Remembering the fall of Saigon

Another Vietnam.

Those two words have become a cautionary mantra over the 40 years since the fall of Saigon indelibly etched images of U.S. foreign policy failure in memories and history books.

The post-Sept. 11 invasion of Afghanistan and the trillions of dollars spent in vain to rid that country of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants was another Vietnam, many argued then and now.

In this April 1975 file photo, orphans aboard the first “Operation Babylift” flight at the end of the Vietnam War look through the windows of World Airways DC-8 jet as it flies them to the United States.
AP

In this Thursday, May 1, 1975 file photo, U.S. sailors transfer a South Vietnamese boy from the USS Blue Ridge to a merchant vessel off the South Vietnam coast during evacuations from South Vietnam.
Nick Ut /AP

The occupation of Iraq in pursuit of its purported weapons of mass destruction was another Vietnam, having wrecked much of the Middle East country and sown resentment that still fuels Islamic extremism three years after the U.S. withdrawal.

“All-in” U.S. intervention has been averted in conflicts racking Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Ukraine, at least partly in recognition that wars fought on behalf of people who don’t share American values are destined to be lost.

In this April 28, 1975 photo provided the White House via the Gerald R. Ford Library, President Gerald Ford, center, meets with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, right, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in the Oval Office of the White House to discuss the American evacuation of Saigon.
David Hume Kennerly/AP

In this Tuesday, April 29, 1975 file photo, American citizens arrive aboard the command and control ship USS Blue Ridge after being evacuated out of Saigon, South Vietnam, by U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopters operating from Navy ships.
AP

In this Tuesday, April 29, 1975 file photo, U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon. The helicopter had carried Vietnamese people fleeing Saigon as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the capital.
AP

Historians continue to disagree about reasons for the defeat of democratic aspirations in South Vietnam at the hands of the communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Some argue that a moral obligation was inherited by the Western victors of World War II to press the struggle for freedom for “captive nations,” including those of Eastern Europe, that were dominated by the Soviet Union. Others contend that American forces had no strategic interests in Southeast Asia, or that the war was lost because the Vietnamese were sidelined as the superpowers fought a proxy war on their territory.

In this Monday, April 28, 1975 file photo, South Vietnamese troops and western TV newsmen run for cover as a North Vietnamese mortar round explodes on Newport Bridge on the outskirts of Saigon.
Hoanh AP

Lewis Sorley, a preeminent chronicler of the war that has become synonymous in the minds of many with misguided U.S. military ventures, laid the blame for the defeat in Vietnam on a failure of political conviction at a key moment when a changed command strategy was turning the war’s tide.

A West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, former Army War College instructor and CIA planning and policy chief, and also the author of six historical accounts of the war, Sorley spoke with The Times this week about Vietnam’s enduring influence on U.S. security policy before Thursday’s 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

In this April 30, 1975 file photo, South Vietnamese civilians try to scale the walls of the U.S. embassy in Saigon in an attempt to get aboard evacuation flights.
Neal Ulevich AP

What was the initial rationale for U.S. intervention in Vietnam?

Most people agree that the decision made during the Eisenhower administration and reaffirmed by successive presidents had to be viewed in the context of the Cold War. Containment [of the spread of communism] was the strategy decided on.

In this April 29, 1975 file photo, people try to scale the 14-foot wall of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, trying to reach evacuation helicopters, as the last of the Americans depart from Vietnam.
Neal Ulevich AP

Why did it fall to the United States to act as ‘defenders of freedom’ in Southeast Asia?

The French were the colonial masters in Indochina and we really needed them in Europe as part of NATO. The French wanted our help in Vietnam. It would be accurate to say we aspired to be leading defenders of the free world but we very definitely didn’t want to be the sole defenders.

We had good reasons for our involvement in Vietnam, but it’s important to remember that our involvement was incrementally increased. Our initial involvement was monetary and logistical. In the spring of 1965, it opened up big time. [Commanding Gen. William] Westmoreland’s response to any crisis was to ask for more troops. At the high-water mark, on 30 April 1969, we had 543,400 troops in the country.

In this May 4, 1975 file photo, a youth waves a weapon and a Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) flag as he joins PRG troops on a jeep on Tu Do street in Saigon.
Matt Franjola AP

Was it mounting public opposition to the war in the late 1960s that prompted the decision to draw down forces?

Congress was out ahead of the American people in losing enthusiasm for the war. Westmoreland squandered four years of support by the public. His only focus was on a war of attrition that assumed if you killed enough of the enemy they would lose heart and cease their aggression.

