Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War continues to shape lives far beyond Southeast Asia. In Bussy-Saint-Georges near Paris, three generations of Vietnamese immigrants reflect on the conflict that forced their families into exile.
On 30 April, 1975, the fall of Saigon – the capital of Southern Vietnam – to the Communist-controlled North brought an end to the Vietnam War. A crushing defeat for the United States, it sealed the country's reunification with a Communist regime that remains in power to this day.
In the late 1970s, many Vietnamese people fled this new regime by sea. Around 120,000 of these so-called "boat people" found refuge in France. There are now an estimated 400,000 people either born in Vietnam or with Vietnamese heritage living in the country.
A large number settled in the town of Bussy-Saint-Georges, east of Paris, where French Vietnamese people from three generations spoke to RFI.
"April 30, 1975 is a day I will never forget," says Anh Linh Tran, a former officer in the South Vietnamese army, now in his seventies. Faced with dwindling food and ammuntion supplies, he and the 100 men under his command had no choice but to surrender.
"We were very sad, but there was nothing else we could do," he said. He spent the next three years in prison.
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Telling 'almost' everything
In 1979, he fled Vietnam by boat, carrying the trauma of war with him. He reached Malaysia, then France, where his children were born and raised.
“When they were young, I promised to take them to Vietnam, where I was born,” he recalled. “I said it without thinking much, but they remembered and brought it up years later. As the trip approached, I told them I still wasn’t ready. I can’t stand the regime in place.”
He eventually returned to Vietnam in 2019, 40 years after leaving. That visit inspired his book Goodbye Vietnam, written for his children.
“I describe my time in the army, in prison, and our arrival in France. I tell them almost everything," he said, admitting that some memories are too painful to share.
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Children 'think like the French'
Fifty-something Tran Phung Vu Nguyen was a child when he arrived in France, and has told his own children less than Anh Linh Tran.
“I don’t tell them about the sadness I experienced,” he said. “I don’t want to impose it on them. It’s not their story.”
He was only nine years old when he left Vietnam. “We escaped on a small boat with about 20 people. A pirate vessel sank us.”
They were eventually rescued by Malaysian sailors and brought to shore. Like many others, he ended up in France, and is now president of the local Vietnamese association.
His children know little about his past, but then "they don’t ask much" either.
"They were born in France, they think like the French," he says. "Vietnamis more of a tourist destination for them. When I take them to Vietnam, it’s mainly for the scenery."
As for the memories: "We talk about them here, in France, among ourselves.”
Writing their own story
Eighteen-year-old Minh Quan Vo, a law student in Paris who is second-generation French-Vietnamese, confirms this generational shift. He rarely questions his elders – partly out of fear of reopening old wounds, but also through a desire to write his own story.
“I studied geopolitics in high school, so I understand the importance of memory,” he notes. “But I try not to define myself by my past or my origins. I define myself by my actions.”
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While acknowledging that the past is important, he insists it shouldn't dictate the future.
Vo says he will nonetheless take part in commemorations on 4 May in Bussy-Saint-Georges, where a monument pays homage to Vietnamese immigrants.
This article was adapted from the original in French
