Vietnamese-American center an important milestone
Santa Clara County recently held the groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnamese-American Service Center. “Today is part of a journey,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, told the estimated 600 Vietnamese Americans at the event. “It started with a tragedy, which is the fall of Vietnam to the communists. But it ended up with good news, which is the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Americans who are now our neighbors.”
The fall of Saigon formed the genesis of the Vietnamese community in Silicon Valley. From the mid-’70s, a few arrived at first, then thousands came to become assemblers and technicians for a nascent Silicon Valley. Tech manufacturers like Shugart Associates and Qume have gone the way of the floppy disks and daisy-wheel printers, but companies like theirs provided the foundation for the émigrés to house, feed and educate their children.
The newcomers converted empty storefronts on Santa Clara Street to serve a population still homesick from its forced exile. The neighborhood where San Jose City Hall now sits was the cradle of Vietnamese commerce: a grocery store here, a sandwich shop there. My parents had a small shop near Fifth and Santa Clara streets. Restaurants and cafes followed, introducing the valley to a mélange of cheap exotic dishes. A community formed. Many of the original merchants are now gone, with their children and grandchildren having gone to college and entering the professional ranks. Redevelopment forced many Vietnamese businesses to leave for the East side, where the émigré commerce thrives today in its own quasiecosystem. Almost 45 years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnamese community for the most part has assimilated, many of its American-born children no longer speaking Vietnamese. Still, cultural and social gaps remain, especially for the elders and the newer arrivals.
A county health study, conducted at the behest of Supervisor Dave Cortese, revealed some surprising statistics:
• Vietnamese American women have the highest cervical cancer rate in the United States — five times more than any other ethnic and racial group.
• One in 8 Vietnamese Americans carry the hepatitis B virus, compared to 1 in 1,000 of the general population.
• About 13% of Vietnamese families live below the poverty line.
The study also found that cultural and language barriers prevent the community from addressing these health disparities. Supervisors Cortese and Cindy Chavez led the effort to build the center.
“We really want you to know that this is a sign of genuine respect from the county of Santa Clara,” Chavez told the crowd. “This center will reflect your values and your vision and the services that you told us you wanted.”
Scheduled to open in 2021, the $37 million center will offer senior programs and health services.
“It’s quite amazing that this center is happening at all,” said Thang Do, the project’s architect. “As a refugee who came to this country in 1975 and to Santa Clara County in 1980, my own life mirrors how our community (has) evolved over those years, beginning as complete newcomers who had to learn everything from language to customs and struggle just to survive. We are now integrated in every aspect of the larger community. … In the larger sense, (the center) symbolizes the maturity and integration of the Vietnamese diaspora into this country.”
The United States is an invention that would not have been possible without immigration, from the Pilgrims to Elon Musk. Yet, the paradox is that it’s never fully embraced immigration.
The Vietnamese was the last mass refugee resettlement in the United States. Almost half a century later, the center is a symbol that the Vietnamese are American, that they belong.
Former Mercury News staff writer De Tran emigrated from Vietnam as a refugee in 1975. He also was publisher and editor of Viet Mercury, the Vietnameselanguage newspaper published by the Mercury News.