Chung Hoang Chuong

In the twenty years since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the United States
has resettled more than a million refugees from the three Southeast Asian
countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ( U.S. Committee for Refugees,
1997). In all, there have been four major refugee resettlement movements. The
first outpouring occurred in the late part of April, 1975, following the collapse
of several governments to Communist troops. Knudsen ( 1983), Tollefson
( 1989), and Chung ( 1994) have extensively documented the relief and
resettlement programs set up in a number of Southeast Asian countries which
dealt with the flow of the refugees after this date.

Needless to say, the Vietnam War left not only devastation but deep
psychological scars on all parties involved. Many young Americans who were
sent to Vietnam never came back. Vietnam lost over four million people in the
conflict. Poverty and destruction pushed thousands of refugees to seek
opportunities for a better life elsewhere, far away from their homeland. Many
refugees lived to recount harrowing experiences on open seas during their
escape, or the difficulties and problems they endured in make-shift refugee
camps. The legacy of the war lingers on, many years after the official end of
open conflict.

America was among the countries that kept its door open to the less fortunate
and allowed the immigration of war-torn refugees for many years. By the late
1990s, large concentrations of Vietnamese could be found in various parts of the
United States, and especially in California. In 1990, the largest Vietnamese
population in the United States could be found in Orange County and Los
Angeles, California, with a combined total of over 100,000 Vietnamese.
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese population in San Jose, California, had reached
55,610, making the city's Vietnamese population the second largest in the state

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