In this April 30, 1975 file photo, a North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam. The war ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon.
Anonymous AP

[President] Nixon and [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger didn’t want to just abandon the Vietnamese. What was decided was a phased withdrawal. When Westmoreland finally was replaced by [Gen. Creighton] Abrams, it was not only a new war but a better war. Abrams understood the importance of building up the South Vietnamese armed forces and the need for population security. The Vietnamese expanded their forces from 600,000 to 1.1 million, almost all territorial forces who were on home ground, where their families lived, where their ancestral grave sites were. They really turned out to be excellent soldiers and until Congress decided to cut support for them they fought very effectively.

In this April 29, 1975 file photo, a helicopter lifts off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon, Vietnam during last minute evacuation of authorized personnel and civilians.
AP

How is the fall of Saigon and the chaotic evacuation of the U.S. Embassy remembered40 years later?

We will never live down the shame of having abandoned the Vietnamese. It’s not just that the evacuation left many behind, but when we cut off support for their armed forces, we caused the war to end the way it did.

In this April 4, 1975 file photo, smoke rises from the wreckage of a U.S. Air Force C-5A transport plane after it crashed in a paddy field shortly after takeoff from the Saigon Airport, killing a large number of orphan children who were on board in a rescue flight from South Vietnam.
Dang Van Phuoc AP

How did the Vietnam experience influence U.S. missions in Afghanistan and Iraq?

By the time we began to pull the plug on South Vietnam, they had a relatively effective government and armed forces and a politically homogeneous population. That couldn’t be said of Afghanistan or Iraq. The preconditions in those countries made our involvement doomed before it began. The young men and women in our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan — all volunteers — served bravely and selflessly and deserve our thanks and admiration. But what we asked them to do was something not in the realm of possibility.

In this April 1, 1975 file photo, a cargo net lifts refugees from a barge onto the SS Pioneer Contender for evacuation from the fallen city of Da Nang, Vietnam. It took eight hours to load some 6,000 refugees aboard the ship.
Peter O’Loughlin AP

What should be the standard for sending U.S. troops into foreign conflicts?

I hope policymakers conclude that it must be shown that we have important interests, even if the main interest is freedom writ large, and that there is a reasonable expectation of success. If not, let’s not spend lives and treasure in a vain cause in which we have nothing at stake.

In this Thursday, April 4, 1975 file photo, young demonstrators toss sticks and rocks at South Vietnamese riot police in Saigon in a brief confrontation after a rally sponsored by the mainly Catholic anti-corruption movement.
Lo Vinh AP

In this April 5, 1965 file photo, Capt. Donald R. Brown crouches on the ground in Saigon, waiting for the order for attack across an open field against Vietcong positions in a treeline from where enemy combatants with automatic weapons had briefly pinned down the HQ company of the 2nd Battalion, 46 Regiment.
AP

In this Sunday, April 27, 1975 file photo, a cross from a church in Saigon stands against the dawn sky after a rocket attack and ensuing fire.
Matt Franjola AP

In this April 23, 1975 photo provided by the Department of Defense, Vietnamese refugees crowd aboard the Military Sealift Command ship Pioneer Contender to be evacuated to areas further south.
AP

In this April 29, 1975 file photo, South Vietnamese civilians scale the 14-foot wall of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, trying to reach evacuation helicopters as the last Americans depart from Vietnam.
AP

This April 30, 1975 photo provided by former U.S. Marines Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Valdez shows Marines barricading themselves on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, 13 Marines returned to dedicate a plaque to their two fallen brothers at the site of the old embassy, which is now the U.S. Consulate.
AP

This undated photo provided by former U.S. Marines Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Valdez shows Vietnamese climbing the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, 13 Marines returned to dedicate a plaque to their two fallen brothers at the site of the old embassy, which is now the U.S. Consulate.
AP

This April 30, 1975 photo provided by former U.S. Marines Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Valdez of Oceanside, California, shows himself, rear center, sitting on the last helicopter leaving the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, 13 Marines returned to dedicate a plaque to their two fallen brothers at the site of the old embassy, which is now the U.S. Consulate.
AP

L.A. Times

Remembering the fall of Saigon

How Tippi Hedren made Vietnamese refugees into nail salon magnates

Tippi Hedren

When actress Tippi Hedren visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California 40 years ago, the Hollywood star’s long, polished fingernails dazzled the women there.

Hedren flew in her personal manicurist to teach a group of 20 refugees the art of manicures. Those 20 women – mainly the wives of high-ranking military officers and at least one woman who worked in military intelligence – went on to transform the industry, which is now worth about $8bn (£5.2bn) and is dominated by Vietnamese Americans.

“We were trying to find vocations for them,” says Hedren, who is perhaps best known for starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and for running a wildcat sanctuary at her home in Southern California.

“I brought in seamstresses and typists – any way for them to learn something. And they loved my fingernails.”

