L.A.’s New Americans : On Fourth of July, They Look to the Future

America is a place for looking ahead. . . .

This year’s Fourth of July celebration--one of the biggest in memory--had special significance for five families newly arrived in the Los Angeles area. For them it was a watershed in life, a time of new beginnings.

It was their first Independence Day in America.

These new Americans’ backgrounds are as different as the languages they speak; their experiences since arrival are not at all alike, and their reactions are entirely individual. Yet there is one common thread:

They speak of the future with hope.

America has never been an easy country. Romantic images and patriotic speech-making notwithstanding, its streets were never paved with gold, its crops never did pick themselves, and not everyone is rich.

Yet it has always had one thing to offer.

“The future!” said Soan Chul Young. “All Koreans don’t know what the future will be like. I am thankful to be in this country on Independence Day.”

Soan said the future is very important to him.

After all, he is only 63 years old.

Soan and his wife, Jung Ja Hewang, who is 60, came to Los Angeles last September from Mokp’u, in the southern part of South Korea. They came to join members of their family already living here.

And they wanted to live in a country that places a high value on human rights.

“I’m not really happy to say it,” Soan sighed, “but I think the United States is far more advanced than Korea when it comes to human rights.”

Still, he was happy to celebrate a holiday that he said is much like the Aug. 15 celebration in Korea commemorating the date that land was finally free from Japan. And as for the future--well--he had but one more thing to ask:

“A job!” Soan said, his face creasing for a moment into an irresistible smile. “I want work; I don’t want handouts!”

Though he already has a job, Rolando Huitz spent the Fourth of July thinking about the future, too.

Huitz, 23, who arrived here from his native Guatemala with his wife, daughter and brother last October, is working in a Los Angeles furniture store. He likes the job. But he does not plan to stay there for the rest of his life.

“I’d like to continue my studies in the future,” he said. “I’m going to take some basic computer courses. . . . “

Huitz went to college for a time in Guatemala. But he says it was dangerous.

“There is a lot of pressure when you go to college in Guatemala,” he said, “because the more you become educated, the more you realize how bad the situation is.”

Not that the United States is so safe. Huitz had been in this country for only a month when he was mugged while riding home from work on a bus.

“The guy who hit me was big, and he almost knocked me out,” he recalled. “The next thing I know, my face is bleeding. I told the bus driver to stop, but he wouldn’t stop. I guess he was scared.”

Huitz shook his head.

“There is a lot of violence here,” he said.

All the same, Huitz said he is hopeful about his future:

“The opportunities are here,” he said. “If I don’t get them, it’s my fault. . . . “

His feelings are an echo--but in very different context--of those expressed by Milton Friedman, who came to Los Angeles this year from Durban, South Africa, with his wife, Norma, and their children.

The Friedmans came to America because of their concern for the future.

But not in the hope of any better economic prospect, for in Durban they were rich: three expensive automobiles, two servants, a large home with a swimming pool, and a major position with a hospital management company.

The Friedmans left that life of affluence to begin all over--not exactly at the bottom, but certainly nowhere near the top--in the United States because they wanted a better future for their daughter, Gabrielle, 18, and son, Warren, 14.

‘Security and Stability’

“There were opportunities,” Norma Friedman said. “We could actually give them more financially there, but here they’ll have security and stability. . . . “

It seemed like a good trade, the Friedmans agreed, while watching their first American Independence Day celebrations on television (with occasional channel switches to take in the Wimbledon tennis matches.)

And as for their former homeland, and the life they left behind:

“There’s nothing to go back to,” Norma Friedman said.

Thuong Thi Nguyen said she feels the same way.

Her husband, Phan Van, was a veteran of South Vietnam’s Popular Forces; he was detained three times by the new government of Vietnam and is partially deaf from beatings that he received.

The Nguyens were smuggled out of the country by boat with their 10 children a year ago. One son drowned during the escape, and the others nearly starved to death before they were finally rescued by a Philippine patrol boat. They finally arrived in Los Angeles three weeks ago.

“All the people were 100% sure they were going to die,” Thuong Thi Nguyen said, speaking through an interpreter. “We prayed. . . . “

And on Friday they celebrated their first Fourth of July in the United States--with their biggest meal in nine years.

“I feel a thousand times happier,” Thuong Thi Nguyen said. And as for the future: “I expect my children to be good people and help our second country.”

And Philip Spivak echoed the thought.

“I did not learn about America through propaganda,” said Spivak, who arrived here last May from the Soviet Union with his wife, Anna, and their son, Sergei, and spent the Fourth of July visiting friends and family in San Diego. “My friends sent me letters so I knew all parts of American life--the hard and the bad.

“For example, the hardness of getting work and the cost of medical care. We knew all sides. . . . “

And he knew, too, the difficulty of leaving his homeland.

Both the Spivaks are professional engineers. It took them three years to get permission to leave--and then they were limited to taking just $100 in currency and 80 pounds of luggage.

But they have no regrets.

“I am not disappointed in America,” Spivak said, musing about his own prospects and those of young Sergei, who is quickly learning English in order to finish high school next year.

“America,” he said, “was a dream.

“But . . . not a daydream.”

Times staff writers Marcos Breton, Sandra Crockett, Lily Eng, Hector Gutierrez and Claudia Puig contributed to this article.