Forty years after the fall of Saigon, symbols of the failed war in Vietnam survive as a painful, divisive legacy for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Americans now living and prospering in the United States.
Organizers this month abruptly canceled a long-scheduled event commemorating the 40th anniversary at the California military base where tens of thousands of refugees first landed in the United States after the South Vietnam government fell April 30, 1975. The reason: The U.S. government won't allow them to fly the yellow-and-red flag of the old South Vietnam while on base.
"We are all very, very sad that we couldn't make any compromises,'' says Sophie Tran, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee. "But again, we have to hear the voices of the community first, and what they want.''
The decision has drawn strong opposition from some Vietnamese Americans who had planned to attend, and sparked an online petition drive at Change.org asking that the event continue as scheduled, without the flag, at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, 60 miles south in San Diego County.
Organizers say they have rescheduled a renamed and a scaled-down event, "The 40th Commemoration of Black April,'' at a Garden Grove high school football stadium, where participants will be able to fly the flag of the former Republic of Vietnam and sing its national anthem.
But others see the move away from Pendleton as a shortsighted bow to anti-communist sentiment that remains intense among the older generation of Vietnamese Americans, as well as throwing away an opportunity to thank Marines and Americans who helped them settle in their new country four decades ago.
"I was shocked to see announcements … basically only a few weeks before the actual event,'' says Nhien Vuong Dougherty, 41, a seminary student in Kansas City, Kansas, who already purchased airplane tickets to attend the event at Pendleton, where she arrived as a toddler in 1975.
She says many of her friends and family regard holding the commemoration in a high school football stadium "a joke."
"I'm positive I would not have planned to go home but for it being planned at Camp Pendleton. For me, the place really does matter,'' she said.
Organizers had planned for more than a year to hold the event Saturday, April 25 at Pendleton. It was one of several military bases around the country set up to receive refuges after the war, when millions fled the fallen South Vietnam.
Base officials embraced the event and planned to recreate the tent city that provided the first temporary homes for some 50,000 Vietnam refugees who passed through Pendleton on their way to resettlement in the United States.
Jason Johnston, director of public affairs at the base, said that after months of planning discussions, organizers informed Pendleton brass last Friday that they would not hold the event on the base because the Defense Department would not permit the flag of a country not officially recognized by the United States to fly on a military installation.
"As far as we are concerned, the event is canceled,'' he said. "We tried to make accommodations and give them options.''
Capt. Eric Flanagan, media officer at Marine Headquarters in Washington, said U.S. government policy requires that display of flags "are restricted to formally recognized governments.''
With three red stripes on a yellow field, it's a flag that's forgotten by most of the world but remains a vital piece of heritage and potent anti-communist touchstone for many from what was once the Republic of Vietnam. California and at least a dozen other states have recognized it as the symbol of their Vietnamese American community.
Display in communist-run Vietnam today risks prosecution. But it can be seen daily on the streets of Little Saigon, a section of Los Angeles suburbs that spills across several Orange County cities and is home to more people of Vietnamese origin than anywhere outside Vietnam.
Tran, one of the event organizers, said making the flag a part of the anniversary was a major requirement of some organizers and sponsors, and she said donors threatened to withdraw their contributions if the flag was denied. She declined to name them.
"Really, the flag is not only important to our principle, but it reflects what others in the community feel as well,'' she said. "Either we go big or we go home.''
But some say the flag shouldn't outweigh the anniversary.
"The disappointment is, why can we not compromise?'' says Huong Duong, an internal medicine physician from Tustin, Calif. "We are the symbol of the old South Vietnam. We don't walk around with the flag every day.''
Duong was 18 when she arrived at Camp Pendleton in 1975 with her mother, eight younger siblings and a large extended family. Their father, a South Vietnam Army colonel, was held in Vietnam and not allowed out for another 14 years. They eventually were sponsored by a local family and built a life in Orange County, Calif.
"My aunts and uncles, they are all in their 80s and 90s now, a generation that is dying off,'' she said.
"They too would like to be able to set foot on the ground where they started (in the United States), 40 years ago."
Vietnam scholars say it's little surprise the flag still triggers such deep emotions among an immigrant community that lost its homeland in war.
"A lot of the older generation, especially, that went through the war had to suffer a lot of atrocities and traumatic events at the hands of the communist government,'' says Tu-Uyen Nguyen, assistant professor in the Asian American Studies Program at California State University-Fullerton.
"So clinging to the symbol of what they lost is a way of coping for them,'' Nguyen said.
Quyen Di Chuc Bui, 68, a Vietnamese language lecturer at UCLA who grew up in Saigon, said the flag unites the Vietnam diaspora around the world as a symbol of shared culture, history, loss and gratitude.
"When we fly the flag, it means we also fly the soul of our soldiers,'' Chuc Bui said.
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