Major stories and events
Weather, jobs and cost of living fueled resettlements here after Fall of Saigon
Houston's first Vietnamese immigrants came after the 1975 Fall of Saigon.
They had been in the Gulf of Thailand for two days, and Terry Truong worried how much longer they could last. Hunger clawed at their stomachs; their lips cracked from the sun and the overpowering thirst.
They were running out of diesel. Waves pounded the small wooden boat Truong had hastily outfitted with a motor. They scooped out the rising water with buckets. By the fourth day, the battery had lost its power, and the 31 South Vietnamese army officers looked to the heavens and prayed.
Then Truong saw the lights. He aimed the boat toward the glimmer. Hours later, they had reached the vessel, but the Thai fishermen onboard pulled their knives. It was a crime to transport Vietnamese refugees, and they were afraid. “Please,” Truong begged. Six months later, in August 1980, he arrived in Houston speaking little English, but “finally free” at age 28. Like Truong, nearly 800,000 Vietnamese came to the United States as refugees between 1974 and 2013, with onequarter arriving in just the first three years. They are the fortunate ones. As many as 400,000 died on risky boat journeys like the one Truong endured.
In all, it was the most expansive refugee resettlement in U.S. history, drawing not only the elite and middle class who came in military airlifts but fishermen and farmers.
Many came to Houston, which the federal government designated as a major resettlement site along with cities in California. Its humid climate was reminiscent of Vietnam, and ample jobs and a cheap cost of living also drew refugees here. Today, the city has the nation’s largest Vietnamese population outside of the San Jose and Los Angeles area. Nearly 111,000 live in the metropolitan region, two-thirds of whomwere born abroad, according to the U.S. Census. They’re an integral part of Houston’s culture, with Vietnamese street signs, shops and restaurants lining Bellaire Boulevard and a history of political representation at City Council.
But when they first came, in the 1970s and 1980s, nearly two-thirds of the country told pollsters that they didn’t want them.
In Houston, racial tensions erupted. Vietnamese shrimpers in Seabrook and Galveston clashed with white fishermen, and a Ku Klux Klan group threatened them, sailing around the bay in menacing white robes and burning effigies. U.S. marshals were ordered to protect the Vietnamese boats, and a federal lawsuit filed on their behalf eventually chased the Klan out of state.
It was a terrifying time. To help their community, some Vietnamese investors purchased rundown complexes in south Houston as a safe space for their compatriots. The largest, Thai Xuan, still exists today near Hobby Airport. Its 1,000 Vietnamese residents have transformed it into a token of the old country, renewing traditions and existing almost entirely in Vietnamese. Womenstill wear nón lás, cream-colored coneshaped hats made of straw, and sell fried egg rolls in the parking lot.
When Truong arrived, Houston’s economy was about to collapse from the oil crash. But nothing could dampen his spirits about being here. He still considered it miraculous that he and his fellow officers on the boat had persuaded the Thai fisherman to drop them at a refugee camp near the Malaysian border.
It was Truong’s second attempt to flee Vietnam, and he didn’t have the luxury of failure as an option. The first time, in the days following the 1975 Fall of Saigon, he abandoned at the last minute a departing Navy ship to see about a girl. But by 1979, when he was working as an accountant for a government agency, a friend with ties to Hanoi’s upper echelons told him he was to be investigated for his time in the South Vietnamese Army.
Truong knew what that meant. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese whomHanoi considered to be traitors were tortured and killed in so-called re-education camps. Truong knew he didn’t have much time. He purchased a boat and rallied his brother and officers from his unit. The girl, who didn’t want to leave her family, stayed behind.
By the time Truong arrived in Houston months later, he was exhausted but overjoyed.
“I feel like my life has changed,” he said.
Within days, he found work at a mechanic’s shop. The owner, who was once stationed in Vietnam, told Truong that he loved his people. Truong worked 16 hours a day at $3.50 an hour. He made manager of the night shift and with the commission he paid for his brother to attend Houston Community College, where Truong also took English classes. He sent money to his mother and four siblings in Vietnam.
Soon he found a job installing vector cables, at $10 an hour a significant raise. After his job fell victim to the oil crisis, he was hired as manager of a convenience store at the corner of Interstate 10 and Federal Road in Jacinto City. Gunshots rung out every day. Truong’s store was often robbed and sometimes he was even shot at.
Once, he himself fired at a man who cocked a gun at him. Truong’s time in one of the 20th century’s cruelest conflicts had taught him quick reflexes. The man turned out to be a felon wanted by police.
“It was very hard, those years,” Truong said.
Meanwhile, he met another girl, also a Vietnamese refugee. They married. His brother, whom Truong supported so he could go to college, graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and eventually persuaded his sibling to retire.
NowTruong works at VN TeamWork, Inc. a Houston nonprofit founded by Michael CaoMy Nguyen, a fellow Vietnamese refugee who came here in a 1975 military airlift.
“We received help from the Americans, and we wanted to pay it back,” said Nguyen’s wife, Ninh.
Truong, too, said he was inspired by the assistance he received.
“WhenI came to this country people helped me, and I said one day I will pay back this help,” he said.
Such strong cultural ties mean that many Vietnamese tend to stick close to one another. They cluster in Midtown and south Houston and around sprawling Bellaire Boulevard, Census data shows. The more prosperous congregate around a sliver of Memorial or in Sugar Land.
Experts say it’s partly the circumstance of their arrival. Their evacuation, so sudden and traumatic, coupled with the harsh Communist punishment endured by many left behind, forged for them a shared identity around the idea that they can never go home again. Language bonds them together, as does gratitude for the generosity they have encountered.
“I appreciate America opening its arms and taking me in,” said Truong, now 64. “This is the greatest country in the world.”