50 Years After the Fall of Saigon, How Can Vietnamese American Families Process the Past?

Growing up in Orange County’s Little Saigon, HaNhi Tran said she didn’t have time for many conversations with her parents about their past in Vietnam.

It wasn’t the norm to talk. They were focused on surviving and working. She was focused on school.

“We didn’t have a lot of time together,” Tran said. “I didn’t even know what to ask.”

But she knew the broad strokes around what happened to her family in April 1975, or “Black April”: when American soldiers pulled out of South Vietnam and the decades-long war officially ended. Over those years, it’s estimated that approximately 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed.

Tran knew how harrowing the war was for her parents. Her father, who was in the South Vietnamese military, was imprisoned in a labor camp for years. After his release, he met her mother and the pair fled the country, just the two of them. They arrived in America as refugees by boat — a journey so dangerous many people were lost at sea.

Recalling her family’s story makes Tran tear up.

“I have so much gratitude that I’m not sure I knew to have back then,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to go to school here, be a professional, be a lawyer and now giving back to the community in the way that I am, without that sacrifice.”

Opening up conversations 

Tran is currently the senior manager at Santa Clara County’s Vietnamese American Service Center.

The county was a major place for refugees to settle after the war, and 10% of San José residents identify as Vietnamese American — making it the largest Vietnamese population for a single city outside of Vietnam.

VASC was born in 2022 out of an earlier county health assessment that found disparities in mental and physical health care for the Vietnamese population — as well as trouble accessing services due to language barriers. Tran described VASC as a “one stop shop,” helping people access resources as varied as legal help to the senior nutrition programs and internal medicine, but also functioning as a community space where people — especially elders — gather for yoga, dancing and karaoke.

“I am so proud to say in the three years that we’ve existed and operated, we’ve become a really trusted place for the community,” Tran said, adding that VASC also serves other communities like Spanish speakers.

Through the month of April, VASC held a series of events exploring the 50th anniversary of Black April. During these events, Tran saw that some seniors are eager to share their story with the younger generations.

“They’re worried … as we move farther and farther away from 1975, that what they experienced, it’s going to be forgotten,” Tran said.

The passing of this anniversary — which is complex within the diaspora itself — and the attendant media coverage may be bringing up painful memories for many Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans. But if you’re seeing this up-close, how can you sensitively talk about these complicated feelings and events?

“A lot of times, this is an experience many people don’t want to revisit.” said Justin Hu-Nguyen, the co-executive director of mobility justice at Bike East Bay who previously worked at the Southeast Asian Development Center in San Francisco. “They want to stay closed, but that is what makes it harder for them to process that trauma and really build forward on it … it seems like yesterday for a lot of them.”

KQED spoke to community leaders, activists and mental health experts on how to connect with older family and community members about this particular anniversary — balanced with the complexities of navigating your family’s history for your own mental health.

Doing the research …

Michelle Vo, a social worker based in Cupertino whose clients are majority Asian American, is herself is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants — and suggested that before starting a conversation with elders, younger generations in the diaspora should first try doing their own research about the Fall of Saigon, to put things into context.

“My dad was only 12. My mother was only 10,” Vo said — and knowing this, she said,“provides a very compassionate approach of, ‘They were just children trying to survive, or growing up, in such an unstable and traumatizing situation.’”

Tran said she became more familiar with the details about Black April — and thus about the context for her family’s history — through her involvement with the Vietnamese American community growing up, and helping with events about Black April.

“I learned so much that I didn’t know,” she said. “Because I didn’t even know what questions to ask my parents.”

Knowing more about the circumstances also helped Tran understand the context of some of the decisions her parents made for her family — and let go of some lingering resentments.

“I think that’s just so important: to have a conversation with them where it’s truly about understanding,” she said. “Versus coming from a place of some of this generational trauma [and] defensiveness.”

… while acknowledging the challenges for your own mental health

Vo said many Asian American children “carry ancestral wounds” of elders who have survived or grown up during war. Guilt is a major emotion her clients struggle with — “guilt of the sacrifice of what our parents and elders did, and then the pressure to uphold and make them proud.”

But Vo said it is important for younger generations to know that they “are not responsible for healing their elders.”

“There’s a pressure to uphold these unspoken and direct expectations to fulfill the ‘filial piety’ — which is respecting our elders, caring for them,” she said.

