Waves of Vietnamese leaving Vietnam in the last 50 years have made their way to political prominence in Little Saigon. Personal experiences from many of them are the nucleus to making their political empowerment felt in Orange County and many other regions throughout the U.S.

It’s been 50 years. I was ten when Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. As peace appeared to return after decades of war, I embraced the ideals of devoting myself to rebuild the war-torn country despite people around me were being rounded up to concentration “re-education” camps, exiled to rural “new-economic zones” or removed from their houses, jobs or schools simply because they or someone in their families had some involvement in the previous government.

Amidst the harshest realities of life under the new regime, I won the first prize in the provincial essay competition, arguing that “Winning the Americans today, we’ll rebuild our country ten times bigger tomorrow.” But winning that essay honor brought me back to a life-changing reality under the communist regime. The prize was taken from me simply because my father was still an inmate in the concentration camp. My teacher fought for me and almost lost her job for it.

Around that time, my other teacher, Mr. Nguyen Bao Tro, was tried in a public showcase trial set up in the schoolyard to intimidate other intellectuals. He was charged with joining a resistance group to overthrow the government. A communist cadre was acting as his lawyer, but all he did was to urge him to confess to his crimes so he could receive mercy from the Communist Party and the people. When Mr. Tro spoke as a defendant, he simply said that his actions were not crimes, but only patriotic acts. Immediately, his microphone was cut off and he was hustled off stage into a box truck waiting nearby. The trial abruptly ended without any further explanation.

Those two events formulated the conviction in me that I had to do something for my country to prevent those injustices from happening again to anyone. Shortly thereafter, I got on a boat to escape Vietnam with my family. As a farewell bid, I gave my trusted friend a coded message that I would use when I returned to join the resistance to fight for Vietnam.

ID photo upon entry to refugee camp (1979) Courtesy of Lan Nguyen

My entire family, including my mother and seven brothers, got on the boat to the vast ocean with no idea where we were heading except to escape Vietnam. I remember when the boat got to international waters, someone from the boat burst out “Fuck you, Ho Chi Minh.”  That powerful outburst for freedom still remains in me to this day.

After many days on the high seas, the boat ran low on oil. At a critical point, my oldest brother, an expelled university student, decided to stay drifting and hoping for pickup by some passing ships instead of returning toward Vietnam. I witnessed my mother accepting her fate along with all of her children on that boat without any expression.  

By a stroke of luck in the vast ocean, we encountered another small boat of Vietnamese refugees, which was loaded with oil and water. We then made our way to the Pulau Bidong Refugee Camp in Malaysia and later to California in 1980. Upon graduating from high school, I went on to college at U.C. Riverside and then law school at Hastings College of Law. My vow of returning to Vietnam to fight the government has turned me into advocating for Vietnamese refugees in Southeast Asia and human rights in Vietnam, empowering the Vietnamese American Community in Orange County and using the political process to lobby for my advocacy works.

I’m now a lawyer for over 34 years and a school board member on the Garden Grove Unified School District for over 22 years, I’ve dedicated many of those years to steering US-Vietnamese international relations toward curtailing Vietnam’s human rights violations, improving political freedoms in Vietnam, advocating for Vietnamese refugees in Southeast Asia and rooting for generations of students to do well in schools to improve their future. If I were to remain in Vietnam, I would be treated worse than a second-class citizen; I would not be allowed to complete high school, enter college or get a job, all simply due to my family’s political prison record. The fact that I’m a U.S. citizen and the longest-serving Vietnamese American elected official is a testament to the power of freedom in the U.S.

My personal experience in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon has made me into the person I am today.

Lan Quoc Nguyen, Esq., President, Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education. Former Chairman of Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers (LAVAS)

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