Hope Village, the refugee camp, was in Northern California near Sacramento. Aside from flying in her personal manicurist, Hedren recruited a local beauty school to help teach the women. When they graduated, Hedren helped get them jobs all over Southern California.

“I loved these women so much that I wanted something good to happen for them after losing literally everything,” Hedren told the BBC from a museum she is building next to her home. The museum includes Hollywood memorabilia, a few photos of the women at Camp Hope and awards she’s won from the nail care industry.

Tam Nguyen’s parents were trained by Hedren

“Some of them lost their entire family and everything they had in Vietnam: their homes; their jobs; their friends – everything was gone. They lost even their own country.”

The Vietnamese gave the nail salon business a radical makeover. In the 1970s, manicures and pedicures cost around $50 – fine for Hollywood starlets but out of reach for most American women. Today, a basic “mani-pedi” can cost around $20 – largely due to Vietnamese American salons, which typically charge 30-50% less than other salons, according to NAILS Magazine.

Forty years after the fall of Saigon, 51% of nail technicians in the United States – and approximately 80% in California – are of Vietnamese descent. And many are direct descendants of that first class of women inspired by the nails of a Hitchcock blonde.

“Of course I know who Tippi Hedren is! She’s the Godmother of the nail industry,” says Tam Nguyen, president of Advance Beauty College, which was started by his parents.

“My mother is best friends with Thuan Le, one of Tippi’s original students. It was Thuan who encouraged my mother to get into the business.”

As Nguyen speaks, dozens of students are learning about cuticle care in a lecture behind him. At 41, Mr Nguyen was born just before the fall of Saigon. In Vietnam, his father was a military officer and his mother a hairdresser. His parents pressured him to become a doctor, which he dutifully did, but then he decided his heart was in the nail business.

“It broke my mother’s heart,” he says.

But Nguyen’s parents soon forgave him and blessed his decision to take over the family business with his sister. They now run two beauty schools and are opening another. All of their courses are taught simultaneously in English and Vietnamese.

The language barrier was the initial reason nails were an attractive option for refugees. They only had to learn a few phrases of English to get by.

Hedren with one of her graduating classes

Not all of the women remained in the nail salon business, but many did. Thuan Le is still working at a salon in Santa Monica, California. Yan Rist, who worked in military intelligence in Vietnam as a translator and then later as a secretary for State Department officials, stayed in the nail business then moved into tattoos once she settled in Palm Springs.

“Tippi got me a job in Beverly Hills so I could make a lot of money,” Yan Rist said. “I worked on Rodeo Drive – but I am a refugee and I didn’t dress well at the time. All the rich women coming in – they didn’t want to try the newcomer. Every day I went to work it cost me $8 for the parking. Eight dollars for parking! In 1976!”

She says Hedren helped her get a different job closer to home when she quit her job in Beverly Hills.

Tippi Hedren in 1966

The women, who still have occasional reunions, say they never anticipated the butterfly effect their polishing and cuticle cutting would have on Vietnamese Americans, the pampering of ordinary people or the US economy.

“There was hope in a idea that maybe I could help these incredibly wonderful women. And I had no idea it would reach the gigantic numbers,” says Hedren, looking out the window at the lions and tigers fenced in on her yard.

She shows off a tiny bunny painted on her toenail, left over from her Easter pedicure. Her current favourite manicurist is a man, and Vietnamese, “of course,” she says laughing.

“Now it’s dominated by the Vietnamese. I sure wish I had a percentage of it – I wouldn’t be working so hard to keep these lions and tigers fed.”

BBC

How Tippi Hedren made Vietnamese refugees into nail salon magnates

Bipartisan Panel Calls For Vietnam"s Return to Religious Freedoms Blacklist

A man walks past a Catholic church decorated with lighting for Christmas in downtown Hanoi, Dec. 22, 2011.
AFP

A U.S. bipartisan commission called on Thursday for Vietnam to be returned to a State Department blacklist of the world’s worst abusers of religious freedoms, urging at the same time that the places of China, Myanmar, and North Korea on the list be maintained.

Vietnam, under one-party communist rule, continues to “severely restrict independent religious practice, and repress individuals and religious groups it views as challenging its authority,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in an annual report.

The State Department included Vietnam on its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) in 2004 but removed it from the blacklist two years later amid improving diplomatic relations, and has since ignored repeated calls by the commission to reinstate the country’s designation.

Despite “some improvements” in religious freedoms noted during the last year in Vietnam, the country’s government “requires religious organizations and congregations to register with a state-sanctioned entity in order to be considered legal,” USCIRF said in its report.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday to announce the report’s release, USCIRF chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett noted that Vietnam employs “a variety of mechanisms” to control religious practice in the country.

“This is something that we remain very, very concerned about,” Swett said.