However, this can be difficult in many Asian American households, who may have a more collectivist view of family, said Vo. “It’s definitely a privilege to learn from our heritage and the stories of suffering and resilience shared by our elders,” she said — but “it is also a privilege to be given the opportunity to take care of ourselves and forge a path because of their sacrifices.”

Hu-Nguyen also stressed the long-term role of intergenerational trauma for Vietnamese Americans — a phenomenon formally known as the “intergenerational transfer of trauma,” first recognized in the descendants of Holocaust survivors, in which trauma can literally be passed down genetically to the next generations.

“Whether you are first generation or 1.5 or second generation, this generational trauma is something that we’re all growing with,” he said. “This is a long haul.”

The Santa Clara Vietnamese American health survey that spurred the creation of VASC found that nearly 1 in 10 Vietnamese adults reported feeling like they might need to see a health professional due to issues with their mental health, emotions, nerves, or alcohol or drugs. Meanwhile, a higher percentage of the county’s Vietnamese middle and high school students reported symptoms of depression than all Asian and Pacific Islanders, white people and students in the county overall.

”Losing your home, losing your country, sometimes the chemical warfare used back then … is very impactful to generations and generations after,” said Hu-Nguyen.

Learning to communicate, listen and watch for cues

People can practice active learning skills, like nodding your head, validating comments and avoiding judgement, Vo said.

She said that younger generations can also allow loved ones to share at a “high level, without going into detail.” For example, they could ask holistic questions about their family’s favorite foods from Vietnam, or about their memories of school before the end of the war.

“Concern about re-traumatization of ‘opening old wounds’ is a very natural worry during any type of anniversary, any grief anniversary, death anniversary,” Vo said. But family members are “not the mental health professionals, so we don’t need to ‘heal’ or ‘solve’ … just be active listeners, with ears perked up.”

During this conversation, Vo said that it helps to keep track of your elder’s physical cues — in case it’s time to pause and assess how they are feeling.

“Are they making eye contact?” Vo explained. “Are they breathing a different way? Are they pacing or kind of moving? Are they getting teary?”

She said many in the community find it difficult to express their feelings verbally, so it can be helpful to be lightly vigilant for family members giving any physical cues for hitting pause on a conversation that’s perhaps getting too intense for them.

“They might say, actually, ‘I’m hungry. Oh, Mom has a headache,’” Vo advised.

Meeting people where they’re at — and decentering therapy

Vo said one of the most important tips is meeting people “where they are” — and not insisting that elders immediately open up or go to therapy.

Mental health, she explained, is still “very much stigmatized” in Asian and Vietnamese communities. “We might have our agenda to heal and support, but the best way that we can be compassionate is to be curious about where people would like to go,” she said. “And most importantly, meet people where they are, shoulder by shoulder: ‘I’m here with you.’”

Vo said people should think on how they’ve seen their elders manage their emotions or discuss vulnerable topics in the past. Younger generations should try asking themselves, “Is this something I even want to talk about? Is it healthy for us to do?”

“Talking about trauma can be, of course, important,” she said. “However, what is most important is that individuals who experience that trauma have control over their reaction and emotional responses.”

This is where you can take the lead from your elders, Vo said. If they want to talk, listen attentively. If they don’t, you can reassure them that you are still interested and can perhaps nudge them to talk to someone else in their family.

“Elders also want to protect their young,” stressed Vo, “so talking about emotions can bring up feelings of shame. And because they have had such a different lived experience here in America, transferring that emotional burden to our children can also be very difficult for elders too.”

If you sense your family member is just not ready to talk with you, you can care for them in other ways, she said. On or around Black April, she said, you could  suggest going on walks, having meals together as a family, going on errands or joining them on their favorite activities — just staying present.

Knowing talk therapy may not be for everyone

Hu-Nguyen notes that therapy “is a very Western way of seeing things.”

“How do we really give them the support and really feel included as a community and a way that they can find healing and restoration?” he said. “A lot of people feel, especially elders, [they] haven’t been talking about it. [They] feel that they’re alone in this hurt.

But “there’s a community there to help,” he said.

Vo added that not everyone “benefits from externally speaking and processing,” and that “some people and some cultures or generations benefit from a sense of belonging and security of having their families present with them without directly saying it.”

