Generations of Resilience: Reflecting on Family War Experiences and Their Lasting Impact
Profilers: Charlie Vega, Kaitlyn Sirimanne, Uto Osung-Etisong, Tarek Najjar, Jasmine Liu
Family’s Experiences During the War
Introduction
My name is Tiffany Hoang Phan, I am a 2nd generation Vietnamese American. In terms of my family history, my mother is an immigrant, she moved to America when she was in her 20s, and she flew over once the borders had opened. My father on the other hand, was a refugee over to America, he came by boat a little bit towards the end of the war possibly,I’m not sure off the top of my head, but possibly after it. And so my father is a refugee, he came by boat; he came, basically, because his family had some ties to the South Vietnamese army during the war through his grandfather, and basically, the fear was that with the new regime under northern Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh that my father might be required to join the army, just to kind of keep an eye on my family as a whole because they were from the south. And kind of had ties in the Southern Army. So his moving over here was to kind of avoid being drafted in, because if he was drafted, there would be a chance, that he would be surveyed a lot closely and kind of looked at, possibly used against his family to try and keep them in line, just as part of the ,you know, shift of power from one capital to another. So my parents are a little bit after the Vietnam War. As for actually in the war, my grandparents on my father’s side, my grandfather, I’m told was a soldier or a general in the southern army, and I’ve not heard much about his time in the army, and we do not really talk about the war times that much in my family. But I do know that my paternal grandmother was a casualty of the war, as a result of trying to visit my grandfather, some time during the war. And the story goes, was essentially because he was a general, he was stationed somewhere, and what happened was that that day, there was supposed to be a weapon shipment. And so you know with guerrilla warfare and tactics, they placed a landmine on one of the roads, just one of the main roads but for whatever reason that weapon shipment ended up being delayed, and so instead the first persons to encounter that mine was a civilian bus with my grandmother on it, and she did not survive the encounter. And that is kind of the most direct part I have heard of my family playing in the Vietnam War. The rest of it , my mother side, our grandparents ,they actually were pretty well off because during the initial redistributions of power and wealth, they were able to kind of avoid some of that redistribution, and kind of keep their wealth, which allowed them to then continue their businesses, and then profit off of the communist regime. So while my dad’s side of the family kind of only suffered once the communist regime took over, my mother’s side of the family was able to coast along and still profit.
Question (00:00): Can you describe your parents’ experience, and their attitudes towards the war?
Yeah. Definitely some different perspectives as a result. My dad moved to America when he was like 14. My mom came after she had reached adulthood in communist Vietnam. So there are definitely differing perspectives on the war. Overall, I think my dad is definitely a little bit more polarized regarding it, but at the same time more open minded to both sides. And in that sense my dad does not really support the communist regime. But his perspective is kind of, you know- living in America you do get to see both sides and he feels that he’s able to look at both sides and then make a decision. And his decision is still the one you would expect him to, which is against the communist because they directly affected him. But his idea is also that with the communist regime, and the corrupt government, everyone is kind of working for themselves, which I do agree with. I see that too, the biggest issue with Vietnam today ,in my dad’s opinion, is that they’re not really looking towards the future, because of the corruption that arises because of that shifted power and still hasn’t gotten away. That corruption has just LED to government officials being really self serving and as a result Vietnam is kind of having like weak border policies, allowing China to kind of have a little bit more influence, and so in my dad’s opinion, this is just going to lead to Vietnam not exactly being strong in the future, and kind of lacking its nationality and strength as its own country. And it’s gonna be very reliant as a result of the problems that the communist government created when they took over Vietnam as a whole. On my mom’s side, she just kind of dismisses the Vietnamese government as a whole. She also agrees that it’s super corrupt ,but she doesn’t think that corruption is necessarily because of any group, one or another. She thinks Vietnam as a whole was never really that democratic, whether it was the south or the north. And so what basically happens is just a result of greed, and so we are not a western power, and it’s just naturally because of not having that democratic ideal that corruption is going to exist. And the country is never gonna be that economically strong. But, she really does dismiss a lot of my dad’s complaints as being biased, because in her opinion, the government did not directly affect her and did not, negatively affect her, so it’s not a direct problem. And she doesn’t really see it as something that needs to be addressed, very much she thinks it’s something you just let go because in her opinion the war is over and has already been won, so there’s no use in protesting a new flag or the new victors’ right. In her opinion, it’s time to just move on, leave it there and be a little bit self serving , in the sense that you don’t need to protest the government anymore- they already have their strongholds, there’s no use; kind of just look towards how to benefit yourself, and make sure that you don’t go down with whatever goes down eventually.
