gun, just laid it on the table in
front of him, but none of us dared to resist his orders.”
117
Nam like many other citizens

115
Roger P. Winter, “Boat Refugees’ Horrors,” New York Times, 27 Aug 1983, 21.

116
Interview with Le Van, Anaheim, CA, May 2007.

117
Interview with N.T., San Francisco, April, 2007.

123
in Vietnam, first heard this song illegally, at night, in clandestine settings, perhaps
even under their blankets, while radios were quietly tuned into the Voice of America.
Lê Văn immediately consulted his boss about adding a music program and was
naturally met with skepticism, if only because a small, newly-settled refugee population
could not possibly sustain a high enough output of cultural production. As Lê Vân
recalled in my interview with him, “When I proposed to the chief of our language
department at that time, he said, ‘But do you have enough material for a weekly show?’
And I said, ‘I do not know. I really do not know, but let me have a 10-week pilot series.’
And that’s when I came to Southern California to interview the refugee artists and
musicians.”
118

The extension of the program was a good thing for the VOA because the demand
from Vietnam was insatiable. By sending letters to P.O. Box 66 in Hong Kong, which
were automatically forwarded to Washington, people in Vietnam could secretly give
feedback on VOA programming. And many were telling Lê Văn to invite more artists
of traditional Southern music.
119
Others wrote to the VOA with requests for American
rock ’n’ roll music.
120
As a second wave of refugees brought with it more musicians from
Vietnam, Lê Vân found it easier to honor those requests.
121
One refugee musician,
Nguyệt Ánh, even incorporated the VOA into her song “Người Ở Lại Quê Hương”
(Those Who Remain in the Homeland).

118
Interview with Le Van, Anaheim, CA, May 2007.

119
Interview with Le Van, Anaheim, CA, May 2007.

120
“Youth in VN Love ‘Rock,’” New Land newspaper (Seattle), Sept. 1978, English section, 6.

121
The show ran until his retirement from the VOA in 2002.

124
Đêm qua lén nghe đài V.O.A.
The other night I listened intently to the Voice of America
Tiếng ai hát vọng nghẹn ngào:
The singer cried out his lyrics
“Ở bên nhà em không còn chờ đợi anh”
“Honey, you do not need to wait for me any longer”
Em gục đầu cho lệ ngược về tim
I brought my head closer to my heart
Hàng vạn ngưòi dần dần ra đi
Tens of thousands have already fled the country
Dẫu chôn thây giữa chốn muôn trung tìm Thiên
Despite a good chance I will die, I will have succeeded
Đường tìm về chồn Tự Do.
Because I will have died free.
122

Dissidents in Vietnam needed to have their work produced overseas in order for
Vietnamese citizens to enjoy it, through listening to the VOA and BBC. The catch was
finding a way to smuggle their work outside of Vietnam, which required them to
compose lines without pen and paper. Once they got their ideas out of the country,
Little Saigon was the key destination for converting memory to music.
One of the first songs to make it out of Vietnam was “Anh Giải Phóng Tôi Hay
Tôi Giải Phóng Anh?” [Who Liberated Whom?], arguing that the newly-discovered
upward social, economic, and political mobility North Vietnamese cadres enjoyed came
at the expense of the “liberated” South Vietnamese dispossessed of their homes and
imprisoned in re-education camps.
Nếu tôi có được phép thần thông
If I had a magic crystal ball
tôi sẽ đưa anh đi thăm Sài Gòn năm năm về trước
I would show you Saigon of five year’s past (in 1970)
để cho anh thấy rằng

122
Nguyệt Ánh, Em Còn Nhớ Màu Cờ--songbook (San Jose, CA: Người Việt Tự Do—The Free Vietnamese
People, 1981); English translation by Phương Nguyễn.
125
So that you can see
Anh giải phóng tôi hay tôi giải phóng anh
Who liberated whom
123

Because Nhật Ngân composed songs—including the previously mentioned “I Will not
Be Home for New Year’s”—for the South Vietnamese military during wartime, he was
easily caught in the already expansive net set up to throw anti-revolutionary individuals
into the re-education camps. Like every other prisoner, he had no clear idea of how
long his sentence would last, or if he would make it out alive. Nhật Ngân had a friend
of his commit the song to memory. A couple of years later, he heard his song, “Who
liberated whom?” on the Voice of America, along with their interview of Ngọc Minh,
whose own dangerous journey eventually landed her in Southern California.
124

The voice of a more well-known dissident reached the outside world in equally
amazing fashion in the post-1975 years. Intellectuals-turned-boat-people had published
memoirs about their time in re-education camps that went by titles like Tạ Tỵ’s This is
Hell, Phạm Quốc Bảo’s Red Chains, and Hà Thúc Sinh’s Bloody College, but none of
them received as much mainstream recognition as a mystery prisoner in Vietnam.
Since 1956, Nguyễn Chí Thiện, a former schoolteacher, had toiled for most of his
life in various North Vietnamese prisons for advocating perspectives and politics in
competition with Communist orthodoxy. He spent his nights composing short poems
after guards and cellmates had fallen asleep.
Hoa địa-ngục tới bằng xương máu thịt,
Flowers from hell—real blood has watered them,

123
English translation by Phương Nguyễn

124
Interview with Nhat Ngan, Anaheim, CA, April 2007.

126
trộn mồ-hôi chó ngựa, lê ly-tan.
blood mixed with animal sweat, with parting tears.
Hoa trưởng-sinh trong tù, bệnh, cơ hàn,
Blooming in prison, sickly, starved and cold,
huơng ẩm mốc, màu nhở-nham xám xịt.
they reek of damp and mold, look gray as mud.
125

Shortly after his release in 1978, Nguyễn successfully handed over his manuscript
to an official in the British Embassy before Vietnamese authorities arrested him and
locked him away for another 13 years. Two years later, Little Saigon finally learned of
Nguyễn Chí Thiện’s poetry. Phạm Duy was hanging out with friends in the garage of
Độ Ngôc Yến, the founder of Người Việt Daily News, when a VOA colleague called to
share a few poems from an unknown political prisoner in North Vietnam.
126
Twenty of
Nguyện’s poems supplied the lyrics for Phạm Duy’s next album, with the poet
identified as Ngục Sĩ—prison-ologist. The first song was based on the poem from 1967,
“Từ Vượn Lên Người” (The Rise From Apes to Men).
Từ vượn lên người mất mấy triệu nắm,
The rise from apes to men took millions of years:
từ người xuống vượn mất bao nắm?
how many years has it required, the fall from men to apes?
Xin mời thế-giới tới thăm
The world may come and look
những trại tập-trung núi rừng sâu thẳm.
at concentration camps in mountains and the wilds.
Tù-nhân ở truồng từng bầy đứng tắm.
Prisoners stand stark naked taking baths.
Rệp muỗi ăn nằm hôi-hám tối-tăm.
They eat and sleep with lice and mosquitoes in darkenss and foul smell

125
Nguyễn Chí Thiện, Flowers From Hell, translated into English by Huỳnh Sanh Thông (New Haven, CT:
Yale Southeast Asian Studies, 1984), 120-121.

126
Phạm Duy, Memoirs, vol. 4, 56.

127
Khoai sắn tranh giành cùm, bắn, chem, băm.
They fight over cassava roots, getting handcuffed, stabbed, shot.
Đánh đập tha-hồ, chết quăng chuột gặm.
Beaten to death, they’re tossed to rats.
Loài vượn này không nhanh mà rất chậm,
These apes are slow, not quick
khác vuợn thời tiền-sử xa-xăm.
unlike those in prehistorical times.
Chúng đói chúng gầy như nhửng cái tăm,
Hungry, as thin as sticks,
và làm ra của-cải quanh năm.
they produce wealth the year around.
Xin mời thế-giới tới thăm.
The world may come and look.
127

Nguyễn Chi Thien’s poetry vindicated refugee fears of a communist state, further
reinforced by the advocacy work of Amnesty International and P.E.N. International on
Thien’s behalf.
128

An Impending Culture War
As far as the Hanoi government was concerned, the refugee nationalism of Little
Saigon did not represent the true identity of the overseas community. The pages of Thái
Bình, a pro-communist monthly based in Santa Monica, mostly ignored the refugee
community when reporting of about news in the Vietnamese diaspora. Taking their cue
from the Hanoi daily newspaper from which they reprinted many articles, the editors of
Thái Bình treated the boat people episode as it did previous refugee migrations: as a

127
Ibid, p. 57; Nguyễn Chí Thiện, Flowers From Hell, translated into English by Huỳnh Sanh Thông (New
Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asian Studies, 1984), 46-47.

128
Colin Campbell, “Verses Carry ‘Sound of Sobbing’ From Vietnam,” New York Times, 12 June 1985;
Interview with Nguyễn Chí Thiện, April 2007.

128
faux-crisis manufactured by outside agitators.
129
For example, Hanoi refused to accept
responsibility for driving the ethnic Chinese out of Vietnam, instead attributing their
exodus to native fears of reprisals if the Chinese won their border war with Vietnam.
130

Thái Bình went on to accuse the Chinese and American governments of conspiring to
continue the Vietnam War and bring down the Vietnamese people. “This particular
war,” the editorial read, “will be fought in the battlefield of ideas. By portraying the
Vietnamese government as inhumane, the enemy hopes to sway the hearts and minds
even of those who once opposed the American war in Vietnam.”
131

In terms of refugee music, the Vietnamese government seemed not to
differentiate between refugee nationalism and U.S. foreign policy since these songs
reached Vietnam via the Voice of America. Indeed, the tone of the article portrayed
Vietnamese refugees as unthinking pawns of an American-led continuation of the
Vietnam War. But the facts on the ground indicated the opposite. Refugee nationalism,
though strongly identified with the United States, never backed down from claims of
authenticity.
Post-1975 diplomatic tensions between Hanoi and Washington fueled refugee
nationalism in both rhetoric and demographics. Before leaving office in early 1977,
President Ford vetoed for the third time Vietnam’s entry in the United Nations, and
denied Hanoi’s claim that Nixon had promised billions in economic aid a few years

129
A refugee advisory panel’s 1981 report to the U.S. Secretary of State refuted as a “reckless charge” the
accusation that “failure to deter the flow (of the boat people) stems from a deliberate American effort to
destabilize Vietnam.”

130
“Editorial: The Emigres,” Thái Bình (7:73) Aug 1979, 12.

131
“Editorial: The Emigres,” Thái Bình (7:73) Aug 1979, 12.

129
back. In 1978, tempers flared as Washington expelled Vietnam’s UN ambassador on
espionage charges. Families of veterans missing in action wanted answers from Hanoi
as to the whereabouts of loved ones either missing in action or still held captive as
prisoners of war. This move ultimately gave the U.S. sufficient moral and legal cover to
admit additional Vietnamese as “refugees.”
132

With the U.S. embargo of Vietnam safely in place, an entire generation of
Vietnamese American youth learned about Vietnamese identity strictly from the
refugee perspective. Little Saigon’s public sphere, from concert venues to churches,
recognized only the flag, national anthem, and history of South Vietnam. While
schoolchildren in South Vietnam were taught that their American-brainwashed parents
and grandparents had erroneously opposed the Revolution, their counterparts in the
United States were learning, through less formal means, that the Hồ Chí Minh’s party
actually served at the pleasure of the Soviet Union, not the Vietnamese people. During
the late 1970s, the emergence of new institutional spaces combined with a new refugee
exodus and critical masses in places like Orange County made possible the formation of
community based on refugee nationalism. Hundreds of thousands benefitted from the
hard work of low-paid activists whose identification of essential Vietnamese refugee
collective memory was to be exploited for political and economic gain by those inside
the community and the mainstream.

132
“U.S. Vetoes Viet Entry Into U.N.,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Nov 1976, A11.

130
Chapter 3
The Anti-Communist Việt-Cộng

From his Glendale office since 1976, Việt Đình Phương edited Trắng Đen (the
Truth) newspaper to satiate the appetite of dispersed refugees desperate for news about
Vietnam and the diaspora. By 1980, the Vietnamese American population had doubled
to 250,000, providing more readers for the ethnic press. Like other papers, Trắng Đen
kept its 6,000 subscribers updated on the anti-communist resistance movement in the
jungles of Southeast Asia. In January of that year, one of Phương’s young staffers,
overcome with nationalist fervor, contemplated joining that movement in Vietnam
rather than enjoy a pointless middle class future in exile. “Better to die there than
here,” she said. Editor Phương, desperate to offer his people any glimmer of hope,
decided then to reach out to a little-known Resistance agitator currently in Australia.
He informed Mr. Võ Đại Tồn that Vietnamese Americans were ready to join the
movement to reclaim their homeland.
1

If refugee music could be said to represent the softer side of refugee nationalism,
then the anti-communist resistance movement of the 1980s represented its unabashedly
harder side. Whereas songs like “Farewell, Saigon” reassured overseas Vietnamese that
leaving behind loved ones was necessary, the resistance movement believed that raising

1
Việt Định Phương, “Lá Thư Cuối Năm: Chúng Ta Sẽ Không Chết Ở Đây,” (Year End Comments: We
Will not Spend Our Whole Lives in Exile), Trắng Đen magazine, 15 February 1980, 3-5.

131
a guerilla army against the Hanoi regime was the quickest path to seeing them again.
And whereas the refugee nationalism of the late 1970s asked Americans to feel pity for
the Vietnamese boat people, its harder, more politicized side instilled refugees with
heroic agency to accomplish what the U.S. military could not: defeating the Việt-Cộng.
To be sure, the resistance movement attracted more than its share of wild-eyed
extremists, many of them former military, full of hope that guerilla fighters could
foment a homegrown uprising against the Hanoi regime. Their legacy of intimidation
and violence against anyone accused of communist sympathies explained why one
researcher in the 1990s, for reasons of personal safety, shied away from interviewing
these people.
2

But it took more than dangerous fanatics to pack auditoriums worldwide and
donate millions to the cause. This movement, no matter how misguided in hindsight,
achieved its popularity in no small part because of support from rank and file refugees,
intellectuals, and members of the United States government. During the Reagan era,
Vietnamese American ultra-nationalists saw it as their patriotic duty as both
Vietnamese and as Americans to join in the Reagan-era anti-communist insurgent
movements. They saw themselves as freedom fighters in the mold of the Nicaraguan

2
Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Creating Ethnic Places: Vietnamese American Community-Building in Orange County
and Boston (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2000). Another sociologist in Asian American Studies
refused to interview members of this movement because of the potential danger involved. In Adelaida
Reyes, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1999), the author describes ex-military types as the foundation of anti-
communist fanaticism in Little Saigon. Thuy Vo Dang treats the issue as limited to military types, too. See
Thanh-Thúy Võ-Đặng’s Anticommunism as Cultural Praxis: South Vietnam, War, and Refugee Memories in the
Vietnamese American Community (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 2008).

132
Contras and the Afghan Mujahideen. Reclaiming Vietnam was also touted as away to
stop future waves of refugees from coming to America, giving it appeal to nativists.
And more than just a military strategy, the resistance movement also included an
extensive political and cultural sphere complete with its own political party in exile,
genre of music, literature, and an annual beauty pageant. In effect, the resistance
movement appropriated key elements of the refugee public sphere and weaved them
into a patriotic narrative calling upon refugees to join the fight back home.
The resistance movement was not without its contradictions. Behind the
narrative of inevitable return lay an authoritarian patriotism police that instilled
enough fear to silence critics. The ironic inability of so-called freedom fighters to
tolerate dissent in their own ranks led to the murder of five Vietnamese American
journalists accused of communist ties. It could be said that in order to defeat the Việt-
Cộng, refugees created their own version of the Việt-Cộng.
3
In addition, their
nationalist activities ensured that ultra-nationalists would be jailed or killed if they ever
showed their faces in communist-run Vietnam again. Thus the only way to convince
ordinary people to take such a risky undertaking was to present victory as inevitable.

3
Remember that in South Vietnamese usage, the Việt-Cộng refers to the Communist Party in particular
and all Vietnamese Communists in general. For information on the Southern Communist insurgents, see
Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for International Studies, 1966); and Douglas Pike, “The Vietcong Secret
War,” in War in the Shadows: The Vietnam Experience, edited by Robert Manning (Boston: Boston
Publishing Company, 1988).

133
Vietnam’s Vietnam War
On June 11, 1975, Camp Pendleton’s nearly 17,000 refugees woke up to
improbable news of Vietnam’s “large-scale search for possible resistance troops” hidden
throughout parts of the former South Vietnam. Quoting official sources from Vietnam,
the camp newsletter indicated that nearly 300,000 former South Vietnamese troops had
failed to meet the May 31 deadline for registering with the new government.
4
The
communist newspaper, Liberation, excoriated this “small number of soldiers of the
puppet army” for having “murdered cadres and revolutionary fighters,” or “spread
reactionary propaganda” and forming “bandit gangs that rob the people.”
5
Nevertheless
the government insisted that new registrants would still be granted “amnesty” by only
having to serve time in the re-education camps, while what they termed “severe
punishment” would await resistance fighters.
6

The U.S. mainstream press offered various assessments of a this potential
counter-revolution.
7
The Los Angeles Times estimated the number of resistance fighters
in the thousands, though the “long-range prospects for the anti-Communist forces
appear virtually hopeless.”
8
An article in the New York Times indicated that the new

4
“News from Vietnam,” UPI, Thông Báo (Camp Pendleton newsletter), 11 June 1975, 1-2.

5
“Saigon Tells of Resistance,” Washington Post, 22 May 1975, A24.

6
“Saigon News,” UPI, Thông Báo (Camp Pendleton newsletter), 51, 17 July 1975, 1.

7
Martin Woollacott, “Liberation Troops Attacked in Saigon,” Washington Post, 26 May 1975, A16;
“Vietnamese Admits ‘Security Problem’ of Armed Holdouts,” New York Times, 1 July 1975, p. 8; “Vietnam
Radio Cites Resistance in Hue,” Washington Post, 29 Aug 1975, A27

8
George McArthur, “S. Viet Resistance Forces Estimated in Thousands,” Los Angeles Times, 8 Dec 1975,
A1.
134
government’s acknowledgement of “security problems” across South Vietnam “could
indicate a more serious and widespread resistance.”
9

Former South Vietnamese military officers greeted news of the anti-communist
resistance with enthusiasm. Seizing another opportunity to redeem his disgraced
legacy, former premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ told a press conference in Fullerton, California
that he was the people’s choice to lead the estimated 12,000 resistance fighters in
Vietnam.
10
“I really would prefer to die gloriously on the battlefield than to live here in
exile,” he declared.
11

In 1983, Working out of the Orange County home he purchased in 1977,
legendary musician Phạm Duy composed a rousing anthem entitled, “Hat Cho Người
Ở Lại” (Song for Those Who Stayed), reminding refugees how the purpose of exile was
to better the lives of those in Vietnam. The melody, which sounded like a country
western cover, reflected Phạm Duy’s attraction to folk styles. The lyrics, lionizing the
resistance movement, reflected Vietnamese refugee nationalism. “I did not write a
single love song,” he recalled. “It was not just me: nobody else seemed to write love
songs any more!”
12

9
David Andelman, “Communist Regime in Saigon Reports Some Military Resistance,” New York Times, 19
Oct. 1975, 20.

10
Jack Boettner, “Ky Willing to Lead Force of Viet Resistance Fighters,” Los Angeles Times, 22 July 1975,
OC1.

11
“Ky Willing to Fight Again,” AP, Thông Báo (Camp Pendleton newsletter), 57, 24 July 1975, 1.

12
From Phạm Duy’s website, now defunct. He published this and other refugee songs in a songbook
available in many libraries across the U.S. See Phạm Duy, Thấm Thoắt Muồi Năm—Ten Years in Transition
(Virginia, 1985).
135
Hát cho người hùng đang cầm súng
I sing for those, arms in hand,
Âm thầm đang phục quốc
Fighting underground in the Resistance
Hát cho người ở vùng nông thôn
I want to sing for villagers
Hay người đang ở ngay phố phường
For city dwellers.
Đồng bào ơi! Vùng lên tranh đấu!
Fellowmen! Let’s fight
Ngày chiến thắng sẽ không lâu.
Until our victory
13

On April of 1976, the thousands who subscribed to Trắng Đen discovered the first
overseas organization dedicated to the resistance. Calling itself the Force of
Renaissance, the San Diego-based group’s ultimate goal was to recruit and train soldiers
to join the allegedly 60,000-strong insurgency back home. Unfortunately, the Force of
Resistance had only 200 members. Few joined the Force because they feared that taking
such a hard line political stand would jeopardize the safety of family members still in
Vietnam.
14
Even single males like Nam Lộc fretted more about sending money to
family than cursing the communists. Others, like Mỹ-Bình, a devout Catholic mother
in Orange County, cast a cynical eye on the potential of politics to deliver anything
more than conflict, pain, and death. She found sanctuary in church and family, where
she could pray for her father’s release from the re-education camps.
15

13
From Phạm Duy’s website, now defunct. English translation by Mary Nguyễn.

14
Everett R. Holles, “New Front Splits Vietnam Refugees,” New York Times, 1 March 1976, p. 7; “Two
New Resistance Fronts Spring Up in France and the U.S.,” Trắng Đen magazine (1:4) 27 March 1976, 7.

15
Interview with M.B., Fountain Valley, CA, April 2007.
136
Even if the early Vietnamese refugees, by sweeping margins, had pushed for an
aggressive anti-communist agenda that resembled a continuation of the Vietnam War,
they would have been swimming upstream against the American political climate of the
1970s.
16
A majority of Americans across all racial backgrounds originally opposed the
entry of any Vietnamese refugees, and that figure that did not budge right away when a
second wave of exiles languished in refugee camps across Southeast Asia starting in the
late 1970s. On the contrary, refugee nationalism in this period consisted of forming
sentimental bonds between the South Vietnamese and Americans as eternal allies. They
organized protests to call attention to human rights abuses and the boat people crisis,
but nothing on the scale of fighting another war. Having been exposed to a generous
paternalism in which the U.S. government, voluntary agencies, and sponsors
functioned like a surrogate family, it was almost natural for refugees like Phạm Duy to
think of America in deferential terms, as expressed in another song from September
1978, “Hát Trên Đường Tạm Dung” (Singing in a Temporary Refuge).
17

Này Thần Tự Do ơi !
O Lady Liberty!
Sẽ vì Nàng đốt đuốc cao hơn
Raise higher your sacred flame,
Sẽ nhận nhìn đất nước bao dung
And I will love this country
Cũng đẹp tựa chốn cũ quê hương

16
For more on the political climate and policy initiatives regarding refugees during this period, see Gil
Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the
Present (New York: Free Press, 1986); W. Courtland Robinson, Terms of Refuge: The Indochinese Exodus and
the International Response (New York: Zed Books, 1998); and Carl Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The
United States and Refugees During the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

17
Lê Văn, formerly of the Voice of America, remembered this song getting significant airplay when it was
first released in the late 1970s. Interview with Lê Văn, Anaheim, CA, May 2007.
137
Like my native land, the same!
Sẽ phục vụ Nhân Quyền vẻ vang
I’ll show what you mean to me…
Nàng chờ tôi nhé !
This song, I sing.
Một ngày tôi sẽ cho Nàng nụ hôn
Some day, I’ll bring
Thắm thiết miếng hôn !
A kiss for you, my Liberty!!!
18

Something dramatic happened after the 1970s that provided an imprimatur for a
militant anti-communism to supplant victim-based anti-communism as the dominant
identity of the Vietnamese refugee community. The first was a series of potential
quagmires for Eastern Bloc countries intent on occupying neighboring countries.
Facing more resistance in Afghanistan than they had anticipated, the Soviet Union
found itself unable to provide Vietnam with significant material support. That left the
Hanoi regime on its own to wage war against Cambodia, which capitulated to Viet-
Cong occupation on January 7, 1979. Endless war drained scarce resources—including
human labor—from the rest of the Vietnamese economy. With productivity below
subsistence levels, millions of Vietnamese civilians were left on the brink of starvation.
The second dramatic change was Ronald Reagan’s support of guerilla insurgencies
against communist-run countries.

18
English translation courtesy of Phạm Duy’s associate Mary Nguyễn.
138
The Reagan Influence
Although the former Hollywood actor started his adult life as a New Deal
Democrat, Reagan’s purported fear of Soviet expansion in the world eventually steered
him towards the Republican Party.
19
In 1975, long before the Reagan Doctrine officially
went into effect, candidate Reagan was meeting with exile leaders from Panama and
Cuba. One source familiar with that November 3 meeting in a Boca Raton hotel fueled
speculation by suggesting Reagan supported the return to power of Dr. Arnulfo Arias in
Panama and Manola Reyes in Cuba.
20

On the stump, Reagan accused establishment politicians of conceding too much
ground to the Soviet Union. Echoing the talking points of the emergent
neoconservative movement, with its unshakable faith in U.S. global hegemony and
disdain for multilateral institutions like the United Nations, Reagan repeated his belief
that American military might was “the greatest guarantee for peace and freedom for
this country.”
21
Establishing himself as a populist outsider, Reagan argued that three
decades of “weakness and indecision” in Washington resulted in concession after
concession to the Communists, making defeat in Vietnam almost inevitable. Ever since

19
For more on Reagan’s influence on American politics and culture, see Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan:
A History, 1974-2008 (New York: Harper, 2008); For a social history of right wing populism in the Sunbelt
that Reagan successfully stoked and tapped into, see Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New
American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent
Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

20
David Binder, “Reagan met Panamanian and Cuban Exile Leaders in Florida,” New York Times, 14 Dec.
1975, 54.

21
Jon Nordheimer, “Reagan says Committed Voters Favor Him in Florida Primary,” New York Times, 8
March 1976, 29.
139
the Korean War, he argued, “our country decided for the first time that victory was not
necessary.”
22
The man those in his own party accused of being a warmonger countered
that the “peace at any price” alternative would only lead to a Soviet-dominated world.
23

Reagan led the charge to secure some semblance of victory out of the Vietnam
experience. In 1976, he charged that the Ford administration’s alleged plans to
normalize relations with Hanoi constituted an act of surrender.
24
Confronted with
Vietnam’s illegal occupation of Cambodia, Reagan’s men floated the idea of increasing
“the political, economic, and yes, military pressures on Vietnam.”
25
After the upstart
westerner finally received his party’s nomination for president in 1980, he told a
gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that the Vietnam War was indeed a “noble
cause.”
26
Reagan’s America, in which veterans deserved nothing less than the nation’s
undying gratitude, was as much about reasserting traditional masculine values as it was
about validating conservativism.
27

Reagan embraced the toppling of socialist states or other enemy states by
sponsoring guerilla rebels with arms and cash. “They are our brothers, these freedom

22
Lou Cannon, “Reagan Says U.S. Must Act to Half Communist Gains,” Washington Post, 1 June 1975, 11.

23
Howell Raines, “Reagan Calls Arms Race Essential To Avoid a ‘Surrender’ or ‘Defeat,’” New York Times,
19 Aug 1980, 1.

24
Philip Shabecoff, “Ford Denies Plans for Ties with Hanoi,” New York Times, 24 April 1976, 10.

25
“Echoes of Vietnam,” editorial, Washington Post, 25 June 1981, A22.

26
Howell Raines, “Reagan Calls Arms Race Essential To Avoid a ‘Surrender’ or ‘Defeat,’” New York Times,
19 Aug 1980, 1.

27
For more about the gender dynamics of post-Vietnam War America, see Susan Jeffords, The
Remasculination of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
140
fighters,” President Reagan once said, “and we owe them our help.”
28
His brand of help,
known as the Reagan Doctrine, constituted a radical—and technically illegal—
departure from the prior Cold War policy of Containment.
29
Neoconservatives blamed
Jimmy Carter for the “fall” of Nicaragua in 1979 and invoked their own Latin
American domino theory.
30
Testifying under oath to the U.S. Senate in early 1982, one
Reagan State Department official echoed the same talking point used to justify going to
war in Vietnam by saying, “There is no mistaking that the decisive battle for Central
America is under way in El Salvador. If, after Nicaragua, El Salavador is captured by a
violent minority, who in Central America would not live in fear?” General William
Westmoreland, the top American military official in Saigon, doubled down on the
earlier testimony by stating, “The domino theory has validity in Central America. If El
Salvador falls, after Nicaragua, then Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica could go.
After that, there’s nothing standing in the way of the Panama Canal.”
31

Neoconservative obsession with American strength and military redemption
knew no boundaries. In 1983, the U.S. military illegally invaded the Caribbean island
of Grenada in an effort to reverse the recent coup d’etat that had put militant Marxists

28
Ronald Reagan, Speech before the National Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Convention,
Washington, D.C., 8 March 1985.

29
For more on the Reagan Doctrine see James M. Scott, Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and
American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).

30
Neoconservatives comprise a collection of post-1960s thinkers who abandoned their prior ties to the Left
and dedicated their political lives to protecting the sovereignty and future existence of the United States at
all costs. For a primer on neoconservatism, see Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are
Changing America’s Politics (New York: Touchstone, 1979).

31
Philip Taubman, “El Salvador as ‘Domino,’” New York Times, 20 Feb 1982, 8.
141
in power. Clint Eastwood’s 1986 warrior flick Heartbreak Ridge described the episode as
the military’s first “victory” against the Communists, with Korea counting as a tie, and
Vietnam as a loss. Grenada’s new leadership created a Thanksgiving holiday to
commemorate the day of the invasion. Speaking at the 1985 gathering of the National
Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Reagan called the mighty unsavory
band of Nicaraguan Contras “the moral equal of our Founding Fathers” fighting the
good fight of “right versus wrong.”
32
Without the knowledge of Congress, Lt. Colonel
Oliver North helped arrange the covert sale of weapons to Iran in exchange for U.S.
hostages and extra funding for the Contras. Ever the protector, Reagan vowed to keep
Americans forever safe by authorizing billions for an outer space missile defense
shield—dubbed Star Wars—that never actually saw the light of day.
33

Policy aside, Reagan’s pro-military, pro-masculine message resonated with a large
swath of veterans still waiting to be showered with glory and honor for their service in
Vietnam. One former veteran, in tune with Reagan’s “noble cause” speech, took issue
with the winning design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
34
Testifying in 1981

32
Ronald Reagan, Speech before the National Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Convention,
Washington, D.C., 8 March 1985; Robert Pear, “Contra Chief Faults Reagan Statements,” New York Times,
30 October 1988.

33
For a political science analysis of the invasion of Grenada, see Robert Beck, The Grenada Invasion:
Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decisionmaking (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); for more about the
Iran-Contra affair—a.k.a. Irangate—see Robert Busby, Reagan the Iran-Contra Affair: The Politics of
Presidential Recovery (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999). For more about the importance of the Strategic
Defense Initiative (Star Wars), see Mira Duric, The Strategic Defensive Initiative: US Policy and the Soviet
Union (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2003); for a more critical perspective, see Frances FitzGerald, Way
Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).

34
For more on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, see Arnold R. Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its
Ghosts, and Its Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); for a dramatic interpretation of
142
before the commission in charge of its design, he stated that the memorial’s abstract
design reflected the views of the home front perception of the war. Instead of honoring
all of those who served, he contended, its roll call of those who died concentrated too
much on the costs of war. He objected to the color of the memorial—essential a black
granite v-shaped wall—calling it “a black gash of shame and sorrow,” surrounded in the
Washington Mall by “well-known edifices of white marble rising in massive splendor
to honor great American heroes.”
35
But more importantly, he wanted a heroic statue-
type memorial, like the Sea Bee Memorial, the 101
st
Airborne Division memorial, and
the Marine Corps’ Iwo Jima memorial:
…these [memorials] show heroic figures rising in triumph on top of black
pedestals, while the proposed Vietnam memorial is anti-heroic—a black
hole, the reward we get, and the place we have been given in our national
garden of history, for faithful service in a confused and misunderstood war.
Black walls, the universal color of sorrow and dishonor, hidden in a hole, as
in shame. Is this really how America would memorialize our offering? It
may be that, in the future, all memorials to American heroes will be black
and underground. I doubt it, but even if that’s true, why should we Vietnam
veterans have to be the first? The only underground memorial I know of is
a tomb. Yes, we lost 57,000, but what of the millions of us who rendered
honorable service and came home? Why cannot we have something white
and traditional and above ground?
36

As a result of the controversy, a more conventional statue of “The Three Soldiers” was
built alongside Maya Lin’s Vietnam Wall memorial. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

the controversy over the memorial’s design, see Jeanie Barroga’s play “Walls,” in Unbroken Thread: An
Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women, edited by Roberta Uno (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1993).

35
Tom Carhart, “Insulting Vietnam Vets,” New York Times, 24 Oct 1981, 23.

36
Tom Carhart, “Insulting Vietnam Vets,” New York Times, 24 Oct 1981, 23.
143
was dedicated on November 13, 1982 while the Three Soldiers statue was dedicated on
November 11, 1984.

The Resistance Movement Takes Flight
If Reagan’s bellicose foreign policy alarmed the mainstream media and a political
establishment weary of war, it delighted refugee communities like Little Saigon. After
all, Reagan promised a stronger America finally capable of putting the Soviet bloc “on
the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic
defensive.”
37
An obscure organization called the Vietnamese American Republican
National Federation tried to get their co-ethnics on board the 1980 Reagan-Bush ticket
by linking it to the resistance movement going on in Vietnam.
38
Another refugee
organization likened the Vietnamese resistance to the rest of the Reagan Doctrine.
Resistance movements are an effective bulkhead to impair and contain the
spread of Soviet hegemonism. This approach is also commensurate with the
American ethical standard of human rights. It is also obviously, an
economical measure. Blocking Soviet expansion in Afghanistan by assisting
the Afghanistan Resistance is certainly less costly than any other measure of
a military build-up. The Vietnam case requires similar consideration.
Freedom-fighters around the world have actually eroded the expansionist
capability of the Soviet and their henchmen. Weakening the Soviet Union
by adequate assistance to these resistance movements is an effective course
of action, because it is morally right and it is the least expensive
alternative.
39

37
Ronald Reagan, Speech before the National Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Convention,
Washington, D.C., 8 March 1985.

38
Half-page advertisement for the Vietnamese American Republican National Federation, Trắng Đen
magazine 189, 24 October 1980, 65.

