Vietnamese American Community in Santa Clara County Reckons with a Somber Milestone

HaNhi Tran’s parents fled Vietnam for the United States after the Vietnam War, settling in Orange County.

Her father had been a military officer for the U.S.-backed Republic of Vietnam, and he spent time in a prison camp after the war ended in 1975, when the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, Saigon, fell to the communist Vietnamese.

Tran grew up in a cramped apartment with her parents, three siblings, and family friends. Her parents worked in the garment industry, struggling to pay their bills.

Now, a few decades later, she leads the County of Santa Clara's Vietnamese American Service Center (VASC), a state-of-the-art facility in San Jose that provides a range of health and wellness services focused on the one of the largest Vietnamese American populations outside Vietnam, numbering roughly 100,000 people.

In her role, Tran has helped the county’s Vietnamese American community reckon with a somber milestone: the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Known to many Vietnamese Americans as “Black April,” it was the beginning of a long and painful ordeal for millions of Vietnamese, particularly the people who had served in the former Republic of Vietnam’s government and military.

Hundreds of thousands of people associated with the former Republic of Vietnam, also known as South Vietnam, were sent to the new communist regime’s “re-education” camps. Just as many escaped Vietnam as refugees, most of them making dangerous trips by boat to nearby countries in Southeast Asia. Those who reached the United States had to begin new lives from scratch.

For Vietnamese Americans living in Santa Clara County, Black April stirs up memories of trauma and sacrifice, perseverance and renewal. 

“It’s a time to remember and thank the people who have sacrificed for us,” said Quyen Vuong, executive director of ICAN, or International Children Assistance Network, a San Jose-based nonprofit that serves Vietnamese Americans in Santa Clara County. “It represents the birth of the Vietnamese American community. For me, every year we should get together and give thanks for the sacrifices of the older generation and celebrate the contributions of the younger generations. The VASC plays a critical role in maintaining that tradition.”

Over the month of April, the VASC has held a series of events exploring the history and significance of Black April. The events have highlighted how multigenerational community members have preserved their heritage, provided forums for refugees to tell their stories, and featured discussions about mental health and wellness.

"Black April leads me to reflect on why my family, and our broader Vietnamese American community, is here today. The sense of loss and grief that I share with our community feels deep and expansive,” said Tran. “With this year being 50 years since the fall of Saigon, I can’t help but marvel at our community’s resilience. My family’s life, and the lives of so many others in Santa Clara County, were transformed by the people who helped us rebuild, and it fuels my sense of purpose to continue serving our community."  

The first generation of Vietnamese Americans 

Tran is one of many first-generation Vietnamese Americans who have risen to positions of leadership in Santa Clara County, motivated by a sense of duty or a desire to help people facing the kinds of challenges they encountered as kids.

During Tran’s childhood in Orange County, her parents felt isolated and fearful of the authorities because they didn't speak English and were unfamiliar with U.S. government systems. When crime occurred outside their building, they closed the blinds and didn’t get involved, afraid of what could happen if they did. 

That experience guided Tran to law school and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, where she worked for 12 years. One of her major initiatives was to build relationships and trust between law enforcement and communities in East San Jose, including Vietnamese Americans.

“What really inspired me to go into public service was that I wanted to go and work for the systems that seemed most out of reach for my family,” she said. “I wanted to bridge that gap between our government systems and our most vulnerable immigrant communities.”

Jena Trinh, controller-treasurer for the County of Santa Clara, had a similar experience. She came to the United States when she was 8 years old with her father and sister, enduring a weeklong boat trip beset by pirate attacks. Her mother joined them eight years later.

They survived in Southern California with the help of government services including CalFresh (formerly known as food stamps) and CalWORKs, which provides financial assistance and other services to people who are struggling to make ends meet. Shortly after arriving in the United States, her mother became an eligibility worker for Los Angeles County, helping people in need of government assistance.

“We wouldn’t have survived without those critical services when we desperately needed them,” said Trinh. “I always feel the responsibility and desire to give back to a community that has helped me and my family so much.”

The origins of Black April

The initial trauma of Black April occurred in Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese were stripped of their money and property. People associated with the government were blacklisted and sent to re-education camps.

Quang Nguyen, 84, and Nghiep Quang Phan, 82, who both spent years in these camps, say there was nothing educational about them. They were hard labor camps, where many thousands of people were worked to death. Inmates died from starvation, exhaustion, disease and even torture. 