“We do continue to recommend that Vietnam be designated as a CPC. We think it’s warranted, we think that facts back that up. And I would point out that despite progress in some other areas, we do feel that Vietnam’s human rights record remains very poor—specifically, its religious freedoms record.”

Further deterioration

For its report last year, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. Secretary of State maintain the status of eight countries already present on the CPC list including China, Myanmar, and North Korea.

“Not one of them has significantly improved its record,” Swett said, while in China, “We have seen signs of further deterioration.”

USCIRF noted that China under its new president Xi Jinping had worked during the last year to further tighten controls over “all aspects of its citizens’ lives.”

“For religious freedom, this has meant unprecedented violations against Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, and Falun Gong practitioners,” with religious believers facing fines, lengthy prison sentences, and the destruction of places of worship.

At least 400 churches were torn down or had crosses removed from public view, with most demolitions taking place in China’s coastal Zhejiang province, USCIRF said.

Leaders of both registered and unregistered, or “house,” churches had also faced harassment and arbitrary arrest, USCIRF said, with some house church pastors classified by authorities as leaders of “cults.”

In Myanmar, designated a CPC since 1999, religious and ethnic minorities “continued to experience intolerance, discrimination, and violence,” USCIRF said in its report.

Abuses by nationalist Buddhists against the Rohingya Muslim minority group were especially severe, the rights group said.

Myanmar’s government has shown itself unwilling to intervene or to investigate and prosecute abusers, though, and “the introduction of four discriminatory race and religion bills in 2014 could well further entrench such prejudices,” USCIRF said.

Christian areas of Myanmar also experienced discriminatory practices at the hands of Buddhist state officials, according to the report.

Severe persecution

In North Korea, also listed as a CPC, “genuine freedom of religion or belief is non-existent,” USCIRF said.

“Individuals secretly engaging in religious activities are subject to arrest, torture, imprisonment, and sometimes execution,” the rights group said, with North Koreans suspected of contacts with foreign missionaries singled out for especially harsh treatment.

All religious practice outside of state control is restricted in North Korea, but Christians experience the most severe persecution, according to the USCIRF report, which noted that Christianity is associated with “the United States and Western ideology” and is therefore considered especially threatening to the regime.

“It is estimated that tens of thousands of Christians in North Korea are currently in prison camps facing hard labor or execution,” the report said.

The Southeast Asian nation of Laos meanwhile remains on USCIRF’s Tier 2 “Watch List” for continuing “serious religious freedom abuses,” the rights group said in its report.

Countries on the Tier 2 Watch List have engaged in violations which, while not rising to CPC status, are considered significant and serious.

Laos—like Vietnam, China, and North Korea a one-party communist state—allowed ongoing abuses during 2014 against religious minority groups, “abuses that are most prominent in remote, rural areas,” USCIRF said.

“Moreover, the government’s suspicion of Protestant Christianity as a ‘Western’ or ‘American’ construct continued to result in discrimination, harassment, and arrests of Christians throughout the country.”

Abuses were especially noted in Laos’s Savannakhet Province, where Christians were reported to have been ordered by local officials to renounce their faith, USCIRF said.

“Based on these concerns, in 2015 USCIRF again places Laos on Tier 2, where it has been since 2009.”

RFA

Bipartisan Panel Calls For Vietnam"s Return to Religious Freedoms Blacklist

40 years after Vietnam"s fall, one Sacramento family remembers

Nhuong Tran, 93, prays at his wife Khai Phan’s altar Sunday. They were married for 70 years.
Renée C. Byer

Nearly every Sunday, UC Davis student Julia Mai Nguyen visits her great-grandfather, Nhuong Tran, at his tidy mobile home on Mack Road in south Sacramento. She practices her Vietnamese and absorbs 93 years of life lessons from Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who led three generations of the family out of South Vietnam after Saigon fell to the communists 40 years ago.

“He’s my best friend,” says Julia, 22. “He and my great-grandma Khai Fan, who died in 2013, helped raise everyone in the family. They taught us to work hard, not complain, be fair and take responsibility.”

Tran and his family are among the 32,000 Vietnamese Americans living in the Sacramento region. Last week, they marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon with bittersweet memories, said Nancy Tran, a talk show host and commentator with Sacramento’s Vietnamese Radio TNT. They have built new lives in the United States, but the memories from Vietnam remain powerful – and sometimes traumatizing.

Nhuong Tran shows off marine anchors he bought to honor his family to his great-granddaughter Julia Nguyen, 22. He collects boat memorabilia to preserve the memory of his family, which escaped Vietnam by boat. Tran relocated to the U.S. by plane in 1990.”
Renée C. Byer

“It’s huge,” said Nancy Tran (no relation to Nhuong Tran). “Most of us are Vietnamese refugees who lost our country and our homes, and many of our families were divided.”