144

In an ironic twist, this organization turned to xenophobic fears to advance its cause.
If nothing is done to encounter the Soviet expansionism, the United States
will witness her own border threatened. Her defensive strategic weapons
will be unable to stop waves of refugees, fleeing from communism, from
reaching her shores.
40

Mr. Võ Đại Tôn, a former colonel in the South Vietnamese army, vaulted to
notoriety first after founding the Overseas Vietnamese Volunteer Forces for the
Restoration of Vietnam in 1980. He answered the call of Trắng Đen newspaper and
agreed to visit Los Angeles on July 19 of that year, bringing with him an exiled Laotian
general by the name of Vang Pao.
41
General Vang Pao claimed to have 300,000 Hmong
resistance fighters under his command already situated in the jungles of Laos, awaiting
orders for the next mission.
42
The event in Los Angeles was followed by two other
rallies in Anaheim and San Diego organized by the local Vietnamese student
organizations. Attendees wanted to know if supporting the resistance would put a
much-desired end to the observance of April 30, the day their country perished.
43

Although Mr. Tôn was captured a year later on his way from Laos to Vietnam, he

39
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 42.

40
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 42.

41
For more on Vang Pao’s past and the “secret war” in Laos, see Roger Warner, Back Fire: The CIA’s Secret
War in Laos and Its Link to the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Jane Hamilton-Merritt,
Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret War for Laos, 1942-1992 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993); for a more recent profile of Vang Pao, including his 2008 on terrorism charges, see
Tim Weiner, “Gen. Vang Pao’s Last War,” New York Times Magazine, 11 May 2008.

42
Trang Den magazine, 18 July 1980, 22.

43
Trang Den, 28 Aug 1980, 5.
145
electrified the refugee community once more when he refused the Viet-Cong’s orders to
implicate the United States, China, and Thailand in his prepared confession, and
instead vowed to “liberate Vietnam once and for all.”
44

While Võ Đại Tôn languished away in a communist prison cell, other resistance
organizations tried to win over his large following. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, speaking in Tokyo
in December of 1982, told followers and the curious that Vietnamese Americans were
training for combat in America’s national parks. And like other resistance types, Kỳ
claimed that the potential for counter-revolution in Vietnam negated the need for U.S.
troops. “With 75 to 80 percent of the people against the regime, we do not need [U.S.
troops]. Give me guns, and we’ll kick them out,” he shouted.
45
But refugees paid closer
attention to another organization as still and video footage of its exploits began to
surface. The February 5, 1982 issue of Đất Mới Seattle featured a photograph of an M-
16-toting guerilla allegedly training just outside of Vietnam. He was dressed in the
same black pajamas and had the same initials made famous by the Viet-Cong’s leader,
but former South Vietnamese admiral Hoàng Cơ Minh headed the National United
Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. During the fall of Saigon, he commanded a fleet
of ships to safety. Initially working as a self-employed painter in America, Minh made a
decent living but lost a great deal of status compared to his pre-1975 days. He co-
founded the Front in 1980 with the belief that “Supporting a liberation movement is a

44
Michael Faber, The Long Road to Freedom (Sacramento: Michael Farber, 1989) 113; Nguyễn Van, “Vo
Dai Ton,” Justice newspaper, April 1985, 2.

45
Joanne Omang, “‘Little Saigons’ in U.S. Foster Hopes of Toppling Hanoi,” Washington Post, 16 January
1983, A6.
146
mandatory duty…it is not a charitable act.”
46
By March 30, 1982, CBS News had
attained a copy of the video footage and correspondent Morley Safer was commenting
on the uncanny resemblance between the Front and its nemesis, except that,
…these Vietcong are the new anti-communist Vietcong. A rag tag of
refugees who have taken it upon themselves to liberate South Vietnam, to
do to the present regime what the present regime did to them…They return
to the jungle from places like Arlington, Virginia, and Sacramento,
California. They dress in camouflage and the black pajamas that were the
trademark of their enemies…They even called the jungle path they have cut
The Hoàng Cơ Minh Trail. Giải phóng—“liberation”—is the way these would-
be insurgents salute each other.
47
Their form of address is “comrades.” They
spend their evenings in political education and indoctrination. It is unclear
how much actual fighting they have done. They say in their speeches that
they are the nucleus around which an entire nation will rally and throw off
the chains of communism.
48

The Front ultimately failed in its mission and Hoàng Cơ Minh—commanding an
army far less than 10,000—lost his life trying to lead an incursion through the jungles
of Laos in 1987. In 1991, the U.S. Justice Department had put the finishing touches on
its prosecution of the Front’s top brass for tax evasion, conspiracy, and other crimes.
But for a brief period of time during the 1980s, they had the full attention of the refugee
community. They had an extensive overseas—as in outside of Vietnam—operation
designed to raise money from Vietnamese refugees around the world and promote

46
Joanne Omang, “Vietnamese Emigres Rally Here For Overthrow of Hanoi Regime,” Washington Post, 1
May 1983, A8.

47
This part Safer got half right. “Giải phóng”—Liberate—constituted the first half of a call and response
greeting among insurgents, which was followed by “Việt Nam!” See Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông Núi, vol.
3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004) 197.

48
Transcript of “The Hoang Co Minh Trail” from 30 March 1982 broadcast of CBS Evening News,
reprinted in Đất Mới (New Land, Seattle), 5 April 1982, 21.
147
awareness of the Front’s activities to government officials through their political party,
Việt-Tân—or Reform Party. As mentioned earlier, the Front had taken many cues from
Hồ Chí Minh’s Việt-Cộng.
Người Việt Daily News publisher Yến Đỗ, hardly an extremist, acknowledged that,
“In 1982, the second phase of the newspaper began with the appearance of the National
Liberation Front of Hoang Co Minh. Founded in 1978, Người Việt had come to
officially designate itself as the “Resistance Newspaper for the Free Vietnamese.”
49
In
search of more stories once the paper expanded beyond a weekly format, Người Việt
looked to the Front for a lot of local news.”
50
During 1982 alone, the Front held five of
its 29 rallies in Southern California.
51
With the help of Vietnamese actress Kiều Chinh,
not exactly an extremist herself, they recruited 150 artists, including Phạm Duy, to
participate in their largest concert/rally yet at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium on
July 3, 1982.
52
Over 4,000 guests paid $5 to $8 for the sold-out event. Later that year,
over 5,000 paid $5 each to pack the Anaheim Convention Center.
53
Other than Front
members wearing brown shirts and beige slacks, most performers dressed in

49
“Nhật Báo Tranh Đấu Của Người Việt Tự Do” appeared on the paper’s masthead beginning with the 26
April 1980 issue.

50
Yen Do and Jeffrey Brody, Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton, CA: Jeffrey Brody,
2003) 103.

51
Vietnamese People’s Fight for Survival (Redwood City, CA: National United Front for the Liberation of
Vietnam, 1982) 108.

52
Vietnamese People’s Fight for Survival (Redwood City, CA: National United Front for the Liberation of
Vietnam, 1982) 105-106.

53
David Holley, “Resistance Movement has Supporters—but Also Doubters,” Los Angeles Times, Orange
County Edition, 27 June 1983, OC_A1.
148
conventional Vietnamese or Western dress.
54
Anaheim physician Võ Tu Nhuong
handled Southland fundraising duties. There was nothing conspicuously fanatical
about the attendees. Some attended merely to enjoy the singing performances. The
front row included the likes of Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, a Catholic priest, and a Catholic nun,
while the 100-member all-woman chorus read from yellow-flag inspired songbooks.
55
“I
must have sung in 50 places,” said one of the choir members. “The crowds were
screaming and cheering. There were speeches and patriotic songs.” Capturing the spirit
of the times, she recalled that, “You felt that soon you’d be back in Vietnam.”
56

Inevitable return was part of the sentiment on April 17, 1983 when an overflow
crowd of 5,000 converged upon Garden Grove High School to see Chairman Hoàng Cơ
Minh in person. They came from different parts of the west coast, but they all invested
their hopes and their funds in the Front’s promise to reunite them with loved ones they
might otherwise never see again. Front members often boasted an army of 10,000,
recruited from the ranks of Vietnamese Americans and recent refugees still in
Thailand. When audience members heard from Chairman Hoàng Cơ Minh that the
Front had made progress, they went home happy enough. One young attendee
proclaimed, “the battle can never end,” despite fears her support of Minh would

54
Vietnamese People’s Fight for Survival (Redwood City, CA: National United Front for the Liberation of
Vietnam, 1982) 101-107.

55
Vietnamese People’s Fight for Survival (Redwood City, CA: National United Front for the Liberation of
Vietnam, 1982) 101-102.

56
Jeffrey Brody, “Front Not Upfront, Some Viets Lament,” Orange County Register, 20 May 1991, B01.

149
jeopardize her family’s safety in Vietnam.
57
The Front’s popularity reached its height in
1984, when 11,000 packed the Anaheim Convention Center on March 17 to catch a
glimpse of singers like Ms. Khánh Ly and celebrate the event’s theme: Liberating
Vietnam. Organizers used the opportunity to talk about the brand new Resistance
Radio that began beaming to Vietnam since December 1983, urging young people to
defect from the regime and join the underground resistance movement.
58

If Vietnamese American organizations wanted the U.S. to take the resistance
movement seriously, it was because Vietnamese Americans already saw their struggle as
part of a larger united popular front against communism.
59
Readers of the refugee press
found inspiration in the anti-communist struggle in Poland or other parts of Eastern
Europe.
60
In the mold of the anti-communist Polish Solidarity Party, the Front founded
a political party in opposition to the Vietnamese Communist Party. An April 30
observance in Seattle included representatives from the Polish Anti-Communism
Organization, the Free China Foundation, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade,
and the Laotian Refugee Association.
61
Meanwhile, the Front’s own newsletter claimed

57
Josh Getlin, “5,000 Cheer News of Rebellion in Vietnam,” Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1983, OC_A1, 10.

58
“Người Việt Quyết Đoàn Kết Để Giải Phóng Quê Hương” (Vietnamese United to Liberate the
Homeland), Người Việt Daily News, 21 March 1984, 22 (translation of an article by John Westcott published
in the Orange County Register, 18 March 1984); Also see Dan Nakaso, “Dream of Return,” Los Angeles Times,
Orange County edition, 18 March 1984, OC_A1.

59
For more about anti-communist struggles during the 1980s, see Maryjane Osa, Solidarity and Contention:
Networks of Polish Opposition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Shana Penn, Solidarity’s
Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005);
Sam Dillon, Comandos: The CIA and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels (New York: Henry Holt, 1991); Timothy C.
Brown, The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 2001).

60
Người Việt newspaper, 26 December 1981, 1.

150
that much could be learned from the exploits of the U.S.-backed anti-communist
Contras in Nicaragua.
62

Economic concerns underlay the resistance movement in Little Saigon. Rank and
file ultra-nationalists, especially the men, had less economic incentive to stay in the
United States. By the mid-1980s, the infusion of less urbanized refugees and reduced
public benefits meant that somewhere near 400,000 Vietnamese Americans were
competing in a tight job market. In 1985, the Indochinese unemployment rate in
Orange County had reached 36.4%, which was better than in Chicago or Seattle, but
much higher than the national average.
63
In terms of gender, a staggering 44% of
Indochinese men had no job. Women had better luck finding jobs but earned only $.83
for every dollar men earned.
64

In her ethnography of Vietnamese American families, Nazli Kibria discovered
that families had a difficult time adapting to women breadwinners, low household
incomes, and “patchwork” family structures. Women in particular felt compelled to
balance their traditional role as the subservient wife with their new role as the
economic authority figure. Meanwhile, men unable to fulfill their gendered obligations
suffered from depression and dysfunction. A combination of a shaky family structure

61
“Editorial: Expanding the Struggle,” Đất Mới-New Land (Seattle) 5 May 1982, 20.

62
“Commentary: Lessons from Nicaragua,” Vietnamese Resistance, November 1986, 7.

63
Nathan Kaplan, John Whitmore, and Quang Bui, Southeast Asian Refugee Self-Sufficiency Study: A Final
Report (Washington, D.C.: Office of Refugee Resettlement, 1985) 113.

64
Nathan Kaplan, John Whitmore, and Quang Bui, Southeast Asian Refugee Self-Sufficiency Study: A Final
Report (Washington, D.C.: Office of Refugee Resettlement, 1985) 114.

151
and scarce material resources equated to fewer life chances for the next generation.
65

But considering they would’ve remained poor had they stayed in Vietnam, there was
reason to believe refugee identity helped them to make sense of their lowly
predicament. It is no surprise then that resistance-style refugee nationalism, with its
embrace of the exiled masculine warrior plotting a heroic return, had more appeal
during this period than identifying just as a fearful boat refugee determined to escape.
Like the rest of America, refugee nationalism underwent its own remasculinization.
66

Popular Culture of the Resistance
Resistance organizations placed a premium on propaganda and popular culture
that appealed to the heroic masculine theme of the times. The Front’s second in
command realized the importance of popular culture while attending the group’s first
culture night on April 3, 1982 in Washington, D.C. Seeing audience members break
down into tears during songs and plays, Phạm Văn Liễu realized that political doctrine
goes down easiest in entertainment form. The play they watched, called The Prisoner,

65
Nazli Kibria, Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995). Although Kibria’s study arrived in time to refute the stereotype of the Asian
American model minority, it does miss out on the way transnationalism affords refugees a level of success
unattainable by those in Vietnam. Brimming with survivor’s guilt, refugees carry intense obligations to
support family members in Vietnam.

66
Asian American literature also underwent a masculinist phase at its inception as the field’s pioneers
sought to put together an anthology and literary tradition based on stories of heroic Asian American men
challenging the constraints imposed upon them by white racism. See Frank Chin, Shawn Wong, Jeffrey
Paul Chan, and Lawson Fusao Inada, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (Washington, D.C.:
Howard University Press, 1974).

152
stirred them to tears and outrage over all the freedoms people in Vietnam had lost once
the Communists took over.
67

Cassette tapes featuring photos of gallant freedom fighters marching through the
jungle or beautiful women clad in áo dài dress waiting to be rescued—complete with
matching album titles—sold for $6 apiece.
68
In the process, the musical genre gave rise
to a class of woman warriors whose presence and voices challenged traditional South
Vietnamese gender roles. Appearing nearly as uninterested in sentimental love songs as
their Viet-Cong counterparts, vocalists like Nguyệt Ánh and Ngọc Minh performed
songs tailor made for a male military audience, often oceans apart from their spouses.
Resistance-era music often encouraged listeners to see themselves as the heirs of the
Vietnamese independence movement, as was the case with Nguyệt Ánh’s “Em Còn Nhớ
Màu Cờ” (I Still Miss the Colors of the Flag).
Ai nhó màu cờ, Ai thương dân lành về diệt lũ xâm lăng
Those who miss the flag want to see an end to the invaders
Thương quá Saì Gòn, Thương vạn người mang cũng kiếp ly hương
Are those who love Saigon, & the people forced to leave their homeland
Thương quá Việt Nam, Thương triệu dân đang sống kiếp lưu đây
Are those love Vietnam, who love the million people who live in exile.

In order to sustain their movement beyond the refugee generation, the Front
reached out to young children. One could often spot Front members operating a both at
the annual Tết Lunar New Year Festival. They also organized Mid-Autumn festivals all
over the world. Underneath banners that read “Vì Các Cháu Thiếu Nhi Toàn Dân Kháng

67
Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông Núi, vol. 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004) 224-225.

68
The specific album titles were Kháng Chiến Ca (Resistance Songs) and Em Vẫn Đợi Anh Về (I Still Await
My Man’s Return). See Kháng Chiến magazine 108, February 1992, inside back cover advertisement.

153
Chiến”—Because children are part of the resistance, too—young boys and girls in
ethnic dress made their parents proud by singing all sorts of music in their mother
tongue. Whether enrolled in Vietnamese language classes, participating in drawing
contests, spelling bees, or accompanying their parents to events, children of Front
members became accustomed to a form of Vietnamese nationalism banned in their
parents’ homeland.
69

One of the more popular books of the period Anh Hừng Nước Tôi—Heroes of the
(Vietnamese) Nation (1986), made sure to include former South Vietnamese President
Ngô Đình Diệm in its pages. Though dismissed by the Hanoi government and many
Western scholars as an impotent dictator, Diệm received near-universal adoration from
the refugee generation for making unpopular but necessary choices during his
presidency.
70
“People may criticize some of his actions,” stated a commentator, “but no
one can deny the patriotism, courage, morality, and integrity of our national hero Ngô
Đình Diệm.”
71
Refugee nationalists saw in Diệm’s policies a pragmatic model of zero-

69
Chldren’s Activities, Mật Trận Quốc Gia Thống Nhất Giải Phóng Việt Nam và Con Đường Cứu Nước—The
National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam and the Road to Freedom (San Jose, 1995) 126-129. Kháng
Chiến magazine 69, November 1987.

70
Near-unanimous criticism of Ngô Đình Diệm as an inadequate leader among Western scholars can be
found in major works on the Vietnam War such as Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking
Press, 1983); Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1972); David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Boston: Penguin Books,
1983); Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Vintage,
1989); and Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1985); Universal refugee adoration of Ngô Đình Diệm was confirmed by oral
interviews and casual conversations with a number of adults from the refugee generation, regardless of
educational or religious background.

71
Anh Hừng Nước Tôi—Heroes of the Nation (San Jose, CA: Đông Tiến, 1986) 266.
154
tolerance against communists that, according to them, would have secured the peace
had the U.S. allowed Diệm to live.
72

The Front’s newsletter, a propaganda piece not so dissimilar to the pro-
communist Thái Bình tabloid published out of Santa Monica, kept readers abreast of
the latest offensives taking place in Vietnam. Their November 1986 issue detailed an
alleged assault on a re-education camp, an alleged sabotage of a chemical plant, and an
alleged cascade of defections from the Viet-Cong.
73
By 1986, the organization had
released six VHS tapes with footage of Chairman Hoàng Cơ Minh’s men supposedly
setting up bases in Vietnam and essentially planting the yellow flag in one village after
another.
74
“The Front knew people would not contribute money for a long time if they
did not see some progress,” confessed a former member.
75

The Front sponsored beauty pageants in San Jose and Long Beach to showcase its
own version of idealized femininity.
76
Potential contestants over the age of 15 had to
first be nominated by an active member of the resistance movement.
77
Asked what this
particular pageant meant to them, one contestant from Garden Grove responded, “If we

72
Again, this was confirmed by oral interviews and casual conversations with a number of adults from the
refugee generation, regardless of educational or religious background.

73
“Resistance Activities,” The Vietnamese Resistance, November 1986, 4.

74
Anh Hừng Nước Tôi—Heroes of the Nation (San Jose, CA: Đông Tiến, 1986) 394.

75
Interview with T.P., Del Rey Oaks, CA, May 2008.

76
For more on the cultural significance of beauty pageants in general, see Sara Banet-Weiser, The Most
Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1999).

77
Half-page advertisement, Người Việt Daily News, 19 September 1984, 18.
155
cannot fight on the battlefront, then we can still make a differenc from the home
front.”
78
In language reminiscent of Asian Americans coming to consciousness, another
contestant confessed that, “It was not until I attended college and participated in
political activities that I fully understood the significance of the resistance movement
and my role within it.”
79
Even one of the regular Vietnamese American beauty pageant
winners, Miss Dương Ngọc Huê from 1982, did her best to “support the struggle,”
namely by donating half her prize money to the Front.
80
USC students managed to get
involved in those political activities, inviting senior Front member Trần Minh Công to
join them on the evening of October 5, 1984 at 301 Taper Hall.
81
One of those students,
Quân Nguyễn, 23, had no doubt the struggle would last for years and require “lots of
sacrifice,” but nevertheless believed a nation must answer to “duty and destiny.”
82

78
“Tại Sao Tôi Dự Thi Hoa-Khôi Kháng Chiến” (Why I want to be Miss Resistance), Người Việt Daily
News, 3 October 1984, 19.

79
“Tại Sao Tôi Dự Thi Hoa-Khôi Kháng Chiến” (Why I want to be Miss Resistance), Người Việt Daily
News, 3 October 1984, 19. If one needs more information on the Asian American Movement that began in
1968, one can find primary material from an early textbook such as Amy Tachiki and others, editors, Roots:
An Asian American Reader (Los Angeles: Continental Graphics, 1971); for a more scholarly treatment of the
movement, see William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993);
Steve Louis and Glenn K. Omatsu, Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment (Los Angeles: UCLA
Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001).

80
The National United Front for the Liberation of Viet-Nam, The National Support Movement for the
Resistance in Vietnam (USA: NUFLVN Overseas Department, 1982) 64.

81
Half-page advertisement, Người Việt Daily News, 30 September 1984, 23.

82
“Người Việt Quyết Đoàn Kết Để Giải Phóng Quê Hương” (Vietnamese United to Liberate the
Homeland), Người Việt Daily News, 21 March 1984, 22 (translation of an article by John Westcott published
in the Orange County Register, 18 March 1984); Also see Dan Nakaso, “Dream of Return,” Los Angeles Times,
Orange County edition, 18 March 1984, OC_A1.

156
In case their revolution succeeded, the Front invented new national holidays and
encouraged the overseas population to practice celebrating these days. They
inaugurated their political program on March 8, 1982, picking the same day reserved
for honoring the two sisters who led the first major insurrection against Chinese
imperialists back in 40 A.D. In 1986, they created a new National Day of Founding
unrelated to either the Hanoi or Saigon regimes, instead going back to the days of
Emperor Hùng Vương in 2880 B.C. Annual festivities took place up through the 1990s
in Vietnamese communities such as Orange County, San Jose, Phoenix, Houston,
Hawaii, Oklahoma, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Paul, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Pennsylvania,
Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Hong Kong, Tokyo,
London, Birmingham, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Melbourne, Sydney, and Norway.
83

Tired of seeing the world “feel pity for the ‘boat people’ tragedy” every April 30,
the Front preferred they focus on more heroic characteristics, such as “the endeavors of
the Vietnamese people to liberate their country, and about the Vietnamese resistance.”
84

Thanks to all the violent red-baiting and political assassinations taking place in Little
Saigon, the Front got their wish.

Conformity at all Costs and By All Means
Given that the Front denied receiving any official aid from the U.S. government,
people inevitably had doubts the Front could do on its own what its members could not

83
Vietnamese National Founding Day Celebrations, 1987-1995, Mật Trận Quốc Gia Thống Nhất Giải Phóng
Việt Nam và Con Đường Cứu Nước—The National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam and the Road to
Freedom (San Jose, 1995) 152-170.

84
“The Vietnamese National Day,” Vietnamese Resistance, March 1987, 1.
157
do with the U.S. military by its side. And furthermore, maintaining a guerilla army of
10,000—which in fact did not exist—would cost far more than the estimated $5 to $7
million the Front had raised by the mid-1980s.
85
Besides the $5 charged at concerts, the
Front’s members canvassed local neighborhoods with collection cans. One family
happily contributed $20 each month when the collection people arrived.
86
Others
contributed because saying no had dangerous consequences. "We heard some reports
about extortion," said Westminster police detective Marcus Frank. "The front was
going around to businesses and factory assembly lines asking for contributions. They
told Vietnamese if they did not contribute, people might think they're pro-
communist.”
87
In early 1982, an editor of a Vietnamese weekly in San Jose questioned
where the money was truly going and soon received death threats by phone. A local
merchant was told to take that magazine off his shelves or else.
88

It was common knowledge in the Vietnamese community that the Front had
invested some of their funds in a chain of noodle restaurants.
89
Hoàng Cơ Minh’s

85
“Vietnamese Plot Communist Overthrow,” Seattle Times, 29 April 1985, D3; “Rebels Keep Vietnam War
Smoldering,” UPI, Sun-Sentinel, 26 November 1987, 58A. Interview with T.P., Del Rey Oaks, CA, May
2008.

86
David Holley, “Resistance Movement Has Supporters—But Also Doubters,” Los Angeles Times, 27 June
1983, OC_A1.

87
Jeffrey Brody, “Front Not Upfront, Some Viets Lament,” Orange County Register, 20 May 1991, B01.
Extortion by Front members also receives mention in Joanne Omang, “‘Little Saigons’ in U.S. Foster
Hopes of Toppling Hanoi,” Washington Post, 16 January 1983, A6.

88
Ellen Norman, “Money to Finance Guerilla War,” Peninsula Times Tribune (SF Bay Area), 19 June 1982,
1.

89
Confirmed in interview with Việt Dzũng, Westminster, CA, May 2007; interview with former Front
member T.P., Del Rey Oaks, CA, May 2008; Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông Núi, vol. 3—Memoirs, vol. 3
(Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004); Michael Faber, The Long Road to Freedom (Sacramento: Michael Farber, 1989);
158
brother opened the first franchise in Sacramento under the name Phở Kháng Chiến—
Resistance—but soon changed the name to Phở Hoà.
90
It did not take for more
additional restaurants to open up in San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Ana,
Monterey Park, and San Diego.
91
In late 1984, Ty Võ moved to Seattle at the Front’s
request and opened up another Phở Hoà restaurant, with partial financing from the
organization. The space once occupied by Kentucky Fried Chicken now sported a
painting of soldiers raising the yellow flag and a collection can for donations to the
Front.
92
In 1986 alone, the Phở Hoà chain brought in $2.9 million in revenues.
93
One
federal investigator picked up on the rumor that Delta Savings and Loan in
Westminster was launched almost exclusively with funds generated by resistance
groups and serves as the main financial conduit for Admiral Hoang Co Minh’s National
United Front for the Liberation of Viet-Nam.”
94
The controversy over
misappropriation of funds prompted two top Front officials, Phạm Văn Liễu and Trần

and U.S. Government prosecution of the Front in 1991. See Jeffrey Brody, “Front Not Upfront, Some Viets
Lament,” Orange County Register, 20 May 1991, B01.

90
Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông Núi, vol. 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004) 300.

91
Advertisements in the Front’s own monthly periodical. Kháng Chiến 69, November 1987, 51.

92
“Vietnamese Plot Communist Overthrow, South Seattle Restaurant is Headquarters,” Seattle Times, 29
April 1985, D3.

93
Text from 1991 Grand Jury investigation of the Front, quoted in Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự
Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold Story (Houston: Văn Hoá, 1991) 488.

94
William Cassidy, “A Study of Vietnamese Involvement in Clandestine International Currency
Transfers,” written report presented at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer
Legislation,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions of the Committee on Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 98
th
Congress, 2
nd
Session on S. 747 to prohibit any
person from exporting from the United States any currency directly or indirectly to any person in Vietnam.
20 June 1984,18.

159
Công Minh, to step down from the organization in 1985. Though violent attack never
befell Liễu and Minh, the same could not be said of refugee journalists brazen enough
to raise legitimate criticisms of the resistance movement.
None of Little Saigon’s 17 newspapers were immune from the wrath of anti-
communist extremists. They engaged in a private grassroots version of McCarthyism,
seeing it their duty as new Americans to oust suspected Communists in their midst, no
matter the cost to a functioning civil society in Little Saigon.
95
One editor kept an M-16
and two handguns at work in case of attack. “It is the price of doing business in the
Vietnamese community,” he said.
96
Another editor, Kiêu Nguyễn Ta received the
beating of his life that same year after his Orange County newspaper, Quê Hương,
accused the Front of fraud. As far as Ta was concerned, “the scenes in their film clips of
guerrilla fighters looked staged. I also did not like the way they were going around with
containers collecting money." People risked having their patriotism questioned—and
their lives threatened—if they said no to local Front members going door-to-door
collecting dues. Although the controversy destroyed Ta’s marriage and bankrupted his
newspaper business all in one year, at least Ta walked away with his life.
97

Between 1981 and 1990, five Vietnamese American journalists paid the ultimate
price for airing controversial viewpoints. The most recent of the murders took the life
of columnist Triêt Lê and his wife nearby their home in the Washington, D.C. area. A

95
For an introduction to McCarthyism and anti-communism in America, see Ellen Shrecker, Many are the
Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998); and Bud Schultz, The Price of
Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

96
Jeffrey Brody, “Editor’s Slaying Heightens Fears in Viet Community,” Orange County Register, 23 August
1987, B1.

97
Jeffrey Brody, “Front Not Upfront, Some Viets Lament,” Orange County Register, 20 May 1991, B01.
160
number of non-Vietnamese subjects interviewed by the police and FBI believed the
Front might be involved in the killings.
98
Lê had been marked for death since 1982
when Houston police discovered his name on a hit list next to the body of gunned
down editor Nguyễn Dam Phong. All five murders remained unsolved despite various
terrorist organizations daring to take credit.
99
For instance, the Vietnamese Party to
Exterminate Communists and Restore the Nation proudly claimed responsibility for
the 1987 arson murder of Tap Văn Phạm, 48, of Garden Grove, but law enforcement
officials discovered no further leads.
100
All they had was a letter from the group
claiming that Phạm’s decision to run ads from three allegedly communist-run money
collection and remittance centers had crossed the line. In the letter, the group also took
credit for the 1985 firebombing at the Montreal offices of the alleged communist-run
couriers—Laser Express, Vinamedic, and QTK.
101
Ads for Laser Express and
Vinamedic appeared on the pages of confirmed pro-communist tabloid Thái Bình, but
also on the pages of refugee newspapers without incident.
102
Something was amiss.

98
Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold Story (Houston: Văn
Hoá, 1991) 23.

99
Carney, Eliza Newlin. "The dangers of being a Vietnamese reporter." American Journalism Review 15.n9
(Nov 1993): 15; De Tran, “Painful Past on Trial, Suit Focues on Reporters’ Deaths,” San Jose Mercury
News, 2 December 1994, 1B. For more on Vietnamese American gangs, see Patrick Phước Long Dư, The
Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996); for
information about other Asian organized crime, see Gerald L. Posner, Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret
Societies—The New Mafia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988); U.S. President’s Commission on Organized
Crime, Organized crime of Asian origin : Record of hearing III, October 23-25, 1984, New York, NY
(Washington, D.C.: The Commission, 1985).

100
Steve Emmons and Nancy Wride, “Police Trying to Determine Veracity of Group’s Letter,” Los Angeles
Times, Orange County Edition, 14 August 1987, 1.

101
“Text of Letter in Firebombing,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County edition, 14 August 1987, 4.

161
Before his death, Mr. Phạm had complained about gangs extorting him for
protection money, despite the fact journalists made far less money than others.
103

Ironically, many businesses had moved to Orange County to avoid the gangs and
violence infesting Los Angeles Chinatown to the north.
104
Fearing retribution, many
businesses reluctantly paid $200 to $300 per month to extortionists. In January 1984,
syndicated columnist Jack Anderson accused wannabe-resistance leader Nguyễn Cao
Kỳ of bailing Saigon with $8 million and leading the gang rings that extorted
Vietnamese businesses throughout the Southland. Kỳ had recently filed for bankruptcy
after incurring gambling debts at Caesars Palace in the neighborhood of $20,000.
105

Interestingly, community members sometimes condoned political assassinations
if it weeded out actual Communist agents. One of the Front’s co-founders claimed that
Hanoi had sent 2,000 operatives to America to infiltrate the refugee community. “Their
first goal is to destroy the Vietnamese communities,” said Phạm Văn Liễu. “Secondly,
to set up financial organizations to get money to send back to Vietnam. The
Communists have plans to cause all kinds of troubles in the Vietnamese community so
that it will not create a good impression among the Americans.” It was no surprise he

102
Lynn Smith and David Reyes, “Politics, Extortion May Be Behind Viet Journalist’s Death,” Los Angeles
Times, Orange County edition, 11 August 1987, 1.

103
Lynn Smith and David Reyes, “Politics, Extortion May Be Behind Viet Journalist’s Death,” Los Angeles
Times, Orange County edition, 11 August 1987, 1.

104
Bill Hazlett, “Police Crack Down on Viet Ching Gang,” Los Angeles Times, 16 June 1982, D1; Jack Jones,
“8 Arrested in Extortion Crackdown,” Los Angeles Times, 8 July 1982, D2; Nancy Wride, “2 Arrested in
Suspected Viet Extortion Plot,” 16 September 1982, OC_A1; “4 Arrests in Extortion Plot Called Major
Breakthrough Against Gangs,” Los Angeles Times, 16 July 1983, OC_A5; Kathy McCarthy, “Asian Crime
Network Grows in U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, 15 January 1984, 5; Roxana Kopetman, “Indochinese Gangs to
be Topic for Police,” Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1986, OC_A7.

105
“Ky and Wife ‘Enjoying Life’ Despite Financial Troubles,” New York Times, 22 January 1984, A18.
162
supported the FBI’s 1985 program to pinpoint Việt-Cộng living in America.
106

Likewise, many in the community sympathized with another Front member who
confessed to shooting a fellow Vietnamese suspected of promoting normalization with
Hanoi.
107
An end to the U.S. embargo would, as publisher Yến Đỗ stated, “destroy the
dream of returning to a free Vietnam.” Đỗ frequently likened Vietnamese refugees to
other stateless people.
The Cubans and the Vietnamese are in a similar position," he said.
"Sometimes they look irrational to the average American who has put the
events of the past behind. But for Cubans and Vietnamese, it is the meaning
of their lives. A lot of them were political prisoners. Revenge lies with them
forever.
108

In expressing his admiration for Jews, Đỗ explained that,
Young Vietnamese have studied how Jews came back from the Holocaust
and built the Israel nation. Through the sorrows of our exodus, young
Vietnamese feel the emotional experience of the Jews.
109

Adding to the cycle of violence was the 1984 murder of Prof. Edward Lee
Cooperman of Cal State University at Fullerton, whom his assailant, a young
Vietnamese student, accused of sending high tech goods directly to the Vietnamese

106
Ted Bell, “It is Spy vs. Spy Among Vietnamese in Sacramento,” Sacramento Bee, 27 March 1985, A16.

107
The U.S. purportedly claimed to support trade embargoes against Communist nations, but every
president since Nixon made an exception when it came to China.

108
Jeffrey Brody, “Editor’s Slaying Heightens Fears in Viet Community,” Orange County Register, 23
August 1987, B1.

109
Buster Sussman, “Vietnamese publisher sees Jews, Israel as example for Vietnam,” unknown publication
and date, partially reprinted in Yen Do and Jeffrey Brody, Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News
(Fullerton, CA: Jeffrey Brody, 2003) 10.

163
government.
110
Regardless, terrorist tactics used by resistance groups and gangs made
conformity a way of life in Little Saigon. "I love my country," said a community leader
back in 1987. “I have a father, mother, five sisters and a brother in Vietnam. But I will
not go back. No refugee should."
111
But was it that much different from politicians, like
the Southland’s own Robert Dornan, who stoked fears for their personal gain?

