Forever touched by Vietnam

The Vietnam War changed the face of Seattle.

If you don't believe it, take a look around. A whole wave of immigrants made this region home after the exodus from Southeast Asia a quarter-century ago. Now social-service agencies estimate more than 30,000 Vietnamese, maybe 15,000 Cambodians and another 8,000 to 10,000 Laotians live in Washington state.

The migration patterns were chronicled in an exhibit five years ago at the Wing Luke Asian Museum. It was pegged to the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

But this year, on the 25th anniversary, which falls on Sunday, the museum decided against such a display. The Vietnam War was just too personal and sensitive an issue, spokeswoman Van Diep says.

There is no one voice that speaks of what the war and the fall of Saigon mean. The only thing they would agree on is that it profoundly changed many lives. The voices talk of sadness, hope, remembrance.

Here are some of them:

Seeking answers

Her name is Kelly Jackson, but she's always been partial to "Ina." That was the name on the bracelet she was wearing when she came to America in April 1975. She was 6 months old. Ina was the woman who raised her in a Saigon orphanage. A family in France planned to adopt her, but Jackson never made it.

She was on the "Operation Babylift" plane that crashed not far from Saigon in the waning days of the war. More than half of the 300 passengers were killed. Jackson was lucky. She was on the upper level of the C-5A Galaxy, where most of the survivors were strapped into tiny boxes.

She made it out of Vietnam on another flight, but the window for adoption in France had closed. Agencies found her a new home with a couple in Kent.

Ribs protruded from her 10-pound frame. Her legs were burned from the crash. Her face was flattened on one side, probably from being left unattended for so long.

"I must have been kind of an ugly baby," says Jackson, now 25.

At 11, she was diagnosed with leukemia and needed four years of chemotherapy. Her life, she concedes, is full of second chances.

Jackson went on to graduate from Western Washington University and now works as a graphic illustrator in downtown Seattle.

"Growing up, I always knew about my past, but I didn't feel connected to it," she says.

She never thought much about the Vietnam War until earlier this month when stories began to appear about the 25th anniversary of its end on April 30, 1975.

"I wonder what mix I am, and, of course, I wonder about my biological parents," Jackson says. Many American soldiers fathered children who were left behind.

Where was she born? When was she born? Where was she found?

"I don't have to know," she says, "but I'd sure like to know."

Today, she leaves for Baltimore to meet up with other Vietnamese adoptees during a three-day reunion. She hopes to find survivors of the plane crash.

They could never replace the family that raised her, she says, but they would link her to the past.

Jackson still has a not-quite-legitimate birth certificate that the adoption agencies created for her. It lists the name of Thi Anh Tuyet. She thinks it's pretty, but "Ina" is the name that holds more meaning.

She still has that bracelet and will take it to Baltimore. It fits around her thumb.

Wife and child left behind

"For me, it's a sad day," says Nicholas Rock of the end of the war.

His Vietnamese wife and child were left behind in a country that would be isolated for more than a decade.

"It took me 14 years to get them out," says Rock of Bothell who served with the Army in 1970 and 1971. He met his future wife, Kim-Loan, at an Army-base store 20 miles from Saigon.

Military officials threatened to court-martial him if he married her. At 19, they said, he was too young.

They married in 1983 by proxy, thanks to a clever law firm in Butte, Mont. But his family was stranded.

Rock wrote stacks of letters to the Vietnamese authorities. He pressed U.S. immigration officials. Nothing happened.

Finally, a People magazine reporter, David Grogan, brought up Rock's case on a trip to Vietnam in 1985. Promises were made. The reporter was tenacious. Rock's wife and son, Zung-Chinh, were on their way to America.

Rock is disappointed that more isn't being done to mark the anniversary, although many vets, he says, are reflecting on the war. More than 58,000 U.S. servicemen lost their lives, and several million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

"It was a tremendous sense of loss," Rock says.

Still, he argues, not all of America's involvement was bad. The U.S. government brought jobs, developed the country and offered aid that saved countless lives.

"We did good," Rock insists. "We also suffered over there."

Today, Rock is commander of the Washington post of Veterans of the Vietnam War. He is active in immigration cases, human-rights issues and in recovering the remains of servicemen.

"I think everyone who went over there, it changed them," Rock says. "You came back different for it."

Protests began 35 years ago

The Seattle protests started 35 years ago, with 500 anti-war marchers walking from the courthouse to the spot now known as Westlake Plaza.

"I got spit on. I got called a communist," says local historian Walt Crowley, who was 19 at the time. "I was actually a Trotskyite."

Five years later, up to 25,000 people were taking part.

"The anti-war movement ended the war in Vietnam," boasts Crowley, who published the underground Helix newspaper in Seattle from 1967 to 1970. "We'd still be there if it wasn't for the anti-war movement . . . (with) God knows how many dead."

