Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the falls of Saigon and the introduction of one of the darkest periods in the history of that region, but it also marked a high point of the achievements of so many Vietnamese refugees who successfully fled and found new homes in the U.S. in the period that followed, including many who were founders of the celebrated Eden Center in the City of Falls Church.
One of those local businessmen Vinh Nguyen, told his own harrowing story of his family’s flight from Vietnam in April 1974 when he was just 15 years old and the long circuitous path that led to their migration to one of four U.S. refugee camps in the U.S. and eventually to the D.C. area where they opened a small grocery business in what was known at the time in Arlington as a Little Saigon neighborhood of near present day Clarendon but soon migrated, with his family’s being one of the first, to the present day Eden Center, that is now one of the East Coast’s most vibrant centers of Vietnamese commerce and culture in the entire U.S.
Nguyen’s business is now real estate and he has extended his reach back halfway around the globe to the country of his birth where he now says it is time for reconciliation, respect and reorganization. He has invested in many schools there now and with programs to assist victims from the Vietnam War of agent orange.
But it was a far darker time when Saigon fell and the entire southeastern Asia came under the murderous hand of the infamous Chinese cultural revolution. The period was documented in the film, The Killing Fields, which centered on the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, but was the case for the entire region for a half-dozen or more years.
Nguyen’s story still moves him in its telling. He’s told it numerous times in this area in his anniversary year, including to the Rotary Club where the local Chamber’s Elise Bengsten first heard it told.
In his presentation to the Falls Church Chamber this Tuesday, he forced back tears on the retelling numerous times.
As the second youngest in his large family, he moved to south of the Demilitarized Zone in 1965. He said it took only a fraction of a second for peace to be destroyed as he witnessed first hand looking down over a scene of horror at the time, and an urgent need to flee in 1975 as the surrender unfolded.
With a scant three month supply of food, the family fled by boat and helicopter to a base further south where they slept on a floor that was then subsequently attacked by communist fighters. Images of the fighting like those captured in the movie, Saving Private Ryan, filled his memories. The family again fled, moving from smaller to larger boats filled with people.
Arriving at Subic Bay was like heaven, he said, the family sleeping on a plywood floor for days with only condensed milk and rice to consume. Once in the Philllipines they had only condensed meals and anything the family had of value was lost. They eventually arrived in Guam, where 125,000 Vietnamese were held in a refugee camp there. Later in the U.S., Nguyen became friends with the man who led the Guam camp.
Eventually there were four camps established in the U.S. in Arkansas, California, Pennsylvania and Florida. Preferring the warmth, Nguyen’s family chose Pesacola, Florida.
When the opportunity arose, they relocated to the D.C. region, it being the capital of the free world.
There was an arduous journey to Arkansas to visit family with no ability to speak English. From opening a modest store and coffee shop above in 1982, the family became one of the first to migrate to the Eden Center then and also bought properfty at the Falls Church downtown intersection of Washington and Broad.
In the last 35 years, Nguyen has become president of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors and has established ties with Vietnamese business associations. His first business trip back to his home country was last October.
