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Vietnamese community in DFW marks a sad day in history — the fall of Saigon

A woman waved a flag during a parade in Garland that marked the date of the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
Bret Jaspers
/
KERA
Victoria Nguyen waved a flag during a motorcade commemorating the fall of Saigon in 1975.

April 30 marked what’s known as the Fall of Saigon. That’s the day the capital of South Vietnam fell to the communist regime of North Vietnam in 1975.

The North Texas Vietnamese community has been commemorating that day for more than four decades.

Women in matching long, white dresses stood in the sunlight outside the Vietnamese Community Center in Garland on Sunday. Some held the American flag, others the former flag of the Republic of Vietnam, yellow with red stripes.

Row of women standing, holding Vietnamese and American flags. They are all wearing identical dresses: white with a picture in black print. One woman is in the foreground, being interviewed.
Bret Jaspers
/
KERA
Dee Doai, president of the Vietnamese American Community of Greater Dallas, is interviewed ahead of the ceremony.

Many men were dressed in military garb. Some also held flags, while others carried rifles.

South Vietnamese flag
Bret Jaspers
/
KERA
Attendees flew a flag representing the defeated South Vietnamese government during the ceremony, along with American and Texan flags.

“Please remember that we are American, but we are also of Vietnamese heritage,” Dee Doai said to a large crowd. Doai is president of the Vietnamese American Community of Greater Dallas.

“Our presence in the United States and anywhere in the world but Vietnam is the result of the sacrifices of our parents and our grandparents after the fall of Saigon," she said.

Doai was born in Vietnam after the war, in 1979. Like thousands of other refugees, her father fled the country by boat and sponsored her and her mother to come to the U.S. in 1991.

“They risked their lives on small boats in the ocean, waded through the jungles,” she said. “They gave up their freedom in the re-education camps so that we can enjoy this freedom, this democracy, and human rights — as some of us, including myself, sometimes take for granted.”

84-year-old Richard Nguyen was working in the presidential bureau in Saigon when the South Vietnamese military surrendered to the North. He was arrested and put in what was known as a re-education camp — essentially a prison camp operated by the Communist government.

Nguyen said everyone should know what happened during and after the war.

“It is very, very important,” he told KERA. “Not for me but for the generation to come, to let them know how it happened and why we are here.”

Parade of cars with South Vietnamese and American flags.
Bret Jaspers
/
KERA
Community members drove their cars around Garland before returning to the Vietnamese American center.

Helping the Vietnamese community is what drives Cindy Nguyen (no relation to Richard), who also came as a refugee. She’s often at the community center signing up people for Medicare and food assistance and translating information for them.

“We are lucky,” she said. “We have a community that can help a lot of Vietnamese people to get together and to learn.”

A few minutes later, she rushed into another room filled with lunch sacks, again busy helping.

A white pickup truck has a yellow sign with red lettering on the side. People are in the back of the truck, waving flags. The sign reads "Vietnamese American Community of Greater Dallas."
Bret Jaspers
/
KERA

Doai said she brings her three kids here each year to learn about the history of Vietnam. She shares a hope that others stated as well - that the children continue this tradition, long after she is gone.

“Access to information is a lot greater now, today, than it used to be,” she said.

Doai encourages people “just try to understand both sides of the story and try to figure out for yourself what is right and wrong.”

Got a tip? Email Stella M. Chávez at schavez@kera.org. You can follow Stella on Twitter @stellamchavez.

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.

Stella M. Chávez is KERA’s immigration/demographics reporter/blogger. Her journalism roots run deep: She spent a decade and a half in newspapers – including seven years at The Dallas Morning News, where she covered education and won the Livingston Award for National Reporting, which is given annually to the best journalists across the country under age 35.
Bret Jaspers is a reporter for KERA. His stories have aired nationally on the BBC, NPR’s newsmagazines, and APM’s Marketplace. He collaborated on the series Cash Flows, which won a 2020 Sigma Delta Chi award for Radio Investigative Reporting. He's a member of Actors' Equity, the professional stage actors union.