Bob Dornan and American Sympathizers of the Front
Little Saigon was part of the 38
th
U.S. Congressional District, the only California
congressional seat up for grabs in 1984. Virtually every other seat in California was safe
for the incumbent. Republican congressional candidate Robert Dornan, a
neoconservative hawk who had never actually seen combat, had originally represented
west Los Angeles County since 1976, but decided against running in 1982. He sought
the comfort of more conservative Orange County and in 1984 challenged the county’s
only Congressional Democrat, ten-year incumbent Jerry Patterson. The $1.5 million
spent by the both campaigns made it one of the nation’s costliest congressional races.
112

Pundits expected a close race against 5-term incumbent Jerry Patterson, especially
since Democrats in the district outnumbered Republicans 50-39.
113
In 1982, Patterson

110
Jeffrey Brody, “Enforcement: US Allows Clandestine Trade to Continue,” Orange County Register, 21
August 1984, K5.

111
Jeffrey Brody, “Editor’s Slaying Heightens Fears in Viet Community,” Orange County Register, 23
August 1987, B1.

112
Karen Tamulty, “Patterson All But Concedes Contest,” Los Angeles Times, 7 Nov 1984, 3.

113
David Holley, “Dornan Shoes He Plans Not to be Soft-Spoken,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County
Edition, 8 November 1984, OC_A1.
164
had defeated Republican challenger William F. Dohr by a 12,635 vote, 52%-43%
victory, but two years later as he was running against the Reagan tidal wave, Patterson
needed every ally he could find. Although only 12,000 Asian Americans in all were
registered to vote in the 38
th
District, Patterson had not done enough to reach out to
Vietnamese voters over the years, choosing instead the safer route of rallying his white
voter base against the invading refugee hordes.
114
His strategy eventually backfired and
set the Democratic Party back for another decade. Not until the end of the Cold War
would Democrats make significant inroads in the Vietnamese community of Orange
County.
Dornan fished for votes wherever he could in the Democratic district and the
ultra anti-communist candidate found a receptive audience among ultra-nationalists.
The Front invited Dornan to speak at one of their rallies prior to the 1984 election.
According to newspaper editor Yến Đỗ, who was among the 800 in attendance, Dornan
“declared that he was ready to support policy of the refugee groups. That made him the
only candidate until now to support them. If he is in Congress, he will be the
spokesman for that policy.”
115

Vietnamese American supporters of Dornan sought his help almost immediately
to seek the release of their brothers and sisters from Vietnam’s re-education camps. Just
like the American campaign on behalf of soldiers missing in action or prisoners of war,

114
Populism, whether of the conservative or liberal variety, has been the closest thing to a constant in the
American West. For more on American populism in general see Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An
American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with
Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Holt, 2005).

115
David Holley, “Candidates Court Minorities in 38
th
District Race,” Los Angeles Times, 30 Sept 1984, OC-
A1.
165
the Vietnamese refugees vowed not forget their comrades either. On July 21, 1979, at a
special convention in San Francisco, the ARVN veterans formed their own
organization, the Vietnamese Veterans Association. Beyond the praise and honor it
bestowed upon those who served their country, the VVA prioritized its “obligations
towards all its comrades-in-arms presently dying away in Vietnamese communist
concentration camps without ever being treated as prisoners-of-war as prescribed in the
Charter of the United Nations.”
116

Back in Little Saigon, the urgency of family reunification inspired people to
action. One lady joined the Association of Vietnamese Political Prisoners’ Families
because her own husband remained trapped in a re-education camp since 1975. In early
1986, when a bipartisan congressional delegation left for Hanoi to talk mainly about
missing American personnel, the organization convinced one its members, Republican
Congressman Robert Dornan, to press the Vietnamese government on the status of over
500 Vietnamese detainees.
117
In talks with the Hanoi government, Dornan referred to
his Vietnamese constituents specifically as “Americans asking to rejoin with…mothers,
fathers, and other relatives.” Two weeks later, Dornan told community leaders in a

116
Dat Moi Seattle, “Declaration of Viet Veterans’ Association, Nov 1979, 16. To the best of my knowledge,
the closest thing to a scholarly work on the reeducation camps would be Stéphane Courtois et al, The Black
Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). The rest
consist of memoirs and films. For example, see Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff, The Vietnamese Gulag
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986); Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn. The Will of Heaven: A Story of One Vietnamese
and the End of His World, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982); and Paul Hollander, editor, From the Gulag to the
Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States (Wilmington, DE:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007).

117
Maricda Dodson, “Dornan Departs for Hanoi with List of Viet Prisoners,” Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb
1986, 1.
166
Garden Grove restaurant that some progress had been made, and that Hanoi
acknowledged holding at least 7,000 in re-education camps.
118

Dornan was not the only major U.S. official supporting the Front. In their own
literature the Front quoted future Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Jack Kemp
stating that, “All Americans admire (the Front’s) devotion to the freedom of Vietnam
and Vietnamese people, just as we appreciate the rich contributions you have made to
America.”
119
U.S. Senator William Armstrong (R-CO) praised Hoàng Cơ Minh’s
patriotism in light of leaving “his family and safety in the West to turn clandestinely to
Vietnam to lead the freedom fighters there in their unequal struggle with Communist
despots.”
120
In early May 1983, just prior to a major Front gathering, the organization’s
second-in-command met in Washington with United Nations Ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Richard G. Stillwell,
and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs
Richard Armitage.
121
Armitage, a veteran of the Vietnam War who gave himself the
nickname Trần Văn Phú, had developed a good relationship with Hoàng Cơ Minh.
122

118
Ray Perez, “Hanoi Easing Stance on Vietnamese Prisoners, Dornan Says,” Los Angeles Times, Orange
County edition, 23 February 1986, OC_A4.

119
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 47.

120
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 49.

121
These meetings and recounted in two separate memoirs. See Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật
Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold Story (Houston: Văn Hoá, 1991); Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông
Núi, vol. 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004) 322-331.

122
Asked why he chose the name Trần Văn Phú, Armitage explained that given name Phú means “rich,”
that middle Văn indicates his gender, and surname Trần was a reference to a special clergyman in Vietnam
167
According to the senior Front official, Armitage secretly persuaded the Thai
government into giving the Front freedom of movement throughout their country.
123

The Front knew it was in their best interests to piggyback off America’s own
agenda. During their April 1983 International Conference of Justice in Washington,
D.C., the Front made sure to pay their respects to America’s 58,209 fallen by laying a
wreath at the five-month-old Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
124
Aware that Americans had
no desire for another war in Vietnam, the Front insisted that,
The key motto of the mass motive mobilization strategy is: “Winning
popular support rather than attacking fortresses,” which reflects the peace-
loving and humanistic nature of the Vietnamese Resistance.
125

In case that line of argument did not work, the Front relied on the Domino Theory,
which neoconservatives had reintroduced in order to justify ousting leftist regimes in
Latin America.
Asia has become an important factor in the United States’ economy as the
countries in Pacific-Asia have outdistanced their European counterparts in
trading with the United States…Soviet military pressures and sabotage
schemes can push the countries of Southeast Asia into a position more and

who blessed his naval group. See Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front:
The Untold Story (Houston: Văn Hoá, 1991) 149.

123
Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Tôi Sông Núi, vol. 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hoá, 2004) 322-331. Liễu’s
statement about assistance from Richard Armitage corroborates a statement one Vietnamese American
writer, an anti-communist who disagreed with the Front, made about the Front in 1983: “Although it is
tempting to dismiss such people as nothing more than frustrated diehards with a quixotic view of their
prospects, the fact is that they are U.S. residents who would have difficulty getting into Thailand without
some from of official approbation.” See Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff, “Beware of Vietnamese
Insurgents,” Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1983, C5.

124
Joanne Omang, “‘Little Saigons’ in U.S. Foster Hopes of Toppling Hanoi,” Washington Post, 16 January
1983, A6.

125
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 24.
168
more disadvantageous to the Free World until the day the Free World is
forced to abandon Southeast Asia as it did to Vietnam…
126

And last but not least the Front appealed to America’s moral obligation to beat back
Soviet aggression and restore its place as beacon for the rest of the world:
Solving the Vietcong problem will put an end to the “Vietnam
complex”…Solving the Vietcong problem will restore people’s faith in
justice and courage of mankind, particularly in influential countries of the
Free World.
127

Unlike the boat people crisis, which brought people across all different social
backgrounds together in solidarity with Vietnam’s newest refugees, the Resistance
Movement gained little traction among the general population outside those who had
served in uniform or supported the Vietnam War. Mainstream publications referred to
the Front as a largely a “longshot,” “symbolic,” or “quixotic.”
128
For most people, the
Resistance Movement represents not the struggle to liberate Vietnam, but rather the
equivalent of a domestic terrorist organization preying off their fellow co-ethnics in the
name of patriotism.

126
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 41.

127
The Vietnamese Fight for Freedom: An Introduction to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam
(San Jose, 1986) 43.

128
David Holley, “Resistance Movement has Supporters—but Also Doubters,” Los Angeles Times, Orange
County Edition, 27 June 1983, OC_A1; Transcript of “The Hoang Co Minh Trail” from 30 March 1982
broadcast of CBS Evening News, reprinted in Đất Mới (New Land, Seattle), 5 April 1982, 21; Doan Van
Toai and David Chanoff, “Beware of Vietnamese Insurgents,” Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1983, C5.
169
The Fall of the Front
The resistance had defined itself in radical terms, thus relegating the boat people
crisis and human rights reform in Vietnam to secondary status, as symptoms of a larger
problem that “Liberating Vietnam” would ultimately eradicate. The resistance
movement advertised itself as a homegrown uprising with refugees comprising the
“overseas” operation, when in fact it was the other way around. The “overseas”
component was the center of the resistance movement while the “domestic” operation
in and around Vietnam was peripheral. Conditions in Vietnam, exacerbated by
imprisonment or the exodus of potential underground resistance leaders, made it nearly
impossible to foment a mass uprising against the Hanoi regime. In 1983, the Front
counted 5000 official members and countless more supporters.
129
Already the Front’s
membership had outnumbered the number of actual freedom fighters under the
command of Chairman Minh. Soon after Phạm Văn Liễu and Trần Minh Công quit the
organization in 1985, things fell apart. Hoàng Cơ Minh’s brother leveraged his way into
power while Chairman Minh himself died while leading a small band of perhaps 200
men into the jungles of communist-occupied Laos during the summer of 1987.
Vietnamese authorities reported killing over 100 guerillas and capturing 77. Before the
end of the year, 18 survivors had been convicted of treason, implying they had not yet
attained U.S. citizenship before joining the Front. Hanoi wanted them to confess to
receiving aid from the United States and Thailand, but presented no evidence to that
end. From San Jose, Front spokesman Đông Sơn Nguyễn—née Nguyện Xuân Nghĩa—

129
Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold Story (Houston: Văn
Hoá, 1991) 32.
170
tried to reassure supporters that, “Chairman Hoàng Cơ Minh is alive and leading the
liberation struggle.”
130
It took another fourteen years before the Front finally
acknowledged Chairman Minh’s death and held a memorial service for him.
131

But the real tragedy befell average Vietnamese Americans and the rank-and-file
members of the Front. “We trusted them and they stole our dream,” said a former
supporter.
132
How ironic that the ones who cared the most about overthrowing the
regime had to resign themselves to never seeing Vietnam again. Take the case of one
former Front member, 65, a contributor of essays for the Resistance, who admitted in
2008 that he had never been back to Vietnam since 1975.
I know the Vietnamese government is not pleased with my work and I may
be put in jail. Some of my friends have already been put in jail for what they
did. All my friends came because they had to visit their ill parents, or visit
their home village. And they did not do anything wrong on that trip. But
they still went to jail.
133

Despite missing his home country a great deal, this person, who spent over 20 years as a
social worker in the United States, had no regrets and claims his wife supported him
the entire way. “I did the right thing. I did nothing wrong,” he said. “When things
change enough we’ll go back together, or we will not go at all.”
134

130
Dennis Rockstroch, “San Jose Group Admits War Against Communist Regime,” San Jose Mercury News,
3 December 1987, 4A.

131
Jessie Mangaliman, “S.J. Vietnamese Group Admits Leader’s Death Fourteen Years After the Fact,” San
Jose Mercury News, 29 July 2001, 1B.

132
Jeffrey Brody, “Front Not Upfront, Some Viets Lament,” Orange County Register, 20 May 1991, B01.

133
Interview with T.P., Del Rey Oaks, CA, May 2008.

134
Interview with T.P., Del Rey Oaks, CA, May 2008.

171
Chapter 4
Racism and the Rise of the Cultural Brokers

When Tony Lâm first became a U.S. citizen in 1982, he initially registered with
the Democratic Party. The former Saigon millionaire turned small-time entrepreneur
admired the party’s dedication to the rights of immigrants. Senator Edward Kennedy,
the Massachusetts Democrat who spearheaded efforts to open America’s doors to
refugees, was no stranger to people like Lâm. But only a year later, the co-founder of
the three-year-old Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce switched over to the
Republican Party. When pressed why, he could have cited first the GOP’s strong anti-
communist record, but opted for another reason: “I found that Democrats always talk
about helping the people with a handout. I said no. I do not like handouts. I never went
to Social Services asking for a handout. The first two jobs I worked were as a service
station attendant and a shipping and receiving supervisor.”
1

Lâm’s ethic of personal responsibility reflected fears that Americans would
eventually regret their decision to assist the Vietnamese refugees just as they had come
to regret the Vietnam War. Orange County lacked a significant African American
population, but that did not make people like Tony Lâm un aware of the dangerous

1
Interview with Tony Lam, Westminster, CA, May 2007.

172
consequences of racial stereotypes, especially for a community identified by its eternal
debt of gratitude to the United States.
2

During the 1980s Lâm and other business and community leaders in Little
Saigon fought back against negative stereotypes of the Vietnamese refugees.
3
I call these
people cultural brokers because they used their bilingual skills to act as
middlemen/middlewomen to ease racial tensions between their group and the majority
society. Even as the size of Little Saigon approached critical mass, cultural brokers
continued to appeal to paternal bonds in mostly white Orange County to help them
prove that, at the very least, South Vietnam’s middle class, now living in exile, indeed
constituted a civilized and democratic people fit for self-government.
4

2
Members of minority groups often realize their individual actions have the potential to be representative
of their group as a whole, a burden not necessarily suffered by majority groups. For a primer on this subject
as it pertains to race and gender see Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal
Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies", reprinted in Gender
Basics

3
Stereotypes of Vietnamese Americans mirrored the images of foreign archetypes imposed on prior
generations of Asians in America. For more see Gina Marchetti, Romance and the ‘Yellow Peril’: Race, Sex,
and the Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Darrell Y.
Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1994); Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1996); Robert Lee, Orientals: Asians Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1999); John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the
Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): Henry Yu,
Thinking Orientals: Migration, Exoticism, and Contact in Modern America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001); Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Form and American literature, 1893-1945 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2005).

4
Cultural brokers essentially act as middlemen/middlewomen between different groups. They can be
members of the majority group, but the term is more often used to describe members of minority groups
who have fluency in Western culture. Interpreters do this work in a professional capacity. The term
appears famously in Clifford Geertz, “The Javanese Kijaji: The Changing Role of a Cultural Broker,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 2. No. 2 (Jan 1960) 228-249. In sociology, the cultural broker
means approximately the same thing as Robert Park’s concept of the marginal man, that person in between
two cultures but never fully assimilated for reasons of racial conflict. See Robert E. Park, "Human
Migration and the Marginal Man." American Journal of Sociology 33 (May 1928): 881-893. For the purposes
173
The cultural brokers responded to controversies involving Vietnamese Americans
in Little Saigon, from local fears that the poorest refugees had introduced tuberculosis
into Orange Country to a statewide health insurance fraud scandal that tainted the best
and brightest refugees to reports of gang violence ensnaring the younger generation.
Anti-Vietnamese agitators had enough ammunition to convince the rest of the white
majority that the South Vietnamese, for all their positive attributes, were a people
unready for redemption and incapable of assimilation.
The cultural broker defense and the anti-communist component of their refugee
nationalism, ridiculed in later years as a vestige of the past, actually helped them
navigate a society sometimes incapable or unwilling to distinguish Vietnamese refugees
from America’s former enemy the Viet-Cong.
5
External threats like these compelled
factions to put aside differences, even if temporarily, for the sake of countering any
anti-Vietnamese backlash.
At a time when being labeled a friend of the Vietnamese had few upsides, some of
Westminster’s most prominent white politicians, from Mayor Kathy Buchoz to
Congressman Ed Royce, came to the defense of Vietnamese Americans. Add to the fact
that all these unlikely heroes of Little Saigon belonged to the Republican Party, with

of this study, I refer to people who engage as cultural brokers advocating on behalf of the Vietnamese
community and help reduce racial tensions between their group and the host society.

5
Sociologists refer to this strategy of pointing out mistaken identity as “disidentification.” Yen Le Espiritu
has identified this strategy as a prime barrier to enhanced Asian American panethnic identity. In her
analysis, the prominence of American-born Asians resulted in diminished identification with Old World
ethnic hierarchies and increased recognition of American ethnic hierarchies—specifically ones that lump
people into racial categories. See Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Identities and
Institutions (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). Historically, Vietnamese refugees had little
personal incentive as Vietnamese or Americans to identify with the Việt-Cộng, a point beyond the scope of
Espiritu’s study.

174
Kathy Buchoz having left the Democratic Party in 1982, sent a clear message to
Vietnamese Americans that the GOP, aside from supporting them on issues other than
anti-communism, had faith in their humanity. Their tolerance of the Vietnamese was a
marked contrast from the Republican Party’s populist hostility towards immigrants and
minorities during the 20
th
century.
6
Buchoz’s presence and her pro-growth policies
ensured that Westminster’s treasury would cash in as Vietnamese business growth
there outpaced the rest of the Southland. And lastly, political leaders and citizens
invested in the politics of rescue could interpret their benevolence as moving the
United States one giant step closer to restoring its mythic reputation as a beacon for the
rest of the world.
As well as they presented Vietnamese refugees as well on the road to assimilation,
cultural brokers could not extricate themselves from Vietnam. The staggering volume
of cash and goods sent they sent to relatives in Vietnam—a clear violation of the
Trading with Enemies act—caught the attention of the United States Senate and
mainstream newspapers. More than just occasional care packages, remittances to the
homeland constituted a $100 million enterprise accounting for half of all commerce in
Little Saigon.
7
Episodes like this proved that anti-communism and loyalty to America
operated in the vast grey area between black and white.
8

6
The Republican Party most famously leveraged white supremacy to their advantage beginning with the
1968 presidential election when they used racially coded appeals to “law and order” to convert New Deal
Democrats into Republicans. See Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, NY:
Arlington House, 1969); Earle Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002); Daniel HoSang, Racial Propositions: “Genteel Apartheid” in Postwar
California (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 2007).

7
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam: Refugees in OC often violate US trade embargo by shipping parcels
to relatives overseas,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K1.
175
Who are the Cultural Brokers?
The cultural brokers of Little Saigon did not constitute a distinct class interest.
9

Trần Minh Công, a spokesman for the National United Front for the Liberation of
Vietnam also working for the Orange County Housing Agency, wanted to concentrate
on homeland politics. Social worker Mai Công had mental health and poverty issues on
her mind. Catholic priests, potentially representing 30% of Little Saigon, were far more
interested in constructing a Vietnamese Catholic Center. The Vietnamese Chamber of
Commerce never registered 300 members at any given time since its founding in 1980.
Instead, as publisher Yến Đỗ put it, cultural brokers could “quickly unify to deal with
some short-term crisis, but did not have the flexibility or capacity to deal with more
long-term pressure.”
10
Indeed, events requiring ethnic cohesion often resulted in
factionalism, from the competing Tết festivals during the Lunar New Year to
resentment against capitalists of Chinese ancestry who thought it best to name the
enclave “Asiantown.”

8
For more on the way race and racism enters into society thought throughout recent history see Michael
Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s, 2
nd
edition (New
York: Routledge, 1994); for an expansive historical sociology of racial formation’s impact on Western
history since 1600 see Howard Winant, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II (New
York: Basic Books, 2001).

9
Historians have talked about other ethnic organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League
or the League of United Latin American Citizens represented distinct class interests. For more on the
JACL, see Lon Kurashige, Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and
Festival in Los Angeles, 1934-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); and David K. Yoo,
Growing up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture Among Japanese Americans of California, 1924-49 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2000); For more on LULAC, see Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of
a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).

10
Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet News, 46.

176
But what cultural brokers lacked in leadership skills they made up for with their
collective awareness that stereotypes and racism in posed just as much a danger in
America as the Việt-Cộng posed to their loved ones in Vietnam. As early as 1975, using
newspapers and other media available in the mainland camps, they argued that the best
way for Vietnamese refugees to show their gratitude to the United States was to,
“disperse ourselves throughout America and become involved in the day-to-day life of
American society.”
11
Cultural brokers like Mai Công could be found volunteering her
services during every step of the exodus, from the Philippines to Guam to Camp
Pendleton, where Ms. Công spent 45 days as a much-needed interpreter for her people.
As Công saw it, the loss of material possessions convinced her that “nothing is more
important than interpersonal relationships,” thus instilling in her a “stronger
commitment to serving society.”
12

Yet all the training refugees received on American customs still left new arrivals
unprepared for culinary culture clashes. Some food feuds were as benign as what
happened to a Vietnamese woman who kept offering egg rolls to her ostensibly
appreciative white neighbor only to finally witness that same neighbor dumping them
in the trash. But refugee transgressions could also fuel more serious backlashes.
13
Take

11
Ngoc Lam, “Let’s not forget the future,” Tân Dân (Fort Chaffee Newsletter), 30 August 1975, 2.

12
The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An History, Vol. 3: Refugee Service Programs and Mutual
Assistance Associations (Santa Ana, CA: Newhope Library, 1992) 73.

13
Tensions between Anglo residents and Southeast Asian refugees in the North Highlands section of
Sacramento, CA almost got out of control in 1983 when—as the Sacramento Bee newspaper put it—
“members of the Hmong tribe from Laos were accused by North Highlands neighbors of ritually slaying
chickens public, eating dogs, and bathing outdoors.” See, Hillary Abramson, “Refugees Grapple with a
Mystifying New Home,” Sacramento Bee, 28 April 1985, C7.

177
the infamous Great Santa Ana Squid Stink of 1977, when some Vietnamese refugees in
Orange County, following their familiar customs, hung fresh-caught squid out to dry in
their backyards. “By all accounts,” recounted the Los Angeles Times, “the stench was
overpowering.” Though the incident was soon resolved when refugee relief workers and
others promptly told the Vietnamese, “You just do not do that here,” hard feelings
lingered among those already predisposed to anti-Asian sentiment: “To one policeman,
it proved what he had known all along: Vietnamese are dirty, different and do not
belong here.”
14
That a police officer would openly share such insensitive language with
a reporter from a major newspaper indicated the social challenges facing Asians in a
majority-white and conservative society.
Stereotypes of Asians as foreign carriers of disease and dysfunction long preceded
the arrival of the first Vietnamese. During the late 1800s, Chinese Americans
continually lived on the edge, not knowing when white settlers would evoke the specter
of yellow disease as justification to drive the Chinese out of town.
15
While the
substandard conditions of Chicago meatpacking houses or New York tenements helped
inspire Progressive Era reforms to eradicate these social problems, stories of dirty Asian

14
Tracy Wood, “Vietnamese Now Fighting Just to Cope,” LA Times, 29 May 1978, A2; Interview subjects
recall stories of early waves continuing to eat dog when they arrived in the United States. Eating dog is a
culinary habit among a minority of Vietnamese, though the practice is most common in North Vietnam.
As far as I could tell, mainstream newspapers in the United States made no mention of an issue that would
have certainly obliterated much of America’s goodwill towards the Vietnamese refugees.

15
Charles McClain’s noteworthy social history of early San Francisco Chinatown recounts how whites
attempted to condemn Chinese-inhabited buildings in order to get their hands on valuable downtown real
estate. See Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in
Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). According to historian Nayan
Shah, the profession of public health in that same city evolved rapidly in response to constant fears of a
bacterial yellow peril in Chinatown’s bachelor societies. See Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and
Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

178
slums convinced the masses that Asian immigrants themselves were the problem.
16
The
1980s seemed to foreshadow another era of anti-Asian sentiment. And in 1983, two
white unemployed autoworkers in Detroit received only a slap on the wrist for the
brutal murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin. But the particular circumstances of
refugees and rescue, along with changes in racial attitudes over time, allowed
Vietnamese Americans to avoid racial scares in ways not available to other groups.
The community experienced a very brief tuberculosis panic on October 15, 1979,
the same day that Orange County’s lone Democratic Congressman Jerry Patterson
announced a “tentative plan” to reduce by 30% the influx of Indochinese refugees to the
county. Patterson, then a three-term populist Democrat with a long history of
resistance to Southeast Asian migration to the U.S., believed that the “over-
concentration of Indochinese refugees in Orange County is an unfair burden” on local
citizens, especially without economic assistance from the federal government. That
same morning, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a 75% increase, from
.008% to .013%, in the tuberculosis infection rate in Orange County, with 20% of
infected individuals being Indochinese.

16
For muckracking literature during the Progressive Era, see Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies
Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892); and Upton Sinclair, The
Jungle (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1906). For scholarly literature, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of
Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955); Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in
American Civilization, 1889-1920 (New York: Basic Books, 1982). For more on the anti-Asian movement of
this period, see Sucheng Chan, Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991); and Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-
Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1962).

179
Although the CDC assured the public that “the cases of tuberculosis among
Indochinese refugees do not present a significant risk to the general public of any
community in Orange County,” a panic ensued.
17
The Orange County League of Cities
hastily passed a resolution urging county supervisors and health officials to take
“whatever steps necessary” to keep the residents of Orange County safe from the new
danger introduced by the Southeast Asian refugees. The City Councils of Garden Grove
and Santa Ana passed their own resolutions to address the “new medical problems
facing the community” such as “intestinal parasites, tuberculosis and leprosy.”
18
But
the most negative effect of the “tuberculosis scare” was the scapegoating the refugees
faced. Biên Quí Lê of the Vietnamese American Mutual Association told the Los
Angeles Times that, “children suffered most as playmates refused to play with them”
while some adults, now suspected of carrying tuberculosis because of their skin color,
“were refused employment or ostracized in other ways.”
19

Fortunately for the Vietnamese, voices of moderation eventually prevailed. One
of those came from the Los Angeles Times, which published an editorial rebuking some
of the people of Orange County for turning an issue of genuine “concern” into an
excuse for a “panic.”
20
The brief episode revealed that Vietnamese Americans were

17
“TB No Major Threat Here, Study Finds: Disease Control Center Expert Says Problem Rates as Non-
Epidemic,” by Doris A. Byron, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct 1979, OC-A1.

18
“Epidemic of Panic” editorial, Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct 1979, OC B2.

19
TB Anxiety, Bien Qui Le, Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, 16 Dec. 1979.

20
“Epidemic of Panic” editorial, Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct 1979, OC B2. The Los Angeles Times was not
always a voice of moderation on matters of race and ethnicity. During World War II, the Times famously
clamored to have Japanese Americans rounded up into internment camps. For more on the Los Angeles
Times, see Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990).
180
viewed simultaneously as former elites of a modernizing nation and backwards peasants
unfamiliar with even the most basic health protocols of Western medicine.
For their part, the Vietnamese community, especially its doctors and scientists,
formed an ad-hoc umbrella organization to educate the public on the matter. Publisher
Yến Đỗ, then a witness to the proceedings at the time, remembered that, “The
Vietnamese followed the French way of vaccination and prevention, which is totally
different from the process in the United States. When the Vietnamese people came
here, they had weak microbes in their body, which were harmless.” But their presence
explained by 80% of Vietnamese Americans tested positive for TB. According to Đỗ,
the panic was short lived partly because the Vietnamese “understood the situation
immediately and prepared a response and clarification.”
21

Like the earliest generation of Asian Americans, they had neither the political
capital nor alliances necessary to call out the racism facing them. That job was left to
sympathetic white liberals.
22
In the meantime, Vietnamese Americans were relying on
French science to cast a favorable light on their nation. For all their obvious differences
and adjustments to American society, they hoped to communicate that, at the very
least, Vietnamese people were familiar with the contours of modernity.

21
Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet News, 41-42.

22
Some of the intellectual forefigures of Asian American Studies include sympathetic Anglos. See Mary
Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1909); Sidney L. Gulick, The
American Japanese Problem (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914); and Bruno Lasker, Filipino
Immigration to Continental United States and to Hawaii (Chicago: Published for the American Council,
Institute of Pacific Relations, by the University of Chicago Press, 1931).

181
But even claims to modernity could not save them in early 1984 when the
California state attorney general, based on evidence gathered by undercover Vietnamese
operatives, ordered the arrest of 51 Vietnamese doctors and pharmacists. They were
charged with collecting fraudulent reimbursements from Medi-Cal, the state-subsidized
health care program for the poor, consisting of monthly vouchers in sticker form.
Considering that refugee medical bills under Medi-Cal cost the state and federal
government more than $40 million in 1982 alone, it is easy to see how public benefits
constituted a resource ripe for abuse. Those arrested were accused of collecting $27.5
million worth of Medi-Cal for patients they never saw.
23

By publisher Yến Đỗ’s own account, “Medi-Cal fraud was the biggest crisis in the
community in the early 80s.” When the story broke, Đỗ’s team covered the entire front
page of Người Việt News with photographs of the guilty parties such as Dr. Nguyễn
Bằng; Saigon Pharmacy; and Vuong Dat Accupuncture & Chinese Herbs.
24
The paper
also published a rare editorial expressing concern over how the matter might affect the
larger community’s perception of the Vietnamese refugees.
25
The fact that Ngưòi Viêt

23
According to a Los Angeles Times article on the arrests, “In some cases, refugees who were not ill sold
their stickers to physicians for a kickback of ‘several dollars,’ according to one investigator. In other cases,
according to [California Attorney General] Van de Kamp, drivers collected large numbers of cards from
fellow refugees and turned the stickers over to physicians who submitted fraudulent claims to the state. In
addition to false claims on office visits, the investigators said some of the physicians wrote phony
prescriptions which were also to be paid by Medi-Cal. Pharmacists involved in the scheme would submit
the false drug claims, often allowing the refugees to purchase nonprescription items including food and
clothing instead of the prescribed drugs. Van de Kamp said during the press conference that some of the
fraudulent prescriptions were actually used to procure drugs ‘for shipment to relatives in Vietnam or for
sales on the black market in Vietnam.’” See Evan Maxwell, “Refugees Charged in Alleged Health Scam: Of
51 Suspects Sought in Medi-Cal Fraud, About Half are Linked to Orange County,” Los Angeles Times, 16
February 1984, OC3.

24
Người Việt Daily News, 17 February 1984, 1.

25
“Ý Kiến (Opinion),” Người Việt Daily News, 17 February 1984, 3.
182
had already warned their readers against selling food stamps indicates that people had
general knowledge of the welfare fraud taking place in Little Saigon.
26

Because the prosecution and the mainstream media lumped the cases together,
especially since only Vietnamese were under suspicion, racialization of the case was
inevitable.
27
It never occurred to investigators that individuals might be committing
similar offenses based on word of mouth. Indeed, one local Vietnamese surgeon,
himself not accused of any wrongdoing, feared that such racial lumping was
counterproductive. “The fact that there has been a massive police raid, which was
statewide…made big news all over the nation,” he said, “it has been a terrible blow to
our pride as a people, and the general credibility of the Vietnamese in the new land that
has adopted us.”
28

Therefore the Vietnamese community had little choice but to be united in their
response, which denied them ample space to voice differing opinions on the matter.
29

One competing entrepreneur, while happy to see the crooked doctors arrested, was

26
“Bán Food Stamps Bị Bất (Sell Food Stamps, Risk Getting Arrested),” Người Việt Daily News, 18 Jan.
1984, 14.

27
What made this situation all the more unfortunate was that many Vietnamese refugee doctors had been
granted certification to practice medication in the United States when they arrived in the U.S., even if they
had no way of proving they received medical degrees in Saigon. From a narrative standpoint, the scandal
resembled an act of betrayal by Vietnamese doctors against their American benefactors. See “State Probing
Credentials of Viet Doctors,” Jerry Hicks, Los Angeles Times, 21 Feb 1984, OC-A1.

28
David Holley, “Vietnamese Singled Out in Arrests, Doctor Says,” Los Angeles Times, 29 February 1984,
OC-A1.

29
For other examples of Asian American responses to external threats, see K. Scott Wong, “Cultural
Defenders and Brokers: Chinese Responses to the Anti-Chinese Movement,” in K. Scott Wong and
Sucheng Chan, editors, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998); and Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging
Identities and Institutions (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).

183
more concerned that, “the American people will think all Vietnamese are bad. We do
not want Americans to think that way.”
30
His fears proved true for an electronic
technician in Orange County, whose American co-workers lectured him on the matter.
“Your doctors, your pharmacists, are thieves, and they are the intellectual class and
they do that,” they told him. “You are under them. We think you will do something
worse than them.”
31

Người Việt Daily News backed away from publishing a series of investigative
articles after suspected community members complained and some reporters “balked at
printing embarrassing news.”
32
Instead they published editorials and reader responses
reassuring each other that the crisis should not reflect on the community as a whole:
“The tumor needs to be removed to restore the health of the community,” one article
stated. “Its presence does not mean that the whole body is unhealthy.”
33
“This isn’t the
first time our honor has been impugned,” noted one reader, alluding to sensational
stories by ABC News and columnist Jack Anderson about the alleged “Vietnamese
Mafia” that pro-refugee Americans had allowed into the country.
34

As they did during the TB scare, the Orange County Vietnamese formed an ad-
hoc committee consisting of 42 local organizations—including two from the Resistance

30
Arrest of 23 Doctors Stuns the Viets in Orange County, David Holley, Los Angeles Times, 17 February
1984, OC1.

31
Arrest of 23 Doctors Stuns the Viets in Orange County, David Holley, Los Angeles Times, 17 February
1984, OC1.

32
Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News, Yen Do, with Jeff Brody (2003) 56.

33
“Community Crisis,” Người Việt Daily News, 29 February 1984, 5.