Many members of the community still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, Tran said. “One man who spent nine years in a North Vietnamese re-education camp and came here in 2003 is still haunted by the fear instilled in him by the guards. He’s still telling his wife, ‘Watch out, they’re coming, don’t let them see me.’ ”

Nhuong Tran doesn’t suffer from PTSD, but he sips Hennessy cognac to ease the pain of loss and loneliness. He blames the communists for the hardships that tore apart his family on both continents – and the United States for letting the South lose the war. “When the U.S. was there, we were winning the war,” he told Julia on a recent visit. “We lost South Vietnam because America withdrew from our country. President (Richard) Nixon didn’t care any more and we ran out of weapons, gas and equipment.”

Nhuong Tran, 93, combs his hair and gets ready to meet his great-granddaughter Julia Nguyen, 22, who visits him every week. “I consider him 94 years old because in the Asian community they count the time you were in the womb,” Nguyen said.”
Renée C. Byer

Tran’s life spans the sweep of Vietnamese history. He grew up the oldest of 10 children in a family of rice farmers in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the communist victory. The old farmer maintains a lovely garden scented with orange roses and star jasmine. Every morning he goes out to his garden to pray to a white statue of Kuan Yin, Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy, and gives thanks for being in the United States.

Then he prays to his late wife Khai Phan’s altar, which is stocked with lemons, oranges, flowers and incense. “We were married for 70 years,” he said, a trace of tears forming in his gray eyes.

Tran, who speaks French, said he used to make and sell his own rice beer in Vietnam. “Even though it cost twice as much as the beer the French were selling, people preferred it,” Julia said. Tran said the French came to his house, told him he didn’t have a license to sell it and made him dump it all into the river.

He moved to Saigon and became a policeman, and one of his son-in-laws, Julia’s grandfather Nguyen Van Ba, became a police captain. “The Americans came to Saigon 40 years ago to take the high-ranking Vietnamese officials out of the country by helicopter, but grandpa Nguyen didn’t want to leave my grandma and his kids, so he jumped off,” Julia said.

One of Tran’s daughters had married an American pilot, who took her to Sacramento before Saigon fell. Tran said she warned him the Viet Cong would cut his throat if he stayed, but he didn’t believe they’d be so severe.

“I thought my wife and I were too old to leave the country on fishing boats and start over in America,” he said.

Their son was arrested three times trying to escape, Tran said, and the communists warned him that if he tried to leave again they would kill him. Tran hated Ho Chi Minh for allowing thousands to die of starvation after the war, but admired him for rising from cook’s assistant to a national leader who spoke five languages.

After Saigon fell, Tran said, he was forced to move back to the farm. Food was so scarce that meals were often watered down rice porridge with rat meat, Julia said. “But he didn’t complain because he’s a Buddhist, and Buddhists say suffering is a choice.”

Julia said her grandfather Nguyen, the Saigon police captain who jumped off the helicopter, was taken away to a communist re-education camp and assigned to feed the cows. When he returned years later, he was so thin his wife didn’t recognize him.

Tran and his family, sponsored by his daughter in Sacramento, finally arrived here in 1990. “Me and my wife and kids would wake up at 5 a.m. every day and deliver The Sacramento Bee,” he said. “I carried the newspaper on my back while I went from house to house by bicycle. It was very heavy.”

They considered themselves lucky to be here in one piece, Julia said. Her maternal grandfather, an American soldier, was killed in combat.

Tran still enjoys a Sunday brunch of French beef stew at My Tho, a Vietnamese restaurant on Stockton Boulevard, with his family, which includes seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Julia, an international agricultural development major studying aquaculture, represents the fusion of two cultures. Her favorite book is “The Great Gatsby”; her favorite movie, The Dark Knight.”

Her cousins, aunts and uncles include accountants, computer programers and engineers who reflect the evolution of Sacramento’s Little Saigon. The number of Vietnamese here has grown by more than 15,000 since 2000, and the median household income was roughly $54,000 in 2013, up about 25 percent from 2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Roughly 24 percent of local Vietnamese adults age 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, up from 19 percent in 2000, according to the census. That compares with 28 percent for the entire population.

Julia, an exceptional student with a full-time job, said she gets her work ethic from her great-grandparents. “They really embody responsibility,” she said. “They raised me and my brother when they didn’t have to. Even though they were very traditional and would give me advice, they made me understand it was my life.”

