U.S. Vietnamese coming to terms with '70s defeat
Mai Tran and Mike Anton
Los Angeles Times
May. 4, 2003 12:00 AM


GARDEN GROVE, Calif. - It's an article of faith in Orange County's Little Saigon: Somehow, someday, the defeated nation of South Vietnam will rise again.

Though the Communists won the war 28 years ago Wednesday, belief that the government of Vietnam will fall is promoted on Vietnamese-language radio and used as a litmus test for politicians in this community of Vietnamese expatriates, the nation's largest. Those who dare challenge the orthodoxy face ridicule, even violence.

But for all the widespread anti-Communist rhetoric, many in the Vietnamese-American community, especially the young, are quietly coming to terms with reality.


Visiting homeland


They are traveling in increasing numbers to the homeland. Doing business with the Communist government. And, like Dung Tran of Garden Grove, sending money to family members.

"They are old and need some spending money," the 39-year-old mother of three said after wiring her latest check for $400. "They are my parents, my blood; I can't leave them stranded. The war is over."

In 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available, 137,000 visas were issued to Vietnamese Americans for travel to Vietnam, twice as many as three years before. Last year, Vietnamese living overseas sent $2.2 billion to family back home, twice as much as in 1999, according to the Vietnamese Embassy. And more than half of that money comes from the United States, the embassy says.

"People send money home all the time; they travel there whenever they can," said Minh-Hoa Ta, an assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. "Everybody knows ... but you don't talk about (it) because you can get in trouble."

One measure of the political climate in Little Saigon and Vietnamese communities in cities such as San Jose and Houston is the reverence paid to the flag of the Republic of South Vietnam, a country that no longer exists.


Old flag lives on


Vietnamese community leaders earlier this year persuaded the Southern California cities of Westminster and Garden Grove to designate the red-and-yellow flag for regular display at official functions, prompting an angry rebuke from the Communist government.

Anti-Communist fervor is easily roused in the expatriate communities. Those who supported the 1994 normalization of relations with the United States were harassed, and a video store owner who displayed the red flag of Communist Vietnam in 1999 sparked large rallies whose angry demonstrators forced his business to close.

"When you live within an anti-Communist community, you better not show or do something that can give the assumption that you are helping the enemy," said longtime community leader Cong Minh Tran, 63. "It's offensive to all of us who fled for our lives."




Music, not politics


Many, however, are putting politics aside. The owner of a Little Saigon music store says business is brisk in the pirated CDs of Vietnam's hottest singers. She doesn't want her name used because selling the work of these artists would be criticized by some in the community.

And yet anti-Communists she knows buy them. Guilty pleasures that they keep to themselves.

"I don't feel guilty selling Vietnam CDs because it is music, not politics. They're love songs," she said. "The extremists and older generation are looking for revenge. It's too late to fight. It's the past. It's over."


Find this article at:
www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0504vietnamese04.html

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