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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com   Published: Saturday, November 18, 2006 Refugee sees war parallels in Iraq Bush's visit to Vietnam stirs up old feelings in immigrant By Krista J. Kapralos / Herald Writer EVERETT - There were endless lines of young faces - 18, 19, 20 years old. Too old to be passed over in a military draft, but too young - much too young - for what would be asked of them during the Vietnam War. Thuy Van Duong watched the American soldiers as they stepped off planes in Saigon, the Vietnamese capital now called Ho Chi Minh City. "They were pushed into war, and we understood that it was a war we could not lose or win," Duong, now 66, said. "It would just keep going, on and on, until something stopped it." By 1975, those soldiers were gone. The Americans had pulled out of Vietnam. With them went Duong's job as a clerk for the United States Agency for International Development, and any hope she had left. These memories overwhelmed Duong when she heard that President Bush was visiting Vietnam, and that he had made a comparison between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. "We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush recently told reporters. It's history repeating itself, said Duong, who owns Mekong, an Asian grocery and imports store on Hewitt Avenue. No matter what happens in Iraq, she said, the result will be the same for the Iraqi people as it was for the Vietnamese. "This means that there will be more refugees from Iraq, and there will be changes for the people who are left behind," she said. "Families will be divided." There are nearly 1 million Vietnamese immigrants and their American-born children in the United States today, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, a nonprofit founded in 1979. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that there are about 1.5 million Iraqis who are displaced within Iraq, and about 1.6 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries. As of 2003, there were 19,000 Iraqi refugees living in the United States. Tam Bui, who was elected this month to a judgeship at Everett District Court, escaped Vietnam with her family in 1975, when she was 7 years old. She said that it's a good sign that Bush is in Vietnam. It shows how much the country has progressed since the days when she would hide beneath a staircase in her family's home as bombs fell from the sky. "Fleeing your homeland, a country you've known all your life, coming to a foreign land, the transition is incredibly difficult," Bui said. The day the Americans left Vietnam, Duong began planning her escape. Three years later, she, her husband and her 7-year-old daughter paid a fisherman to take them to Malaysia. Thirty-nine people crammed into a boat built for 18. It was three weeks on the open sea before they reached their destination. It was a journey that left many dead. Those who survived were known as "boat people." Iraqis may not huddle in boats in a bid for freedom, but they will walk across vast deserts, Duong said. "I understand how dangerous it is," she said. "People can lose their lives easily. They will suffer from separation. "They will suffer a lot." Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.

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