Reporter’s Notebook : Defaced Road Signs Point to Anti-Refugee Sentiment

To this day, freeway and street signs directing motorists to Orange County’s Little Saigon continue to be spattered with paint or defaced in some way.

As land markers, they’re very simple. The only unique accent is the reflective dots that rim the state’s large, green, 4-foot-by-12-foot signs.

Judging from the damage, they generate powerful emotional reactions.

Little Saigon signs have been uprooted with shovels, bashed by vehicles and mauled with chain saws, according to one official for the state Department of Transportation. Mud has been sprayed on them, racial graffiti scrawled on them and the U.S. flag draped over them.

It had been Caltrans’ policy to replace each of the original markers on the Garden Grove and San Diego freeways only once. Originally, there were nine; now there are two.

That policy appears to have changed, however, with Caltrans officials now saying that the agency is responsible for maintainance of the signs and that they will continue to be replaced despite their $250 price tag.

Still, they haven’t all been replaced. Albert Miranda, public information officer for Caltrans’ district office in Orange County, said it may wait to restore some of the signs until after the emotions surrounding them subside.

“In some cases we can repair, clean them and put them back up,” he said.

The city of Westminster also has endured similar defacing to some of the 17 smaller signs it maintains within the city limits, said John Jobson, Westminster’s public works supervisor. City crews often repair damaged signs or replace them at a cost of $55, he said.

Jobson acknowledged that some of it is due to anti-Vietnamese sentiment, but he said he believes a lot of the damage is from young vandals or souvenir hunters. The Little Saigon signs represent some of the first “ethnic” markers in Orange County. As such, they also are a sign of the times--and of the future.

Such changing times may be difficult for some longtime Orange County residents to cope with. In the early 1970s, the county’s nonwhite population was only 3% of the total. It’s now estimated at 26%, or roughly 613,000 residents, many of them Southeast Asian refugees, out of a little more than 2 million people, according to the National Planning Data Corp.

To people such as Van Thai Tran, a UC Irvine graduate planning to enter law school in the fall, the Little Saigon signs proudly symbolize the resurrection of the former capital of South Vietnam.

Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, about 1 million Vietnamese have immigrated to the United States. And in the short span of 14 years, since the Communist takeover of South Vietnam, an estimated 100,000 Vietnamese have come to Orange County, many helping to turn the strip along Bolsa Avenue into a thriving commercial district of more than 1,000 shops and businesses. On any weekend, during a trip along Bolsa Avenue one can see thousands of Southeast Asians shopping or dining.

Tran is proud of the transformation and mystified by the vandalism of the road markers.

“I can’t believe what they’re doing to the signs. We worked so hard to get those signs,” said Tran, who as a former aide to state Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim), helped the Southeast Asian business community in Westminster and Garden Grove win official recognition as a major tourist area.

At 24, Tran symbolizes the future for the Vietnamese community in Orange County. He arrived in this country at age 10 and speaks perfect English without an accent. He is proud of his heritage, yet readily agrees that he is becoming “Americanized.” At home, he speaks Vietnamese to his parents. He also understands French.

The desire to highlight Little Saigon as a major tourist and shopping center led the Vietnamese community’s Little Saigon Committee, of which Tran was a part, to spend months researching the state’s guidelines, all the while sipping “hundreds of pots of tea,” he recalled.

Although Tran eventually left Royce’s office, he continued to join committee members who volunteered hundreds of hours toward their goal over many more pots of hot tea.

Persuading Caltrans was also a challenge.

“Motorists didn’t need another distraction,” Miranda explained. “Our job is to move people on the freeway, not distract them.”

But Gov. George Deukmejian approved the signs last June. And the governor himself kicked off their arrival with a visit to Little Saigon and dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Since the governor’s visit, many have watched the growth of Little Saigon as one of California’s unique commercial and ethnic centers. Controversial though it may be for some, it is a symbol of changing Southern California.

Just look for the signs.