Hu-Nguyen said culturally, some people may find it hard to ask elders intrusive questions. There are ways he recommended to circumvent this feeling, by asking people to write down their stories, share a poem, watch other stories around Vietnam or immerse themselves in art projects.

“Those things are really important for sharing what’s on their heart and how to approach it — in a way that isn’t as direct or confrontational,” he said.

‘Leveling expectations’ and finding other spaces

Flooding someone’s feelings by asking many questions about the past, Vo said, can be “a lot for anyone to experience.” And some younger generations may need to acknowledge that “some people might not feel ready to speak about it, while some folks might not want to ever stop talking about it,” she said.

Vo said that as you prepare to speak with someone, “level your expectations” and “think about how they showed up in the past.”

“Of course, we will feel disappointed when they don’t show up fully as warm or accepting,” Vo said. In these situations, she said, it’s important for younger generations not just to check their patience and learn “the skills to self-soothe,” but also to have “other spaces to allow us to open up fully.”

Other spaces could include Vietnamese American community centers and groups. Tran said at VASC, she noticed that some elders were willing to open up about their family history to younger generations not in their family — especially those who are eager listeners.

“They’re more willing to share it because you don’t have the same complications or potential baggage sometimes that exists within a family,” she said. She added that staff members and other community members often work as “proxies” for their younger family members. And it works both ways — for the staff, elders may likely have a similar experience as their parents or grandparents.

“I hope that it’s two-way,” she said. “Learning their stories is healing for me and my generation.”

Tran said her connection to Vietnamese American communities gave her a “stronger sense of identity.”

“It makes me feel like you want to really honor our collective communities’ resilience,” she said, “but then in some ways it inspires me, and us, to think about other communities that may be facing challenges now — other refugee communities.”

That preservation of history — and connection to culture and traditions — is important, Hu-Nguyen said.

“There [was] a moment where I think a lot of the community wanted to close their eyes and not remember it,” he said. “But … here we are, we build our community up from so little to one where people are graduates. We have people in Congress … We have people in leadership roles, entrepreneurs. And that’s such a joy.

“Even more so with the context of where we are and who we are, and who our community was, and who our ancestors are,” he said. “And I think that’s lost if we become ahistorical.”

How you can find more resources and support

Having mental health support that is culturally competent and familiar with a client’s background can be a major way to build trust — especially with groups who historically have a stigma surrounding mental health.

When a person walks into VASC, “you’ll see that even though we provide behavioral health services, we don’t label it as such,” Tran said. “Because we don’t want them to feel, ‘Oh, my neighbor is going to know my business if I show up to that clinic that has a sign on it that has ‘behavior health.’”

She said that the connections VASC is able to make with programming — like exercise classes — allows staff members to build relationships with elders, and then nudge them to the clinic, if the time is right.

According to the latest data from the American Psychological Association, only around 4% of active psychologists in the United States identify as Asian,  compared to 79% white psychologists.

Another major barrier for Asian American communities in accessing mental health and other resources in California is language — especially when those languages are as varied as, say, Khmer and Lao, Hu-Nguyen said. And without language access or culturally competent resources, people who “need it the most” will be missed entirely, he warned.

“I think the hard part is that the diaspora is so diasporic,” Hu-Nguyen said — not every Asian American population around the Bay Area is as dense as Santa Clara’s Vietnamese American community.

“Talking to your elected officials really helps find resources,” he advised. “Pushing for these community centers to have different language access is really important.”

Hu-Nguyen said another major way to fill these gaps is directly training young people of the diaspora — whether Cambodian or Burmese or Vietnamese — into mental health and community programs.

“Making sure the community can serve the community is really important,” he said. “They’re the ones that share a narrative with their elders and also carry that. And how do they help process together, as a community?”

Physical and mental health resources for Asian American communities in the Bay Area include:

• Asian Mental Health Collective
• Asian Mental Health Project
• Vietnamese American Service Center
• Asian Americans for Community Involvement
• Local churches and temples
• Reaching out to a local nonprofit or community center focused on mental health
• Vietnamese American Community Center of The East Bay
• Southeast Asian Development Center
• Brown Girl Therapy
• Southeast Asian Community Center
• Viet Care
• Project SHINE-OC