American Involvement In Vietnam War

After the Fall of Saigon, many Vietnamese refugees had left Vietnam in the hope of moving to another democratic country that would accept them. This resulted in the Indochina refugee crisis, in which a large outflow of people from the former French colonies of Indochina, comprising the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, after communist governments were established in 1975. Most of these refugees were thus taken in by other countries and were resettled, mostly in North America and Europe. At least twenty Western countries, led by France, Canada, Australia, and the United States, the very nation that tried but failed to help prevent their country of South Vietnam from falling to Communism. The total number of Vietnamese evacuated by the

U.S. during the Fall of Saigon totaled 138,000. Most of them were taken by naval ships to Guam for processing to enter the U.S. and from there they were flown to one of four military bases: Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, Camp Pendleton in California, Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. These Vietnamese refugees were to be resettled in every U.S. state over the next few months. Many faced hardships and a loss of identity when relocated to the U.S., because to them, the U.S. was an entirely different country than their native land, it had a different culture, way of life, and societal norms. As a refugee and former State Assemblyman Van Tran remarked, “We assimilated quickly because of all the adversity we had gone through, when we dove into the U.S., we took to it like fish in water.”
Initially, the U.S. governments Refugee Dispersion Policy was aimed to dispersed and resettle Vietnamese refugees across the states, in hope to avoid financially burdening local social services, prevent the creation of ethnic ghettos, and as a way to force the Vietnamese to quickly assimilate. Basically, it was the deliberate policy of the government to disperse the Vietnamese refugees with the intent to impede the formation of Vietnamese communities. Yet contrary to this policy and for survival purposes, the Vietnamese regrouped themselves into geographic areas in states where they could find better social services, employment, and education. They clustered into large ethnic enclaves mostly located in northern and southern California. These insular ethnic areas gave the new Vietnamese immigrant refugees the means to establish services in their ethnic languages and the material necessities to function in their new society. The feeling of being isolated and lonely was solved in these enclaves, and they found psychological comfort, especially those yearning for their former lives and their homeland, among the co-ethnics who shared their language, culture, and history. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 45 percent of the Vietnamese households report they are “linguistically isolated” compared to 25 percent of the Asian American population, meaning “all members fourteen years old and over have at least some difficulty with English.” .
Over time, the refugees slowly became Vietnamese Americans and started to overcome their hardships by setting up these congregated communities.

They took advantage of America’s vast suburbs and got together to open up businesses and community centers. The growth of these areas attracted new arrivals as well as Vietnamese from across the country that wished to rejoin their already established relatives and friends. The viability of entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging Vietnamese commercial distracts, along with a ready-made ethnic consumer base proved to be too good to miss. In turn, newcomers who flocked to the area also brought along their financial experiences, as well as human resources and social capital with them. One Vietnamese community in particular that stood out the most was a Vietnamese suburb, called Little Saigon, located in Orange County, California. What sets Orange County and Little Saigon apart from other Vietnamese communities in the U.S., is that it is the most established for an ethnic enclave that used to be a white suburban stronghold, and because it is home to the largest amount of Vietnamese Americans, giving it the title, the capital of Vietnamese America. By focusing on the structural and social opportunities that existed in Orange County suburbia since the beginning of their arrival, the Vietnamese were able to establish a strong and vibrant community in Orange County, which in turn, lead to the growth and influence of Little Saigon. In general, these analytical questions will help explain how the Vietnamese refugees built such a prosperous community from just little to nothing. As Vo from, Constructing a Vietnamese American Community, said, “In the last thirty years, Vietnamese refugees and immigrants have not merely transformed the racial landscape of the county, but even with their limited resources, are also translating their demographic growth, residential density, and economic concentration into political

clout.”