The movement picked up steam from other counterculture themes.

"It became the emblem, beyond the horror and injustice of the war itself, for young people of what was wrong in American society at that time," Crowley says.

The legacy of those protests had a profound impact on Seattle, the historian says. Outside of Berkeley, he maintains, no other city in the nation has so incorporated the civil-rights values of the 1960s into its institutions.

Joe Martin is just one case in point. His political consciousness was forged by the 1969 demonstrations in Boston, where he was a student.

"There was never any rational explanation for the war," he says.

Now 49, Martin continues to fight for the rights of the homeless and poor. He's been a social worker at the Pike Place Medical Center since 1978. And he's been arrested several times while protesting for social causes.

"We are still in a war," he says. "We are in a war between the rich and the poor."

Between two worlds

Hanh Nguyen went to school in Vietnam with pictures of Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader, on the cover of her school books.

Today she studies capitalism at the University of Washington.

The 20-year-old business major tries to keep a balance between both worlds. "It's two different cultures, two different values," she says.

On Saturday, Nguyen donned a traditional ao dai, a long dress split at the waist with separate pants. She and other Vietnamese students sang, danced and acted out skits in Kane Hall to celebrate the old culture and to highlight the difficulties of entering a new one.

Their annual culture show, performed almost entirely in Vietnamese, was dedicated to those who fought for South Vietnam. But its main purpose was to educate students about Vietnam and the "great history behind it."

"We do lose identity," Nguyen says. "Our language, our culture, ourselves - so we're trying to maintain that."

She was born and raised in the former South Vietnam, where her father had been an army officer. He spent three years in a re-education camp, and the family felt the stigma.

"My brother was so smart, but they wouldn't let him go to (academic) competitions because he was the son of an officer," Nguyen said.

Her family tried 15 times to escape by boat. Each time, they were caught. Each time, their father was imprisoned.

Finally, in 1991, the government allowed them to leave. Nguyen's oldest brother, Huy, is an engineer in Bellevue. The middle child, Hoang, is a second-year medical student at the University of Washington. Younger brother Hai is a UW freshman.

Their father, Trung Nguyen, 58, is a school janitor in Vancouver, Wash., where he lives with their mother, Lanh Vo. The parents still feel the hurt of losing the war.

But they believe things are improving in Vietnam and harbor hopes of returning one day.

"I am definitely going back there," Trung Nguyen said as his son, Hoang, interpreted. "Unless or until there's no more communists."

The war's `still going on'

Vietnam wasn't the only Southeast Asian country affected by war. The conflict spilled into Laos and Cambodia, nations that underwent their own civil struggles.

Phoua Panyanouvong stayed in his native Laos for as long as he could. A businessman who sold construction materials, he says he tried to help his countrymen get through the hardships after the communist Pathet Lao took over.

But people were killed or taken away at night. He fled to Thailand in 1981 and arrived in the United States in 1984.

He took a job with a Seattle seafood company and helped make beds in a factory.

He seems to have few regrets.

"The hospitals are good here," he says through a translator. "There's better health care. Plenty of food."

Today, the 65-year-old with a family of four works for the Coalition of Lao Mutual Assistance on Rainier Avenue South.

He greets clients, helps translate documents and does a bit of everything.

In Panyanouvong's eyes, the war in Laos is "still going on." And it will continue to, he says, as long as the former rebels are still in control.

On his office wall is a stark reminder of this defiance: a red flag with white elephants. It's the symbol for the Kingdom of Laos, which has not existed for 25 years. Today the landlocked nation is known as the Lao People's Democratic Republic and flies a different flag.

Panyanouvong says he would like to retire there. But the possibility seems remote. "I don't think I can go back because of the communists," he says.

Thinking of returning

She cleans houses and runs a nail salon to make ends meet. The days are long.

In her homeland of Vietnam, she thinks, life would be easier. She and her husband would like to retire in the land they once fled.

But they don't want their names used. It would look bad, she says, to those Vietnamese Americans still defiant of the communists.

They are part of a small number of immigrants - not too old, not too young - now contemplating the once-unthinkable notion of living in the land of Ho Chi Minh.

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Anniversary events

Tomorrow, 1 to 5 p.m.: The Vietnamese Community of Washington State will host a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Nguyen Xuan Vinh, commander of the South Vietnamese air force from 1958 to 1962, will speak. There will be a memorial service to the servicemen and women who died in Vietnam and a denouncement of the human-rights record of the current Vietnamese goverment.

Asa Mercer Middle School, 1600 S. Columbian Way.

Sunday, 1:30 to 5 p.m.: Observance of the April 30, 1975, commemoration date for the South Vietnamese exodus, Vietnamese Community of Pierce-Thurston County.

Photographic exhibition from noon to 1 p.m.

Lincoln High School, 701 S. 37th and G streets, Tacoma.

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