Question (00:00): Can you tell us about your dad’s experience as a refugee?
Yeah, my dad I don’t remember the specific dates off the top of my head, but he did leave on a fishing boat with his cousin when he was 14, and just kind of traveled through the Pacific Ocean until he reached… I can’t remember if it was Malaysia or the Philippines. But there’s a, I believe it’s Pulau Tengah – the refugee camp- and he stayed there for a couple of months, he talks a lot sometimes about just the journey itself, but it like tidbits so I don’t know what the linear story is.I know that traveling, that he said there was like a fear of pirates from Thailand mostly, that they would come and kind of hold you hostage until you gave up your gold. And he says that’s because initially, some Thai fisherman would help the refugees out, and out of gratitude these people would give their gold and jewelry because when you leave a country you take your valuable medals, because money doesn’t really hold any worth, especially from a communist country. And then I guess somewhere along the way, these Thai fishermen kind of realized that these refugees were carrying a lot of gold. And so, the rise of piracy kind of occurred as a result, and there is definitely this Asian on Asian racism that kind of comes into play here. Where I think the Vietnamese people still harbor some kind of ,not resentment, but weariness of the Thai people out of fear – saying “your people did this to our people when we were in need, we don’t trust your country as a whole”, I think that’s a little bit prevalent still. I mean my dad ended up growing up and doing a lot of his developmental years in America, so he has a bit of a more broadened view. But that is something that stuck out to me when he talked to me about his history in the past. I know that at the refugee camp itself, he stayed there for a couple of months trying to get to America. The way it worked I think he said you would get surveyed by all these different countries, and it was just whichever one took you first, you ended up at. And a lot of people were there, but still fearful that they’d end up at a country they didn’t want to go to, because everyone obviously kind of aims for America. Knowing America’s golden dream and all that, it was the most ideal place for you to end up at, but you don’t really have a choice. I think some of the possibilities were Australia, France and Canada. My dad, because his father was formerly a South Vietnamese general, had some connections with people in refugee camps and America itself, and was able to get him directly into America after some waiting instead of potentially being bounced around the other countries’ immigration centers. So that was really good for him, and he and his cousin went to America. But I know not everyone had that chance, and that’s kind of the main thing he’s talked about.
Question (03:07): What was your mom’s experience like during this time?
Definitely not a positive experience because obviously, no matter how much wealth you had yourself or what side you were on in terms of conflicts, Vietnam as a whole was going through a time of poverty, and so it definitely was not the most comfortable experience. And of course, that’s part of the reason why she did end up moving to America, even despite the fact that her family was well off. I mean , my mom was born the year after the war ended and so, she didn’t experience the war itself so much as the after effects. She did say the divide between classes only grew faster and faster in a time like that, and so she didn’t have very many friends who were in the same class of wealth and social standing as her, just because of redistribution. So she did have a little bit of that friction with friends, but other than that she was able to just grow. It was kind of just her childhood, it was just a childhood with a bit more difficulty than you would imagine. But growing up after the war just meant she never had a reason to stick to one regime or the other. She just knew the one she grew up in, and she knew that it was not perfect. And her family was very business oriented, so it was all about developing skills, and businesses needed to ensure that you would continue to prosper, to ensure that you wouldn’t have to sacrifice too much just to stay afloat. And always finding a way to stay wealthy despite communist redistribution. So I wouldn’t say it was necessarily a positive or negative experience, just that she was adapted to the environment, because she was born into it.
Question (00:00): Have your parents ever gone back or plan to visit Vietnam?
