LONGVIEW —The viral videos of Afghans clinging to military planes last month as they attempted to flee their country hit close to home for Huyen Truong.
Her parents were part of the last wave of refugees who landed in Washington at the end of an American war. The Truongs fled South Vietnam in 1975, shortly before the fall of Saigon marked a definitive end to the Vietnam War.
Truong does not remember her family’s flight; her mother, Thu Tran, was pregnant with her at the time. She knows the secondhand stories her parents and siblings passed down of the traumatic escape, and she remembers the life they built after being taken in by a Castle Rock family.
Today, Truong is the vice president of Kelso’s Ethnic Support Council, an organization that helps support refugees and immigrants coming to Southwest Washington. She hopes the same generosity that led families to welcome her parents and other Vietnamese refugees following that war will be extended to any Afghans who arrive in Cowlitz County.
“My hope is that people are open to hearing their stories and can show compassion as they rebuild their lives,” Truong said.
Difficult choices
Hong Truong, Huyen Truong’s father, was a captain in the South Vietnamese Army. Truong, Tran and their six kids lived on Con Son Island off Vietnam’s southern coast. He worked directly with U.S. Navy operations.
Con Son was a prison island during the Vietnam War and had served as a prison since France took over the region in the 1860s. Lê ?uc Tho, the Communist Party organizer who later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the Paris Peace Accords, was a prisoner there in the 1930s after rebelling against the French colonists.
As April 1975 approached and the Spring Offensive saw the North Vietnamese Army quickly gain ground, it suddenly became clear the Truongs likely would not be safe. Tran was in her second trimester of pregnancy, and the family didn’t know how American allies would be treated after the war.
“A lot of the former North Vietnamese prisoners were still around, and my father’s face would have been recognized,” Huyen Truong said.
Not all of the family made it. The two oldest Truong daughters were living in Saigon to attend school. In order for the rest of the family to make it on the U.S. boats that were rapidly evacuating, the two of them were left behind with relatives.
“They were devastated by that,” Truong said. “My parents did a lot of sacrificing so we could have a better future.”
Life in Washington
In the spring of 1975, the Truongs arrived at a refugee camp in San Diego along with many other Vietnamese refugees. It didn’t take long for Castle Rock residents John and Anna Nelson to step up as potential sponsors for the Truongs.
Huyen Truong thought the Nelsons might have picked their family to support because, before she was born, both families had two boys and two girls.
“The Nelsons are lifelong friends. They taught us how to survive here,” Truong said.
It may have helped that Gov. Dan Evans was a vocal advocate of Washington’s efforts to host Vietnamese immigrants. The state would take in hundreds of refugee families in the months following the fall of Saigon.
Over time, the Truongs’ relatives and other Vietnamese families would make their way to Cowlitz County. The eldest sisters spent six years living in Vietnam before the family was reunited. There were no easy ways to stay directly in touch at that point, so the family sent money and letters through relatives in France.
Before he became the longtime owner of Pacific Auto Parts in Kelso, Duc Huynh was a South Vietnamese helicopter pilot who also fled the country with his family at the end of the war. Huynh and his family resettled in Arkansas immediately after the war before being taken in by another local family, Jim and Melody Parker of Kelso.
Huynh told The Daily News in 2016 that the community sent the family donations after hearing about the growing family of refugees living with the Parkers.
“I still remember one old lady came over with some materials and gave [us] her $20,” Huynh said. “It’s still unbelievable.”
The transition was not always welcoming. Truong remembered store owners who refused to sell to her mother, or followed her and her siblings around the aisles. Some children mocked her accent growing up and used racist names to describe the stores owned and frequented by the Asian residents.
The Truongs found new jobs and received a lot of support from the Nelsons and a growing Vietnamese community. It was a community that faced the same challenges of assimilation and building new lives that her parents dealt with. Truong remembered learning to read and write Vietnamese at Sunday School and the musical celebration that happened during Tet, the Lunar New Year festival.
“Vietnamese people are very proud, and it was important to the adults that the children not forget their culture,” Truong said.
Truong said creating that sense of community would be the priority if they were asked to help Afghans who came to the region. She started reaching out to see if anyone nearby spoke Pashto and Dari, the two main languages of Afghanistan, and could work with the Ethnic Support Council as translators.
The Ethnic Support Council helped circulate a signup form from the Washington nonprofit Afghan Health Initiative that looked for families who could serve as short-term emergency hosts for Afghan refugees. Truong signed up as a possible host, as did Sen. Jeff Wilson and several members of the council.
“It’s the same plan as it was 46 years ago when we needed this support,” Truong said.