34
Thanh Tâm, “Quan Điễm Bạn Đọc (Letter to the Editor),” Người Việt Daily News, 4 March 1984, 11.

184
Movement discussed in the previous chapter—and scheduled a press conference for
February 29, 1984 to address the Medi-Cal crisis.
35
On a Wednesday morning at the
Westminster Civic Center, community spokespersons asked Americans to be “fair-
minded” and not to judge all Vietnamese based on the “misdeeds of a few black
sheep.”
36
The same could be said in reference to highly publicized gang activity among
Southeast Asians. Instead they insisted their people be judged by the spectacular but
underpublicized academic achievements of the majority, which a UC Irvine assistant
chancellor in attendance confirmed.
37

The ad-hoc committee sought support from every possible corner, with the San
Jose community specifically appealing to “friends among other ethnic groups.”
38

Another cohort of allies answered the plea for tolerance from the Vietnamese of Orange
County. As Yến Đỗ recalled, “We fortunately got the help of the Republican party with
our first communiqué.” The story did not end there, as Đỗ vividly remembered it:
It was the beginning of the network between the community and the
Republicans. It was a honeymoon period. [California State] Senator Ed
Royce sent two of his assistants to monitor the situation and ask what they
could do. Finally, we suggested that Royce prepare a statement and have a
representative come to the meeting and read it before the Medi-Cal fraud
committee. I remembered that it was very emotional for us to have him to

35
Người Việt Daily News, 4 March 1984, 3.

36
David Holley, “Plea Linked to Arrest in Medi-Cal Fraud Case,” Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 9 March
1984, OC_A1.

37
David Holley, “Plea Linked to Arrest in Medi-Cal Fraud Case,” Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 9 March
1984, OC_A1.

38
The Vietnamese Community of Santa Clara County, “A Communique Regarding the Collective Arrest of
Vietnamese Physicians and Pharmacists on 2-15-84 in California,” Người Việt Daily News, 24 February
1984, 35.

185
appear before the committee, because committee members recognized that
they have American support.”
39

Ironically, the event did more to cement a lasting relationship between Vietnamese
Americans and the Republican Party than for building solidarity among competing
camps in Little Saigon.
40

The Republican Paternal Connection
In the spring of 1984, the Washington Post traveled to Orange County to gauge
Vietnamese American political participation and concluded that homeland politics
steered the older generation towards the Republican Party. On the other hand, “When
you are thinking about politics right here, you get close to the Democrats,” stated one
of their bilingual informants, a recently naturalized citizen still torn between the two
parties.
41
But the Post’s armchair sociology did not square with facts on the ground.
Orange County had very few Democratic politicians and none of them did as much as
the Republicans to endear themselves to the Vietnamese refugees on local issues. Even

39
Yen Do, with Jeff Brody, Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton: Jeffrey Brody, 2003)
58-59.

40
Refugee nationalism worked much differently than the case of Monterey Park, where racism against
Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs mobilized Asians, Asian Americans, Latinos, and white liberals in
aggressive, far more confrontational solidarity against racial discrimination. Asians in Monterey Park were
not waiting for the Democratic or Republican Party to come to their rescue. For more on Monterey Park,
see Timothy Fong, The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1994); John Horton, The Politics of Diversity: Immigration, Resistance, and Change
in Monterey Park, California (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); and Leland Saito, Race and
Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb (Urbana-Champagne: University of
Illinois Press, 1998).

41
Haynes Johnson and Thomas Edsall, “Asian Americans Torn Between Two Parties,” Washington Post, 2
June 1984, A1

186
Kathy Buchoz, the one-time mayor of Westminster, left the Democratic Party in 1982.
At a time when “there were very, very, very few Caucasian people shopping there” in
Little Saigon, Buchoz was among the first.
42
In fact, no politician was more beloved by
the Vietnamese business community than Kathy Buchoz.
43

Without people like Kathy Buchoz and Vietnamese Americans, the city of
Westminster did not have much potential for economic growth. This small, sleepy
town of 71,000, located just south of Disneyland, endured more than its share of self-
inflicted problems since incorporating in 1957.
44
In 1961, five city officials were
indicted on bribery charges, cementing Westminster’s reputation as a corrupt bedroom
community. People would say about Westminster: “Of yes, we have heard of
Westminster. You serve on the council, you go to jail.” When conservative voters in
1978 overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, a radical restructuring of municipal
wealth in California benefitting cities with abundant property and sales tax bases, they
allowed ideological loyalties to place cities like Westminster in an economically
precarious position.
45
A semi-rural backwater, Westminster collected relatively little in

42
John Horn, “American and Vietnamese Cultures Blend in Orange County’s Little Saigon,” Orange
County Register, 13 March 1988, 103.

43
Two of my interviewees, Tony Lâm and Pastor Nguyễn Xuân Bảo, gave Buchoz the lion’s share of the
credit for turning Bolsa Ave, as opposed to some other street in Orange County, into the main thoroughfare
of Little Saigon. In their own brief history of Little Saigon, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce singled
out Kathy Buchoz as the politician who “poured her heart into the community and always showed up to
special events in her yellow-colored Vietnamese áo dài dress.” See 1990 Vietnamese Business Directory
(Westminster, CA: Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, 1990), 14.

44
For more on the history of Westminster, see Elisabeth E. Orr, Living Along the Fault Line: Community,
Suburbia, and Multiethnicity in Garden Grove and Westminster, California, 1900-1995 (Ph.D. dissertation,
Indiana University, 2000).

45
For more on the effects of Proposition 13 see Proposition 13: Its Impact on California and Implications for
State and Local Finance (Sacramento: California Budget Project, 1997); Daniel A. Smith, Tax Crusaders and
187
property taxes and had few retail stores prior to the arrival of Vietnamese businesses.
Ed Bynon, the former publisher of the Westminster Journal once quipped that, “If it
were not for the Westminster Mall, there’d be no Westminster.”
46

It took three tries before Buchoz, a small business owner herself, finally earned a
seat on Westminster’s city council in 1980. Despite being a lifelong Democrat in a
region that despised “liberals” only slightly less than “communists,” Buchoz garnered
the most votes in Westminster’s history, with her husband serving as her campaign
manager. In 1981, she was elected mayor, and immediately inherited a major
controversy, fueled by residents near Little Saigon, where nearly 350 Vietnamese
businesses had sprung up.
Slow-growth residents in Westminster had gathered 170 signatures in opposition
to further Indochinese business expansion. On the 9000 block of Bolsa Ave alone, they
had witnessed over 25 Vietnamese businesses open up.
47
Williamsburg Center, home to
Bolsa’s first Vietnamese businesses such as Hoà Bình Market, Danh’s Pharmacy, and
Le Croissante Dore, eventually changed its name to Hoà Bình Center once white-

the Politics of Direct Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1998); and Jeffrey I. Chapman, The Continuing
Redistribution of Fiscal Stress: The Long Run Consequences of Proposition 13 (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy, 1998).

46
Down on its Luck: Westminster’s Saddled with a Corrupt Past and an Uncertain Future, Andy Rose, Los
Angeles Times, 19 Oct 1986, OC-A1. The city came dangerously close to filing for bankruptcy in 1987. An
unpopular but necessary hike in the utility tax enabled the city to forgo laying-off 30 police and fire
fighters.

47
New Business Information for 9000 block of Bolsa Ave. from January 1977 to January 1984, provided by
Westminster City Hall, 18 April 2006.

188
owned businesses had moved out.
48
By the early 1980s, Vietnamese Amerian
entrepreneurs had transformed Bolsa Avenue from a street “lined with bean fields and
half-empty shopping centers” into “the Vietnamese capitol of the United States.”
49

Resentful white businesses owners confided to reporters that, “People are really ticked
off” because they feel the Vietnamese are “taking over.”
50
“Everywhere you look
anymore, it is Viet Cong,” said another.
51
Buchoz tried to placate these concerned
citizens, only to be outraged by their unbridled racism. “I went to a few of these
meetings,” said Buchoz, “and it was like being with the Ku Klux Klan. It was very
emotional and ugly. They said they were worried about property values, (even though)
property values have gone up since the Vietnamese arrived.”
52
The rest of the city
council had no problem siding with her and the Vietnamese refugees.
Many of the big entrepreneurs and landlords, most notably the future “Godfather
of Little Saigon” Frank Jao, were 1
st
or 2
nd
generation Vietnamese of Chinese origin.
Most had owned businesses in Vietnam and found it advantageous to pursue an
entrepreneurial career abroad once they realized that increased refugee migration into

48
Haynes Johnson and Thomas Edsall, “Asian Americans Torn Between Two Parties,” Washington Post, 2
June 1984, A1.

49
Kathleen Day and David Holley, “Boom on Bolsa: Vietnamese Create Their Own Saigon,” Los Angeles
Times, 30 Sept 1984, 1.

50
Steve Padilla, “Vietnamese Businesses Thriving in Southland Despite Some Opposition,” Los Angeles
Times, 10 July 1981, OC-C1.

51
Joe Starita, “American Dream is Elusive: Culture Shock Poses Problem, But Vietnamese Make Strides in
California,” Miami Herald, 28 April 1985, 9D

52
Kathleen Day and David Holley, “Boom on Bolsa: Vietnamese Create Their Own Saigon,” Los Angeles
Times, 30 Sept 1984, 1.

189
places like Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and San Jose helped make ethnic
economies a reality. Some arrived with reserves of gold and diamonds, but all of them
spoke fluent Cantonese, which opened the door to Chinese customers and business
contacts all over Asia and North America.
53

It did not take long for Saigon’s former business class to give Los Angeles
Chinatown a Vietnamese flavor. In 1976, one could shop at Man Wah Company, just off
College Street, for bootlegged Vietnamese music cassettes, Chinese herbal medicine,
Vietnamese periodicals and books, fish sauce from Thailand, shrimp paste from the
Philippines, Chinese sausage from Canada, pickled scallions from Japan, and instant
noodles from Taiwan.
54
Its owner, Roger Chen, a young Taiwanese developer, joined
forces with Frank Jao in 1981 to buy up properties on the 9000 block of Bolsa Avenue
in Westminster.
55
With a growing Vietnamese population, affordable property, and
local politicians sympathetic to Vietnamese entrepreneurs, Orange County was the
gamble that paid off. That same year, Duong Huu Chuong, a pharmacist back in
Vietnam, opened up the largest Asian supermarket in Orange County at the time.
56
He

53
Penelope McMillan, “It is Chinatown, With Subtitles,” Los Angeles Times, 14 February 1982, B1; Steve
Padilla, “Vietnamese Businesses Thriving in Southland Despite Some Opposition,” Los Angeles Times, 10
July 1981, OC-C1. For more on the Sino-Vietnamese see Steven J. Gold, “Chinese-Vietnamese
Entrepreneurs in California,” in The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring, eds.
Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, & Lucie Cheng (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1994); and Minh-Hoa
Ta, Twice a Minority: A Participatory Study of the Chinese-Vietnamese Adaptation Experiences in Vietnam and the
United States (Ed.D. dissertation, University of San Francisco, 2000);

54
Trang Den magazine, advertisement for Man Wah, 6 March 1976, 1:1, 42.

55
Jeffrey Brody, “Frank Jao: Real-Estate and Power Broker,” Orange County Register, 11 January 1987, C01.

56
Rev. Nguyễn Xuan Bao, the founder of Vietnamese Christian Reformed Church, remembers upon his
arrival to Orange County in 1982 that, “the biggest market among many others was Wai-Wai (which was
owned by Duong Huu Chuong).” The Vietnamese Community in Orange County, An Oral History, vol. 2:
Religion & Resttlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana, CA: Newhope Library, 1991) 46.
190
had opened a small grocery store in Inglewood back in 1979 with $5000 he had
managed to smuggle out of Vietnam. By 1984, he, along with Chinese friends in
Taiwan, Thailand, and the States operated an import/export business that supplied over
100 grocery stores in Southern California.
57
From 1975 to 1984, developers from
Taiwan and Hong Kong had invested $10 million along Bolsa Ave alone.
58
Thus Little
Saigon’s growth, at least from an economic standpoint, mirrored that of the expanding
Chinese American suburb Monterey Park. The presence of transnational behemoths
soon made obsolete mom-and-pop grocers like Santa Ana’s tiny Saigon Market that
opened in 1976 and the Hoà Bình Market that opened on Bolsa Ave in 1978. And the
fact that virtually all of these supermarkets accepted food stamps made them another
pillar of the ethnic economy—the other being physicians and pharmacists—whose so-
called model minority success would not have been possible without the welfare state
first putting money in their customers’ pockets.
59

57
David Holley, “Orange County’s ‘Little Saigon’: Chinese, Vietnamese Feel Tension, But They Coexist,”
Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 3 October 1984, 1.

58
David Holley, “Orange County’s ‘Little Saigon’: Chinese, Vietnamese Feel Tension, But They Coexist,”
Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 3 October 1984, 1.

59
According to a survey of 1384 Southeast Asian refugees in Orange County, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and
Houston conducted in 1984 by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), only 25% received no
public assistance at all, 58% received food stamps, and 23% received Aid for Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC) money. They calculated that every month, “an eligible family of four officially receives
$601 in Orange County, $531 in Seattle, $444.50 in Boston, $368 in Chicago, and $118 in Houston.” Those
stark differences in public benefits, factored alongside Southern California’s favorable political and
environmental climate, made it even more attractive to secondary migrants. See Southeast Asian Refugee
Self-Sufficiency Study, Final Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Social Security Administration, Office of Refugee Resttlement, January 1985) 152-153. In 1985, the
Sacramento Bee stated that, “About 14,000 of Sacramento’s estimated 18,000 Indochinese (77%) are on
welfare.” See Hilary Abramson, “Refugees Grapple with a Mystifying New Home,” Sacramento Bee, 28
April 1985, C07.

191
Though mayor for only one year, Buchoz made it her mission “to get totally
involved in the Vietnamese community” in ways that exhibited a genuine affection—
even if paternalistic—towards her new neighbors.
60
Buchoz made it fashionable for
other women to start wearing South Vietnamese áo dài dresses.
61
She encouraged the
Vietnamese to join the mainstream Chamber of Commerce and advocated on their
behalf to the white business community. Before the summer of 1981, the Westminster
Chamber of Commerce had only one Vietnamese member. Six were admitted during
July alone.
62
Although the neighboring cities of Santa Ana and Garden Grove had a
head start in the Little Saigon sweepstakes with their already larger Vietnamese
populations—explaining why many Vietnamese from afar still say Santa Ana when they
refer to Little Saigon—it did not take long for businesses to flock to Westminster.
63

60
Marilyn Kay Kukhler, “Orange County’s Women Mayors: The Involvement Began Early,” Los Angeles
Times, 26 Nov 1981, OC-C1.

61
A photograph of Kathy Buchoz wearing a South Vietnamese áo dài dress appears in the 1990 edition of
the Vietnamese Business Directory (Westminster, CA: Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County,
1990) 14.

62
Steve Padilla, “Vietnamese Businesses Thriving in Southland Despite Some Opposition,” Los Angeles
Times, 10 July 1981, OC-C1.

63
Santa Ana was already the home of the Vietnamese American Mutual Association and Orange County’s
first Vietnamese stores back in 1976. Ephemera from Santa Ana College and Orange County Register articles
revealed that students organized the first Vietnamese American Tet Festival at Santa Ana College in early
1978. A hand count of the businesses in the 1986 Vietnamese Business Directory of Southern California showed
Westminster in the lead with 358 businesses, followed by Garden Grove with 221, Santa Ana with 170, Los
Angles with 164, and Long Beach with 51. According to a Santa Anta College Inter-Office Memo, dated
1/1978: "160,000 refugees in the US. 20,000 of them are in OC." "Distribution of refugees in Orange
County: 28% Santa Ana, 13% Garden Grove, 8% Westminster, 8% Huntington Beach, 7% Orange, 6% Costa
Mesa, 6% Fullerton, 2% Buena Park, Less than 1% are distributed elsewhere." See Gayle Morrison Files on
Southeast Asian Refugees. MS-SEA014. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine,
California. Box 3, Folder 28; Also see G.M. Bush, “Garden Grove: Buena Clinton, Redevelopment Appear
to be Top Issues,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County edition, 3 November 1984, OC4. For more on Santa
Ana and race, see Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996).
192
Ending the policy of slow-growth that was the norm in most of Orange County would
be the key, Buchoz knew, to Westminster surviving in the post-Proposition-13 political
economy. By 1984, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in America estimated that
Orange County had 650 Vietnamese businesses generating at least $300 million in sales
annually.
64

Ironically, Buchoz’s strong relationship with the Vietnamese community made
her the target of race-baiting from fellow Democrat Al Serrato, who in 1982 ran against
Buchoz for the newly created 32
nd
State Senate seat. In statements decried by Buchoz
and others as “blatantly racist,” Al Serrato’s campaign mailed out leaflets charging that
Buchoz “marched with Vietnamese in black pajamas,” received key financial support
from a “Vietnamese businessman,” and made “Indochinese refugees” a key issue in her
campaign.
65
The desperate xenophobic tactic of lumping refugees with the Việt-Cộng
scared enough people to leave Buchoz 400 votes short of the Democratic nomination,
but Serrato finished a distant third.
66
The winner of the primary, whom Serrato labeled
a “liberal” with links to anti-war power couple Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden,
eventually lost in the general election to Republican Ed Royce, another future friend of
the Vietnamese refugees. Buchoz returned to the Westminster City Council, but only

64
Kathleen Day and David Holley, “Boom on Bolsa: Vietnamese Create Their Own Saigon,” Los Angeles
Times, 30 Sept 1984, 1; A similar statistic is cited in Joe Starita, “American Dream is Elusive: Culture
Shock Poses Problem, But Vietnamese Make Strides in California,” Miami Herald, 28 April 1985, 9D.

65
John O’Dell & Jeffrey Perlman, “Racism Charged After Last-Minute Political Mailers,” Los Angeles
Times, 7 June 1982, OC-A1; Kenneth Reich and Jeffrey Perlman, “Dirty Campaign Tactics Creating
Alarm,” Los Angeles Times, 14 June 1982, B1.

66
Jeffrey Perlman, Buchoz Says Serrato Apologized for ‘Racist’ Campaign Mailer, Los Angeles Times, 18
June 1982, OC-A5.

193
after switching to the Republican Party. Refugee nationalism and the politics of rescue
had created an unusual political climate in which Republicans, at least in their dealings
with Vietnamese Americans, could claim to be the party of racial tolerance. Upon
learning Buchoz would step down from politics after the 1984 election, Người Việt Daily
News put her on the cover of their November 2 issue, with the rare English headline,
“Thank You, Kathy Buchoz.”
67
After leaving politics, she took a senior position in
Frank Jao’s property management firm Bridgecreek.

We are not VC!
As the Al Serrato debacle and everyday interactions revealed, many Americans
could not—or would not—differentiate between the Viet-Cong and the refugees. In
1980, avowed white supremacist and surprise San Diego Congressional candidate Tom
Metzger could be found voicing farfetched racist claims, such as the one about “former
Viet Cong guerillas…living in the Orange County suburbs.”
68
Many of these remarks
did not distinguish the Vietnamese from other Asians. A Japanese American Deputy
Sheriff in Sacramento noted how the “fires of racial hatred” had “flared up against
other Asians who’ve been called ‘V.C.’…since the refugees arrived.”
69

67
Microfilm archives of Người Việt Daily News are available at the Langson Library, University of
California at Irvine.

68
Nancy Skelton, “Burgener Presses Campaign Attack on Metzger,” Los Angeles Times, San Diego Edition, 1
October 1980, SD_A3.

69
Hilary Abramson, “Refugees Grapple with a Mystifying New Home,” Sacramento Bee, 28 April 1985, C07.
Sociologists refer to this concept as racial lumping. See Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity:
Bridging Identities and Institutions (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).

194
Cultural brokers, to their credit, took a far more measured response to being
lumped with the Việt-Cộng. Rejecting the extremist playbook of threatening, beating,
or killing fellow Vietnamese accused of communist ties, the cultural brokers opted to
educate their co-ethnics and the general public. Trần Khánh Vân, gunned down by
mysterious Vietnamese assailants outside a Westminster restaurant back in 1986,
offered to publish a Vietnamese-language essay detailing his anti-communist
credentials and essentially wishing his attackers well in locating the real communists in
Little Saigon. From his hospital bed Trần, 44, told the Los Angeles Times, “If I meet
them, I tell them it is wrong, I’m on your side.”
70
When Yến Đỗ’s company broadcast
images allegedly portraying socialist Vietnam in a positive light, the editor of Người Việt
Daily News feared retribution. Two days later, on the night of April 24, 1989, extremists
torched one of his delivery trucks and spray painted death threats in front of his
building. “It was a mistake,” Đỗ insisted. “I apologize. I am not pro-communist. I
oppose normalizing relations with Vietnam.”
71

College students did the best they could to educate the general public about
Vietnamese culture and history from a refugee perspective. They organized the first Tết
festivals on community college campuses in 1978. The one at Orange Coast College
took place in the cafeteria from 6-10pm on February 5.
72
In 1977, while Hanoi still

70
Nancy Wride, “Gunshot Victim: Vietnamese Immigrant Still Fearful,” Los Angeles Times, 22 March 1986,
OC_A1.

71
Jeffrey Brody and Le Kim Dinh, “Vietnamese Paper’s Editor Threatened,” Orange County Register, 26
April 1989, B6.

72
Program for the Tet Festival, Santa Ana College, 7 February 1978 and Program for the Tet Festival,
Orange Coast College, 5 February 1978. See Gayle Morrison Files on Southeast Asian Refugees. MS-
SEA014. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Box 3, Folder 28.
195
banned such events, students at Cal State Long Beach organized the first Vietnamese
American beauty pageant.
73
Legendary exile musician Phạm Duy, far from being
invisible this period, served as one of the judges for the 1984 pageant.
74
Throughout the
1980s, Vietnamese Student Associations (VSA) organized major culture night
performances during the spring that drew from talent off campus as well. USC students
held their 1984 show at Bovard Auditorium with the help of professional singers like
Duy Quang—son of Phạm Duy—and Jo Marcell along with assistance from the VSA’s
at UCLA, Pasadena City College, Cal State Long Beach, and Cal State Northridge.
75

Many of these same performers, plus renowned vocalist Khánh Ly, performed at the
Pasadena City College culture night just two weeks later. Proceeds from the event went
to the boat people still living in Thailand.
76

Because of language barriers, educating people about the refugee version of
Vietnamese history brought mixed results. When Nam Lộc, the Catholic Charities
refugee caseworker, gave a guest lecture at UCLA prior to the 10
th
anniversary of the
fall of Saigon, he did not realize how little the class of 30 knew about the Vietnam War

73
Full page advertisement for 8
th
annual Vietnamese American Beauty Pageant (18 August, 1984), Người
Việt Daily News, 6 July 1984, 19; For more about Vietnamese beauty pageants, see Nhi T. Lieu,
“Remembering ‘the Nation’ through Pageantry: Femininity and the Politics of Vietnamese Womanhood in
the Hoa Hau Ao Dai Contest,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies Vol. 21. No. 1/2, Asian American
Women (University of Nebraska Press, 2000) 127-151.

74
Front page photograph, Người Việt Daily News, 26 August 1984, 1.

75
Full page advertisement for USC Vietnamese Student Association Culture Night, Người Việt Daily News,
25 April 1984, 19.

76
Advertisement for Pasadena City College Vietnamese Student Association Culture Night, Người Việt
Daily News, 2 May 1984, 19.

196
and the Vietnamese people. Only two students raised their hands when 40-year-old
Nam Lộc asked how many knew which side the U.S. aided during the Vietnam War,
with one student claiming the U.S. went to war against all of Vietnam. Even worse, the
majority of students had no idea why the Vietnamese came to America, with three
quoting their parents that Little Saigon was an enclave of “illegal immigrants.”
77

Having composed “Farewell, Saigon” back in 1975 for himself and his people,
Nam Lộc decided to produce a new refugee song, this time with English lyrics so the
rest of America could understand all the hardship and tragedy that distinguished the
Vietnamese American experience from that of others. He called it Xin Đời Một Nự
Cười—Return Life a Smile.
I left, when Saigon was dying,
Tôi bước đi, khi Sài Gòn Trong cơn hấp hối.
Just like a forsaken lover clinging to her last breath.
Như một người tình phụ thở hơi cuối cùng.
When I left, Tan Son Nhat was engulfed in smoke and fire,
Tôi bước đi Tân Sơn Nhất lửa khói ngập trời,
Shops were abruptly abandoned in despair
Khu thương xá cửa khép cộc đời,
Boats were aimlessly sailed to sea.
Những con tầu ngơ ngác ra khơi.
I left, through thorny jungles in darkness,
Tôi bước đi, qua đường rừng chồng gai tăm tối.
Feeling the pain of having lost a loved one.
Như cuộc đời ở lại từ khi mất người.
I left, like a centipede pulling its life,
Tôi bước đi, như con rết lê lết cuộc đời
Like an exhausted butterfly wearily flapping its wings,
Như thân bướm đôi cánh rã rời
Whose sorrow is disguised as a desolate soul.
Lấy u sầu cho dấu tả tơi

77
Nam Lộc, “Xin Đời Một Nự Cười,” Việt Weekly (Orange County), October 2005

197

Freedom! Oh, Freedom! I pay with tears.
TỰ DO ơi, TƯ DO! Tôi trả bằng nước mắt.
Freedom! Oh, Freedom! We pay with our blood.
TƯ DO hỡi TỰ DO! Anh trao bằng máu xương.
Freedom! Oh, Freedom! She pays with her body.
TỰ DO ơi, TƯ DO! Em đổi bằng thân xác.
Only for Freedom, do we live in exile.
Vì hai chữ TỰ DO! Ta mang đời lưu vong.

I press myself into a flimsy boat worn by wind and fog,
Tôi nép thân trên mảnh thuyền mong manh sương gió
Drifting as if to approach my own grave.
Như một người tìm đường về nơi đáy mồ.
But I am leaving for I do not want to be a prisoner.
Tôi bước đi vì không muốn làm kẻ tội đồ,
I want to continue a human life,
Vì tôi muốn lại kiếp con người,
A life with all its smiles.
Muốn cuộc đời còn có những nụ cười.

The Los Angeles CBS affiliate agreed to play the song during a feature segment looking
back at ten years of Southeast Asian American history, but when it aired, there was only
background music and no English lyrics to be found. “Dammit,” cried his actress
friend Kiều Chinh, who was interviewed by KCBS for the segment, “Why cannot we
just have one good English-language history so that everyone will know what we
sacrificed to live in exile?”
78

Ms. Kiều Chinh’s anger was likely exacerbated by the fact the Vietnamese
community had spent a good chunk of the prior year pushing back against negative
depictions of their former nation in the PBS documentary, Vietnam: A Televised History.

78
Nam Lộc, “Xin Đời Một Nự Cười,” Việt Weekly (Orange County), October 2005, translation by Phương
Nguyễn

198
Airing in 1983, ten years after Nixon withdrew U.S. combat forces from Vietnam, the
13-hour series sought to present a thorough and definitive examination of the only war
the United States ever lost. To that end, the filmmakers interviewed senior government
officials like U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese General
Nguyễn Võ Giap, as well as military grunts.
Over the course of several weeks, Người Việt News published a lengthy series on
the history of the Vietnam War from the refugee perspective. On Sunday, August 19,
1984, a committee of 15 organizations staged a protest in front of KOCE, the Orange
County PBS affiliate. By Người Việt’s estimate, over 1000 demonstrators showed up
holding signs and banners bearing chants such as, “Vietnam: A TV History is a series
of lies;” “KOCE: Communists use you today, kill you tomorrow;” and “Human Rights
for Vietnam.”
79
They objected most to the film’s romantic portrayal of North
Vietnam—based on official North Vietnamese documents and films already pre-
screened by the Việt-Cộng—and for accepting without question Hanoi’s claim to be the
heirs to the Vietnamese independence movement.
Người Việt rarely published articles for English readers, but dedicated a
considerable number of pages to a point-by-point critique of the PBS documentary by
James Banerian, entitled Losers are Pirates. Banerian, an independent literary critic and
translator of Vietnamese literature, visited Vietnamese communities like those in
Seattle to share his work. He consulted with well-known refugee intellectuals such as

79
Người Việt Daily News, 22 August 1984, pp 1,9,15.

199
Yến Đỗ of Người Việt Daily News to help him write his 306 page book, published jointly
with the Vietnamese Action Committee.
80

The community put such a high price on proper representation of their past that
they had to accept whatever ideological baggage came along with allies they befriended.
Though James Banerian never styled himself a partisan, the same could not be said of
numerous Republican allies. Thus was the price of refugee gratitude. So was the
expectation that refugees assimilate. By 1984, American businesses stepped up their
advertising in Vietnamese newspapers in an attempt to “crack the Vietnamese
market.”
81
But Vietnamese entrepreneurs felt just as much pressure to avert an anti-
Vietnamese backlash. Even one Westminster mayor admitted that his town had “a lot
of racists” who “have been here a long time, and they see (Vietnamese) who came here
10 years ago, boat people out of Camp Pendleton, who are now driving fancy cars and
living in nice, big homes.”
82
That’s where organizations like the Vietnamese Chamber
of Commerce played an important role.
Founded in 1980, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce offered cultural
orientations so members learned to adjust to American social customs and expectations.
City Hall had received complaints that Vietnamese-only business signs dominated,
making it hard for non-fluent readers to distinguish one business from the next. Likely

80
“Bạch Thư ‘Thua là Giặc’ và James Banerian” (Losers are Pirates and James Banerian) Người Việt Daily
News, 14 October 1984.

81
Vietnamese Businesses Thriving in Southland Despite Some Opposition, Steve Padilla, Los Angeles
Times, 10 July 1981, OC-C1.

82
UPI, “Developers are Thinking Big About Little Saigon’s Future,” Daily News of Los Angeles, 19 April
1987, 7.

200
plaintiffs probably included firefighters, police, and other emergency officials who
found it hard to do their job without the aid of English-language signs to identify
businesses.
83
Under the leadership of Phil Trinh and Tony Lam, who in Vietnam were
fluent in American culture, the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce
successfully averted the legislative controversy that erupted when the city councils of
Gardena and Monterey Park passed laws requiring English on all business signs.
84
At
the same time, Westminster officials in the early 1980s were not ready for a shopping
center named Saigon Shopping Center, approving instead the name Westminster
Colony Plaza for a newly constructed location on Bolsa Ave.
85

The Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce also convinced the refugees to deposit
their savings in banks instead of their mattresses. Two financial institutions, Delta
Savings and Loan and United American Bank, sprang up in Westminster in 1982 and
1983, respectively, with high expectations. They were the first banks geared specifically
towards the Vietnamese American community. Without organized labor unions or
assistance from the homeland, the refugees initially relied a great deal on ethnic banks
for access to credit.
86

83
Vietnamese Businesses Thriving in Southland Despite Some Opposition, Steve Padilla, Los Angeles
Times, 10 July 1981, OC-C1.

84
Rich Connell, “Post Signs in English, New City Law Says,” Los Angeles Times, 30 Dec 1982.

85
Yen Do with Jeff Brody. Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News, (Fullerton: Jeffrey Brody, 2003)

86
Ethnic banks also served European immigrants as well. In her history of New Deal culture, Lizabeth
Cohen details how business at ethnic banks declined during the 1930s as European ethnics increasingly
deposited their money in non-ethnic banks. See Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in
Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also Gary Dymski and
Lisa Mohanty, “Credit and Banking Structure: Asian and African-American Experience in Los Angeles,”
201
Serving a customer base with low incomes, no credit history, and poor English
skills, both institutions reported modest success. At the end of the 1984 fiscal year,
United American had a loan portfolio of $4 million against almost $10 million in assets.
Delta Savings had $8 million in loans against $18 million in assets. In order to compete
against bigger, more established institutions, both banks were “bending over
backwards” to approve loans to high-risk borrowers who would never qualify for loans
elsewhere.
87
Delta enticed new customers with interest rates averaging an entire
percentage more in return than giant institutions like Bank of America offered.
88
Based
on tips from Vietnamese informants, a federal investigator learned of the rumor that
“Delta Savings and Loan was launched almost exclusively with funds generated by
resistance groups and serves as the main financial conduit for Admiral Hoang Co
Minh’s National United Front for the Liberation of Viet-Nam, together with its allied
organizations the Viet-Nam Liberation Front and the National Support Movement for
Resistance in Viet-Nam.”
89
Despite questionable lending practices and origins,

The American Economic Review, vol. 89, no. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Eleventh
Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1999), 362-366.

87
Banks Catering to Asians Face a Culture Gap, Leslie Berkman, 30 Sept 1984, Los Angeles Times, OC-C1;
In 1984, Orange County’s welfare rolls included 22,488 Indochinese refugees, accounting for nearly half the
total county Indochinese population of 55,000 to 60,000.
87
With many of the newly arrived refugees likely
working in the ethnic economy and getting paid under the table—partly so they could continue receiving
public assistance—it is amazing how many people were able to extricate themselves from poverty. See
Indochinese Refugees a Costly Load for Counties, Penelope McMillan, 16 Sept 1984, Los Angeles Times, p.
SD3.

88
Half-page advertisement for Delta Savings and Loan with chart comparing interest rates between Delta,
Bank of America, and Security Pacific National Bank, Người Việt Daily News, 4 January 1984, 11.

89
William Cassidy, “A Study of Vietnamese Involvement in Clandestine International Currency
Transfers,” written report presented at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer
Legislation,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions of the Committee on Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 98
th
Congress, 2
nd
Session on S. 747 to prohibit any
202
financial institutions like Delta and United American provided one of the few lifelines
for many of the refugees at that time to attain middle class status.

Contradictions and Conflicts with the Model Minority
Signs of economic success and refugee gratitude in Little Saigon gave the false
impression that Vietnamese Americans entrepreneurs had the right cultural outlook for
breaking with the past. In fact, a combination of refugee survivors’ guilt and Vietnam’s
own economic woes made for an uneasy and contradictory transnational economic
relationship, most of it on the down low.
90
The Hanoi government, though thousands
of miles away, used their leverage against loved ones still in Vietnam to continue
exploiting the refugee population. For instance, they abused the Orderly Departure
Program to pressure Vietnamese Americans, now part of the working class, into paying
up to $25,000 per person or else wait years and years until relatives finally received
permission to emigrate.
91
By 1981, Vietnamese authorities brought up the need for a

person from exporting from the United States any currency directly or indirectly to any person in Vietnam.
20 June 1984,18.

