By Srishti Prabha
This past April carried the weight of fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War — the first war broadcast directly into American living rooms.
In its aftermath, thousands of Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodian refugees resettled in the U.S., with the largest concentration making their home in California. As of 2023, Pew Research Center reports that California is home to more than 770,000 Vietnamese residents. And Sacramento County ranked 10th in the nation for Vietnamese American population, with over 40,000 people in 2019.
The Vietnamese community continues to grapple with the legacies of war, memory and identity. Stories written by Vietnamese Americans — like Florence Tang’s “50 years after Vietnam War, my generation bridges upheaval and prosperity” and Teresa Tran’s “How second-gen Vietnamese Americans are healing from the Vietnam War” — help archive the evolving narratives surrounding the war’s anniversary. And a recent photo essay from the Washington Post — Scars, Secrets and Memories: 50 Years After the End of the Vietnam War — brought these complex threads to light by chronicling multigenerational Vietnamese Americans living in Pinole, California, Falls Church, Virginia and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Threaded through the piece were the voices of people living at the intersection of history and inheritance: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who insists on passing his parents’ story to his children; planning commissioner Trúc Christy Lâm-Julian, who speaks in careful fragments to her son about their family’s escape; barber Hùng Hoàng, who wonders if the legacy of Eden Center will last another generation; and Chef Anh Phương Lưu, who returned to New Orleans to reconnect through food and family after her mother’s death.
But beyond its compelling portraits and vivid photography, the story drew its strength from who told it. Led by Vietnamese American photographers, editors and journalists, the project wasn’t simply a documentation of a distant past. It was informed by a present shaped by the same ruptures and reckonings that have defined generations of their own families.
“We wanted to really center community — Vietnamese American photojournalists — with this work,” said Christine Nguyen, photo editor at The Washington Post, who recruited freelance editor Vi Nguyen to help craft the piece.
“It was really incredible because it’s deeply personal to me,” Vi said. Both Vi and Nguyen spoke about their work during a virtual event held on May 28.
In early conversations, the team considered focusing on the history of the war, its modern-day reverberations, or global perspectives. In the end, they chose something more intimate and layered: intergenerational U.S. experiences — from first-generation refugees to second-generation youth — told visually and with intention. Images include Saigon Restaurant at the Eden Center where Trúc Nguyễn slices lotus stems while talking to customer — the background showcasing a buffet of food and Buddhas — and Lưu at home in front of her family altar, featuring a portrait of her mother, incense and offerings of fruit.
“If you don’t understand it, it’s not for you and that’s okay,” Vi added.
Photographers like Valerie Plesch, who grew up just minutes from Eden Center in Virginia, said returning to photograph it required a different kind of seeing. “You would think, ‘Oh, it’s easy. I know this place so well,’” she said. “But, actually, to document it … I learned so much.”
Christine agreed. “There were images that Valerie took of Eden Center that had ‘Paris by Night’ playing on the TV,” she said, referring to a Vietnamese-language musical variety show. “My mom always had ‘Paris by Night’ playing on the TV while ironing clothes. That made me feel nostalgic.”
For some, the work stirred buried memories. Photojournalist Tâm Vũ connected with Lâm-Julian long before the project began — during Lâm-Julian’s city council campaign. But once she began reporting, Vũ realized the true story lay not in politics, but in lineage.
“There were so many parallels … to mine,” Vũ said. “She grew up in a very emotionless, stiff household — she did not have a lot of guidance about making sense of who she is in this world and understanding her family history was so fragmented.”
Yet within that silence lived a story only insiders could fully understand. The project made clear that Vietnamese American identity is not fixed — it is emotional, evolving and personal. For the photographers and editors behind the work, documenting these moments wasn’t just storytelling — it was a way to see their own families, to revisit unspoken histories, and to create something that could carry memory forward when words had long been withheld.
“It just felt so special to see people and think, ‘That looks like my auntie or my mom or my nephew,’” Christine said.