VCF Updates: The Struggle to Forgive
OLD SOLDIERS: At a Little Saigon rally, veterans wear tags showing their terms in communist re-education camps. EUGENE GARCIA/The Orange County Register
"Sometimes they thrive on their past experiences. Their scars won't heal. It's like they keep coming at their scar with a knife. It's going to bleed again."
--Trang Nguyen, co-founder of Little Saigon television, on the anger of the activists in the refugee community
FAMILY ALBUM: kieu Chinh lost almost all her family photos as she fled from Vietnam. These old photos, belonging to her uncle in Hanoi, brought back memories.
CHAPTER I: OPENING ACT
A hostile reception in Little Saigon after a trip to Vietnam reopens wounds of war and separation.
kieu Chinh waits off stage, preparing her lines, looking elegant in a dark suit, her hair knotted in a regal bun.
In a few moments, she will address a campaign crowd of 1,000 in a Little Saigon parking lot.
This is her first appearance in Orange County since returning from a groundbreaking for a school her charity is building in her native Vietnam.
kieu Chinh was once South Vietnam’s most popular actress, and, at age 63, she remains an icon of grace and beauty, with the same pearly skin and charcoal eyes that made her a star.
This brisk March evening outside Little Saigon’s Asian Garden Mall is a kind of homecoming.
kieu Chinh recognizes many faces in the crowd, and even more people recognize her, whispering her name — pronounced Kyoo Ching — as their eyes meet.
People over age 50, in particular, regard kieu Chinh as a symbol of the Old World, born in the vanished society of French colonial Hanoi, twice a refugee from communism, a woman of culture, art and style.
Younger people see her as a model of success among the Vietnamese exile community.
Many in the crowd know her charity work. Some were refugees she counseled when they first came to America. Many came to this same parking lot three months earlier, cheering kieu Chinh when she appealed for donations to help flood victims in Vietnam.
Tonight, she will introduce presidential candidate John McCain, a man she admires for his courage as a naval aviator and prisoner in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”
She wants to tell the story of how her father and brother suffered as inmates in the same prison, victims of the communist regime. She wants to explain how war divided her family, just as it divided her country.
But not everyone is happy to see kieu Chinh tonight. Twenty-five years have passed since the end of the war, but in Little Saigon the wounds are still raw.
Among the crowd are old soldiers in South Vietnamese army uniforms, former political prisoners, American veterans of the war. Men in military garb wear paper tags on their chests, listing their terms as political prisoners — 18 years, 21 years.
People have heard about her trip to Vietnam, about her schools.
Cameras flash as she strides across the stage, which is decorated in red-and-gold bunting, the colors of the old South Vietnamese flag.
She smiles as she steps up to the microphone, expecting applause.
But there will be no cheers. Instead, she will face once more the anger her generation cannot let go.
“Why is this happening to me?” she asks later, weeping. “What have I done?”