Not exactly to visit, I know my dad’s been back to look at business. My family has ties to businesses in Vietnam still, so my dad has gone back to make sure some expansion things worked well while my mom stayed here with the family just to take care of us. My dad did go back for his father’s funeral in 2015 as well, I don’t think either have gone back to just visit though. I don’t know If my mother has gone back recently, but if they have it’s usually for business reasons. They would go back and visit I think with us because we have- me and my siblings – expressed the desire to go back to the motherland to kind of touch on our roots. But my parents, my dad does say he’d like to be in Vietnam towards the end of his life, and when he dies he’d like to be cremated and have his ashes spread in Vietnam. But I think as immigrants, both of their emotional ties, and nostalgic ties to Vietnam do not really exist because they’re kind of used to living a whole life in America as a necessary trade off and so nostalgia wise, I don’t think either of them have those desires to visit Vietnam, for a nostalgic reason.
Life in the United States
Question (00:00): Can you share what you know about your parents’ journeys immigrating to the United States, and what challenges they faced?
My parents are, I think technically from different generations of Vietnam or follow different generations of thought if that makes sense, like the reason shifted in between their years, but My dad was pretty much right after the war, definitely in search of a better life. I mean for him, it was also kind of some exigence in the fact that he had to avoid being drafted into the army because his family didn’t want him to have anything to do with the army right. It’s a very common self preservation idea- you don’t really wanna be in the army if you wanna survive longer ,especially in a country in a state of turmoil, and plus, he probably would have been used to feed propaganda and stuff like that. And being a southern Vietnamese family is not really ideal, so again poverty in Vietnam was pretty rampant. So the idea was he’d find a better life in America, but also to avoid the communist government, so that was his main reason to come to America. My mother, on the other hand, did attempt to escape by boat multiple times when she was young, I think she was 10 or so , but she failed I think a total of 3 times to make it out of the country. And then after that, she decided not to try again just because it was too dangerous. So when she was in her 20s, the borders opened. She decided to take a plane and move over to America on a student visa, even though she didn’t plan on studying. She took a student visa because again, it’s really just looking for a better lifestyle, looking to have upward social mobility. Vietnam is -although my mom’s side of the family was very well off- not a great place to continue to move up in life . There’s not really much you can do, and it’s kind of stagnant because with the communist regime, there’s not really much to advance towards because once you do, it may be seen as an unfair distribution of wealth, or maybe against the government. And you don’t really wanna risk that, so the risk she took instead was to move to America, and start a business here. She moved over on a student visa, and founded a shop in Chinatown, alongside her siblings who were already in America and just kind of went from there. She was very business oriented until she eventually had children, but her whole life in America was mainly built around building up her own wealth, and kind of gaining social mobility here because she couldn’t do that there.
Question (00:00): How did your parents adjust to their new life in the United States?
So my father didn’t really have any direct family. He came with his cousin and I think he had an aunt or some other family that was already here, but the way the refugee camp or the refugee stuff worked was he would have been on his own if he had been the actual age. So what he did when he moved was he lied about his birthday, and I think lied and made himself a couple years younger so he would be placed under the care of his aunt and the family he did have here instead of living on his own. And I think he also changed his name, and so his actual documents ended up being different then, than they are now cause he had to change his name back once he was an actual adult , working and all that. So it is complicated, I think he did not have that much support moving here, but coming to San Francisco, even though he was Buddhist, he joined this Christian group that was taking in refugees, helping them get settled. This was back when the refugee or the cultural opinion towards refugees or immigrants of the Vietnam War was that they were refugees, and America kind of had that social consciousness of maybe we should help them as a result of what we did during the war. There wasn’t really so much racism so much as like pity, so he had some resources to help him get settled. He lived in San Francisco for a bit, and then eventually moved down to Irvine with his family. I think obviously, the No. 1 thing for any immigrant to America is the language barrier. He talked about learning English and that was a difficult time for him, but because I think the time specifically he immigrated over, the actual transition from living in one place to another, was not the worst, and the main thing for him was just learning the language. But he ended up going to high school in Irvine and then he went to UC Irvine. Once he graduated and lived an Asian American life. I think even though he was first generation, he did come here young enough that I think you could consider him Asian American, which I think is something I’ve realized recently. It’s just a fun dichotomy to think about.
