‘Black April’ remembered with stories of sacrifice
Refugees commemorate the 44th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War
SAN JOSE >> When the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, Kelly Khue Le didn’t go to school that day. She attended class only intermittently afterwards, spending most of the next four years working in the fields at the behest of Community Party officials.
In 1979, Le and her five siblings left Da Nang in a boat. Her parents stayed behind in the central Vietnam town because they were too old for the journey and didn’t want to lose their home.
They wanted to keep the home “just in case we didn’t come through, so we would have a place to come back to. If we all left, we would lose everything,” Le recalled Monday at an event marking the 44th anniversary of the end of the war, known to refugees as “Black April.”
“I had to make the decision to leave my parents, never knowing when we would be reunited,”
she said.
Refugees commemorate April 30 with stories of sacrifice — those of South Vietnamese and American soldiers who fought in the war — and tremendous loss for lives lost and the people left behind in Vietnam, as well as the pain of losing a country they once called home.
Many years later, that feeling of loss still followed Le’s visit to Vietnam last month.
“I miss my country, but I can’t be free-speaking,” Le said of her visit. “You have to behave, not do any politics. Just family.”
But how “Black April” is remembered and commemorated is changing, in part because a growing generation of Vietnamese aren’t old enough to remember the war.
During Monday’s event at the San Jose City Hall rotunda, Vietnamese Americans of many generations gathered to tell not only stories of sacrifice and loss, but also how that has affected San Jose’s Vietnamese community, now the largest outside the country of Vietnam itself.
Organized by the Vietnamese American Roundtable, the event also featured exhibits focused on Vietnamese American leaders, businesses and organizations established in San Jose since the end of the war.
“It’s very easy for us to argue with each other and fight each other — we see that with the competing Tet Festivals and fractured community groups,” said organizer Huy Tran, referring to Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.
For the community’s history to endure it needs to be told in ways young generations can relate to, across language barriers and political divides, he said.
“We are in a unique position to tell both stories — those of boat people and refugees, and those who are just learning about it,” Tran said.
Tran, president of the Roundtable group, grew up in the East Bay but moved
to San Jose in 2001, part of a youthful attempt to break free from his parents.
His parents didn’t discuss their own experiences as boat people often. It wasn’t until he became more engaged in San Jose’s Vietnamese American community that he gained a perspective on their experiences.
“It made me realize I had a source of information back home,” Tran said.
Today, the community in San Jose includes many newer immigrants who grew up and were educated in post-war Vietnam. There, April 30 is celebrated as the day of the country’s reunification.
“Those who were born (in Vietnam) after 1975, they studied history as written by the communist regime,” said Ngoc Le. “They don’t yet understand the meaning of this day, like those of us who lived under two different regimes.”
Ngoc Le left Vietnam in 1980, first for New York, then to San Jose in 1987, drawn to its temperate weather and large Vietnamese community. But, he said, many things have changed.
“Our community doesn’t have as much unity now,” Le said.
Le’s son, Vandoan Robinson Ngo, said he didn’t think much about Black April until he enlisted as a Marine and served in Iraq.
Ngo said his military service deepened his appreciation for both South Vietnamese soldiers and his mother’s experience as a
boat person having to leave her parents behind.
“And now that I have a son and daughter, I realized how important it is to remember not only the lives that were sacrificed in the war, but also the future they did it for,” Ngo said.
Ngo performed a spoken word poetry piece at the event honoring his mother, recalling how he grappled with criticism of his limited Vietnamese, fueled in part by his mother’s eagerness to learn English and assimilate.
“How about wanting a better life for you, and not just your children?” Ngo said in his performance.
“Ma, if you never spoke English to us every single day to better read and write, to better navigate this new life,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t be here today, a college graduate with a great career, a husband and father who served this country for years.”
Ngo recently took his two children, 1 and 3, to Vietnam to meet their last surviving grandparent. He wants to sit down and interview his mother about her experiences leaving Vietnam, something they’ve only discussed in bits and pieces, so he can tell it to his children.
And Le hopes people her son’s age will continue to hold Vietnam in their hearts.
“And hopefully, some day, we can go back free,” she said.