Word: vietnamize
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...case of Xuong and Nu Lu, Victor's parents, those fears were shaped in part by their memories of another war that ended a generation ago. Like more than half a million of their countrymen, the Lus came to the U.S. as refugees from Vietnam, having fled their native Saigon with their two young children after the Communist government took power in 1975. They made their home in east Los Angeles and had four more children. Victor was born in the summer of 1982. As the family built a new life in the U.S., the memories of the war that...
...burned into both countries' consciousness. That moment marked the end of a 15-year debacle that claimed more than 50,000 American lives?and more than 1 million Vietnamese. For years, many Americans, like the Lus, have sought to forget the image of the U.S.'s ignominious retreat from Vietnam?but to the American military and political establishment, the legacy of that war has become steadily more haunting as the U.S. struggles to contain the insurgency in Iraq and design a successful "exit strategy" for another deeply controversial war. Vietnam and Iraq, in that sense, are inextricably linked. Critics...
...other Vietnamese, the Lus are ethnic Chinese, and were residents of a part of Saigon known as Cholon, where many Vietnamese of Chinese descent had settled. Like Chinese diaspora the world over, the one in Saigon was tight knit, industrious and relatively prosperous. Even as the war in Vietnam intensified in the late '60s, Lu says, he was able to make a decent living. "We just tried to live, make the best of it," he says. "What else could...
...witnessed heavy fighting. When her husband was away, Nu sold cigarettes on the streets of Saigon to support their two children. By 1974, Xuong's concerns about the war's course had grown. He had never thought the United States would leave without at least ensuring a viable South Vietnam. And like many in the large ethnic Chinese community in Saigon?which would provide the majority of the boat people fleeing to the U.S. after the war ended?he dreaded the idea of a Communist regime ever coming to power. "We had never thought about leaving," he says. But when...
...Xuong's younger sister had fled almost immediately, and she eventually made her way to the U.S. She worked tirelessly to sponsor all of her siblings?eight in all?to emigrate. Xuong and Nu eventually left Vietnam in 1981, and found themselves in an entirely new world, speaking little English, but relieved to be free of the Communist regime in Vietnam. When the Lus got off a plane for the first time in the United States, in Seattle, the eldest sister, Nanci, then just a girl, remembers charity workers giving the entire family warm winter coats to ward...