On my mom’s side the language barrier again was definitely greater, but when she came here she was no longer a refugee she was just an immigrant, and this was around the time that wave of resentments kind of started to form in America- the idea that maybe the immigrants are stealing our jobs, like, first inkling that Asian Americans were not really wanted anymore- and so she did not really get that much support from being directly from Vietnam. The regret about the Vietnam War had long since passed, it had been a while and the borders were open, and so her main thing she had families kind of rely on, and business practices that she knew how to run, so for her she never really developed that Asian American identity. She was just always an Asian immigrant who learned English and ran a business, and kind of worked hard to make a living for herself- not so much follow the American dream but just find a way to gain social mobility.
Question (00:00): In what ways do you believe your parents’ lived experiences shaped the way they raised you?
I think my mom falls into that stereotypical tiger mom ideal, where she really does push her children to do the best they can, out of the desire for them to be stable in their future lives, and not have to sacrifice in order to move ahead the way she did. My dad though, what’s really interesting is he has this all American demeanor that he likes to apply, and I think his idea of the American dream is one that you work towards yourself. Whatever it is, if it makes you happy and you put work towards it, then that’s something worth doing for you, also that if you make the choice, you will take the consequences onto yourself. So my dad is a bit more hands off, but definitely not less stern. He is just more of the idea that you make your choices, and then you deal with your consequences. While my mom I think would rather that we not face any consequences at all, she kind of tries to push us into the idea that this is gonna be the best for you, and you should really work towards that best ideal, so you don’t face those consequences at all.
Question (01:01): How have you connected to your Vietnamese heritage while growing up in the United States?
I think we are still very much a Vietnamese family, we eat Vietnamese food every single day. My mom makes it , so cultural wise we’re definitely still Vietnamese. I would say that in terms of American assimilation, I think that really comes from an outside persona . It’s not so much in the home, I think we follow a lot of typical Asian family values, and we still celebrate Lunar New Year. So we don’t obviously do the large celebrations, but we do put out offerings, we have an altar in our home, and we light incense on the nights that you’re supposed to. And even beyond the Lunar New Year we have the Mid Autumn festival ,leading up to that we have the night for the kitchen gods , where we leave offerings in the kitchen for blessings from the kitchen gods. And just in general we are Buddhist, but we don’t really follow Buddhist practices, so much as the cultural practices that you do that’s part of an Asian family. And that’s something that’s really interesting to me – we say we’re Buddhist, but we’re not actually doing Buddhist things so much as the cultural parts of Buddhism as a result of being Asian. We have large extended family gatherings on anniversaries of my grandparents deaths where we have all these foods, light incense to offer to their ghosts, and to the ancestors . There are those things that are still part of our culture even though we’re in America in terms of holidays, but in terms of day to day life, I mean living in America, you can’t practice that much stuff because there isn’t really an opportunity to. But we would go down to Little Saigon in Orange County all the time, almost every weekend when I was younger. We just go down there for Vietnamese food. it’s not really a cultural practice, but it just really kept all of us in touch with our culture, because that’s a huge Vietnamese hub spot. I think it’s the largest population of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, which is really cool, and you definitely get that sense when you go there. There’s this famous place, called the Asian Garden Mall in English, and there are night markets there every year. We go there every time, and it’s good to experience a night market with Vietnamese food and songs. And you see the different generations interact with each other. And I’ve seen throughout the years that the cultural focus of these night markets is actually shifted- as the old generation population falls, the younger people come up, so they play more pop now than they used to,instead of traditional Vietnamese bolero, and the food there’s more flashy things. But I think overall, definitely we’re still in touch with Vietnamese culture.
Post-Memory
Question (00:00): After hearing your parents’ different perspectives, what is your take on the Vietnam War?