Sacramento Bee

40 years after Vietnam"s fall, one Sacramento family remembers

‘The Memory is Still With Me’

Le Cong Dinh gives an interview from his home in Ho Chi Minh City, April 10, 2015.
AFP

U.S.-trained human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh, 46, was released from prison in 2013 after serving more than three years for “activities aimed at overthrowing” Vietnam’s one-party Communist government. Speaking to RFA’s Vietnamese Service by telephone from his home in Ho Chi Minh City, where he is serving probation, Dinh recounted the day North Vietnamese forces took the city, ending the Vietnam War. Following is an abridged transcript of the interview:

Dinh: The memory of April 30, 1975 is still with me. I was seven years old. We went to school as usual up until that day. The evacuation happened on the streets and at the U.S. Embassy. People ran to the embassy and boarded helicopters. I saw those scenes as I passed by and the images still linger in my mind. On April 30, all of the children in my area went out on the streets to see the liberation forces or watched it on TV. On TV, we saw the transition committee organize meetings where the portrait of Ho Chi Minh and the flags of North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong) were hung. I was surprised and asked my dad who the person was and he said “Ho Chi Minh.”

As I grew up I started to understand more about the war. I was taught about the war according to the government’s distorted perception. Just like many other generations who grew up in this new regime, I was only familiar with the propaganda.

When I was in university, through talks with my relatives and friends, I gained a greater understanding of the issue. I started to study about our history and looked for books to read. But most of the books back then were published by the government, so how could I fully understand it? That was why I had to look for books published before 1975—books from my own family and especially those of my own elder brother. Those books really changed my thinking. I had a new perception about our history around the age of 17 or 18. I wanted to have a comprehensive, multi faceted understanding of the country’s history.

RFA: After you were arrested, the mainstream media wrote that your family was a revolutionary family and enjoyed privileges due to this. Did your family receive any privileges after April 30, 1975?

Dinh: In 1975, after the reunification, my father became a member of the new regime, but many things happened after that which made him realize he had been deceived, such as the policies [the government] applied to many people in the south. Those policies included the detention of South Vietnam veterans and civil servants of the South Vietnam government, and capitalism reforms. He saw these policies as inhumane.

Before 1975, people tried to save their money and work legally to lead normal lives, emulating the middle class. But now they were categorized as capitalist, their assets were confiscated, and their families were forced to relocate to new economic zones.

Of course, when looking at my background, they still thought of my family as a revolutionary family and that was why when I was at the lower court, I said “I think my family—including my grandfather, uncle, father and aunt—all followed the revolution, however I chose a different path.” I stated that very clearly, but when I saw the footage on YouTube … [the authorities] cut that part out and dubbed in different words. They made it seem as if I said that because I had gone against my family tradition and achievements, I felt regret.

RFA: Forty years after the war, prisoners from re-education camps have returned home. But now there exist new prisoners of conscience. What does this show to the world?

Dinh: From what happened to veterans who served the South in the past, we can see that the new government’s policy sought to take revenge on them. The new government had no leniency and offered no reconciliation—that was why they had implemented the re-education policy.

From today’s prisoners of conscience, everybody can see that this is a despotic regime whose members only want to hear words that please their own ears, who expect the people to follow their will, and who will not tolerate dissenting opinions. That is why there are political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. I only voiced my own opinions and they considered it to be a threat by hostile forces. This shows the world the consistent policy of all communist regimes. Europe, Asia and especially the U.S. have not seen any change in their authoritarianism.

The number of prisoners of conscience is increasing. This shows us the fear in the minds of [Vietnam’s] leaders. They are always afraid that their power will be taken away due to the influence of intellectuals and dissidents, and the only way they have to respond is to crack down on them and imprison them. They think that is the best way to stop all opposing voices.

RFA

‘The Memory is Still With Me’

Vietnamese TV Show Suspended for Moving Hanoi Into China

Screen shot of erroneous map that aired on reality TV Show. (Photo: VOA Vietnamese service)

A new reality TV show in Vietnam has been put on hold for wrongfully depicting the capital of Hanoi as being inside Chinese territory.

Also, the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, claimed by Vietnam in the South China Sea, were omitted in a map seen during the commercial announcing the new show, sparking public outcry.

Spratly Islands, China Sea Territorial Claims

State-owned Vietnam Television (VTV) has coordinated with a private company, Cat Tien Sa, to produce the show “Sabotage,” in which one of the contestants is tasked with spoiling the missions of other contestants.

A senior editor of a Vietnamese daily newspaper, who wished to remain anonymous, told VOA the program’s suspension illustrated the sensitivity surrounding disputes with China over the South China Sea.

“The map without the two archipelagos was dealt with seriously. It was acted upon swiftly as it is a politically sensitive issue,” he said.

The government’s media oversight department said the incorrect mapping triggered public speculation, violated press laws and might affect the defense of Vietnam’s sovereignty.

The mishap came a few days after VTV broadcast footage showing Vietnamese activist blogger Dieu Cay sitting next to President Barack Obama at the White House last week while celebrating World Press Freedom Day.

