REMEMBERING THE COLLAPSE
Black April, observed annually in San Jose, marks the fall of Saigon at end of Vietnam War
SAN JOSE — Forty-two years after Saigon fell to the communists on April 30, 1975, the memories are still too painful for Khanh Nguyen.
“We still remember it because it was tragic for South Vietnam,” said the 67-year-old Nguyen, a San Jose resident who served in the South Vietnamese military and was thrown into a communist forced-labor camp for “re-education” for six years after the war. “We tried to hold on to the country, but unfortunately we could not make it.
“We didn’t believe that we would lose the battle like that,” he added. “After ’75 ... they treated us like second-class citizens.”
About 150 members of the Vietnamese-American community marked the anniversary of the collapse of the South Vietnamese government — still referred to in the community as Black April and the Day of Shame — with a solemn ceremony at the James P. McEntee Plaza at the County Government Center.
A group of women dressed in white áo dài and red and yellow sashes carried the old Republic
of Vietnam flag in a brief procession as South Vietnamese military veterans looked on. The American and South Vietnamese flags were raised as the national anthems of their old country and adopted country were sung with pride.
San Jose Councilman Lan Diep, whose parents fled Vietnam by boat in 1979, said the event is an opportunity for younger generations to reflect on the sacrifices of those that came before them as they searched for liberty and a better life.
“For my parents’ generation, they actually lost their home and fled the country to flee communism to find freedom and democracy,” said Diep, 33. “For people of my generation, who were born outside of Vietnam, it marks the loss of our ancestral homeland. It’s a day of mourning, a day of remembrance, not just for the lives lost during the war but the lives lost during the journey to freedom.”
Dire economic conditions, political repression and conflicts with neighboring countries caused nearly 1 million people to flee communist Vietnam after the war. Hundreds of thousands came to the U.S. after spending time in Southeast Asian refugee camps. Many settled in San Jose, forming a tight-knit community that through the decades has become an integral part of the region’s social and cultural DNA.
Today there are more than 100,000 Vietnamese immigrants in San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, according to a 2016 report by the Migration Policy Institute. From 2010 to 2014, one in three Vietnamese immigrants lived in one of three U.S. places — San Jose, the greater Los Angeles area or Houston — according to the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Roughly 1 in 10 San Jose residents have Vietnamese roots. More Vietnamese live in San Jose than any other city outside of Vietnam.
In recent years, the community has gained a strong footing in local politics. Two Vietnamese — Diep and Tam Nguyen — now sit on the 11-member San Jose City Council. Madison Nguyen, the city’s first Vietnamese-American council member, served as the city’s vice mayor for several years until she was termed out in 2014.
“I think any group that has been here for some decades will eventually make its way into politics,” Diep said. “I’m the first American-born Vietnamese council member that San Jose has had and I think it’s a natural progression.”