90
Transnationalism refers to imagined communities that transcend traditional national boundaries. The
concept also challenges zero-sum game paradigms that assume that people assume one nationality at a time,
thus an emphasis on letting go of past ties. Transnationalism’s most ardent proponents, partly because they
study large corporations or elites, often argue for the decreasing relevance of the nation-state, but these two
concepts are not inherently contradictory. For more on transnationalism see Linda G. Basch, Nina Glick
Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and
Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994); Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at
Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Aihwa Ong, Flexible
Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

91
William Cassidy, “A Study of Vietnamese Involvement in Clandestine International Currency
Transfers,” written report presented at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer
Legislation,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions of the Committee on Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 98
th
Congress, 2
nd
Session on S. 747 to prohibit any
203
new “efficient exploitation organization…to exhaust the foreign exchange capabilities
of overseas Vietnamese.”
92
A newspaper article published in the Washington Post and
Los Angeles Times back in 1977 gave readers the impression that Vietnamese who sent
letters asking for remittances would enjoy “a few privileges” over their fellow
compatriots.
93
Without using the word “refugee,” Vietnam’s Council of Ministries made
it clear when referring to “Vietnamese residing in countries outside the socialist
system” that they were the desired donor group.
94
Desperate to accumulate valuable
foreign currency necessary for puchasing foreign goods, the Hanoi treasury and
Communist officials made sure to skim a large portion of remittance money.
95

Their plan to bleed the refugee population dry seemed to be working. “I would
send $1,000.00 so [my family] could get $10.00 if that is what they asked,” admitted one
male refugee. “I have no choice. I want my son to stay alive. I want my wife to stay

person from exporting from the United States any currency directly or indirectly to any person in Vietnam.
20 June 1984, 11; Oral Statement by Madame Le Thi Anh (same hearing) 46.

92
“Concerning the Question of Finding and Exploiting Foreign Exchange,” Tin Sáng newspaper (Hồ Chí
Minh City), 17 February 1981, reprinted in written statement presented at Senate Hearing 98-935,
“Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 11.

93
Vu Thuy Hoang, “Viet Refugees in U.S. Aiding Saigon,” Los Angeles Times (originally published in the
Washington Post) 14 October 1977, C8.

94
Decision 151/HDBT, issued by Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s Council of Ministers on 31 August 1982,
in report by William Cassidy presented at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer
Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 12.

95
For more on remittances see Chun-Hsi Wu, Dollars, Dependents, and Dogma: Overseas Chinese Remittances
to Communist China (Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1967); Caroline Kieu
Linh Valverde, Making Transnational Viet Nam: Vietnamese American Community—Viet Nam Linkages
through Money, Music and Modems (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2002); Lan Thi
Thanh Pham, Access to Credit, Remittances, and Household Welfare: The Case of Viet Nam (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Minnesota, 2008).

204
alive.”
96
According to the Commerce Department, the overseas Vietnamese sent $90
million in legal remittances in 1988, which was a far, far larger amount than the $6.3
million Cuban Americans remitted through legal channels that same year.
97
But
Vietnamese refugees often exceeded the $1200 per year legal limit through the
assistance of underground money collectors and shipping businesses that routed
remittances through Canada and France to bypass U.S. customs laws. According to
some local and federal law enforcement officials in the U.S., Hanoi operatives were
responsible for many of these remittance collection centers posing as legitimate
businesses, a charge that Hanoi’s United Nations representative declared “absolutely
wrong.”
98
But Người Việt Daily News warned their readers to stay away from such places,
especially after three people in Saigon died from ingesting expired pills shipped from
Paris by two Communist-run couriers, Vina Paris and Vietnam Diffusion.
99

Testimony by Vietnamese Americans before the Senate Banking, Housing, and
Urban Affairs Committee on June 20, 1984 revealed that virtually all Vietnamese
Americans sent remittances and had access to multiple couriers in every Vietnamese
community in the United States. The Hearings also revealed why refugees presumably
living safe and sound in the United States could not afford to stop thinking about the
Communists. Their loved ones in South Vietnam were being taxed, threatened, and

96
Testimony of Sgt. John W. Willoughby, Jr., New Orleans Police Department, at Senate Hearing 98-935,
“Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 29.

97
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

98
John Mintz, “Refugees’ Money to Vietnam Kin Shores Economy There,” Washington Post, 22 September
1984, A1.

99
“Gửi Thuốc Về Việt Nam” (Shipping Medicine to VN), Người Việt Daily News, 21 September 1984, 3.
205
extorted into writing letters begging for assistance. A witness going by Mr. X, and
wearing a mask in front of the U.S. Senate, had set up a secret code with his wife before
he escaped alone by boat. When he started receiving letters absent the obligatory photo
of his wife and, as Mr. X testified, all of a sudden asking “what am I doing in America,
how much money I make, where I work at,” he suspected the Vietnamese police were
“forcing her to write what they want me to do for them and what they need, especially
money.”
100
Mr. Tran, a former Vietnamese Marine now living in Eastern New Orleans,
had no choice but to send remittances because, “If I no send the money my mother will
be put back in the (re-education) camp forever.” Because there was only one way to get
the money to his mother’s remote village, he begged authorities not to arrest the
currency man he dealt with.
101
Echoing the sentiments of early American colonists, Mr.
X declared, “Vietnamese here [in Virginia] are paying taxes. Also they have to pay an
additional tax for the Communists. Is that fair? No.”
102
Of course, Hanoi denied any
coercion in the matter, claiming that shipments to the “fatherland” were voluntary in
nature.
103

100
Testimony of Mr. X, at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June
1984, 36-37.

101
Testimony of Sgt. John W. Willoughby, Jr., New Orleans Police Department, at Senate Hearing 98-935,
“Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 29.

102
Testimony of Mr. X, at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June
1984, 61.

103
In a public statement, Vietnam’s deputy foreign minister said, “We see a role for the overseas
Vietnamese. We fully welcome any contribution by the overseas Vietnamese toward the fatherland. We
encourage them to help their families.” See Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register,
21 August 1988, K01.

206
Because refugees sent back goods as well as money, “opportunistic
businessmen”—as one police officer called them—were busy trafficking merchandise
whose ultimate destination was the black market in Vietnam.
104
U.S. law allowed small
shipments of humanitarian goods—such as food, clothing, and medicine—but all
parties knew, and one writer witnessed, “With the average Vietnamese earning $2 to $3
per week, the sale of a $75 cassette radio can earn enough money, even with the high
tax, to pay grocery bills for a month.”
105
Businesses in every Vietnamese community
engaged in this practice, but Orange County businesses grabbed the largest market
share. All those advertisements in the refugee press by air couriers, bookstores, and
pharmacies also selling consumer electronics made sense after a reporter from the
Orange County Register discovered one black market in Saigon “stocked with the latest
products, including Phillips and JVC remote-control color-television sets, Sony stereo
cassette recorders, Singer sewing machines, Winston cigarettes, Shaeffer pens, Proctor
Silex irons, Remington electric typewriters and Panasonic fans.”
106
Danh’s Pharmacy,
one of the first refugee businesses on Bolsa Ave., dedicated most of its store space to
those non-pharmaceutical items, and its owner confessed to moving 10,000 lbs of goods

104
Testimony of Detective James Bady, Arlington Police Department, at Senate Hearing 98-935,
“Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 49.

105
Jeffrey Brody, “Lifeline: Family in Vietnam Lives ‘From Package to Package,” Orange County Register,
21 August 1988, K06; The wife recommending a place in Texas was pulled from U.S. Senate testimony by
her husband, Mr. Y, who testified under oath that, “I send the money to a person with whom I am
acquainted, but my wife wrote to me saying that that is not sure. It is at a rate of exchange which is too
disadvantageous, is too low, and she gave me the name of another person in Texas to whom I should the
money, but I’ve seen no one it.” An astonished Senator William Armstrong replied, “Where would his wife
in Vietnam get the name of a person in Texas?” to which Mr. Y answered, “I do not know.” Testimony of
Mr. Y, at Senate Hearing 98-935, “Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 41.

106
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

207
per month to the motherland.
107
Despite the embargo, it was not unusual to see a
Danh’s Pharmacy-emblazoned calendar hanging in some house in Hồ Chí Minh City or
a wife all the way in Vietnam recommending a place in Texas so her husband on the
west coast could wire money back home.
108

In order to circumvent the $400 limit on goods, companies like AF Express
International on Bolsa Ave. accepted orders for $1900 Honda motor scooters while their
partner in Japan would ship the product to Vietnam.
109
"This year [1988] the big items
were water pumps, engines and tillers,” observed publisher Yến Đỗ, whose own
remittances supported relatives and friends in Vietnam. “Last year it was medicine.
Chain saws and motorcycles are good all the time."
110
Vietnamese Freight International
of Garden Grove, which reported moving 20,000 pounds of goods each month, fielded
orders from Vietnamese living as far away as Iowa and Minnesota.
111
It therefore came
as no surprise when the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County
estimated that the remittance business accounted for a staggering 50% of the ethnic
economy.
112

107
Jean Davidson, “Pipeline to Vietnam Fueled by Family Ties,” Los Angeles Times, 31 October 1988, 1.

108
Jeffrey Brody, “Lifeline: Family in Vietnam Lives ‘From Package to Package,” Orange County Register,
21 August 1988, K06.

109
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

110
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

111
Jean Davidson, “Pipeline to Vietnam Fueled by Family Ties,” Los Angeles Times, 31 October 1988, 1.

112
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

208
Though illegal, few federal officials had any interest in prosecuting Vietnamese
Americans. One police detective in Arlington, Virginia, after busting a proprietor
responsible for routinely shipping over $20,000 per week’s worth of pharmaceuticals to
the black market in Vietnam, was shocked when a U.S. Customs special agent promptly
told him, “No one is interested.”
113
A few token crackdowns during the 1980s did not
deter most Vietnamese Americans from continuing to violate the terms of the
embargo.
114
"How can a box that weighs 150 pounds have goods in it that cost less than
$400? Just look at what's being sold," mentioned one entrepreneur. "You send a
television over, a stereo cassette radio, a sewing machine, and you wrap it with clothes
and fabric. The embargo's a joke. The federal government never checks."
115
Or as one
expert on Vietnam noted, the government would care more if military hardware or
high-tech equipment changed hands.
116
Even ultra right wing anti-communist
Congressman Robert Dornan believed in the humanitarian principles behind
remittances, lobbying for the $400 limit “out of sympathy” for his Orange County
constituents.
117
People rarely talked very openly about the contradictions of refugee

113
Testimony of Detective James Bady, Arlington Police Department, at Senate Hearing 98-935,
“Vietnamese Currency Transfer Legislation,” 20 June 1984, 49.

114
Jeffrey Brody, “US Customs Seizes County Goods, Gold Bound for Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 25
October 1988, A01.

115
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

116
Jeffrey Brody, “US Customs Seizes County Goods, Gold Bound for Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 25
October 1988, A01.

117
Jeffrey Brody, “Pipeline to Vietnam,” Orange County Register, 21 August 1988, K01.

209
remittances because virtually everyone was implicated in it. As a result, the refugee
community spent the rest of the 1980s openly discussing other political issues.
As soon as Little Saigon’s success became a priority for Westminster politicians,
one could sense friction building among different Vietnamese interest groups.
118
That
happened during the 1980s when competing factions organized multiple Tết festivals,
which wound up diluting the quality and attendance of each. When the idea to
officially designate Little Saigon a tourist landmark approached critical mass, in
stepped power brokers Frank Jao and Tony Lam with their unilateral proposal to name
their ethnic enclave Asiantown instead. Until then, people referred to the area by all
sorts of names, from Khu Bolsa to Tiếu Saigon to Saigon Nhỏ to Little Saigon. People
from out of town frequently called it Santa Ana, in reference to the neighboring town
where the largest proportion of Vietnamese actually lived.
119
Determined to focus
people’s attention purely on the commercial sector, Jao’s company Bridgecreek had
unveiled the Asian Garden Mall at 9200 Bolsa Ave., which would become the de facto
emblem of the community. Jao, by far the wealthiest Vietnamese American, felt that the
name Little Saigon was “too narrow, too small” and not worthy of his vision of a

118
For more about intra-ethnic conflict in Little Saigon see Nhi T. Lieu, Private Desires on Public Display:
Vietnamese American Identities in Multi-Mediated Leisure and Niche Entertainment (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004).

119
Though identified as a mostly Latino city, Santa Ana, because of its high proportion of affordable
apartments, become home to more Vietnamese than any other city in Orange County. In 1978, of the
approximately 450 Vietnamese students in Southern California community colleges who’d taken the Test
of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) as a requirement for transferring to a four-year college, 100 of
them (22%) attended Santa Ana College. Three other schools, Fullerton JC, Long Beach CC, and Pasadena
CC, tied with the next largest proportion of Viet TOEFL takers (40 each, or 9%). See Santa Ana College
letterhead, Gayle Morrison, New Horizons Counselor, letter to Mrs. Trinh Ngoc Dung, NEW Refugee
Task Force, DC, 27 June 1978. Located at See Gayle Morrison Files on Southeast Asian Refugees. MS-
SEA014. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
210
shopping center “broad enough for different Asian ethnics.”
120
“’Little Saigon’” said
Tony Lam, “is too negative and reminds people of the bad experiences from the
(Vietnam) war.”
121
Community rank and file immediately launched their collective ire
at Jao and Lam, accusing them of betraying their race to satisfy rich Chinese capitalists.
Jao’s insistence on identifying as Chinese further insulted a refugee community
starving for any positive recognition. Needless to say, both men reversed course and the
unveiling of the Little Saigon freeway sign on June 17, 1988, with California Governor
George Deukmejian present, became one of the monumental days in Vietnamese
American history.
While Jao thought first and foremost about profit margins, Lam’s remarks
reflected some awareness of lingering anti-Vietnamese sentiments in Orange County. In
early 1989, unidentified persons trashed the Little Saigon freeway sign and draped an
American flag over it. "If the area had been named `Asiantown' instead of `Little
Saigon',” lamented Lam, “then maybe these signs would have been left alone."
122
And
for many closed-minded Americans, Tết still evoked only horrific memories of the 1968
Tết Offensive, which was the claim the Brothers of Viet-Nam, a fringe veterans group,
made in 1989 when they demanded the Westminster City Council not participate in the
Vietnamese New Year festival. The faux-controversy suddenly pitted pro-Vietnamese

120
UPI, “Developers are Thinking Big About Little Saigon’s Future,” Daily News of Los Angeles, 19 April
1987, 7.

121
David Reyes, “Asiantown: Commercial-Cultural Complex Expected to Anchor Southland's Next
Chinatown,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County edition, 16 March 1987, 1.

122
Le Kim Dinh, “‘Saigon’ Signs Targeted: Racism Feared in Posting on Freeway,” Orange County Register,
1 February 1989, B1.

211
against pro-U.S. military "Imagine if Christmas held horrible memories for a group of
soldiers," said Westminster Mayor and pro-Vietnamese voice Chuck Smith. "Should
Christmas then be ignored to salve their wounds?"
123
Smith and two council members
pledged to attend the Tet festival. The other two council members committed to
joining the Brothers of Viet-Nam in a flag-raising ceremony at City Hall in honor of
those 2,383 still missing in action. One of those two pro-U.S. military council members
was senior citizen Frank Fry, Jr.

Frank Fry and Racial Politics
Born in 1925, Frank Fry moved to Westminster in 1957 and worked as a
supermarket manager before getting elected to the City Council in 1966. He usually
campaigned on a basic conservative platform of small government, and managed to
steer clear of the dirty politics that had plagued Westminster during that decade.
Living in a mostly-white conservative environment generally opposed to the social and
cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Fry could afford to utter offensive comments because,
as one Vietnamese editor put it, “he seems too crass to know it.”
124
The fact he was a
World War II veteran and proud member of the American Legion only reinforced a
sense of entitlement to speak with masculine bravado. One could easily imagine Fry
joining the chorus of angry veterans initially opposed to a Chinese American woman
designing the National Vietnam War Memorial in a way that excluded any statue of

123
Robert Frank, “Westminster’s Role in Tet Festival Angers Vets,” Orange County Register, 26 January
1989, C1.

124
Bridget Le, “Fry’s Remarks an Insult to Vietnamese,” Los Angeles Times, 24 October 1993, B15.
212
actual war heroes. Prior to styling himself as the friend of the Vietnamese refugees
beginning in the mid-1990s, Fry had vaulted himself into infamy for racist remarks he
made on April 12, 1989.
125

After the City Council of Westminster voted 4-1 to against a parade to
commemorate the South Vietnamese Military on June 18, Fry proceeded to lecture the
parade’s organizing committee. “It is my opinion that you’re American,” he said, “and
you’d better be American. If you want to be South Vietnamese, go back to South
Vietnam.”
126
It mattered not that the parade also intended to honor American veterans,
or that it was scheduled on a quiet Sunday afternoon. The four “no” votes—with Mayor
Chuck Smith, a Korean War vet, the lone “yes” vote—objected to the supposedly
foreign nature of Vietnamese Veterans Day even though New Orleans and Houston
hosted similar parades the past three years.
127
Fry had in his corner the La Habra-based
veterans group Brothers of Viet-Nam, whose spokesman went on record saying Fry
“should be commended.” Unwilling to concede the racist ground to Fry, the
spokesman asked indignantly, “Why should [the Vietnamese] have a different holiday
to honor veterans? They’re already getting everything they want. It is about time
somebody stood up to them.”
128

125
In many ways, Fry presents a parallel to Barry Hatch, the infamous—i.e. racist—city councilman of
Monterey Park who unsuccessfully led a nativist crusade against Asian entrepreneurs during the 1980s.

126
William Boyer, “Viets Denied Parade, Told to ‘Assimilate;’” Angry Veterans call Council Vote Racist,”
Orange County Register, 13 April 1989, A1.

127
Associated Press, “Vietnamese Parade,” in San Francisco Chronicle, 14 April 1989, A31.

128
William H. Boyer, “Apologize to Vietnamese, Panel Tells Councilman,” Orange County Register, 14 April
1989, B01.

213
Editorials in the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register gently rebuked Fry,
and the Orange County Human Relations Commission voted unanimously to
recommend Fry apologize to the Vietnamese American community. Former CIA
Director William Colby, as unlikely an interlocutor as any, came to Orange County to
praise the Vietnamese as “hardworking” people undergoing the same discrimination
Italian immigrants suffered.
129
Vietnamese activists threatened to recall Fry from office,
but aborted the effort after Fry issued an apology six days later.
Even if Fry were not a racist, his remarks were symptomatic of larger anti-Asian
anxieties gripping the nation during the 1980s. Defeat in Vietnam and an eroding
industrial economy stoked fears of national decline, and the resulting populist backlash
against foreign, especially non-white, competition. In 1983, a Chinese American
architect named Vincent Chin never made it to his wedding after two white men in
Detroit beat him to death. Asian American activists know by the heart the slur uttered
at Chin: “It is because of you Japs that we’re out of work.”
130
Popular feature films gave
dramatic voice to fears that Japan’s economic might came at America’s expense. In the
comedy Gung-Ho (1986), white and black autoworkers resist conforming to the
authoritarian work environment their new Japanese bosses have imposed. During a Los
Angeles car chase in the interracial police buddy action flick Lethal Weapon 2 (1989),

129
David Reyes, “Ex-CIA Chief Defends Role of Vietnamese in Little Saigon,” Los Angeles Times, 17 April
1989.

130
For more on the murder of Vincent Chin see Christina Choy, director, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (New
York: Filmakers Library, 1988); Robert S. Chang, Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State
(New York: NYU Press, 1999); Patricia Wong Hill and Victor M. Hwang, Anti-Asian Violence in North
America: Asian American and Asian Canadian Reflections on Hate, Healing, and Resistance (Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press, 2001).

214
one cop, upon hearing an unintelligible dialect over police radio, asks if the Japanese
have bought up the Los Angeles Police Department, to which his partner replies,
“They have bought everything else.” And black gangster films like Boyz n the Hood
(1991), released less than a year before the Los Angeles riots, popularized the stereotype
of Korean liquor merchants poisoning America’s ghettoes. Even so-called Asian model
minorities at America’s top universities suddenly found their admissions numbers
capped just as Jewish students experienced in the 1920s.
131

In all these incidents, Asian culture, and not the large-scale economic and
political decisions that displaced millions of Third World people and decimated
America’s middle class, was treated as the real threat to America’s way of life. Fry’s
statements, issued so close to the annual Fall of Saigon commemoration day, created
what Mayor Chuck Smith called “a wedge between the Caucasian and the Vietnamese
community, and also between the city [government] and the Vietnamese
community.”
132
Fry blamed the Vietnamese for the alleged divisiveness in Westminster,
never thinking for one second that, as the Los Angeles Times noted, no one tells the Irish
or Italians to return to Europe if they want their own parade.
133
Just as important, Fry’s
offensive remarks indicated that his lifelong commitment to honoring veterans only

131
In the process of fighting against caps on Asian admissions, nobody realized that affirmative action
programs for other minority groups would receive the lion’s share of the blame in popular reports. For
more on the Asian American admissions debate see Don Nakanishi, "A Quota on Excellence? The Debate
on Asian American Admissions," Change, November/December 1989, 38-47; and Dana Takagi, The Retreat
from Race: Asian-American Admissions and Racial Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1992).

132
David Reyes, “A City Tries to Restore Fragile Fabric of Harmony After Insult,” Los Angeles Times, 30
April 1989, II-1.

133
“Editorial: All Refugees Deserve Tolerance at the Least,” Los Angeles Times, 16 April 1989, 10.

215
applied to the U.S. military, and he demonstrated the same American disdain for South
Vietnamese veterans and their sacrifices that was evident during the Vietnam War.
Few Vietnamese Americans stepped forward to call Frank Fry a bigot. Real estate
giant Frank Jao, as powerful a man as any in the refugee community, preferred to
express refugee gratitude: “Frank Fry has done too many things that have helped us in
the past to make a statement like his affect how we think of him.” Another Vietnamese
businessman told the Times that his people are “very practical people” who more than
anything want “Americans to know…how thankful we are for living here.”
134
Upon
hearing that Fry would apologize, the spokesman for the short-lived recall effort said it
was “a big relief to all of us that this is coming to an end in a very beautiful way”
because “any conflict upsets” his people.
135
And Fry’s future political rival Tony Lam,
the same man who exclaimed in 2007 that Fry is a racist, agreed the community
“should give him the opportunity to apologize.”
136

Refugee nationalism partly explained why Vietnamese Americans took a fairly
passive stance in response to Frank Fry’s bigoted remarks. Considering the economic
power they had in their favor, they could’ve conceivably threatened to take their
business elsewhere. But instead they banked on their refugee gratitude and the
goodwill of sympathetic—albeit conservative—Anglos. And it worked insofar as Frank

134
David Reyes, “A City Tries to Restore Fragile Fabric of Harmony After Insult,” Los Angeles Times, 30
April 1989, II-1.

135
William Boyer, “Fry Will Apologize to Group,” Orange County Register, 18 April 1989, B1.

136
William Boyer, “Councilman Refuses to Apologize for Remark that Upset Vietnamese,” Orange County
Register, 15 April 1989, B1; 2007 comment from personal interview with Tony Lam, Lee’s Sandwiches,
Westminster, CA, May 2007.

216
Fry apologized and the City Council reconsidered their earlier decision against hosting
a Vietnamese Veterans parade. In this light, Vietnamese developed a set of expectations
about race relations in America that few other groups could relate to.
137

Vietnamese for City Council
Rivalries and divisions within the Vietnamese community of Orange County,
now 72,000 strong according to the 1990 Census, also made it politically dangerous to
take a more strident stand against American inequality and a less strident stand against
Vietnamese communism. Thus was the price of politicizing patriotism. When Tony
Lam, 56, decided to run for the newly vacated spot on the Westminster City Council in
1992, only 3% of the city’s 16,000 Vietnamese had registered to vote. And for
inexplicable reasons, another Vietnamese candidate, Jimmy Tong Nguyễn, 45, entered
the race. Their joint candidacies succeded in registering 2,000 additional Vietnamese
voters. “Tony Lam gave me the idea of running for City Council,” said Nguyễn, while
Lam claimed that he had planned since 1989 for this campaign.
138
Three white
candidates also sought the two-year council seat vacated by Joy Neugebauer. Fearing
criticism, none of the ethnic organizations dared to endorse either Lam or Nguyễn.

137
For more about Asian American electoral politics see Pei-te Lien, The Making of Asian America through
Political Participation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Jan Leighley, Strength in Numbers?
The Political Mobilization of Racial and Ethnic Minorities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2001); Gordon Chang, editor, Asian Americans and Politics: Perspectives, Experiences, and Prospects (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2001); and Janelle Wong, Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants & American Civic
Institutions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

138
Andrea Heiman, “3 Vietnamese Make History as O.C. Candidates,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County
Edition) 8 October 1992, 1.

217
Because local elections depend so heavily on door-to-door campaigning, it only
made sense for all the Vietnamese candidates in Orange County to join the Republican
Party.
139
Besides the much-needed paternalism Republicans offered, there were also the
institutional advantages of GOP membership. By 1984, registered Republicans
outnumbered Democrats in the county by a margin of 100,000, the largest difference in
the county’s history.
140
Reagan’s landslide victories depended on former Democrats
switching parties, and they did so in droves, all the while claiming the Democrats no
longer represented the values most dear to them—namely anti-abortion, pro-military,
anti-tax, anti-regulation. Người Việt Daily News devoted an entire front page to
publicize Reagan’s upcoming September 3, 1984 campaign rally at Mile Square Park,
just minutes from Little Saigon.
141
It also did not hurt that the GOP’s 10 to 1
fundraising advantage virtually assured a permanent Republican majority.
142
Bruce
Sumner, the Orange County Democratic Chair, found it quite “ironic if they’re saying
the Democratic Party is the party of special interests because it is really the Republicans

139
For more on Orange County see Karl Lamb, As Orange Goes: Twelve California Families and the Future of
American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1974); Edward Soja, “Inside Exopolis: Scenes from
Orange County,” from Michael Sorkin, editor, Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the
End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992); Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster , editors,
Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990); Gilbert G. González, Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a
Southern California County, 1900-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

140
Jeffrey Perlman and Kristina Lundgren, “Registration Trend Cited by Republican Official: 3
Prominent Democrats Join GOP,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition) 8 August 1984, A1.

141
Người Việt Daily News, 29 August 1984, 1.

142
Jeffrey Perlman and Kristina Lundgren, “Registration Trend Cited by Republican Official: 3
Prominent Democrats Join GOP,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition) 8 August 1984, A1.

218
who have the special interests—where do they think the money comes from?” he asked
rhetorically. “It is from all those industries and businesses who want something.”
143

If nothing else, Tony Lam had the advantage of spending most of his post-1975
life in Orange County while Jimmy Tong Nguyễn’s 1990 move from New Orleans to
Westminster made it far too easy to label him a carpetbagger.
144
Lam also possessed the
perfect model minority biography, often describing himself as “three times a
refugee.”
145
As a ten-year-old child who missed the boats out of Hải Phong in 1946, he
had to fend for himself by singing with an itinerant troupe. In 1954, he joined over a
million Northerners who migrated to Saigon after the Geneva Accords divided
Vietnam in two. And in 1975, he lost everything when he evacuated his family before
Saigon fell.
146
But in case that rags-to-riches tale failed to sway voters, Lam could tell
them he had the support of Mayor Chuck Smith, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the
Westminster Police Officers Association, Assemblyman Mickey Conroy of Orange, and
Rep. Robert Dornan.
147
Lam campaigned as a proud American, and an interview
conducted in his office described him being “surrounded by American flags.”
148
With

143
Jeffrey Perlman and Kristina Lundgren, “Registration Trend Cited by Republican Official: 3
Prominent Democrats Join GOP,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition) 8 August 1984, A1.

144
“Westminster City Elections,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition) 22 October 1992, 8.

145
Personal interview with Tony Lam, Lee’s Sandwiches, Westminster, CA, May 2007.

146
Seth Myrdans, “A Vietnamese-American Becomes a Political First,” New York Times, 16 November
1992, A11.

147
Andrea Heiman, “3 Vietnamese Make History as O.C. Candidates,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County
Edition) 8 October 1992, 1.

148
Seth Myrdans, “A Vietnamese-American Becomes a Political First,” New York Times, 16 November
1992, A11.

219
all the votes tallied as of November 13, 1992, Lam had beaten the next closet opponent,
future mayor Margie Rice, by a count of 7119 to her 6987 votes.
149
The mainstream
media now viewed Lam, the first from his country ever elected to U.S. political office,
as the official face of the Vietnamese community. Lam’s election and the growth of
Little Saigon ironically inspired his rivals to style themselves as populists in contrast to
Lâm’s alleged white establishment identity.

A New Model Minority
While refugee identity was tied to the Vietnamese homeland, the cultural brokers
proved that it could be adapted to problems in their new home country. Just as
historical events revealed Vietnamese to be as human as any other poor migrant group,
the cultural brokers had little choice but to insist their brethren were super-human:
parents suffered unspeakable horrors to escape Vietnam; children excelled in school;
refugee gratitude was unrivaled; and they had no apparent need to cling to the past. But
why this obsession with a model minority image among the cultural brokers? Simply
put, many Americans expected perfection in return for rescuing Vietnamese refugees
from communism. They needed as much validation in their collective decision to
welcome the Vietnamese as the refugees did in the decision to leave Vietnam forever.
Pro-Vietnamese voices got their wish in 1991 when new U.S. Census data touted
the phenomenal entrepreneurial proclivities of Vietnamese Americans. Between 1982
and 1987, the number of Vietnamese-owned businesses increased from 4989 to 25,671, a

149
Andrea Heiman, Frank Messina, Rene Lynch, “Countywide Results Unchanged in Final Absentee
Tally,” Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition), 14 November 1992, 2
220
whopping 415% rate that far exceeded the 135% increase in their population during the
same period. No other Asian American group saw such a dramatic rise in their business
sector. “People come here, they realize this is the land of opportunity,” boasted a
Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce representative.
150
Nowhere was there any mention
of the prior week’s arrest of three Orange County gang members charged with extorting
seven co-ethnic businesses for protection money.
151

Sometimes the desire to see refugees succeed clashed with assimilationist
ideology, as the Frank Fry episode illustrated. And sometimes the appearance of anti-
communism obscured an uncomfortable reality in which almost all Vietnamese
refugees found themselves investing in the Hanoi government. Traditional critiques of
the model minority thesis point out that it originated as a way to discredit African
American protest as a means for achieving equality.
152
Vietnamese American history
introduced a new context for the model minority myth, that of rewriting the past, so at
least no one could question whether the South Vietnamese people were worth fighting
and dying for.

150
Associated Press, “Businesses Up 415% Among Vietnamese,” Sun-Sentinel, 5 August 1991, 33; Ronald
Campbell, “Vietnamese-Americans Make Business Their Life,” Orange County Register, 2 August 1991, A1.

151
“Three Youths Are Charged With Robbery, Conspiracy,” Orange County Register, 25 July 1991, B6.

152
For more on Asian Americans and the model minority stereotype see Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a
Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Penguin Books, 1989); Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and
Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Lucie
Cheng and Philip Yang, “The ‘Model Minority’ Deconstructed,” in Roger Waldinger and Mehdi
Bozorgmmehr, editors, Ethnic Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996); Timothy Fong, The
Contemporary Asian American Experience: Beyond the Model Minority (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1998); Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asians Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1999); Claire Jean Kim, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); and Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin, The Myth of the Model
Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008).

221
Chapter 5
Becoming Refugees in the Post-Cold War Era

By the 1990s Vietnamese Americans acquired a reputation as a model minority
whose nostalgia and ties to South Vietnam were giving way to an all-American identity.
Their American journey reached a milestone in 1992 when Orange County
businessman Tony Lâm made headlines as the first Vietnamese ever elected to political
office in the United States. Yet despite their Americanization, the end of the Cold War,
and with it the establishment of formal U.S.-Vietnam relations, cleared the way for a
revival of refugee nationalism.
The resurgence of South Vietnamese refugee nationalism reached its zenith in
1999 when over 20,000 angry Vietnamese Americans protested a Little Saigon
merchant’s display of the current flag of Vietnam and a portrait of communist leader
Hồ Chí Minh. The protestors in front of Hi-Tek Video made clear their will to
continue fighting a war the U.S. and Vietnam had spent the past twenty-four years
trying to forget. Many observers of the video store protest wondered if the refugee
generation would live the rest of their lives as victims of their own trauma and the
charlatans who would exploit it for their own profit.
1

1
The 1999 Hi-Tek demonstrations ignited a surge in scholarship and interest on Vietnamese Americans
and their supposed inability to let go of past trauma. Most recent scholarship, being non-historical in its
methodology, has focused on Vietnamese American experience since 1990. Adelaida Reyes’
ethnomusicology study, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999) makes mention of Little Saigon’s glut of Catholics and
former military to explain why she witnessed heightened anti-communist there during her visit in 1992.
222
But most of them have assumed that refugee nationalism consisted almost
entirely of anti-communist grudges that consumed older Vietnamese Americans to the
point of paranoia. As a result, they ignored the paternal bonds with the U.S. that
conditioned the former South Vietnamese to publicly express undying gratitude
towards their country of refuge. In this chapter, I argue that the video store protest
reflected not simply Vietnamese American anti-communism but the refugees’
perception that America was forgoing its role of protecting the world from communist
Vietnamese in the name of economic globalization. Just at the time that Vietnamese
Americans established political clout, the federal government seemed to be spurning
them in favor of Hanoi. Return migration and business opportunities
By 1990, the Vietnamese American population had grown to over 600,000, with
the largest concentrations in the suburbs of California and Texas.
2
With political

Most of this scholarship has also been textual or ethnographic in nature, such as Caroline Kiều Linh
Valverde’s Making Transnational Viet Nam: Vietnamese American Community—Viet Nam Linkages through
Money, Music and Modems (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2002); Mareen Patricia
Feeney, Freedom to speak: Vietnamese reeducation and the search for Cold War refuge (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Michigan, 2002); Nhi T. Lieu’s Private Desires on Public Display: Vietnamese American
Identities in Multi-Mediated Leisure and Niche Entertainment (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, 2004); Mimi Nguyễn’s Representing Refugees: Gender, Nation, and Diaspora in “Vietnamese
America" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2004); Mariam Beevi Lâm’s Surfin’
Vietnam: Trauma, Memory and Cultural Politics (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Irvine, 2006);
and Thanh-Thúy Võ-Đặng’s Anticommunism as Cultural Praxis: South Vietnam, War, and Refugee Memories
in the Vietnamese American Community (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 2008). A
couple of historical studies of note include Vu Hong Pham’s Beyond and Before the Boat People: Vietnamese
American History Before 1975 (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 2002); Roy Vũ’s Rising from the Cold
War Ashes: Construction of a Vietnamese American Community in Houston, 1975-2005 (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Houston, 2006); and Eric Tang’s Unsettled: On the Postcolonial Presence of Southeast Asian
Refugees (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2006).