The freelance reporter was imprisoned in 2012 for anti-state criticism but was released early and sent to the U.S. last year.

Dissident Nguyen Tien Trung, who met former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2006, said he was surprised to see the blogger on Vietnamese TV screens.

“I am very pleased to see President Barack Obama meet with blogger Dieu Cay, a Vietnamese prisoner of conscience,” he said. “The U.S. is very interested in promoting the human rights situation in Vietnam and has urged the ruling Communist Party to release political prisoners. The meeting obviously motivates others inside Vietnam.”

Vietnamese television programs are often censored to reflect the official line of the ruling party. Observers have said VTV’s increasing partnerships with private media companies to produce shows has led to material slipping past media censors.

VOA

Vietnamese TV Show Suspended for Moving Hanoi Into China

Returning to homeland, Vietnamese Americans make their mark

People ride past billboards marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, in Hanoi, on Tuesday. (Luong ThaiI Linh / European Pressphoto Agency)

Twenty-seven years ago, Lam Ton was living his American dream.

A former interpreter at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, Ton was a can-do Chicago restaurateur who helped revive a declining neighborhood. He was also making a trailblazing return — chronicled by a local TV crew — to the country where, in 1974, his infant son in his arms, he tearfully boarded an evacuating helicopter atop the embassy roof.

Today, Ton pursues his dreams for Vietnam, long after trouble, anger and violence drove him from Chicago.

Forty years after the fall of Saigon — the anniversary is Thursday — Ton’s story scratches at a scar that is still tender for many Vietnamese who were on opposing sides of what people here call “the American War.” The U.S. and Vietnam normalized diplomatic relations 20 years ago, but many older Vietnamese here and those who fled to America still regard one another as enemies.

The hostility persists in a shared, tragic history. Today, more than 3.5 million people with Vietnamese ancestry live in the United States. The first evacuees, such as Ton, created a community that grew with the later arrival of “boat refugees” who escaped South Vietnam in the early years of communist rule. Since 2000, more than 335,000 Vietnamese have immigrated to the U.S. An additional 16,500 Vietnamese are in America on student visas.

The reverse migration of American Viet kieu, or “overseas Vietnamese,” to the homeland is far smaller. Official data is sketchy at best. Bloomberg News recently cited a Communist Party website asserting that from 2004 to June 2013 about 3,000 overseas Vietnamese returned from the U.S. and other countries to permanently live in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and an additional 9,000 were granted long-term residential permits for work and investment there.

In comparison, about 35,000 Vietnamese immigrants are claimed as alumni by Advance Beauty College in Orange County, founded by a former South Vietnamese military officer. (The skills the immigrants learned have helped them open and work in salons across America, earning money that contributes to some of the $12 billion in remittances that Vietnam receives from its global diaspora.)

Back in their ancestral land, several returning Vietnamese and some who shuttle between the two countries have made a significant mark.

Phuc Than, a venture capitalist and Intel’s country director in Vietnam, helped persuade Hanoi authorities and Intel’s top brass to forge an agreement that resulted in the opening of an Intel factory in 2010.

Others of note include David Thai, the Seattle-raised founder of a popular coffee chain; actor and filmmaker Dustin Nguyen; and Henry Nguyen, a Harvard-educated investor who married the daughter of Vietnam’s prime minister and last year brought McDonald’s to the country.

Hieu Tri Nguyen, who in 2005 founded First Vietnamese American Bank in Orange County, stirred controversy in Little Saigon when he tried to cultivate business ties with Vietnam. After the global financial meltdown prompted the sale of that bank, Nguyen, now 68, was enticed to return to Vietnam. He’s been active in guiding Vietnamese banks through the nation’s evolving financial system and in advising huge state-owned enterprises regarding pending trade agreements.

Vietnam’s leaders are trying to encourage more far-flung Vietnamese to return and help build the country’s economy, but the fratricidal history makes communication difficult.

For older Vietnamese, the war and its aftermath are emotional topics remembered and recounted with selective detail. Southerners, for example, tend to be familiar with and sympathetic to the perilous, often tragic experience of the boat refugees, an exodus in which, by some estimates, as many as 300,000 people perished at sea. Northerners, on the other hand, sometimes show only a vague awareness and express a harsh viewpoint, some calling those who left cowards who abandoned Vietnam in hard times.

To the north and its allies, the American War and the previous one with the colonial French were fought to unite and “liberate” the nation from interlopers. But whereas April 30 is celebrated as Liberation Day or Reunification Day in Vietnam, many Viet kieuconsider it a day of mourning.

