This past April marked 50 years since what’s become known as black April in the Vietnamese community.
Black April marks the start of the hardship that followed for those in South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War.
The fall of Saigon marked a defining moment in Vietnamese history.
For those left behind after the United States withdrew at the end of the Vietnam War, it also marked a moment of immense loss.
“What we’re looking at, why we have to remember that, is because it’s the day we lost freedom. We lost our opportunity to speak our mind, we lost the opportunity to do what’s right from wrong. We lost the opportunity to gather, to organize, and to be able to speak freely about what’s in your mind,” said Hoa Dinh.
Hoa Dinh is the president of the Vietnamese American Association of Michigan.
He was one of several speakers at a yearly commemoration of Black April, held in Grand Rapids.
“I came here in 1982, and I spent 7 years with the new government, the communists, I saw a few of my neighbors who were taken away at night time and you don’t see them again, and you never see them again, because you don’t know what happened,” said Hoa.
A half century of time has hardly dimmed the pain and sorrow felt by those who lived through the fall of Saigon, and later survived the perilous journey to leave war-torn Vietnam by boat.
“Everyone’s migration story is a little bit different, some are darker than the others, but what we really appreciate is what this country has provided us, has given us a lot of opportunity for us to grow and give us the freedom to advance ourselves,” said Hoa.
It’s something the Vietnamese community doesn’t want reduced to a mere footnote in the history of the days and years following the end of the Vietnam War.
“We learned that regime, that government, we understand them and we know what they did and we know how to move on and how to better ourselves and our next generation. And the next generation is what’s really important; they will not forget,” said Hoa.
50 years later, the story of the Vietnamese boat people remains one of incredible courage and determination, a journey that was both life-changing and life-defining.
“We’re not more special than anyone else, but we’re special in the way that we paid too much to be here, right, when you get something free, you don’t appreciate it as much, when you get something you paid with your life, you could have died at sea, you could have perished in the jungle, you could have been executed for escaping Vietnam. The Vietnamese got here with a very steep price,” said Phillip Nguyen, who escaped Vietnam by boat.
I think it really chronicles the perfect ideology of the American dream. I think you can come here with absolutely nothing and create this life of not only freedom, but success and meaning. And I think that isn’t that why the U.S. was built? Because people were fleeing from something that did not give them freedom, and we created this beautiful country, this successful country. So I think any story that talks about the plight of people in search of a better life is a really relevant story, and doesn’t matter if it’s 50 years ago or 100 years ago. I think you have to remember what the American Dream is about,” said Soon Hagerty who also escaped Vietnam by boat.
It’s estimated as many as 2 million people left Vietnam by boat from 1975-1995.
Anywhere between 200,000 & 400,000 people are believed to have died making the journey
An estimated 402,000 resettled in the United States.
Many still call the U.S. home today.