2
According to 1990 U.S. Census figures, the Vietnamese population totaled 617,747, 1990 US Bureau of the
Census, Census Population and Housing: Summary Tape file 1C. February 1992. CD90-1C. Eugene Turner
and James P. Allen authored the definitive map-based reference books on contemporary Southern
California demographics. See the following: An Atlas of Population Patterns in Metropolitan Los Angeles and
Orange Counties, 1990 (Center for Geographical Studies, Department of Geography, California State
223
leverage at the local level, Vietnamese Americans doubled down on the paternalism
narrative by tapping into residual American guilt over having abandoned their
Vietnamese allies in the past and found political friends among Republicans and
Democrats alike. Simply put, Vietnamese Americans became refugees once more so
that local politicians would help them ensure that globalization would not someday
transform Little Saigon into Little Ho Chi Minh City.

Capitalism in Southeast Asia
The people of communist Vietnam had little reason to hold their heads up high
compared to their Asian neighbors. What good was the Revolution when post-1975
Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world? Repressive social policies
combined with an extremely limited circuit of economic trade left the country on the
verge of starvation throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Hanoi’s plans to jumpstart
the economy in 1985 resulted in a modest 5.6% increase in GDP, but left consumers
with 41% inflation. As the Communist Party further liberalized the demand side,
inflation skyrocketed as high as 365% in 1986.
3
Visits to Vietnam revealed a picture of
devastating poverty and corruption. The price of victory against the United States and
South Vietnam was quite steep. Indebted to the Soviet Union during wartime, the new

University at Northridge, 1991); The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity n Southern California (Center for
Geographical Studies, Department of Geography, California State University at Northridge, 1997); and
Changing Faces, Changing Places: Mapping Southern Californians (Center for Geographical Studies,
Department of Geography, California State University at Northridge, 2002).

3
John Dodsworth et al, “Vietnam: Transition to a Market Economy,” Occasional Paper, No. 135, 15 March
1996 (International Monetary Fund).

224
regime had no choice but to send surplus labor and production to Russia and Eastern
Europe. Resource-rich Indochina, once the crown jewel in the French empire, had
become little more than a colony in another. It was hard for the casual observer,
regardless of political leanings, not to feel sorry for the people of Vietnam.
4

Meanwhile Vietnam’s neighbors were experiencing unprecedented economic
prosperity. Between 1973 and 1996, the world’s fastest growing economy belonged to
South Korea, followed closely by Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, China, Hong Kong,
and Malaysia.
5
Export oriented economics, foreign investment, and currency
devaluation had turned the agrarian frontiers of Southeast Asia into majestic urban
skylines rivaling those of America’s big cities. As long as these countries offered a
surplus of low-wage semi-skilled labor, then there was no end to how many
multinational corporations would open up a new factory on their soil.
6

4
For more on Vietnam’s post-1975 economy, see the following: William Duiker’s Vietnam Since the Fall of
Saigon, updated edition (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989) give an historical
account of the post-revolutionary era; Tetsuburo Kimura’s, The Vietnamese Economy, 1975-86: Reforms and
International Relations (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1989) concludes that Vietnam needs to
liberalize its economy like its neighbors if it wants to pull itself out of permanent Third World status;
William Alpert’s edited volume, The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System
(London: Sharpe, 2005) depends on contributions from overseas Vietnamese and Western experts while
Economic Growth, Poverty, and Household Welfare in Vietnam, edited by Paul Glewwe, Nisha Agrawal, and
David Dollar (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004) relies on experts who have worked in post-1975
Vietnam; Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Đổi Mới in Comparative Perspective, edited by William Turley
and Mark Seldon (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993) compares Vietnam and China; Nicholas Nugent’s
Vietnam: The Second Revolution (Brighton: Print, 1996) attempts to view historical change from a
Vietnamese perspective and even dedicates two chapters to the overseas Vietnamese.

5
Nicolas Crafts, “East Asian Growth Before and After the Crisis,” IMF Staff Papers, vol. 46, no. 2 (June
1999) 139-166.

6
For an introduction to the so-called Asian Miracle, see the following: World Bank Policy Research
Report, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 1993)
takes a market-oriented approach to success; Joseph E. Stiglitz and Shahid Yusuf, editors, Rethinking the
East Asian Miracle (London: Oxford University Press, 2001) does a little more to take government action
into account; Izumi Ohno, Beyond the “East Asian Miracle”: An Asian View (New York: United Nations
225
Not surprisingly, Vietnam wanted to join in Southeast Asia’s economic boom.
And after hardline communist leader Lê Duẫn died in 1986, the country began to
liberalize its economy. The government, now led by reformer Nguyễn Văn Linh,
declared the Revolution over as of 1986 and ushered in the socialist world’s version of
the New Deal—in this case introducing capitalist policies in order to save the
communist state. The Party did this in spite of fears that vices like prostitution, drug
use, and bootlegged Vietnamese American merchandise would become much more
widespread in a liberalized economy.
7
They based their market-based socialism on
China’s model. By 1995, Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), followed in 1996 by their membership in the Asian Free Trade Agreement
(AFTA). While Vietnam could have surely felt content with being integrated into the
larger Asian capitalist economy, a deal with other nations, especially the United States,
would provide much needed leverage against neighboring predatory states.
8

Development Program, 1996) argues that a hegemonic political culture promoting shared growth pushed
governments to make the right choices that would lead to economic growth whose benefits are shared.

7
The term translates literally into New Deal, but the country’s official English translation is Renovation.
Whereas Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal installed socialist measures to ensure the long-term stability of the
capitalist order, Đổi Mới essentially installed free market mechanisms to ensure the long-term stability of
the Communist regime in Vietnam. Both reforms succeeded at those top-level objectives, though the
benefits as the grassroots level are more debatable. Barbara Crossette, “Vietnam’s Party Chief Says
Capitalism Can Be Guide,” New York Times, 22 January 1988, A2.

8
This term is borrowed from James K. Galbraith, The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free
Market and Why Liberals Should Too (New York: Free Press, 2008).

226
Coming to Terms with Reconciliation
In official statements and informal encounters from the late 1980s and early
1990s, the people of Vietnam let it be known they held no grudge against their former
enemy the United States. “Everywhere in Vietnam, from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi,”
one American writer recalled, “Americans are met with smiles and appeals for
friendship.”
9
Calls for war reparations were few and far between. Instead, most agreed
that the United States had a moral obligation to lift the trade embargo imposed on the
whole country since 1975. That act, as they saw it, would effectively usher in a new era
of harmonious relations between former enemies.
10

But the United States would only normalize ties with Vietnam from a position of
strength. As early as 1976, Gerald Ford was forced to adamantly deny plans to formally
recognize North Vietnam after his Republican rival Ronald Reagan accused the
President of once again appeasing the Russians with “pre-emptive concessions…that do
not work.”
11
So instead the United States would not budge on its long list of demands—
most importantly the return of United States personnel missing in action—that would
precede any step towards normalization. And because the United States government
also demanded the release of South Vietnamese political prisoners, the Vietnamese

9
Hall Gardner, “Those Stumbling Blocks to Recognizing Vietnam Do not Have to Trip Us Now,” Los
Angeles Times, 14 March 1989, 7.

10
Larry Engelmann, Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990).

11
Leslie H. Gelb, “Presidential Challengers Diverge on Foreign Policy,” New York Times, 6 April 1976, 21;
Philip Shabecoff, “Ford Denies Plans for Ties with Hanoi,” New York Times, 24 April 1976, 10.

227
American community could safely assume that Washington still had some loyalty to its
Cold War ally.
Throughout history, the United States had experience turning old enemies into
new allies, but it had always done so after winning wars. Shaking hands in the role of
loser revealed a lingering disbelief that the previously undefeated U.S. military actually
lost to a tiny developing nation. Neoconservatives tried to blame the war’s outcome on
a weakness of American political will. Ronald Reagan, one of the original
neoconservatives, staked his presidency on redeeming the promise of American
military power in the post-Vietnam era. His renewed arms race with the Russians
ended in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, catapulting the United States into
sole superpower status and earning Reagan even high approval ratings in the
Vietnamese American community. It was around this time that reconciliation with
Hanoi was framed as an opportunity for victory in Vietnam.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called New World Order would see
to it that the United States assumed global leadership of an increasingly capitalist world
system. These voices expressed unvarnished faith in the power of capitalism’s capacity
to forge a peaceful post-colonial global order.
12
Writing on the 15-year anniversary of
the fall of Saigon, USA Today founder Al Neuharth argued that the hardliners in
Washington should stop fighting the last war and concentrate instead on winning the
peace. Specifically, he recommended the United States admit that going to war in

12
For more celebrator ruminations on U.S. Hegemony in the post-Cold War era, see Frances Fukuyama,
The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

228
Vietnam was a mistake and proceed to deliver political and economic reparations to all
three sides—veterans from the United States, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam—
that had fought the Vietnam War.
13
In 1991, as the United States barred its people from
attending Vietnam’s largest foreign investment conference yet, Los Angeles Times
business writer Teresa Watanabe seemed to lament seeing “foreign competitors snap up
Vietnam's best deals in oil, construction and telecommunications.” One of her
interviewees, a Vietnam specialist, believed lifting the economic embargo would be no
worse than pursuing the status quo. “We have tried for more than 30 years—probably
close to 45 years—to use the stick against the Vietnamese…[and]…they have not
changed their way of doing things. I think our greatest strength is our economic
system. Maybe we can get to them with the pocketbook where we could not with
bombs.”
14
Not to be outdone, conservative political economist Francis Fukuyama,
author of The End of History, used the downfall of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
to justify the historical durability, superiority, and inevitability of the American liberal
democratic way.
15

Even some of South Vietnam’s old guard joined in the premature celebration.
“Now Marxism is finished,” exhorted Nguyễn Cao Kỳ back in 1990. “We should fight

13
Al Neuharth, “Vietnam: Can USA ever win the peace?” USA Today, 4 May 1990, 15A.

14
Teresa Watanabe, “Focus: Is it Times to End Sanctions Against Vietnam?” Los Angeles Times, 18 March
1991, 3.

15
Ironically, Fukuyama’s belief in the inevitability of American-style regimes throughout the world did
not stop him from wanting the U.S. government to take a direct hand in overthrowing unfriendly regimes
and replacing their leaders with pro-U.S. puppets. See op-eds by Project for the New American Century co-
founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough", New York Times, 30 January
1998 and "A 'Great Victory' for Iraq", Washington Post, February 26, 1998.

229
[the Communists] in the field of politics and economics.” Former president Nguyễn
Van Thieu eagerly predicted that a homegrown wave of South Vietnamese would rise
up to demand the return of land seized from them in 1975.
16
Orange County became the
headquarters of new exile organizations like the Government of Free Vietnam. Inspired
by the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, these new organizations believed
that a coordinated cultural and political front against Hanoi, without need for guerillas
and guns, would eventually topple the regime.
From there on, reconciliation with Vietnam became a bipartisan enterprise. So
important was the mission of reconciliation with Hanoi that its most credible
proponent was U.S. Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain, the same man
who eventually confessed his never-ending hatred of “gooks.”
17
By the time Bill Clinton
became the 42
nd
president of the United States, the Democratic Party had already
abandoned its liberal New Deal principles, instead casting themselves as New
Democrats—i.e. neoliberals. The conservative Democrat set out to prove that his party
could best harness the global reach of laissez-faire capitalism to usher in a new era of

16
Sonni Effron, “Ky and Thieu Wage Battle for Hearts, Minds,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 20 May
1990, 1.

17
Other prominent pro-normalization politicians included former swiftboat commander John Kerry and
an entire cohort of conservative and liberal Vietnam veterans that entered the U.S. Congress during the
1980s. Slowly but surely, the U.S. made progress in negotiations except on the issue of human rights abuses
in Vietnam. In 1989, liberals and conservatives alike had second thoughts about assisting communist
nations after China’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beiijing’s Tienanmen Square. See,
Roger Simon, “A Trip Back to His Future: John McCain’s Vietnam Visit Wasn’t About Healing; It was
About Ambition,” U.S. News & World Report, 3 May 2000, p. 14; During the 2000 Presidential campaign,
Sen. McCain confirmed a reporter’s question that he frequently and unabashedly used the term “gook” in
reference to his North Vietnamese captors. “I’ll call right now my interrogator that tortured me and my
friends a gook. You can quote me. I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some
people here, because of their beating and killing and torture of my friends. I hated the gooks and I will hate
them as long as I live.” Frank Bruni and Alison Mitchell, “Bush and McCain Toward Showdown,” New
York Times, 18 Feb 2000, A1.

230
world peace. In 1996, Clinton confidently stated that, “Increased contact between
Americans and Vietnamese will advance the cause of freedom in Vietnam just as it did
in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.”
18
More than just reconciliation, the
president hinted that globalization was America’s secret weapon for finally winning the
Vietnam War. Besides effectively scuttling pressure for direct political reform Vietnam,
that line of argument advanced economist Milton Friedman’s long-running falsehood
about the interdependency of capitalism and freedom.
In practical political terms, neoliberals believed globalization presented the most
viable alternative to the neoconservatives’ militaristic path towards world peace. In
1991, President George H.W. Bush had declared that, “By God, we have kicked the
Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” after Operation Desert Storm succeeded in
driving Saddam Hussein’s forces out of neighboring Kuwait.
19
So impressive was the
propaganda behind the first Bush Administration’s new high-tech war that even people
in the Clinton Administration, like United Nations Ambassador Madeline Albright,
became convinced that air strikes alone could end the fighting in Kosovo.
20
But thanks

18
Seth Mydrans, “Hanoi Seeks Western Cash but Not Consequences,” New York Times, 8 April 1996, A3.

19
Tom Wicker described the Vietnam syndrome in the following words: “Since the war in Indochina, the
reluctance of some Americans to commit U.S. troops to foreign wars has been derided as the ‘Vietnam
syndrome,’ But the most persistent hangover from that lost war appears to be the conservative and military
myth that restraints imposed at home made victory in Vietnam impossible.” In Tom Wicker, “In the
Nation: Ghosts of Vietnam,” New York Times, 26 January 1991, 1.25. George H.W. Bush’s line is cited in,
“Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, 2 March 1991, 1.2. For more on the Vietnam Syndrome see Geoff
Simons, Vietnam Syndrome: Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

20
Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996). Ironically, Powell used
Madeline Albright’s misunderstanding of warfare to mock the naïvete of liberal doves when in fact Powell,
as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played a huge role in constructing the aura of an invincible high-
tech air attack that emerged out of Operation Desert Storm.

231
to Bill Clinton’s reputation as a less than stellar military commander, the Vietnam
Syndrome continued to militate against the impetuous use of military force for
resolving international conflicts.
But if politics was the driving issue, then the neoliberals largely succeeded in
framing normalization as a victory for the United States. They had plenty of help from
left-leaning thinkers critical of globalization. With only cheap labor and plentiful
natural resources to their advantage, the Vietnamese were entering into a bargain in
which their economy would become all too dependent on foreign spending. This
scenario sounded vaguely similar to the American presence before 1975, except this
new era of foreign investment included a new cohort of Asian capitalist powers. The
anti-globalization voices, more interested in critiquing the United States, failed to
recognize that non-white, non-western nations had become quite good at capitalism,
too. Instead, they safely assumed that capitalism was inherently a western invention,
thus unintentionally reinforcing the neoliberal argument that America had really won
the Vietnam War.

No Victory, No Surrender
On the other hand, the accusations of surrender emanated from familiar voices.
The difference of opinion revealed that everyone had their own prerequisites for
putting the Vietnam War behind them. One veteran turned professor suggested that
“veterans of the peace movement” like the Clintons rushed towards normalization
232
because they had never viewed Hanoi as the enemy.
21
People in search of lost relatives
did not see how normalization would help their cause. As of 1992, over 2,000
Americans personnel in Vietnam had yet to be accounted for, which angered many
veterans’ groups. “We feel lifting the trade embargo is going too far,” said John
Sommer, executive director of the American Legion. “It is the only leverage we have to
resolve the P.O.W.-M.I.A. issue.”
22

Naturally, Vietnamese refugees were most skeptical about the democratizing
potential of capitalism alone. To a certain extent, their own wartime country proved
that big business and bad government could co-exist just fine. “We are not going to
surrender to the Communists just like that,” said Phong Duc Tran of the Vietnamese
Community of Southern California, a new community organization.
23
Before becoming
an outspoken proponent of free trade, the president of Little Saigon’s Chamber of
Commerce believed that only a tough stance would guarantee progress. “You are
dealing with a very smart enemy, and a very meticulous and capricious and
manipulative enemy,” said Dr. Cơ Phạm. “The U.S. is winning the Vietnam War. [The
Vietnamese] are suffering from poverty; they lack materials, technology. Now is the
time to negotiate with an upper hand. If you lift the embargo, they will stay the same.”
24

21
Peter C. Rollins, “United States-Vietnam reconciliation in 1994,” National Forum, v. 74, no. 4, 30.

22
Steven Holmes, “Delay in Hanoi Ties Sought,” New York Times, 24 Nov 1992, A5.

23
Leslie Berkman, “O.C. Vietnamese Want Guarantee of Rights First,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 28
January 1994, 1.

24
Teresa Watanabe, “Focus: Is it Times to End Sanctions Against Vietnam?” Los Angeles Times, 18 March
1991, 3.

233
In general, the hardliners in Little Saigon knew full well that like the war in Vietnam,
economic engagement did not come with much of an exit strategy.
It surely bothered leaders in Little Saigon that no one in the Bush or Clinton
Administration thought it essential to consult with the Vietnamese American
community about normalization. Two times previously, at the Geneva Accords of 1954
and the Paris talks of 1972, the Western powers negotiated the future of Vietnam
without any involvement from the South Vietnamese. "If we do not have any voice in
the future of our homeland, it seems unfair,” said Westminster mayor pro-tem Tony
Lâm.
25
Some in Little Saigon finally saw their anti-communism at odds with their
paternal ties to the United States. "I want to pay back the U.S.A., which has saved my
life and my family,” said Dr. Cơ Pham, “but I want to help the people in Vietnam
against the Communists." Others, like Chuyen Nguyễn of the recently founded
Vietnamese Community of Southern California, did not suffer outwardly from divided
loyalties. Nguyễn personally predicted that, “America will be cheated again” if its
leaders think they can negotiate the Vietnamese out of Cambodia.
26
Overall, their pleas
echoed those of earlier generations of Asian Americans believing their patriotism
would be rewarded in kind.
27

25
Leslie Berkman, “O.C. Vietnamese Want Guarantee of Rights First,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 28
January 1994, 1.

26
Eric Lichtblau, “Vietnamese in O.C. Angry and Skeptical,” Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 9 April 1991,
1.

27
See John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900-
1942 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977); Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and
Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); and Henry Yu,
Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact & Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press,
2001).
234
Attempts by Congressional Republicans to place conditions on normalization—
mostly tied to MIA/POW issues and human rights reforms in Vietnam—were
immediately vetoed by President Clinton. One of these failed provisions included
granting legal refugee status and admitting thousands of Vietnamese living in camps in
Hong Kong, the Philippines, and elsewehere. With relatively minimal controversy,
Washington and Hanoi celebrated the opening of embassies in each other’s countries in
August of 1995.
28

The End of Refugee Migration?
While the end of the Cold War hostilities made it immensely easier—and
presumably safer—for Vietnamese Americans to travel to their old homeland, it also
meant that emigrants from Vietnam would no longer be recognized by the United
States as refugees. That development meant that thousands still waiting in the refugee
camps in Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian nations
were nothing more than illegal immigrants now in danger of being deported to
Vietnam. Some inhabitants of the Hong Kong camp threatened to commit suicide
rather than return to Vietnam, where they would certainly face some form of
retribution from the state. Vietnamese abroad did their part to support this cause by
raising funds and some high profile community members made well-publicized visits

28
United States Library of Congress, CRS Issue Brief for Congress: The Vietnam-U.S. Normalization Process
(Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2005)

235
to the camps. But despite those barriers, over 200,000 Vietnamese refugees came to
American shores during the 1990s.
Little did Mai Quốc Linh realize that nearly nine years spent in a communist re-
education camp would make him eligible to migrate legally to the United States under
the terms of the new Humanitarian Operation (H.O.) program. When the then-51-year-
old former military officer left Tân Sơn Nhất Airport by himself in December of 1993,
his only comfort was his mother’s wish that he somehow, “regain the life and dignity
that the Communists took away.” Within hours of arriving at Los Angeles
International Airport, Mr. Linh had already recaptured some of that lost spirit. “I could
not stop my eyes from welling or my heart from pounding once I laid eyes on that
golden flag of South Vietnam for the first time in 18 years.”
29
Although life in America
would deal Mr. Linh and the H.O. people far more disappointment than success, their
perception of Little Saigon as a refuge from the darkness made it easier to justify their
decision to leave Vietnam. Indeed, the preservation of a South Vietnamese refuge
became a critical rallying point for many of them just as globalization threatened to
introduce to America elements of official Vietnamese nationalism the H.O. people
thought they had safely and permanently left behind.
30

Little Saigon underwent a dramatic demographic shift during the 1990s that
accelerated the impulse to permanently identify it as a non-communist refuge. The

29
Mai Quốc Linh, “Nỗi Buồn Của Tháng…” Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives of the Re-
education Camp Prisoners, Volume 2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007), 319.

30
Maureen Feeney has written a dissertation describing this identification with the United States as
rehearsing established narratives—what she calls an “economy of stories”—so as to navigate one’s way into
the United States as a recognized refugee. See, Mareen Patricia Feeney, Freedom to speak: Vietnamese
reeducation and the search for Cold War refuge (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2002).

236
1989 bilateral ratification of the Humanitarian Operation (H.O.) program allowed
nearly 200,000 of Hanoi’s former political prisoners and their families to resettle in the
United States. Imprisoned for years because of their affiliation with the U.S.-supported
Saigon regime, these middle-aged ex-military officers and government employees
consigned to second-class citizenship in Vietnam were given another incentive to
identify with the U.S. one last time. By the year 2000, the H.O. people accounted for
one out of every six Vietnamese Americans, a percentage far exceeding that of pro-
Hanoi migrants trickling into the United States. Appropriating the language of
Holocaust survivors grateful to have found refuge in America, the H.O. people—mostly
men—took advantage of the increasingly local nature of refugee nationalism to fight for
the long-term security of Little Saigon.
The State Department attempted to classify its 10,000 Amerasian admits as
refugees, but it was the former political prisoners, larger in number and victims of
brutal persecution, who had the most incentive to identify as such.
31
As members of the
military and the intelligentsia, their socio-economic profile differed little from the
predominantly middle class first wave of refugees airlifted to safety during the final
days of the Vietnam War. And with numbers far exceeding that of the 1975 refugees,
their stories bought back the tragic memory of America abandoning so many of her
allies. Consequently, their bodies were living proof of the horrific fate that the first
wave refugees narrowly avoided. Those who made it out their jungle captivity alive had
the gaunt, broken, premature grey appearance caused by years of starvation and torture.

31
Bernard Gwertzman, “More Vietnamese To Get Permission to Enter the U.S,” New York Times, 12 Sept
1984, A1.

237
Inside the camps, they had been trained to confess without equivocation their
misguided support of the puppet government before 1975, their newfound disdain for
the American empire, and their eternal gratitude for having been liberated in 1975 by
Hồ Chí Minh. It was a far cry from the day prisoners willingly turned themselves in
after being promised their “training” would last only ten days.
Even after they had paid their debt to the new utopian society, the H.O. class and
their children could expect no more than second-class citizenship. The best work one
former prisoner could find was selling ice cream and lottery tickets along the streets.
32

Another man, who had the misfortune of being caught in military uniform the day
Saigon fell, had to give up selling watermelons because of frequent harassment from
North Vietnamese authorities. Their stigmatized background made it difficult for the
next generation to make it past high school. And those were the families lucky enough
not to be sent off undeveloped frontier euphemistically named New Economic Zones.
Enduring routine taunts of “Boy” or “Lackey,” the South Vietnamese exemplified
Michel Foucault’s theory of governmentality in which leaders and citizen-subjects alike
adapt to predetermined scripts.
33
In short, push factors germane to the refugee
experience were present. But failed escapes and the prison sentences that followed
eventually drained the will and wallets of would-be boat people.
The H.O. negotiations actually started in 1982 after Vietnamese Foreign Minister
Nguyễn Co Thach communicated his government’s desire to release the re-education

32
Phạm Hoần Ân, “Job và Tuổi Già,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ 2001 (Writing on America, 2001 edition)
(Westminster, CA: Việt Báo Publishing, 2001), 200.

33
For more on the theory of governmentality see Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller,
editors, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

238
camp inmates “if American would like to have them—all of them!”
34
Aside from
externalizing political dissent and a portion of their underclass, allowing former
enemies to emigrate could potentially enrich the coffers of the cash-strapped Hanoi
regime. Estimating that over 500,000 would apply for the H.O. program, the
government saw an opportunity to extort additional money in exchange for an exit visa,
just as it had done in the late 1970s with the Sino-Vietnamese boat people.
35
But even if
Hanoi initiated the offer, Washington officials on both sides of the aisle treated their
release as what Republican Senator Robert Dole called “a very important U.S.
responsibility” and what Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State called a “great
humanitarian concern.”
36
This episode demonstrated that Vietnamese refugee
nationalism would continue to exert political leverage as long as public officials felt the
nation—whether out of liberal guilt for dragging allies into an imperial war or
conservative guilt for leaving Saigon in such cowardly fashion—was still another
humanitarian act away from redemption.
Working through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.S.
State Department initially identified nearly 100,000 political prisoners with “special
ties” to the United States.
37
Their admission would be tied to the existing Orderly

34
“Hanoi Makes an Offer to Send Inmates to U.S,” Reuters, New York Times, 14 June 1982, A5.

35
Johnny Ng, “U.S.-Vietnam Pact Could Bring Huge Bay Area Influx,” Asian Week, 4 Aug 1989, vol. 10,
issue 51, 3.

36
Norman Kempster, “Kin of Missing Vietnamese in Bid to Learn Their Fate,” Los Angeles Times, 3 May
1987, 5.

37
“Release of Vietnamese Sought,” UPI, New York Times, 1 July 1982, A6.

239
Departure Program’s quota of 1,000 persons per month.
38
Under the terms negotiated
by American and Vietnamese officials, those eligible for visas had survived at least a
year in the re-education camps because of their close affiliation with the United States.
Yet political tensions stalled efforts to bring the first 10,000 over by the end of 1984.
According to the U.S. State Department, “Hanoi withdrew its offer to release the
prisoners after making unacceptable demands for guarantees that the prisoners would
not engage in anti-regime activities if brought to the United States.”
39
Blaming
Vietnamese refugee activists for the attacks on a recent Vietnamese Mission to the
United Nations, a Hanoi diplomat made it clear that, “It is impossible to hand over
weapons to be fired against us.''
40
It was not until 1989, with the Soviet Union on the
verge of collapse, that the two nations finally put the finishing touches on the
Humanitarian Operation program. A U.S. diplomat involved in negotiations hailed the
pact’s goal of “healing the last big wound remaining from the war, which is that these
people who were clearly associated with the United States have not been allowed to

38
The Orderly Departure Program, created in 1979, allowed eligible Vietnamese to legally exit their
homeland as pseudo-refugees. Its main benefit was sparing thousands from fleeing covertly by boat or
across the jungle, where they risked drowning, starvation, disease, or attack from Thai pirates. The United
Nations High Commissioner on Refugees negotiated the terms of the program with Vietnam and the
western nations. Because families had to have a salient material, legal, or occupational connection to the
United States, for example, to be eligible for a legal exit permit, the ODP did not totally curtail the illegal
and dangerous outflow of persons by boat.

39
“Political Prisoners Initiative,” World Refugee Report (Washington DC: U.S. Department of State—
Bureau of Refugee Programs, Sept. 1985), 36; “Hanoi Called Hesitant to Let Foes Go,” New York Times, 11
Nov 1984, A3.

40
Barbara Crossette, “Inmate Release Hits a Snag in Hanoi,” New York Times, 24 December 1984, p. 13.
Mr. Stephen J. Salarz, the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific
Affairs, explained that Hanoi’s anti-dissident demands carried little weight with the U.S. ''because their
definition of subversive activities could include anything from writing articles or taking part in
demonstrations to sending arms.''

240
leave Vietnam and be united with their relatives.”
41
As the H.O. program came to a
close ten years later, the State Department reported that nearly 200,000—more than
double the initial estimate—had made their way to the United States since the
program’s inception.
42

For the potential H.O. people, the chance to resettle in the United States seemed
too good to be true. “My uncle did not apply at first because he thought it was a hoax by
the VC,” remembered a child of one H.O. refugee. Another skeptical former prisoner
figured the hoax consisted of, “rounding us up and punishing us again.” Nevertheless
he took his chances. “And when I landed in Thailand, it looked so much like Vietnam
that I really thought they were shipping us to prison!”
43
Single H.O. men sometimes
entered into marriages of convenience to help others migrate to the States.
44
In 1990,
when prospective H.O. emigrant Thanh Phong informed his family that two Los
Angeles Times reporters would be dropping by their house for an interview, they were
incredulous. “Are you sure it is not the Russians?” his skeptical wife intoned.
45
How

41
“Hanoi OKs Exodus to U.S. of Freed Political Prisoners,” Los Angeles Times, 31 July 1989, 12.

42
Marguerite Rivera Houze, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration,
“Remarks on Vietnamese-American Appreciation and Celebration Day on the Occasion of the 10th
Anniversary of the Signing of the U.S.-Vietnamese Agreement for the Release and Resettlement of
Vietnamese Political Prisoners,” Houston, Texas, July 25, 1999, archived online at
http://www.state.gov/www/policy_remarks/1999/990725_rivera-houze.html

43
Interview with Yvonne Huynh, December 2008; also discussed in Helen Le’s personal narrative, “Cha
Con Tôi à Đất Nước Hoa Kỳ,” in “Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, volume 1 (Westinster,
CA: Viet Bao Daily News, 2000), 49.

44
Interview with Yvonne Huynh, December 2008; also discussed in a Vietnamese-language memoir by
Văn Quang, Sài Gòn - Cali 25 Năm Gặp Lại (City unlisted: Tuổi Xanh publishers, year omitted), 51.

45
Thanh Phong, “Đường Vào Thiên Đàng,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, volume 1
(Westminster, CA: Viet Bao publishing, 2000), 76.

241
awkward it must have been reconciling their bitterness towards the United States with
the news that their old alliance would finally pay off. On top of that, the same United
States that the Việt-Cộng had denounced as a decadent empire was now poised to
become the people’s economic savior in the post-Cold War era.
Surprisingly, there was no apparent residual animosity towards the United States
among them at first. Dependent on years of remittances from their Vietnamese
American. relatives, many South Vietnamese referred to the United States as “Thiên
Đàng”—the Promised Land.
46
The frequent sightings of returning Vietnamese who
exaggerated the extent of their economic success in the States only reinforced that
myth. Writing in Vietnamese-language publications unlikely to be seen by a general
audience, many H.O. continued to extend an excess of gratitude towards the United
States for having delivered them from a life without freedom. One H.O. person, who
had spent 45 days in a re-education camp and failed four times to escape by boat,
thanked the heavens for being allowed to go.
47
And their new identity as refugees
finally put them on the right side of history. As a Southern military widow living in Ho
Chi Minh City noted, "I have heard that Northern widows get pensions and mothers of
the dead and missing are called 'heroic mothers' of martyrs. But here we are nothing.
Our husbands and sons were considered traitors."
48

46
Thanh Phong, “Đường Vào Thiên Đàng,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, volume 1
(Westminster, CA: Viet Bao publishing, 2000), 73-80.

47
Lê Tiên Đức, “Hai Lần Đến Mỹ,” in Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, volume 1 (Westminster,
CA: Viet Bao publishing, 2000), 131-134.

48
Needless to say, most refugees with memories of post-1975 Vietnam welcomed their newfound freedom
to publicly criticize the Hanoi regime without fear of going to jail for their actions. David Lamb, “Column
242
The cultural compensation afforded H.O. refugees was vital because economic
rewards were few and far between. They were eligible for eight months of public
assistance, but some came in expecting much more. Pastor Nguyễn Xuân Bảo, whose
Little Saigon church helped sponsor thousands of H.O. people during the 1990s, knew
firsthand about their condition. “Once those Vietnamese military officers or high-
ranking civilians arrived here, their dreams were shattered since nobody gave them new
houses, and nobody gave them big sums of money, as the Communists had led people
to believe!” While Pastor Bảo did his best to encourage the H.O. to train for jobs as
“masons, bricklayers, construction workers, electronic assemblers, school janitors,
office cleaners, nurse aides, dental assistants, or nursing home workers,” he regretted
the fact that too many would “stay home and spend their time watching…Chinese
Kung-Fu or martial arts movies day after day.”
49
Angered by accusations of laziness,
some turned on Pastor Bảo, falsely believing he had pocketed some of the funding
allocated for the H.O. people.
50

The early waves of the H.O. also had the misfortune of arriving in the midst of an
economic recession, followed by Orange County’s filing for bankruptcy protection on

One: A Silent Struggle Haunts Vietnam; Although it denies any bias, the government forgoes attempts at
reconciling with ex-soldiers of South, underscoring conflict over past,” Los Angeles Times, 17 July 1998, 1.

49
Interview with Pastor Nguyễn Xuan Bao, in The Vietnamese Commmunity in Orange County: An Oral
History, vol. II: Religion and Resttlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope
Library, 1991), 56.

50
Interview with Pastor Nguyễn Xuan Bao, in The Vietnamese Commmunity in Orange County: An Oral
History, vol. II: Religion and Resttlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope
Library, 1991), 55.

243
December 6, 1994.
51
Social Services had already been saddled with budget deficits
imposed by rising immigration numbers and reduced federal funding. “The prisoners
are basically ex-military people who aren’t a lot more than farmers and fishermen,”
bellowed an Orange County Social Services official. “What are you going to do with
someone who worked the rice paddies or killed other people for a living?” Her
colleague in the Adult and Employment Services division believed the “health and
emotional problems associated with having been in a re-education camp for long
periods of time” would pose a bigger burden on public resources.
52
Even the ethnic
economy had evolved, as H.O. people increasingly saw themselves competing for
restaurant jobs against Spanish-speaking men half their age. Fifty-one-year-old Mai
Quốc Linh tried pulling himself out of his minimum wage position by taking courses
in cosmetology, and finding himself in a classroom full of Vietnamese women.
53
One
social worker confided that Vietnamese seniors in Orange County applied for United
States citizenship at a swift pace during the 1990s so as to meet eligibility requirements
for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits.