The Saigon government and its American backers preferred a two-state solution, not unlike Korea; to them, the war was a fight against communist hegemony. So in Orange County’s Little Saigon, the flag of the old South Vietnam still flies, and the phrase “Ho Chi Minh City” can provoke a dirty look, or worse.

A man takes a photo April 28 of a T59 tank displayed at a museum in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Luong ThaiI Linh / European Pressphoto Agency)

Hieu Nguyen has lived for extended periods in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Little Saigon. Vietnamese who remember how civilians were killed in “Christmas bombings” of Hanoi and Haiphong, he said, are much more likely to forgive Americans for those attacks and other wartime horrors than they are unrepentant southerners.

“It is not very hard to understand why the feelings toward blood-related brothers are much harder than toward the stranger,” he said.

Hanoi’s desire for better relations with Vietnamese in the United States was demonstrated last spring when a major Vietnamese newspaper published an article that described how Nguyen Thanh Son, chairman of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, was seeking their participation in a special memorial that had a contemporary political edge: a retort to China’s claim on disputed maritime territories.

The diplomat hoped Vietnamese Americans would help lay two memorial wreaths at sea. One would be for South Vietnamese sailors who in 1974 were killed in a battle with the Chinese navy (Hanoi’s wartime ally) near a disputed island east of Danang. The other would honor boat refugees who perished at sea and who, he said, should be considered “victims of war.”

To some, the comments in state-controlled media represented a significant gesture of conciliation.

“Such a deep hole of hatred will always exist,” Son was quoted as saying, “if there is no breakthrough solution or there are no people who are ready to act as sincere bridges.”

But he also struck a wrong note. In explaining why so many people chose to leave the country, the diplomat cited economic difficulties and “the lack of knowledge of the new regime after 1975.” Refugees say there was no misunderstanding; they knew too well how life had become under authoritarian rule.

Sweeter words and perks may be insufficient to lure more Viet kieu home. Many say that Vietnam’s legal system needs to create, in Son’s words, “a more level playing field” and do away with centuries-old cultural practices that benefit people with personal connections. Several Viet kieu who made investments some years ago “got burned,” Son said, and that has made many others wary.

Lam Ton and Hieu Nguyen, who like Phuc Than are naturalized U.S. citizens, were among the few Vietnamese Americans who reached out to Hanoi years before the normalization of U.S.-Vietnam relations, angering intensely anti-communist peers. Whereas Nguyen initially came back in 1991 as part of a California trade delegation, Ton first returned in 1988 under the aegis of a United Nations Development Program effort to lend cultural knowledge and business acumen to help Vietnam transition from a centrally planned economy to what Hanoi calls “market-oriented socialism.”

Ton’s visit was covered by a crew from WTTW in Chicago. The station aired a remarkable interview in which Ton sternly questioned Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach about the government’s responsibility for the misery he had witnessed. Thach acknowledged errors and spoke of a commitment to reform. Off-camera, Ton said, Thach told him that nobody had ever spoken to him in such a way and urged him to contribute to the reform process.

In Chicago, frequent trips by Ton to Vietnam led to suspicion and then protests at his restaurants when a Vietnamese newspaper quoted him as saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” An arsonist set fire to a 25-unit apartment building he owned. His home was firebombed, and his young children jumped from a second-story window, his daughter injuring her arm. After a priest warned him of more threats, he resettled his family in the San Gabriel Valley, blending in among the Asian immigrants.

Ton avoided Vietnamese circles but continued to shuttle to Vietnam, gradually building a new life in Hanoi. He divorced, remarried and had another son. In 2011, his eldest son, Michael, the one he had carried into the evacuating helicopter, returned to Vietnam and now works closely with his father. An ongoing project is to bring “green” energy technology to Vietnam.

Ton presides over diversified interests from his spacious garden restaurant known for California-style pho and pricey Saigonese meals such as “seven courses of beef.” And now it’s the state-controlled media that salute him. A magazine under the auspices of the Ministry of Planning and Development recently listed Ton among Vietnam’s top 100 business leaders. Another featured a profile of the “quiet pho Cali peddler” and recounted a story once shrouded in secrecy: how during his early travels he managed to relay messages between two governments that had no diplomatic relations.

One crucial message, the magazine reported, was delivered toward the end of Vietnam’s 10-year occupation of Cambodia, where it defeated Pol Pot’s murderous forces. The message, Ton recalled, signaled that the U.S. was willing to resume a dialogue if Hanoi agreed to fully withdraw.

Soon after, Ton said, Vietnam announced its withdrawal plan and relations were eventually normalized.

On a recent morning at his restaurant, Ton gestured with his Cuban cigar to new palm trees, transplanted, he explained, from the property of a high-ranking government minister who was expanding his home.

Working with people and not against them, he said, is how to get things done.

L.A. Times

Returning to homeland, Vietnamese Americans make their mark