My personal take on the war, I would say it’s a tragedy honestly. Instead of trying to point fingers or anything, I think overall the whole thing is a tragedy. It created so much strife and poverty, and really damaged Southeast Asia for a really long time. But I think that is just what you get when you have a proxy war right? And I think it’s really tragic that both sides- the north and the south- suffered a lot in both ways trying to feed into their own ideologies. It was kind of destructive on both sides. it’s also really sad that the support both sides received from the USSR and America respectively, was just to further ideological goals. And so,The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese American, is something that seems really far away, and doesn’t necessarily touch me directly, but I feel like it’s just a tragedy, because of all the things that happened, all the things that could have been prevented, and all the misconceptions that are still out there. I mean, my dad when he was in college, talked about how UC Irvine hung up all these flags for a multicultural day and he and the Vietnamese Student Association went out there and protested that they put up the new flag, because all of the Vietnamese immigrants there at the time were from the original three stripe flag, not the star. And I kind of agree with that, I was like that makes sense , and my mom was kind of the idea that “no, why would you do that it’s kind of pointless”. And so having heard those two different ideologies my whole life, I still think that even though the war has been won or lost- depending on your perspective – for years now, it’s still something I think needs to be socially relevant, because even if you can’t change any outcomes anymore, even if you’re protests or you’re talking, there’s no difference in the actual scheme of the world. It’s important to not forget it, and there are tragedies on both sides. I think it’s a great lesson on nuance, and that every side committed horrible atrocities. You have a million massacres, and in each one every single problem of the Vietnam War, someone died and someone killed someone else- there’s no one person to blame for each one of those massacres, and each one of those tragedies. I think that’s a great lesson, because it’s a little bit uncomfortable to say maybe my enemy was right in this specific impasse, but maybe I align with this wrong. Because I think we don’t spend enough time being uncomfortable in our daily lives, and that leads to really unfortunate echo chambers, where we never think about one side or another. And so, since I’ve never really been directly affected by the Vietnam War, I don’t have a lot to say on the actual outcomes. I feel like I’m not qualified to talk about the actual outcomes. But I think it’s a great lesson in understanding that the world is complicated, and that there are more sides to every story.
Question (00:00): How do you think think the war continues to affect the Vietnamese-American community today?
There are many ways that I think we are affected by the war and some of those are biological too. I did conduct a literature review on the mental health among Vietnamese Americans, and what I found is that we have these shared histories that created shared reactions in our brains. These epigenetic changes that get passed down from generation to generation, it kind of all revolves around intergenerational trauma I think still affects us all. I mean, some may find that they have a more fight or flight response directly, as a result of the previous generation being involved in wartime and you also have these post traumatic stress disorders that are prevalent in adults today because they experience a lot of things directly as a result of that war. I think it’s just created this environment where ,with most Asian communities, there is the stigma against mental illnesses, but because of the Vietnam War, Vietnamese American communities are actually, very much more predisposed to mental illness, depression and anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. We are predisposed for all of those issues,I think we end up with this positive feedback loop where we have these issues , but we also have stigmas that play into them as a result of cultural development over years and centuries, versus the actual epigenetic responses of just a few, recent generations. I think that’s really interesting to think about, it is sad that ,we have these strains between generations within our community, but at the same time that is just a result of going through something as traumatic as living through a war that has displaced so many of your people and created these ethnic clubs where your community gathers as a result. And so on that side you have areas where the Vietnamese community gathered, once they all immigrated, because that is just the national tendency of an ethnic community, to do so, but you also have these mental issues that have stemmed as a result that sometimes go untreated, that kind of exacerbate stigmas, because as mental illness becomes more prevalent, the stigma against it becomes greater and more acknowledged. Because I think in Vietnamese culture it is considered a karmic retribution that if you are challenged by mental health, then you have done something to deserve this in a past life, which is obviously not the case. But there are so few words to describe it in Vietnamese, other than I think literally being called crazy. And that just causes a divide between generations. As you become more Americanized, you become more accepting of mental health as well, just because of the nature of American culture, which does lead to the idea that maybe what we sacrifice between generations is not entirely cultural. But trying to mix other parts of our culture creates a kind of dichotomy, where you think that where you create a strong man’s argument, and that maybe this mental health is an American issue, and really, it’s just that the American side is able to acknowledge it more. And that is one part where in the Vietnam War still affects us today in a roundabout way ,it’s because we are kind of a