51
For more on the Orange County bankruptcy of 1994 see Mark Baldassare, When Government Fails: The
Orange County Bankruptcy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Philippe Jorion, Big Bets Gone
Bad (San Diego: Academic Press, 1995); For readings on other fiscal crises see William K. Tabb, The Long
Default: New York City and the Urban Fiscal Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982); Martin
Shefter, Political Crisis/Fiscal Crisis: The Collapse and Revival of New York City (New York: Basic Books,
1985); Milan J. Dluhy and Howard A. Frank, The Miami Fiscal Crisis: Can a Poor City Regain Prosperity?
(Westport: CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002).

52
David Reyes, “County Braces for New Refugees Immigrants: Officials Will Discuss How to Care for the
Expected Resettlement Here of a Number of Freed Vietnamese Political Prisoners,” Los Angeles Times
(OC), 28 Oct 1989, 1.

53
Mai Quốc Linh, “Nỗi Buồn Của Tháng…” Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives of the Re-
education Camp Prisoners, Volume 2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007), 322.

244
Most English-language coverage of the H.O. portrayed them as tragic survivors
who faced just as much hardship in the States as they did in Vietnam. Mrs. Khuc Minh
Tho, once the head of the Association of Families of Political Prisoners back in 1989,
remained continent in Orange County while her husband languished for 13 years in a
communist re-education camp. She admitted that some friends did the opposite. “They
tell me, ‘I do not think the prisoners will ever get out of the camp,” she told the New
York Times. “They tell me they give up.”
54
Before enough of them arrived to form a
community of their own, the first H.O. people suffered from extreme depression
associated with feelings of failure and isolation. Entire families on humble means had
to rent out a room or a tiny apartment at the same time earlier waves of refugees were
moving into multistory homes outside of Little Saigon. On top of mental health issues,
many H.O. suffered debilitating physical ailments that went untreated for years in
Vietnam.
55
One former military officer, within a month of moving to Orange County,
rode his bicycle into Interstate 5 because, as an associate put it, “He saw that his future
did not have any light” and “His spirit was tired.”
56
But despite the bitterness that
consumed, none of those interviewed had harsh words for the United States.
Without hope of rebuilding their own, the H.O. had to find other reasons to
justify leaving Vietnam. As former army major Cung Pham told the Los Angeles Times,

54
Seth Mydans, “The Next Wave from Vietnam: A New Disability,” New York Times, 15 Oct 1989, A4.

55
In his personal narrative, Cha Bac relates the story of how injuries he had suffered in the re-education
camps caused him to fail his physical and thus be denied employment at K-Mart. Chuyện Người Tù Cảo
Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives of the Re-education Camp Prisoners, Volume 2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News,
2007).

56
Lily Dizon, “Column One: Wounded by War and Peace: Many Who Survived Vietnam’s Prison Camps
Sought New Lives in the U.S. but Found Despair,” Los Angeles Times, 14 April 1995, 1.

245
"There are two beliefs I and my brothers live by. The first is that we willingly left
Vietnam because we could not live with the Communist regime. The second is that our
youth and usefulness have already passed us by; we now have to live for our children.
We came here so that our children could have the chance the war took from us."
57

Phuong Le was one of those children. Only 11 when Saigon fell, he witnessed his father
spend over 8 years in a communist re-education camp. Le had tried and failed ten times
to catch a clandestine voyage out of the country, while his younger sister drowned at sea
in 1987. He embraced refugee nationalism soon after his family finally made it out in
1990.
58
“If I look at [South] Vietnam as my blood parents,” said Le, “I look at America
as my adoptive parents. I love both countries. Both have the same heroic history, and
their people have fought for democracy, human rights and freedom.”
59

From a sociological framework, the profile of the H.O. people seemed to
guarantee an intensification of anti-communist sentiment in 1990s Little Saigon.
Having endured the most pain under the new regime, they vowed never to suffer
another defeat against the Việt-Cộng. Their large numbers and dependent condition
also helped perpetuate a traditional ethnic business model catering to limited-English,
low-income people, to the crucial benefit of ethnic print and broadcast media. As a
vulnerable population, they were far more dependent on Little Saigon for their
economic and cultural sustenance, and thus had another incentive to object to sharing

57
Lily Dizon, “Column One: Wounded by War and Peace: Many Who Survived Vietnam’s Prison Camps
Sought New Lives in the U.S. but Found Despair,” Los Angeles Times, 14 April 1995, 1.

58
Mai Tran and Vik Jolly, “For many, a day of infamy,” Los Angeles Tmes, 30 April 1999, 1.

59
Vik Jolly, “Immigrant pride wrapped up in two flags,” Orange County Register, 13 April 1999, 6.

246
their new home with sympathizers of the Hanoi government. If they had cared for that
environment, they could have stayed in Vietnam and spared themselves the
humiliation of starting all over and the pain of leaving loved ones behind. But their
proclivity towards protest needed institutional support if they wanted their minority
discourse legitimized.
60

In her doctoral dissertation on H.O. migrants in the Seattle area, Cultural Studies
scholar Maureen Pheeney argued that Seattle’s eagerness to embrace free trade with
Vietnam in the 1990s made it a less than ideal “Cold War refuge” for refugees desperate
to preserve their version of the past. Their lack of political leverage at the local level put
refugee nationalism at odds with the University of Washington and transnational
entrepreneurs. But more importantly, the era of normalization finally made it
problematic to publicly utter a disparaging word about the Vietnamese government,
thereby pejoratively marking anti-communists as reactionaries. In order to avoid being
totally relegated as enemies of progress, much less have their refugee nationalism
institutionalized, refugee nationalists in Orange County turned to the allies they had
left at the local level, sometimes in opposition to fellow Vietnamese Americans.

Putting [Vietnamese] Americans First
It did not take long for Little Saigon’s capitalist class to see the writing on the
wall. After all, the community’s Sino-Vietnamese entrepreneurs had exploited

60
Prior to the Hi-Tek protests of 1999, the most well-known protestor of the 1990s was Ly Tong, a former
South Vietnamese whose heroic tale of escape from the communists made the pages of Reader’s Digest.
During the 1990s, he commandeered a plane from Thailand and dropped 50,000 pro-democracy leaflets
over Vietnam. In 2003, he committed the same act over Cuba and was arrested when he landed in Florida.

247
international ties with Taiwan and Hong Kong to acquire a twenty-year head start on
the rest of Little Saigon. Likewise, other American capitalists, like Irvine-based
computer manufacturing giant AST, were eager to sell more computers in Hong Kong
by first opening low-cost, non-union factories in nearby Vietnam. Meanwhile, others
like Fullerton-based Beckman Instruments wanted to enjoy the same success Japan and
Europe already had selling medical and scientific equipment in Southeast Asia. Even
hard-line anti-communists like Phong Duc Tran took notice of capitalist pressure on
the United States government to lift the trade embargo on Vietnam, trading away
human rights just “to make some dollars.”
61
Seeing Vietnam as a potential labor market
of 70 million, the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce co-sponsored a trade
mission there as early as 1994, in hopes that, “Little Saigon will be the gateway between
the United States and Vietnam.”
62

The organization’s president, Dr. Co Pham, soon discovered his obstetric clinic
surrounded by the angry wives and widows of re-education camp inmates. Garden
Grove resident Andrea Nguyễn, whose husband survived three years in a communist
prison, exclaimed that, “We’re against anyone who will cooperate with the
Communists.” She found among her comrades the likes of Chau Tue Phuong, who had
left Vietnam as recently as 1989 and Nga Pham, whose husband did not survive the
camps.
63
For these women, calls from the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce

61
Leslie Berkman, “O.C. Vietnamese Want Guarantee of Rights First,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 28
January 1994, 1.

62
Bert Eljera, “Westminster O.C. Trade Mission Protested,” Los Angeles Times, OC edition, 9 Sept 1994, 2.

63
Bert Eljera, “O.C. Trade Mission to Vietnam Protested,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 9 Sept 1994, 2.

248
to “forget the past and look to the future and rebuild Vietnam” were considered
insensitive at best since North Vietnam were under no similar pressure to do the same.
“In many ways,” noted one journalist visiting Vietnam in the 1990s, “Hanoi has had an
easier time reaching out to its former enemy the United States than its brothers who
fought for the South.”
64

The mid-1990s also saw a renewed commitment to refugee nationalism in some
quarters of government. After defeating conservative anti-immigrant fear-monger
Robert Dornan in Orange County’s 46
th
United States Congressional District,
Democratic challenger Loretta Sanchez continued his tradition of pandering to pro-
refugee, anti-communist interests. Elected on the strength of Latino and Vietnamese
electorates that totaled 15% of voters, Orange County’s lone Democrat in Congress was
just as comfortable around the Vietnamese Political Action Committee as she was to the
Chamber of Commerce.
65
With her combination of social service advocacy and refugee
nationalism Sanchez privately won the support of influential people like community
activist Mai Công and radio personality Viet Dzũng.
66
At Little Saigon public forums
and annual festivals, Sanchez was a regular, replete in her custom-made South

64
David Lamb, “Column One: A Silent Struggle Haunts Vietnam; Although it denies any bias, the
government forgoes attempts at reconciling with ex-soldiers of South, underscoring conflict over past,” Los
Angeles Times, 17 July 1998, 1.

65
Joseph Drew, “Congressional Nativists, Beware,” Forward (New York), 10 January 1997, vol. C, issue 31,
7; Peter Warren, “Brixey Admits to Taking Down Dornan Signs; Politics: Husband of 46th District
challenger Loretta Sanchez says he was motivated by 'frustration over . . . personal attacks,’” Los Angeles
Times, OC edition, 22 October 1996, 1.

66
Dana Parsons, “Dornan’s Lost His Lock on Vietnamese Vote,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 25
September 1998, 1; On a larger scale, Sanchez’s strategy reflected a Southern Democratic strategy—
mastered by Bill Clinton—of adopting traditional conservative positions on issues such as welfare, crime,
and free markets.

249
Vietnamese long dress—áo dài. More than that, her successful appeals to refugee
nationalism reinforced its standing as an essential component of Vietnamese American
identity. This strain of populism was consistent with Orange County’s political history
of bucking the interests of Washington, and by extension new trade partner Vietnam,
in favor of supporting local interests. Americans first, the same credo used to justify the
exclusion of the Vietnamese refugees, had now become the mantra of refugee
nationalism in the post Cold War era.
The FBI claimed “in years past” to have “relied on the assistance from the
Vietnamese refugees” to fulfill counterespionage duties.
67
In 1996, they came calling
again. By the mid-1990s, Communist espionage had allegedly “multiplied vigorously”
in now that the Vietnamese American population had grown to over half a million,
with 150,000 in the Orange County area. Using ads in ethnic newspapers like Nguoi Viet
Daily News, the FBI sought out recent arrivals “who had worked for, communicated
with, or had been asked by the Vietnamese Communist regime to carry out whatever
activity, but who no longer believe in, or who are dissatisfied with, the ideas of the
Vietnamese Communist regime.”
68
But any hope of actually locating spies in Little
Saigon devolved into a public relations disaster as virtually none of the calls to the FBI
hotline came from reliable sources. None of this was a surprise to James Dempsey of the
Center for National Security Studies, who described newspaper bulletins like these—

67
English translation of FBI Notice placed in several Vietnamese-language newspapers in California and
Texas in early 1996. The ads stopped running in March, not too long after a flurry of mainstream
newspaper articles roundly criticized this recruiting technique. For more on the 1980s informant program,
see Ted Bell, “It is Spy vs. Spy Among Vietnamese in Sacramento,” Sacramento Bee, 27 March 1985, A16.

68
English translation of FBI Notice placed in several Vietnamese-language newspapers in California and
Texas in early 1996.

250
also circulated previously in Russian and Chinese ethnic newspapers—suggested “that
more traditional counterintelligence techniques of identifying and monitoring known
or suspected intelligence officers have not been totally successful against the
Vietnamese.”
69
Instead the FBI had to rely on half-baked leads, like that of Garden
Grove resident and frequent protester Chau Carey, who arbitrarily concluded one
person’s occupation as community activist was “just a cover-up for his supporting the
Communist regime.”
70

Radio broadcasts to Vietnam did not let up. In 1990, the Voice of America
increased its editorial programming to Vietnam. Refugee artists like Việt Dzũng
contributed new musical compositions such as “Bài Ca Dân Chủ Mới (Song of New
Democracy).
71
The very next year, Congress created Radio Free Asia in 1991 for the
express purpose of reaching listeners in Kampuchea, Laos, and Vietnam, doing so more
hours per day than VOA was doing. Unconstrained by the same diplomatic or
journalistic protocols imposed on the VOA, Radio Free Asia, headed by conservative
heir Steve Forbes, also delivered far more opinionated versions of the news.
72

69
Carey Goldberg, “FBI Using Newspaper Ads to Seek Vietnam Informers,” New York Times, 12 March
1996, 1.

70
Lily Dizon, “OC Vietnamese Split on FBI Call to Aid Spy Hunt,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 2
March 1996. The exigencies of refugee nationalism helped to explain the dilemma exposed in sociologist
Karin Aguilar San Juan’s study of Little Saigon of why its denizens shied away from a collective pan-Asian
response to the 1996 hate-induced murder of UCLA student Thien Mien Ly. It was simply easier for them
to rely on their paternal relationship with their host society than on an imagined community with other
Asians that they had never had an opportunity to cultivate.

71
Heritage Foundation 1990 Newsletter.

72
R. Jeffrey Smith, “Task Force Urges Creation of Radio for a Free Asia,” Washington Post, 17 December
1991, A10.

251
But it was at the local level where the refugee community nearly bet it all and the
ally they turned to was conservative Westminster politician Frank Fry. A World War II
veteran who first won a City Council seat back in 1966, Fry had a front row seat to the
transformation of Westminster from a small farming community to an anti-tax suburb
on the verge of bankruptcy until the emergence of Vietnamese businesses by the
hundreds injected much needed revenue into the city treasury. During the 1990s, he
served two terms as Mayor and soon styled himself as the white savior of the
Vietnamese community, taking over the unofficial mantle previously held by Kathy
Buchoz and Chuck Smith during the 1980s. By 2005, Frank Fry was still participating
in Little Saigon’s annual New Year’s parade while the city’s first Vietnamese council
member had fallen off the radar.
What made Fry an interesting choice of ally were racist remarks he had made in
1987, in effect telling the former refugees in Westminster to learn English or go back to
Vietnam. In prior studies of Little Saigon, scholars have been too quick to dismiss
Frank Fry as a petty racist whose political profile mirrored that of Monterey Park after
council member Barry Hatch.
73
During the 1980s, Hatch decried his city losing its All
American status because of the glut of Chinese-owned businesses in the Los Angeles
suburb, reminding the last Americans to leave Monterey Park to take the flag with
them. As sociologist Leland Saito has noted in his study of Monterey Park, Hatch’s
conflation of America and whiteness wound up mobilizing the city’s long-time Asian

73
See Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Creating ethnic places: Vietnamese American community-building in Orange
County and Boston (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2000); Mary Yu Danico and Linda Trinh Vo,
“Formation of Post-Suburban Communities: Koreatown and Little Saigon, Orange County,” International
Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 24, 2004.

252
American, Latino, and white liberal residents in support of the Chinese immigrants.
But unlike Hatch, who never recovered from his political misstep, Frank Fry turned
crisis into opportunity and redeemed himself in the eyes of Vietnamese Americans.
Building on the fact Little Saigon attracted 300,000 visitors annually, both he and
political rival Tony Lam wanted full credit for transforming the ethnic enclave into a
major Orange County tourist stop alongside Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.
74
But
Lam took the elite route in by advocating without much success for the gentrification
of Bolsa Ave, the area’s main business corridor, into a Vietnamese yuppie destination
rivaling that of posh South Coast Plaza in nearby Costa Mesa. Of course, his plan would
put current small-time merchants out of business, and they opposed Lam’s grand
scheme. Lam also proposed building a Vietnam War memorial that also honored the
veterans of South Vietnam, but found little white support for the project.
On the other hand, Frank Fry had the political and racial qualifications necessary
to get win public support for the major institutional projects like the Vietnam War
memorial. As a military veteran and former critic of Little Saigon, Fry could better
relate to City Council members skeptical about turning over their “All American City”
in order to “bring the Vietnamese and American communities closer together.”
75

Benefiting from the myth of conservative patriotism, Fry’s endorsement brought with
it the perception that refugee nationalism was consistent with American nationalism.
And as a white man, Fry had little reason to fear public reprisals from the Vietnamese

74
Bert Eljera, “Big Plans for Little Saigon,” Asianweek (San Francisco, CA) 17 May 1996, (17:38). 13.

75
Tini Tran & Louise Roug, “Saluting as One; Planned Vietnam Soldier Memorial Brings Westminster’s
Fighting Factions Together,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 18 July 1999, 1.

253
American community. As local professor Nhan Vu saw it, “The Vietnamese-American
community has generally been more lenient on people who are not of Vietnamese
descent than on those of Vietnamese descent. Thus, there are few protests against
organizations that publicly support trade with Vietnam, so long as those organizations
membership is mainly non-Vietnamese.”
76
Jeff Brody also benefited from this double
standard in Little Saigon allowing white journalists like him to get away with writing
newspaper articles that would earn a Vietnamese writer death threats. It was very
consistent with refugee nationalism’s need to publicly treat Americans, especially
whites, with deference for fear of jeopardizing that supposed paternal bond. Unable to
see themselves as equals, and dependent on the United States to pressure for change in
Vietnam, refugee nationalists nevertheless felt confident enough to criticize or
intimidate fellow Vietnamese without seeing them as the same kind of Americans.
Escaping various anti-communist episodes relatively unscathed, Fry could become the
public face of refugee nationalism in a way no Vietnamese ever could.
As the 20
th
anniversary of the refugee community approached in 1995, activists in
Orange County campaigned for a fitting tribute for South Vietnam’s veterans. With the
passage of time and the arrival of H.O. people Westminster’s lone Vietnamese city
councilman, Tony Lam, floated the idea of building the first ever memorial honoring
the former South Vietnamese Army, personally describing it as the “West Coast Statue
of Liberty.”
77
But Lam’s reputation took another hit when he appeared to support a

76
Mike Whitcomb, “Professor Analyzes Lingering Effects of Vietnam War, Viet Weekly 15 Sept 2004, 1.

77
Tini Nguyễn, “Group to Honor Those Who Died in Vietnam War Memorials: Vietnamese American
Leaders Hope to Raise $1 Million for the Vietnam Monument of Freedom Project in a Westminster
Cemetary,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 14 April 1995, 1.
254
Sino-centric remodeling of Little Saigon’s main thoroughfare, a sensitive issue for
people still smarting from 1000 years of Chinese rule and ethnic Chinese control of
Little Saigon’s prime real estate. Organizations like Project 20 and the recently founded
Little Saigon Radio sought to raise over $1 million for the memorial, but constant
questioning of one’s refugee nationalist credentials divided the community and slowed
down the project.
78
Prominent music industry emcee, former political prisoner, and
one-time boat refugee Nguyễn Ngọc Ngàn came under fire because his employer had
included offensive documentary footage in a popular concert video.
Intra-ethnic tensions within the community over the proper representation of the
Vietnamese refugees were no different than what other American minority groups had
experienced. Aware of the extremely finite opportunities minorities had for media
exposure, aggrieved interests treated representation as a zero-sum game that benefitted
one segment of an ethnic group at the expense of others. Throughout African American
history, conservative middle class individuals have consistently decried against black
popular culture for glorifying negative stereotypes for the sake of short-term profit. The
radical student movements of the late 1960s that brought us Ethnic Studies also
reflected insurgent perspectives within ethnic communities eschewing cultural
assimilation as the panacea against racial discrimination.
79
Vietnamese refugee

78
Rick Vanderknyff, “Date of Fund-Raiser Creates Observances: April 28 Affair Could Be Seen As A
Celebration of the Fall of Saigon, Some Project 20 Members Fear. The Dispute Has Split the Group,” Los
Angeles Times, OC Edition, 12 March 1995, 4.

79
The controversy surrounding the chosen design for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC
centered partly on the question of whether a Chinese American woman could properly represent the
interests of the fallen. Therefore, the deference given to whites, no matter how reluctant, was not extended
when the outsider was non-white. Maya Lin’s non-heroic, non-representational design nevertheless
255
nationalism, in accusing its rivals of selling out the community, resembled the racial
nationalism of the 1960s, with the main difference being refugee nationalism’s goal of
actual statehood.
Free of the burden of representation that would have befallen a Vietnamese
American politician, Fry confidently took the reigns of the Vietnam War memorial
committee and even suggested that the statue depict American and South Vietnamese
G.I.’s shaking hands. In 1998, the selection committee, which included retired generals
from the United States and South Vietnamese military, settled on local sculptor Tuan
Nguyễn’s representation of a South Vietnamese and American (read: white) soldier
standing side by side in a show of “collaboration between the two soldiers, the
friendship between two countries.”
80

Paternal ties were always in need of constant maintence. Tensions between the
pro-growth City Council and the Vietnamese community had evolved from sympathy
and support to that of impatience and exasperation over bureaucratic diligence.
“They’re a pretty dedicated people,” pointed out Councilwoman and future Mayor
Margie Rice, “But it is frustrating when they never get their applications in on time. I
see that continually—like with the Tet festival. They argue among themselves all year,
then they get the applications in late. You get to the point they do not know what the
heck they want.”
81
Greed was one source of that infighting as competing entrepreneurs,

became a powerful symbol among veterans and serves as a meeting ground for annual pilgrimages every
Memorial Day weekend.

80
Harrison Sheppard, “City Gets Model of Vietnam War Tribute,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 5
November 1998, 2.

81
Mai Tran, “Plans Still in Flux for Viet Events,” Los Angeles Times, 24 April 2000, B3.
256
no longer satisfied to have a Tet festival at all, mistakenly believed the market could
sustain three competing Tet festivals, all within minutes of each other.

The Hi-Tek Episode
White frustration with Vietnamese refugees, once associated with health
insurance fraud or gang activity, reached an all-time high in early 1999, when a local
video store owner’s display of the current Vietnamese flag and a portrait of communist
hero Hồ Chí Minh sparked the largest public protests in Vietnamese American history.
The problems began in January when the store’s owner, Tran Van Truong, decided
after a winter trip to Hanoi that he would proudly display their flag and a photo of Ho
Chi Minh in order to “further the dialogue” on how much Vietnam had progressed for
the better. Although a boat refugee himself, Truong had acquired a taste for fame. On
the weekend of January 15, he told community, “I defy you all…if you dare to come to
take them off.”
82
By 1 p.m. the following Monday, 400 protestors had lined up outside
his video store, and Truong received several blows to the head while exiting the
premises.
83
Protestors waved American and South Vietnamese flags as one of them sang
the national anthems of the United States and South Vietnam.
84
They also plastered

82
Vik Jolly, “Little Saigon Display Rips Old Wounds,” Orange County Register, 20 January 1999, A1.

83
Rachel Tuinstra, “Hundreds Protest in Little Saigon,” Orange County Register, 19 Jan 1999, B1.

84
Claire Vitucci, “Ho Chi Minh Poster Angers Vietnamese Refugees,” Contra Costa Times, 21 Jan 1999,
A12.

257
Tran’s storefront with South Vietnamese flags and kept guard at night to ensure they
were not removed. After two months of protests, in which crowds swelled to as much as
10,000 and Westminster owed more than $24,000 in police overtime pay, city
authorities ended the standoff quite anticlimactically by closing down Hi-Tek video
store on charges of video piracy.
85

The United States had spent nearly 20 years figuring out a way to save face
against Hanoi only to balk when Vietnamese Americans sought their own political
mini-victory against the Communists. The mainstream media slammed the Vietnamese
community’s crazed behavior over seemingly innocuous symbols, especially since
Hanoi had gone to great lengths to repair their image in the minds of most Americans.
In a 2004 documentary entitled Saigon USA, filmmakers Lindsey Jang and Robert
Winn explored what they saw as a widening generation gap between anti-communist—
i.e. paranoid—parents and their Americanized—i.e. normal—children.
86
Another
division of note occurred within the older critics of the protestors. When
Councilmember Tony Lam refused to participate in protests, political rivals such as
protestor Ky Ngo, former city council opponent Jimmy Tong Nguyen, and a far-right-
wing politician named Van Tran quickly assailed Lam’s reputation. Local pastor
Nguyễn Xuan Bao disapproved of local stations like Little Saigon Radio using the Hi-

85
Hieu Tran Phan, “10,000 in Angry Protest,” Orange County Register, 21 Feb 1999, A1.

86
The protests in front of the Hi-Tek video store also brought out clear divisions among Vietnamese
Americans. Most conspicuously, it revealed the growing voice of younger, American-raised ethnics who
had no memories of suffering under the Communists or any interest in Vietnam whatsoever. More likely
their parents or grandparents to identify as American, this generation did not suffer from refugee
nationalism’s deference to the host country. Therefore they found it easier to not vote Republican without
feeling vulnerable against conservative attacks questioning their loyalty to America.

258
Tek protests, and listenership was sky high, to engage in nationalist-based fundraising.
For that he allegedly earned the condemnation of the refugee community’s leading
radio host and prominent anti-communist Việt Dzũng.
87

In retaliation for the Hi-Tek episode, Westminster’s City Council members—
with the exception of Tony Lâm and Frank Fry—sided with the local American
Legion’s opposition to flying the South Vietnamese flag alongside the American flag for
April 30. Even the pleas of a Vietnamese American in the United States Marines could
not sway the City Council. Some of the opposition stemmed from fear that any kind of
Vietnamese politics would deplete even more of the police department’s operating
budget. Another part came from compassion fatigue over the Vietnamese community’s
repeated use of their refugee victimhood to justify any and all actions. A
communications study conducted by former Little Saigon beat writer Jeffrey Brody
seemed to confirm that hunch when it concluded that among American ethnic groups,
Vietnamese exhibited the strongest opposition to free speech. Brody eventually penned
several op-eds warning Vietnamese Americans against replicating the oppressive
political climate many had risked their lives to escape many years ago.
But for the protestors themselves, it was an unprecedented moment of unity to
send a message a loud message to the Vietnamese government. According to local
professor Nhan Vu, “They seek to tell the Vietnamese government that it cannot
control the Vietnamese-American community the way it controls its own people and

87
Interview with Pastor Nguyễn Xuân Bảo, Garden Grove, CA, May 2007.

259
that it cannot impose burdens upon them the way it does with its own people.”
88
Living
in America because they chose to leave Vietnam forever, protestors were not going to
allow their last refuge of Little Saigon to fall as its original namesake had 24 years
earlier. The pages of the ethnic press announced times for work parties and published
photographs showed protestors of all ages and genders plastering the Hi-Tek storefront
with dozens of South Vietnamese flags. On the evening 22
nd
of February, over 10,000
people filled the parking lot in front of Hi-Tek to partake in a free concert spectacular.
Between patriotic songs and political speeches, audience members could be heard
chanting, “Long live the Republic of Vietnam.”
89
Kieu My Duyen, the former
newspaper writer, would enjoy the daily walk to join the protestors after work. “It was
lots of fun,” she recalled. She and others, like Nguoi Viet Daily News, noticed how the
protests had an organic character to them, with no clear hierarchy or leadership, or any
dominant age group.
90
A Vietnamese-language documentary referred to the protests as
“52 Days of Resistance” against the Communists and contained footage verifying
claims about the organic nature of the Hi-Tek affair. In a rare political outburst, the
usually sober pages of Người Việt published a blistering editorial in response to a major
Hanoi newspaper’s attack on the protestors’ allegedly anti-democratic impulses. And
among the thousands of Vietnamese Americans could be found a handful of white
politicians, local residents, and military veterans.

88
Mike Whitcomb, “Professor Analyzes Lingering Effects of Vietnam War, Viet Weekly 15 Sept 2004, 1.

89
Raw video footage from the video, 52 Days of Resistance DVD video, purchased at 2007 Tet Festival,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

90
Interview with Kieu My Duyen, Garden Grove, May 2007; Interview with Do Quy Toan, Westminster,
May 2007.

260
These events afforded opportunities for military wives and widows to enter the
public sphere and air grievances they were forbidden to talk about back home. It was
partly on behalf of these women that musician and activist Nam Lộc decided to become
active in the seemingly endless fundraising campaign for the local Vietnam War
Memorial. Credited with raising over one third of the $1.3 million needed for the
memorial, the original composer of Farewell Saigon considered it his proudest
accomplishment as a Vietnamese American. As he recalled quite emotionally, “Over
300,000 died and were left behind. What about their souls? You do not have a chance to
go back and pray. Why do not you bring the soul here? There were 400 Vietnam War
memorials, but none of them talked about the Vietnamese soldier. So my dream was to
build a memorial for them. All I want is to bring their soul here, so I can look at the
memorial and see my friend. And a wife can come pray for her husband.”
91

It took the overt interference of the Hanoi government that summer to finally
unite the rest of Westminster behind the memorial project. A letter from Consulate
General objected to the proposed Vietnam War memorial. But the suggestion of
replacing the winning design with one institutionalizing a bond between Americans
and the Hanoi government drew Westminster’s white and Vietnamese residents into an
uncommon show of solidarity. In response to the Vietnamese Consulate’s letter,
Westminster councilmember Kermit Marsh shot back, “You have proved unable to
provide freedom and democracy in your own country. Please refrain from telling us
what to do.” Indeed, the City Council, in front of a packed audience of 100 enthusiastic

91
Interview with Nam Loc, Los Angeles, April 2007.

261
gatherers, voted unanimously on July 13, 1999 to approve the construction of the
memorial.
92
Veterans groups that had spent the previous months opposing the display
of the South Vietnamese flag next to the American flag to commemorate the Fall of
Saigon now found themselves rallying behind the memorial.
93

Fry’s team had commissioned part-time senior citizen songwriter Lê Quang Anh
to compose two English-only patriotic ditties for the final unveiling of the memorial on
Sunday, April 27, 2003 at Westminster’s Freedom Park. He gave the first song the title
of, “Battle Hymn of the Vietnam War Memorial,” whose melody sounded similar to the
“Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Come with me to see the Vietnam War Memorial
To praise the brave for their gallantry
Come with me to sing a song to honor those, the Heroes
To praise the Proud who for Freedom sacrificed
Believing in God and country love led them the way to Hope and Care
They went to war holding their head high
Believing in God they’re marching on, Vowing to fight the tyranny
Risking their life to make men Free
Come with me to proudly hail the men who made the history
To pay them respect, To pay them tribute.
Come to see the Stars ’n’ Stripes and Yellow Flag both waving
Through starry nights and never-ending day [sic]
94

92
Tini Tran & Louise Roug, “Saluting as One; Planned Vietnam Soldier Memorial Brings Westminster’s
Fighting Factions Together,” Los Angeles Times, OC Edition, 18 July 1999, 1.

93
For more about the importance of memorials and the nation see Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 2006); Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the 20
th

Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); and John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public
Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1993).

94
From Lê Quang Anh’s DVD, entitled “Andy Quang Le and His Musical Compositions (Westminster:
NV Video Production, 2005).

262
Lê also composed a tourist ditty he entitled, “Do you know the way to Little Saigon?”
It seemed to borrow the title of Burt Bacharach’s 1968 tune, “Do you know the way to
San José?” while appropriating some of the melody and pacing of Kurt McKenzie’s
1967 hit, “San Francisco.”
Do you know the way to Westminster?
Do you know the way to Little Saigon?
Let me tell you how to get there and where to go and where to be
In order to see the Vietnam War Memorial
The only monument that you can see nowhere (else)
How proud the solemn pair of soldiers side by side
Let’s come to praise the brave who fought for human rights
Let’s come to see the Vietnam War Memorial
And sing a song to honor those, the Heroes
So proud they stand for Love and Care and for the Free
Let’s come to praise the Brave who fought for you and me.

The Centrality of Local Politics
If one important lesson could be gleaned from post-Cold War politics in Little
Saigon, it was that nothing was more valuable for the fate of refugee nationalism than
having political allies in the host community. Without local allies, refugee nationalism
faced impossible odds such as what happened when memorials recently erected at the
former refugee camps in Malaysia and Indonesia were destroyed only a few months
later at the request of the Vietnamese government. To commemorate the 30
th

anniversary of the fall of Saigon, former refugees had staged reunions at Pulau Bidong,
Malaysia and Galang Island, Indonesia. They used the occasion to dedicate memorials
to the many thousands who died before their boats safely made it to shore. Derek
Nguyễn, a 41-year-old Southern California attorney, was a teenager when, “the
263
Malaysians, especially the people in Terengganu had helped rescue us, and gave a
proper burial for those who died at sea.”
95

The memorial consisted of a simple 10-foot tall stone plaque with English and
Vietnamese writing on the front and back. The inscription on the front at both
memorials read:
In commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who
perished on the way to freedom (1975-1996). Though they died of hunger or
thirst, of being raped, of exhaustion or of any other cause, we pray that they
may now enjoy lasting peace. Their sacrifices will not be forgotten.
—Overseas Vietnamese Communities, 2005

The reverse side read:

In appreciation of the efforts of UNHCR, the Red Cross and the Indonesian
Red Crescent Society and other world relief organizations, the
Indonesian/Malaysian government and people, as well as all countries of
first asylum and resettlement. We also express our gratitude to the
thousands of individuals who worked hard in helping the Vietnamese
refugees.
—Overseas Vietnamese Communities, 2005

Just two months after the March 24 dedication, the local government of Galang
Island quietly and compliantly tore down the memorial after the Vietnamese
government complained to the Indonesian president, citing the memorial’s allegedly
offensive wording. They also demanded the destruction of the memorial at Pulau
Bidong, Malaysia.
96
Understandably, the refugee community protested Hanoi’s
campaign to rewrite the past. “The monument is part of the Vietnamese people’s

95
Salmy Hashim, “Former ‘Boat People’ Plead to Malaysia Not to Destroy Bidong Memorial,” Malaysia
General News, 28 June 2005.

