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HA, Dong Nguyen (b. 1968)

Oral Histories

OH 1741

For the DFW Metroplex Immigrants Oral History Project. Vietnamese-born immigrant to Dallas and UNT graduate student. Birth and childhood in Tam Ky, Vietnam; Vietnamese family life; memories of the Vietnam War; American involvement in Vietnam; memory of the fall of Saigon and the North Vietnamese invasion; experience as a refugee in 1975; American treatment of Vietnamese refugees; father’s time in the Communist reeducation camps after his capture; discussion of comparison between Vietnamese reeducation camps and Nazi concentration camps; Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; getting sponsorship to come to Dallas; the family’s goals in coming to the United States; how Americans welcomed he and his family; adjustment to life in the United States; the experiences of the “boat people” in 1979; religion; maintaining Vietnamese traditions in the United States; returning to Vietnam to visit family; how Vietnam has changed; effects of the Communist government on the development of Vietnam since the war; experience with brain cancer; undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin; medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; experiences as a graduate student at the University of North Texas; future goals; lasting effects of the refugee experience on Vietnamese immigrants; the Vietnamese community in the D/FW area; impressions of the younger generation of Vietnamese Americans that were born in the United States; lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War.