different person now, we are Vietnamese American – we are both Vietnamese and American, not one or the other and that’s just something that I think, it’s something to try and acknowledge and definitely plays a part in these generational divides that can affect how you perceive one generation from another and I think like that’s also made worse like the divide is made worse. Just by how the Vietnam War is discussed in America, it’s really a tragedy because there are so many sides that you don’t really get taught to you, you have the immigrants directly from the war, who are of the idea that they lost their homeland, and so their side is just very biased, very against the current government, but you don’t really get any nuance from that because you wouldn’t expect them to have to face the nuance. They lost their homes, and they lost almost everything coming to America, you can’t really begrudge them, the fact that they hold a grudge still against the government, but then at the same time in Vietnam, of course they’re not teaching those nuances, just because it is obviously a communist regime now. But then in America because of American involvement in the Vietnam War, you got a very biased perspective on the fact that it was a proxy war, that it is between the communist and the capitalist, you have that idea that it is solely about these different ideologies, when in reality it was definitely a multi prompt war, it was economic , it was social and it was civil. And so it was more than just communist versus capitalist, there were people in the south who were not communist at all, but put their lot in with Ho Chi Minh, because Ngo Dinh Diem was a horrible president, and he was very self serving . You have these people joining guerrilla forces and all that, just to be on the winning side not out of any ideological desire. And you have these stories of people who were forced to fight, even coming into contact with American squads, and both of them just deciding not to shoot each other. There is a very large history of soldiers in the Vietnam War refusing to fight on all sides, just because it was a war that had elevated beyond the actual goals of reuniting Vietnam. I mean the Americans were drafted into the war, they didn’t even sometimes know what they were fighting for right, and so you have all this different perspective that you kind of, get to absorb more being in America. As a second generation, you have the opportunities to actually see these different sides more, but it’s really hard to bring this up with the first generation, because the first generation has their set opinions and you don’t want to change their mind, because they have suffered so much that they deserve to have that , single mindedness. But at the same time, you get so little in the second generation, who have a desire to learn about the war, that you’re starting to lose the fact that it was very nuanced. A lot of people are no longer aware of the nuances, or aware about the war at all, and not many of them express the willingness to learn. And so the Vietnam War does affect us in many ways, but it is dying out in its relevance as a product of what it was.
Question (00:00): Have you felt the impact of generational trauma from your family’s experiences during the war?
I think it’s hard to qualify generational trauma. I mean, I can’t do a brain scan and interpret those results, so I don’t know about it directly epigenetically, but I will say I think that even if I can’t put a finger on it, definitely I think I have to have. Just being second generation, knowing that my parents had different perspectives, and having to grow up in America, in a Chinese dominated community, despite it being Asian. I’ve not really seen like a lot of Vietnamese representation, and so I kind of do have that idea that,I take it on myself to try and be connected more to my culture, but it definitely creates a lot of inner conflicts about whether or not I can call myself Vietnamese when I don’t really know that much about the Vietnamese culture because I’m not in touch with it as much as I would like to. And that my parents don’t have a nostalgic connection to it, so they don’t see the need to necessarily pass it on, so while I can’t say if I have experienced generational trauma, that’s definitely there in my life, it would just be really hard for me going through it myself to be able to tell you what exactly it is.
Question (01:15): Is there anything else you would like to share or want people to take away from this interview?
Something I would want people to take away from this interview,I think is just so know that the, to just be educated on the Vietnam more, I think that is really important. Cause we see it used a lot in like meme culture, or just like as a joke regarding veterans, or maybe just from the veterans point of view, which obviously is not a bad thing,I think veterans do deserve like, you know support and all that, but it is important to note that maybe even if Vietnam was their glory days the Vietnamese people didn’t want them there. I’ve just been saying a lot, like the Vietnam War is so nuanced, and I personally cannot be qualified enough to speak on it, just not being an actual historian, but I think as a Vietnamese American, what I wish was more prevalent even among my peers, among fellow Vietnamese American is a more open mind and greater willingness to seek out that nuance, because the Vietnam War is a nuanced tragedy, and I think like as it fades out of relevance, we lose a lot of our own culture, because so much of Vietnam today is defined by that war, and if we forget about it, then all that’s left is the actual Vietnam of today which many immigrants would not consider their Vietnam, just because of the government itself, and I think that’s kind of sad to think about how in the future, there may very well be a Vietnam that does not represent its, people outside of Vietnam anymore. And I guess, the best way to prevent that is to make sure that we are all updated on the history and aware so that when certain ideology starts getting spread around again, they do not perpetuate and erase that history.