Nguyen, a captain in the South Vietnam infantry, was forced to carry rocks to make roads and dig holes for yucca plants during his eight years in the camp. Guards killed one of his friends for standing up to criticize the camp’s leadership during a meeting.

Phan, who had served as an intelligence officer for the South Vietnamese during the war, languished for 17 years in a camp in North Vietnam. He and fellow inmates were forced to pull a plough through rice paddies, doing the work normally done by buffaloes. More than one friend died in his arms. 

Nguyen and Phan both made it to the United States in the 1990s and settled in San Jose. They live humble lives, but they are content. Though they suffered immensely, they are the lucky ones. They survived. 

Nguyen has a wife, two children and six grandchildren. They help look after him. He prefers not to think about his former life in Vietnam.

“My wound is too deep. It cannot be healed,” he said. “But I am happy to be here in America. This is my second country.”

A perilous voyage

For refugees, the journey to the United States was often treacherous. The “boat people” who escaped Vietnam by sea were typically crammed into rickety fishing vessels, many of which were swamped in the open ocean. 

Quyen Vuong, 60, fled Vietnam without her parents when she was 16, in charge of a younger brother and two cousins. There were 49 people crowded into a boat that was 30 feet long and 6 feet wide. They were chased by pirates and spent several days adrift before touching land in Malaysia.

She ultimately reunited with her parents and siblings in Houston. She worked 30 hours a week in high school to help support her family and got accepted to Yale University.

In 2000, she co-founded ICAN, which began with a mission of helping Vietnamese refugee children overseas. The organization has since broadened its scope to include helping Vietnamese American children and families succeed in Santa Clara County.

“We need to make sure that our children grow and thrive in this land, and thrive in two cultures, so they can be successful as Americans but also retain their cultural roots and traditional Vietnamese values,” Vuong said. 

Building new lives

Life was not easy once refugees reached America. They didn’t speak English. They didn’t have many resources. They had to work low-wage jobs to scrape together a living.

Tam Thu Nguyen came to United States in 1993 with her husband, who was disabled from an injury he suffered in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He died in 1997.

She found work in the garment industry, but her employers took advantage of her. She worked overtime without pay for her first job. At her next job, her paychecks bounced.

But she managed to raise three children and put them through college. Now, they take care of her, though she sends any extra money she has back to relatives in Vietnam. The Milpitas resident visits the VASC three days a week to take exercise classes and socialize. 

The trauma of the war and its aftermath left deep scars, but she prefers to focus on making other people happy. She sings for residents of nursing homes, which helps her forget her own worries.

“That makes me happy,” Nguyen said. “That’s enough for me.”

She is one of many refugees from Vietnam who poured their energy into the next generation, setting them up for success.

Lt. Joseph Nguyen, of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, recalls how his father came to California at the age of 18 with a mission: to help the rest of his family, including nine siblings, emigrate to America. Supported by a host family in Los Gatos, he got his first job working in the meat department at a grocery store. Over time, he developed a successful career in real estate and technology. And with relentless determination, he raised the money and grappled with U.S. and Vietnamese bureaucracies to help a couple dozen family members reach the Bay Area. 

“We are living the American dream because of the sacrifices he made,” said Lt. Nguyen. “It might not have gone the way he envisioned for himself, but he was able to provide the American dream for the rest of his family and generations to come.”

Gratitude

Supervisor Betty Duong shares Lt. Nguyen’s appreciation for the struggles and sacrifices of her parents’ generation.

Duong was born at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and grew up in San Jose after her father and mother fled Vietnam in the 1970s. She and her sister translated for her parents and other people in their apartment building when interacting with the landlord or police officers.

Years later, she was a member of former Supervisor Cindy Chavez’s staff during the planning and development of the VASC. Chavez, former Supervisor Dave Cortese, and other County and community leaders pushed to build the VASC, which opened in 2022, after a health assessment of the Vietnamese American community revealed disparities and challenges with respect to physical and mental health as well as difficulty in accessing County services.

Duong said she is grateful to be part of an organization that has helped build the support system she wishes had been available when her family arrived in Santa Clara County.

“I hope that my elders are proud of what we’ve accomplished and that they’re proud of themselves and understand they’ve done something superhuman,” said Duong. “They survived the war and navigated migration – that takes grit and a determination to survive, a will to live. Then they entered into a new world, a new life, and raised new generations of Vietnamese Americans who are growing up strong, engaged, with agency, with a voice, and with a new identity – this new identify that combines America and Vietnam, family traditions, and San Jose and Santa Clara County traditions.”