96
Fadli, “Vietnam Boat People’s Plaque Torn Down,” The Jakarta Post, 20 June 2005.

264
memory,” expressed a prominent refugee organizer. “What happened to our history
must be recorded and Vietnam must come to terms with this.”
97
From 1978 and 1990,
almost 250,000 boat people landed on the shores of Pilau Bidong, for reasons the
Vietnamese government has continued to argue are economic, rather than political, in
nature. Concerted appeals by the refugee community, including letters from Orange
County congresswoman Loretta Sanchez and the Vietnamese American Commissioner
of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,
failed to move the Malaysian government. With only a hint of resignation in his voice,
Malaysia’s state secretary told the press, “We have to take into account the relationship
between the Malaysian and the Vietnamese government.” By the end of October, the
memorial at Pulau Bidong ceased to exist.
98
It certainly made up setbacks in other
countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, where private memorials honoring the casualties
of Vietnam’s boat people exodus were demolished less a year after their unveiling.
“It is because they do not want future generations to know the truth about the
Vietnamese refugees,” asserted one Vietnamese observer. Indeed, books published in
Vietnam about the history and sociology of the diaspora shared a dramatically different
perspective on the exodus. Their authors talked of expatriates and émigrés, but
refrained from using the term refugees. Explaining why so many people left, they
preferred the economic reasons: to lift themselves from poverty or to avoid serving in

97
“Malaysia to Demolish Memorial Built by Vietnamese Boat People: Report,” Agence France Presse, 30
June 2005.

98
“Malaysia demolishes Vietnamese Refugee Memorial,” Bernama News Agency website, Kuala Lumpur,
26 October 2005.

265
the military.
99
One author in particular dealt with refugee history in his 600-page book
on the overseas Vietnamese by marginalizing their experience. Specifically, he tried
equating it to the history of Vietnamese migrant laborers on loan to the Soviet Union.
100

When the William Joiner Center at UMASS-Boston to bring in two literary
scholars from Hanoi to study the diaspora, local Vietnamese Americans, most of them
older men sporting US and South Vietnamese flags, flocked to Dorchester Ave during
the fall of 2000 to publicly vent against the Center’s scholarly sanction of communist
propaganda. "The Vietnamese community here is determined not to allow these two
communist writers to tell our story," said one of the protestors. "If they say something
different from what the government wants, then they cannot go back," opined another.
"They have a mission here."
101

Whether or not they had intentions to spread propaganda, the scholars had
already won in the court of public opinion. In contrast to stereotypes of Communists as
evil monsters, both scholars came across as quiet, unassuming intellectuals. Meanwhile,
the refugee community found themselves cast as vindictive reactionaryes who “simply
cannot imagine finding a shred of good in their old captors…Nor can they embrace any

99
Nguyễn Ngọc Hà, M.D., Về Người Việt Nam Định Cư ở Nước Ngoài – On the Vietnamese Who Have Settled
Abroad (Hồ Chí Minh City: Hồ Chí Minh City Publishers, 1990); Trần Trọng Đăng Đàn (Ph.D. in
Literature), Người Việt Nam Ở Nước Ngoài –The Vietnamese Expatriates (Hà Nội: Chính Trị Quốc Gia
publishers, 1997); Trần Trọng Đăng Đàn, Ngưòi Việt Nam ở Nước Ngoài: Không Chỉ Có “Việt Kiều” – The
Vietnamese Abroad: Before and Beyond the post-1975 Migration (Hà Nội: Chính Trị Quốc Gia publishers,
2005); The Committee on Overseas Vietnamese, Cộng Đồng Người Việt Nam ở Nước Ngoài: Những Vấn Đề
Cần Biết – The Overseas Vietnamse Community: An Essential Guide (Hà Nội: Thế Giới Publishers, 2005).

100
Trần Trọng Đăng Đàn (Ph.D. in Literature), Người Việt Nam Ở Nước Ngoài –The Vietnamese Expatriates
(Hà Nội: Chính Trị Quốc Gia publishers, 1997).

101
Marcella Bombardieri, “Battle Lines Remain: Some Vietnamese Refugees Protest Hanoi Scholars in
Boston,” Boston Globe, 26 October 2000, A1.

266
sign of softening that still comes under a banner of communism.”
102
The days of calm
anticipated in the post-refugee generation “cannot happen here soon enough,” opined a
Boston Globe staff writer.
103
Ironically, the refugee community had benefited from
images of virtuous victimhood as they took to the oceans.
For their part, the Anglophone younger generation did not have enough
memories of the old country to fear Communist reprisals the way their parents did
upon returning to Vietnam during the 1990s. If they cared at all about Vietnamese
culture and history, they usually did so in ways that kept as much distance from the
Vietnam War as possible. At colleges and high schools, they started fairly non-partisan
organizations with names like Project Ngọc, Lên Đường, and Vietnamese American
Coalition. Even the organization most active in homeland politics—founded in 1996 by
students at Cal-Poly Pomona University—named itself after Phan Bội Châu, a major
nationalist figure from the 1920s. Thumbing through various anthologies, one could
ascertain the undeniable urge of a new generation, with assorted collective memories, in
search of their own voice.
104
One former University of California student, in search of a

102
Marcella Bombardieri, “Battle Lines Remain: Some Vietnamese Refugees Protest Hanoi Scholars in
Boston,” Boston Globe, 26 October 2000, A1.

103
Adrian Walker, “Still No Peace on Vietnam,” Boston Globe, 27 August 2001, B1.

104
Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, edited by Barbara Tran, Monique T.D. Truong & Luu
Truong Khoi (New York: Asian American Writers Workshop, 1998); Once Upon a Dream: The Vietnamese-
American Experience, edited by De Tran, Andrew Lam, and Hai Dai Nguyễn (San Jose: San Jose Mercury
News, 1995).

267
non-refugee Vietnamese American consciousness, wrote his doctoral dissertation on
pre-1975 Vietnamese American communities.
105

Those who tried to balance community obligations with individual ambition,
especially if they were female, met tough challenges. One young female city council
member, who owed her 2005 election victory to a record turnout of Vietnamese
American voters, bemoaned the lack of professional respect that comes with a
traditional family-centered culture. "I feel that when [older Vietnamese] people look at
me, they feel that I am their daughter instead of an elected official,” she said.
106

Nevertheless, she did not stray from reminding Vietnamese constituents that she was a
refugee just like them. Like slavery for African Americans, or the Holocaust for Jews,
the refugee experience served as the primary collective memory around which ethnic
identity was defined, even for those too young to have memories of their own.

105
Vũ Hong Phạm, Beyond and Before the Boat People: Vietnamese American History Before 1975 (Ph.D.
dissertation, Cornell University, 2002)

106
My-Thuan Tran, “Vietnam Echoes in a San Jose Feud,”, Los Angeles Times, 22 March 2008.

268
Conclusion

Despite all the mini-victories achieved in Little Saigon during this time period,
mainstream institutionalization was still beyond the reach of many important historical
and cultural figures of South Vietnamese collective memory. The case of musician
Pham Duy highlighted this discrepancy with tragic clarity. In August of 1999, after his
wife of nearly 50 years lost her battle with lung cancer, the only thing Phạm Duy had to
live for was his legacy. Now the only lone surviving composer in modern Vietnamese
history, Pham Duy must have bristled at seeing late greats Trịnh Công Sơn and Văn
Cao canonized while his own accomplishments went unrecognized by a government
intent on marginalizing the legacy of all musicians turned refugees. The newly
widowed 79-year-old came face to face with that fact the following year during his first
trip back to Vietnam, a place where one could easily procure bootlegged copies of his
recordings, but would be hard pressed to find any mention of Mr. Duy in all the
important institutions of public memory.
1

A life in exile offered no compensation commensurate with his musical
contributions. Nobody among the refugee generation denied his greatness, but that

1
The dilemma that Pham Duy faced brought to light the continued importance of the nation-state in this
era of transnationalism. More than just sole administrators of rights and violence, the nation-state plays a
primary role as cultural gatekeeper. More for on cultural policy see Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian
American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward
Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Stephen J. Whitfield, The
Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Penny M. Von Eschen,
Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2006).

269
generation was dying off and fading memories alone could not sustain his legend.
Although more known to Americans than any other Vietnamese composer, his resume
contained none of the usual indicators of legend status. He had received nothing in the
way of a Grammy, a Kennedy Center Honor, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, an
important lifetime achievement award, or even a major encyclopedia entry. He was a
permanent fixture in Little Saigon, but bystanders there, as Phạm himself put it, “They
do not ask for autographs. They just look silently…They're very shy, I think, my
people."
2
Because Vietnamese songs were not treated as intellectual property by most in
the community, Phạm Duy had to keep scheduling concerts and producing new albums
just to reap any economic rewards.
3
Even then, none of the major Orange County music
labels, now profiting wildly off the sale of concert and karaoke videos, expressed much
interest in his more ambitious work of late. Consequently, the untelevised concerts and
retrospectives his friends threw for him in the years following his wife’s death felt
miniscule compared to the full-scale spectacle a nation-state could put together. At
these community-based retrospectives, entitled Một Đời Nhìn Lại, he noticed his
audiences getting older as younger Vietnamese Americans, suffering from language

2
Rick Vanderknyff, “His Music Links the Generations,” Los Angeles Times, Orange County edition, 14
March 1995, 12.

3
In Adelaida Reyes’ ethnomusicological study, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese
Refugee Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), the author’s informants in Little
Saigon’s music industry admit that few professionals, partly because they all know each other, seek
permission or collect royalties from songs since they draw mostly from pre-1975 songs, and thus see these
songs as part of the public domain. For years, Little Saigon Radio used one of Phạm Duy’s songs as its
theme music without every paying a royalty. When one of their employees, in fact a longtime friend of
Phạm Duy, wrote an article criticizing his defection from the community, Duy promptly banned the
company from using his music.

270
barriers and limited memories of the homeland, could not relate to the music of their
parents and therefore spent their money elsewhere.
4

These kinds of problems illustrate the essential role nation-states have played in
making culture and taste intelligible in the global marketplace. Along with exclusive
authority to confer political rights, the sovereign nation-state, with its power to
institutionalize the past, has the last word in shaping the parameters of popular culture
over the long haul. Without a country to which art works have origins and belonging,
what barometer could an artist like Phạm Duy point to as a proper measure of his
greatness? There was little good in being the hero of an exile community when exile
was intended to be a temporary condition until statehood arrives. Because of historical
circumstances, two formerly stateless populations—the African and Jewish diasporas—
eventually became strongly identified with the United States, especially its popular
culture. Barring that transformation, Phạm Duy’s artistic merits remained tied to a
country and context that no longer existed and whose former citizens were reaching
their golden years. As the thirty-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon neared, the 84-
year-old initiated a last ditch effort to save his legacy.
Unfortunately, his quest to do put himself ahead came at the expensive of the
refugee community. Beginning in late 2004, he made banner headlines in the ethnic
press by announcing his defection from the refugee community in exchange for being
allowed a place in official Vietnamese history. He had relinquished all copyrights to an
entertainment company in Saigon for the lofty sum of nearly $500,000. Next in line was

4
Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký 4: Thời Hải Ngoại—Memoirs, vol. 4: Life in Exile (Midway City, CA: Duy Cường
Productions, 1999), 105.

271
revising the story of his hasty retreat from North Vietnam in 1954 and from South
Vietnam in 1975 on the eve of Communist liberation in each region, respectively. His
line of reasoning echoed the statements made in the 1975 refugee camps by soon to be
repatriated men and women who did not want to incur the wrath of South Vietnam’s
new communist government. In Phạm’s case, he did not want to jeopardize the
opportunity to witness his songs performed for the first time in communist Vietnam.
5

Hanoi had authorized a concert in honor of Phạm Duy, opportunely scheduled around
the 30
th
anniversary of their Southern Liberation Day, with the legendary songwriter to
be in attendance.
The following year, from his new perch in Hồ Chí Minh City (formerly Saigon),
the author of nearly 1,000 songs—including “Vietnam, Vietnam,” the unofficial
anthem of his people—settled the debate once and for all. “When I left North Vietnam
in 1954,” Phạm Duy told reporters, “it was really to escape the path of destruction war
left behind; in 1975, I simply followed the thousands stampeding across Saigon: I did
not know I would up in America; so please do not think for one second I was some kind
of refugee fearing communism persecution.”
6

5
Phạm Duy’s songs have been officially banned in North Vietnam since 1954. That, combined with
traditional Northern contempt for Southern culture would have made it much more difficult for Phạm
Duy to find sanctuary in the region of his birth. Phạm Duy currently resides in Hồ Chí Minh City
(formerly Saigon), located in the southern part of the country.

6
From the Orange County edition of Viet Weekly, issue in 2006. During the lead-up to Phạm Duy’s
farewell to the U.S., the only newspaper taking his side was the weekly tabloid Viet Weekly. Consequently,
Phạm Duy gave them considerable access to interviews. Incidently, Viet Weekly is the only one of Little
Saigon’s newspapers that local firewalls allowed me to access over the internet while I stayed in Vietnam
during the summer of 2007.

272
Ironically, Pham Duy’s attempt to find a home in communist Vietnam alienated
him from his roots more than ever. For all his passionate denunciations of refugee
nationalism, the government of Vietnam legalized only a couple dozen of his songs,
mostly from the pre-1954 anti-French resistance period when he “carried a guitar in
one hand a gun in the other hand.”
7
He went from being a giant in exile to a minor
figure in official Vietnamese cultural history. As recently as 2007, his name remained
missing from the music history books and museums in Vietnam. Meanwhile, in the
bookstores of Little Saigon, people can still purchase his music, but his name has
become persona non grata or slowly forgotten. Younger Vietnamese Americans in
search of high art will more than likely gravitate to the “anti-war” music of Trịnh Công
Sơn, one of Phạm Duy’s contemporaries who took his chances by staying in Vietnam.
Desperate to salvage his legacy, Phạm Duy made the same mistake fellow exile
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ made a year earlier, a move that infuriated the community even more.
Nobody in Little Saigon had ever expected an exile as stridently anticommunist as
South Vietnam’s former prime minister to journey back to his native country on good
terms. As early as 1975 Kỳ had styled himself as head of the government in exile. He of
the trademark moustache once remarked that, “The only circumstance under which I'd
go back is whenever there is freedom and independence for the Vietnamese people.”
8

By 2004, with the Cold War long since ended but the Vietnamese Communist Party
still in power, the 73-year-old Ky all of a sudden exhorted his fellow refugees to “forget

7
Dick Schaap, “Singer from Saigon,” New York Herald Tribune, 18 April 1966.

8
“Vietnam’s Once-Fiery Ky Now Just a ‘Papa-San’” by Joseph N. Bell, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct 1988, 3.

273
the past.” Questioned by the mainstream media regarding charges he was waving the
white flag of surrender, he responded, “If you surrender to your country, what’s wrong
with that? This is my country, not Little Saigon, not Orange County.”
9
For all their
conciliatory rhetoric, Kỳ and his fellow travelers seemed to underestimate the cultural
concessions being asked of the refugee community in exchange for reconciliation with
post-Cold War Vietnam. In short, they were asking refugees to suck it up and identify
with a nation whose history books and classrooms portrayed the former South
Vietnamese as enemies of the Revolution, and whose national iconography showcased a
Madonna-like Hồ Chí Minh cradling a young child.
The overseas Vietnamese community debated nonstop over whether or not Phạm
Duy’s renunciation of the refugee community constituted an act of treason since his
legacy would now be subsumed under the Viet-Cong’s version of the past. After all, the
Vietnamese government had little interest in any of Phạm Duy’s music after 1954. One
of Duy’s former friends from the Voice of America, who had also written numerous
articles mythologizing the man, discouraged me from writing a single word about
Phạm Duy’s life prior to 2005. “Just write about his defection because nothing he’s
done before that matters anymore.”
10

9
Mai Tran and Richard C. Paddock, “Column One: The Tourist Who Ran the Place; Nguyễn Cao Ky, the
flashy pilot who led South Vietnam and was an anticommunist icon, is home as a visitor eager to leave the
past behind,” Los Angeles Times, 24 January 2004, A1’ In the summer of 2005, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ granted a
lengthy series of interviews with the Little Saigon tabloid Viet Weekly, in which he insisted that Vietnam,
because it had liberalized its economy since 1986, could no longer be called a communist country any
longer.

10
Phone interview with Mr. B.L., May 2007.

274
To be sure, many critics of Duy had traveled to Vietnam themselves, often
rationalizing their journeys as non-political in nature. But even personal visits had
political consequences. Just like Phạm Duy, regular Vietnamese Americans, especially
the men, saw their social status skyrocket upon landing in Saigon. Countless numbers
of older male travelers had easy access to women seemingly more submissive than their
Vietnamese American counterparts.
11
At the same time, younger Americanized males
reveled in a society where women found them attractive. “This place is heaven!”
confessed a twenty-something Vietnamese American male at a Saigon nightclub for
expatriates.
12
Back in Little Saigon, several companies specialized in tourist videos
targeted towards male audiences. DVDs featuring young bikini-clad beauties depicted
the homeland as the ultimate leisure destination because of easy access to great food,
scenic vistas, and hot women.

Finding Roots in Exile
Even if Phạm Duy and Nguyễn Cao Kỳ were sincere about wanting to spend
their last years in their homeland, they had misread the extent to which Vietnamese
Americans had on their own turned Little Saigon into a place where refugees could live
and die in peace. Beginning in 2000, the 25
th
anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Viết Báo

11
For more on the back-and-forth travel former refugees engage in, see Hung Cam Thai, Marriage Across the
Pacific: Family, Kinship, and Migration in Vietnam and in the Vietnamese Diaspora (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California at Berkeley, 2003).

12
The overwhelming majority of Vietnamese American men I encountered enjoyed their elevated social
status in Vietnam. For more on the gendered dynamics of Asian American expatriate life see Mary Yu
Danico, "Korean Identities: What does it mean to be Korean American in Korea?" Transaction Journal.
Seoul, Korea: Royal Asiatic Journal (March 2006).

275
Daily News set up their first annual native language essay competition called Viết Về
Nước Mỹ (Writing on America). One of the first out of over 800 submissions summed up
quite passionately the competition’s purpose: “The refugee generation is reaching its
twilight. We forget things or we are forgotten. Some are no longer with us. We need to
leave some record of our existence for the next generation. Let’s do it before it is too
late.”
13
In attendance at the November 29, 2000 awards ceremony was none other than
the now ubiquitous Mayor Frank Fry. With more essays than they could give awards
for, the editors included 100 essays each year in a paperback volume for $25 in all of
Little Saigon’s bookstores. In the collective urgency that surrounded the recording of
refugee history, Phạm Duy released his memoirs in 1999. So too did Nguyễn Cao Kỳ
along with two major figures from the Resistance Movement of the 1980s. Prior to his
death in 2005, Người Việt newspaper founder Yến Đỗ published an English-language
autobiography that outlined the unique contributions to Little Saigon along with
providing a rough social history of the community. Back in 2001, his one-time partner
Du Miên moved the three-year-old Vietnam Library and Museum a 3800 square foot
space he would eventually fill with over 50,000 books.
14
Among those books were
anthologies about the H.O. people. In 2004, the Viễn Đông newspaper company
collected enough personal essays from the wives of former re-education camp prisoners
to fill two paperback volumes. Soon after, they published a three-volume anthology

13
Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tuyển tập 1 - Writing on America, volume 1 (Westminster, CA: Viet Bao Publishing, 2000)
5-6.

14
Deepa Bharath, “Community Support Keeps Doors Open and Shelves Full,” Orange County Register, 24
Nov 2006.

276
penned by the former prisoners themselves. Last but not least, the people of Little
Saigon had constructed their own burial grounds so that former veterans could have the
South Vietnamese flag draped over their coffin, as was done for beloved 65-year-old
vocalist and music instructor Duy Khánh in 2003.
Unfortunately, there were two barriers to reaching the younger generation. The
first was ideological, of whether refugee nationalism’s traditional reliance on paternal
bonds with the United States would rest well with people far less interested in
continuing their elders’ outpouring of gratitude towards the United States for having
rescued them after 1975. The problem of language barriers posed an even greater threat
to cultural continuity. When social worker and musician Nam Lộc gave another guest
lecture, this time at Georgetown University in 2002, his hope turned to frustration
when the only Vietnamese student in the class admitted that she knew very little about
her own ethnic history because her parents never bothered to share their harrowing tale
of escape by boat during the 1980s.
15

Few bilingual scholars thus far have stepped towards to translate documents and
literature into English. Or more likely these texts wait for philanthropists who care as
much as journalist Andrew Lâm does. “If I were really rich,” said Lâm, “I would give
lots of money for translation work. I have Vietnamese American college students who
came up to me and say: ‘I can speak a little Vietnamese but cannot read it. I do research
on Vietnam and the majority of the texts in English are either from Hanoi and
Americans writers.’ Where’s the history of Little Saigon? They exist in books like Trại

15
Nam Lộc, “Xin Đời Một Nự Cười,” Việt Weekly (Orange County), October 2005.

277
Cải Tạo and Vượt Biển – first person narratives about re-education camps and boat
people experiences, written in Vietnamese. But these self same people, who sweated and
bled to write these stories and unfortunately, their children cannot access it. Which also
means, the rest of American cannot access it. Yet there are a lot of amazing stories
waiting to be heard. When we are all gone, it is the text, the stories that survive. And
our history cannot survive without care and nurture and a willingness to communicate,
to testify. We need to make our history known in everyway possible. That is part of the
reason why I became a writer.”
16
It was the same reason so many average Vietnamese
Americans became writers for anthologies.
The very institutionalization of their culture in books and memorials, as
acknowledged on DVD covers in Little Saigon, was victory enough for these people.
They would not see regime change in their lifetime, but they made sure their collective
memories would outlive them, so that future generations might learn how and why a
group of Vietnamese, treated like nearly-assimilated immigrants by the majority of
Americans, nevertheless identified as refugees who never stopped arguing that the
history of the Vietnamese diaspora started with the people of the fall.

16
Interview with New America Media founder Andrew Lam in a 2006 issue of BN magazine, a now
defunct bilingual Vietnamese American lifestyle magazine. On December 17, 2006, the transcript was
posted on New America Media’s website. http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/andrew-lam/396/bn-
magazines-interview-with-nam-editor-andrew-lam
278
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th
Congress, 2nd
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any currency directly or indirectly to any person in Vietnam. 20 June 1984

United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Refugee Task Force,
Summary of Findings of Visits to Indo-Chinese Refugee Resettlement Areas and a
Telephone Survey of a Selected Sample of Indo-Chinese Refugee Heads of Households
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 24 Feb 1976)

United States, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Refugee Task Force,
Task Force for Indochina Refugees: Report to Congress (Washington, DC:
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Refugee
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Refugee
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Interagency Task Force
on Indochinese Refugees, Report to Congress, 15 June 1975

United States, Department of States, Marguerite Rivera Houze, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, “Remarks on
Vietnamese-American Appreciation and Celebration Day on the Occasion of the
10th Anniversary of the Signing of the U.S.-Vietnamese Agreement for the
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http://www.state.gov/www/policy_remarks/1999/990725_rivera-houze.html

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United States Social Security Administration, Office of Regional Resettlement, CIU
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Uno, Roberta, editor, Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women
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USA Today

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Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 2 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2001)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 3—Writing on America, vol. 3 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2002)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 4—Writing on America, vol. 4 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2004)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 5—Writing on America, vol. 5 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2005)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 6 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2006)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 7 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
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306
Việt Nam Tự Do newspaper (San Jose, CA)

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1991).

The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History III: Refugee Service
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The Vietnamese Resistance (San Jose, CA)

Việt Weekly (Garden Grove, CA)

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307
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Washington Post

Wei, William, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
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Weis, Paul, Nationality and Statelessness in International Law, 2
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Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967

Wilentz, Sean, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (New York: Harper, 2008)

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Wong, K. Scott, and Sucheng Chan, editors, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese
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World Bank Policy Research Report, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and
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World Refugee Report (Washington DC: U.S. Department of State—Bureau of Refugee
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308
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Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Chân Trời Mới (New Horizons, Guam)

Agence France Presse

Asian Week

Bernama News Agency (Indonesia)

Boston Globe

Chicago Defender

Daily News of Los Angeles

Đất Lành (Good Land, Fort Indiantown Gap newsletter, Pennsylvania, 1975)

Đất Mới (New Land, Camp Eglin newsletter, Florida, 1975)

Đất Mới newspaper (Seattle)

Hiệp Nhất magazine (Vitnamese Catholics, Westminster, CA)

Kháng Chiến (Resistance, San Jose, CA)

309
Los Angeles Times

Malaysia General News

Miami Herald

New Pittsburgh Courier

New York Times

New York Times Magazine

Người Việt Daily News

Orange County Register

Peninsula Times Tribune (San Francisco Bay Area)

Sacramento Bee

San Francisco Chronicle

San Jose Mercury News

Seattle Times

Tân Dân (The People, Fort Chaffee Newsletter, Arkansas, 1975)

Thông Báo (Camp Pendleton newsletter, California, 1975)

Time magazine

Trắng Đen magazine (Glendale, CA)

Trắng Đen newspaper (Glendale, CA)

USA Today

Việt Nam Tự Do newspaper (San Jose, CA)

310
The Vietnamese Resistance (San Jose, CA)

Việt Weekly (Garden Grove, CA)

Washington Post

Dissertations, Theses, and Unpublished Papers

Aguilar-San Juan, Karin Creating Ethnic Places: Vietnamese American Community-
Building in Orange County and Boston (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2000)

Feeney, Maureen Patricia, Freedom to speak: Vietnamese reeducation and the search for Cold
War Refuge (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2002)

HoSang, Daniel, Racial Propositions: “Genteel Apartheid” in Postwar California (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Southern California, 2007).

Lâm, Mariam Beevi, Surfin’ Vietnam: Trauma, Memory and Cultural Politics (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California at Irvine, 2006)

Lieu, Nhi T., Private Desires on Public Display: Vietnamese American Identities in Multi-
Mediated Leisure and Niche Entertainment (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004)

Nguyễn, Mimi, Representing Refugees: Gender, Nation, and Diaspora in “Vietnamese
America" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2004)

Orr, Elisabeth E., Living Along the Fault Line: Community, Suburbia, and Multiethnicity in
Garden Grove and Westminster, California, 1900-1995 (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana
University, 2000).

Padgett, Douglas M., Religion, Memory, and Imagination in Vietnamese California (Ph.D.
dissertation, Indiana University, 2007).

Potocky, Mariam, The Economic Integration of Southeast Asian Refugees in California
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1993).

311
Ta, Minh-Hoa, Twice a Minority: A Participatory Study of the Chinese-Vietnamese
Adaptation Experiences in Vietnam and the United States (Ed.D. dissertation,
University of San Francisco, 2000);

Tang, Eric, Unsettled: On the Postcolonial Presence of Southeast Asian Refugees (Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 2006)

Thai, Hung Cam, Marriage Across the Pacific: Family, Kinship, and Migration in Vietnam
and in the Vietnamese Diaspora (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at
Berkeley, 2003)

Valverde, Caroline Kieu Linh, Making Transnational Viet Nam: Vietnamese American
Community—Viet Nam Linkages through Money, Music and Modems (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2002)

Võ-Đặng, Thanh-Thúy, Anticommunism as Cultural Praxis: South Vietnam, War, and
Refugee Memories in the Vietnamese American Community (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California at San Diego, 2008).

Vũ, Roy, Rising from the Cold War Ashes: Construction of a Vietnamese American
Community in Houston, 1975-2005 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Houston,
2006)

Biographies, Memoirs, and Oral Histories

Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold
Story (Houston: Văn Hoá, 1991)

Chan, Sucheng, ed., The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution,
Flight, and New Beginnings (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006)

Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 1—Narratives of the Re-education Camp Prisoners, Volume
1 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007).

Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives of the Re-education Camp Prisoners, Volume
2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007).

312
Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 1—Narratives from the Wives of the Re-education Camp
Prisoners, Volume 1 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2004).

Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives from the Wives of the Re-education Camp
Prisoners, Volume 2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2005).

Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 3—Narratives from the Wives of the Re-education Camp
Prisoners, Volume 3 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2005).

Do, Yen, and Jeffrey Brody, Yen Do and the Story of Nguoi Viet Daily News (Fullerton,
CA: Jeffrey Brody, 2003)

Doan, Brian, The Forgotten Ones: A Photographic Documentation of The Last Vietnamese
Boat People in the Philippines (Santa Ana, CA: VAALA, 2004).

Freeman, James, Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989)

Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn, The Will of Heaven: A Story of One Vietnamese and the End of His
World, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982)

Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký 4: Thời Hải Ngoại—Memoirs, vol. 4 (Midway City, CA: Duy Cường
Productions, available online only, 2000)

Phạm Ngọc Lũy, Hồi Ký Một Đời Người, tập 2—Memoirs, vol. 2 (Tokyo & Santa Clara,
CA: Tân Văn, 1994).

Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Ta Sông Núi: Hồi Ký 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hóa, 2004)

Powell, Colin, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine, 1995)

Toai, Doan Van, and David Chanoff, The Vietnamese Gulag (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1986).

Tran, De, Andrew Lam, and Hai Dai Nguyễn, editors, Once Upon a Dream: The
Vietnamese-American Experience (Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1995)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, vol. 1 (Westminster, CA: Viet Bao
Publishing, 2000)

313
Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 2 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2001)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 3—Writing on America, vol. 3 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2002)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 4—Writing on America, vol. 4 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2004)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 5—Writing on America, vol. 5 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2005)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 6 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2006)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 7 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2007)

The Vietnamese Commmunity in Orange County: An Oral History, vol. I: Business
Development (Santa Ana: Newhope Library, 1991).

The Vietnamese Commmunity in Orange County: An Oral History, vol. II: Religion and
Resttlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Orange County (Santa Ana: Newhope Library,
1991).

The Vietnamese Community in Orange County: An Oral History III: Refugee Service
Programs and Mutual Assistance Associations (Santa Ana: Newhope Public Library,
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Government Documents & Publications

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California, Health and Welfare Agency, Office of Migration and Refugee Affairs,
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th
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Refugee Task Force,
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315

United States, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Refugee Task Force,
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Refugee
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United States, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Refugee
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United States, Department of States, Marguerite Rivera Houze, Deputy Assistant
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Secretary of State by the Special Refugee Advisory Panel, 12 August 1981
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Normalization Process (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2005)

United States President’s Commission on Organized Crime, Organized crime of Asian
Origin: Record of hearing III, October 23-25, 1984, New York, NY (Washington,
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316

Vietnamese Language Sources

Anh Hừng Nước Tôi—Heroes of the Nation (San Jose, CA: Đông Tiến, 1986)

Cao Thế Dung, Mặt Trận: Những Sự Thật Chưa Hề Được Kể—The Front: The Untold
Story (Houston: Văn Hoá, 1991)

Chân Trời Mới (New Horizon, Guam newsletter, 1975)

Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 1—Narratives of the Re-education Camp Prisoners, Volume
1 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007).

Chuyện Người Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives of the Re-education Camp Prisoners, Volume
2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2007).

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Prisoners, Volume 1 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2004).

Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 2—Narratives from the Wives of the Re-education Camp
Prisoners, Volume 2 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2005).

Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cảo Tạo, Tập 3—Narratives from the Wives of the Re-education Camp
Prisoners, Volume 3 (Westminster: Viễn Đông Daily News, 2005).

Đất Lành (Good Land, Fort Indiantown Gap newsletter, 1975)

Đất Mới (New Land, Camp Eglin newsletter, 1975)

Đất Mới newspaper (New Land, Seattle)

Hiệp Nhất magazine (Vietnamese Catholics, Westminster, CA)

The National United Front for the Liberation of Viet-Nam, Mật Trận Quốc Gia Thống
Nhất Giải Phóng Việt Nam và Con Đường Cứu Nước—The National United Front for
the Liberation of Vietnam and the Road to Freedom (San Jose, 1995)

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317
Nguyễn Đình San, ed, 100 Bài Hát Việt Nam Hay Nhất Thế Ký 20—The 100 Greatest
Vietnamese Songs of the 20th Century (Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 2007)

Nguyễn Đình San, ed, Dư Âm: 100 Ca Khúc Đặc Sắc của 100 Nhạc Sĩ Thế Ký 20—
Echoes: 100 Selections from the 100 Greatest Vietnamese Songwriters of the 20th
Century (Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 2007)

Nguyễn Ngọc Hà, M.D., Về Người Việt Nam Định Cư ở Nước Ngoài – On the Vietnamese
Who Have Settled Abroad (Hồ Chí Minh City: Hồ Chí Minh City Publishers,
1990);

Phạm Duy, Hồi Ký 4: Thời Hải Ngoại—Memoirs, vol. 4 (Midway City, CA: Duy Cường
Productions, available online only, 2000)

Phạm Ngọc Lũy, Hồi Ký Một Đời Người, tập 2—Memoirs, vol. 2 (Tokyo & Santa Clara,
CA: Tân Văn, 1994).

Phạm Văn Liễu, Trả Ta Sông Núi: Hồi Ký 3—Memoirs, vol. 3 (Houston: Văn Hóa, 2004)

Tân Dân (The People, Fort Chaffee Newsletter, 1975)

Thái Bình newspaper (Santa Monica, CA)

Trần Trọng Đăng Đàn, Ngưòi Việt Nam ở Nước Ngoài: Không Chỉ Có “Việt Kiều” – The
Vietnamese Abroad: Before and Beyond the post-1975 Migration (Hà Nội: Chính Trị
Quốc Gia publishers, 2005);

Trần Trọng Đăng Đàn (Ph.D. in Literature), Người Việt Nam Ở Nước Ngoài –The
Vietnamese Expatriates (Hà Nội: Chính Trị Quốc Gia publishers, 1997)

Trắng Đen magazine (Glendale, CA)

Trắng Đen newspaper (Glendale, CA)

Việt Nam Tự Do newspaper (San Jose, CA)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 1—Writing on America, vol. 1 (Westminster, CA: Viet Bao
Publishing, 2000)

318
Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 2 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2001)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 3—Writing on America, vol. 3 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2002)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 4—Writing on America, vol. 4 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2004)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 5—Writing on America, vol. 5 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2005)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 6 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2006)

Viết Về Nước Mỹ, tập 2—Writing on America, vol. 7 (Westminster, CA: Việt Báo
Publishing, 2007)

Việt Weekly (Garden Grove, CA)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Throughout history refugees have formed their own communities in new lands while holding on to memories of exile and harboring aspirations for reclaiming their lost nations. These memories and aspirations are part of a process I call “refugee nationalism,” and this dissertation studies its origins, development, and persistence within Southern California’s Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. Most studies of Vietnamese Americans have marginalized the refugees’ attachment to the fallen country of South Vietnam, focusing instead on their transformation from refugees to immigrants in the process of shedding their old-world identities and adapting to their American surroundings. This perspective fails to appreciate the fact that refugee nationalism has flourished in conjunction with becoming American. Like prior generations of stateless people, the former South Vietnamese had to come to terms with a refugee cultural identity without precedent in their own cultural history. Only later would they come to embrace refugee nationalism.

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