Big Sigh in Little Saigon as New Reality Sinks In : Reaction: Largest Vietnamese community in U.S. is quietly, sadly resigned to end of 19-year embargo.

When the news finally came to Little Saigon in Orange County and the end was clear, so many people had braced themselves for the lifting of the 19-year U.S. trade-embargo against Vietnam that the deepest emotions most could muster were sadness and regret, resignation and bewilderment.

Orange County is home to the nation’s largest Vietnamese community, but Thursday was just another gray and subdued business day along the Bolsa Avenue strip of shops and pho restaurants in Little Saigon that is the cultural capital of the Vietnamese immigrants living in Southern California--more than 70,500 of them in Orange County.

As President Clinton delivered his announcement live from Washington, rows of flickering television sets at the Ultimate Electronics International Appliance Store in the Asian Garden Mall were tuned to another program: Woody Woodpecker. Two toddlers watched with keen interest.

“Everything is quiet. The reaction of the community seems fairly low. So I think it’s a good thing for the President,” said Co Pham, head of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce who just a few months ago donned a bulletproof vest and hired bodyguards because his vociferous support for normalization of relations between the two nations aroused such heated reactions.

Westminster City Councilman Tony Lam said he supported lifting the embargo, but is aware that the decision will create division within the Vietnamese American community. He is cautiously optimistic that the move will work.

“I still have mixed emotions,” he said. “I hope that the lifting of the embargo will be beneficial for the two countries. But with all the mistrust that’s built up over so many years with the Communists, I don’t know.”

Because the United States has stopped short of normalizing relations with Vietnam, Lam believes it retains sufficient bargaining power to ensure that democracy will come to Vietnam. He said the Communists there have no choice but to deal with the United States.

“They have to play fair,” Lam said. “Otherwise they would be at risk.”

For days, news of the President’s expected decision had circulated widely in the Vietnamese community; when it was finally official, the only surprise was that the announcement was not made on Friday, as had been expected.

“Not Friday?” asked Huu Dinh Vo, a Pomona physician who is co-chairman of the Vietnamese American Community in the USA. “Guessing when it will happen is one thing, but to actually hear about is something else.

“I feel a bit disappointed,” said Vo, a staunch opponent of trade with Vietnam. “I think American business will have a chance to make a profit in Vietnam. At the same time, the Communists will have the propaganda to say the embargo is lifted. They will care less about human rights. The more money they have, the more they can cling to power.”

Vo and other allies scrambled to organize a Saturday demonstration on Bolsa Avenue to oppose the President’s action. Other major community groups--like the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, which already had big plans to inaugurate its president this weekend--offered moral support for the effort, but not much more.

Diem Do, a member of the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam and host of a cable television show called “Youth and Tomorrow,” said his group was preparing to stage a weekend demonstration in Westminster.

“We want to point out to the Vietnamese community that no matter what happens, we’re going to struggle for human rights in Vietnam,” Do said. “We don’t want the community to feel down or depressed.”

But that’s precisely how many of the Vietnamese immigrants were reacting Thursday. There were no tears, just the chill numbness of depression. Missing were the charged arguments against normalization that have occasionally erupted into fistfights in Little Saigon. Gone was the passion.

At St. Boniface Church in Anaheim, the Rev. Joseph Son Nguyen shook his head as he listened to the President’s announcement. “He was talking about Vietnam, and I felt so left out,” Nguyen said. “Vietnamese Americans were not once mentioned. A very important constituency of this country was left out. I am an American citizen and, in listening to the President talk about why he’s doing this, I felt that the government didn’t care.”

Hung The Tran, a former Vietnamese Army captain, was working in his television repair shop in Garden Grove when the President delivered the news via a televised news conference. “Sooner or later we have to start trading with them,” said Tran, who fled Vietnam on one of the last departing planes for the United States in 1975. “But not this moment, because we have a lot of Americans missing in Vietnam, and they hide them some places in the north and the central area. I think Communists are like snakes. You cannot deal with them like they are human.”

One of Tran’s military buddies is Tom Mahan, a Vietnam veteran and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army reserve who is active in POW/MIA family organizations. He was one of the few Thursday who refused to let his passion die.

“We’re sickened,” Mahan said. “I’ve put 26 years of my life into fighting for the freedom of this country. I have sponsored more than 100 Vietnamese families out of my own pocket, and I have three adopted Vietnamese children. . . . The Vietnamese Communists have proven that they are practiced liars. They’ve cheated, lied, stolen, raped and plundered.”

Barbara Robertson, a Santa Ana resident whose husband is presumed to have died in Vietnam more than two decades ago and who received a purported photograph of him alive in captivity four years ago, was also blunt in her assessment of the President’s announcement.

“The thing that bothered me most,” said Robertson, “is that he never once mentioned live POWs. He talks about sending back remains, but they’ve sent me back my husband’s remains twice, and the remains weren’t human.”

Barbara Lowerison, a San Diegan whose brother, Air Force Col. Joseph Scharf, was shot down near Hanoi in 1965, said she was infuriated by Clinton’s decision. “I hope to God I’m wrong, but I think the Vietnamese might just go ahead and murder our Americans (POWs) because they’ve outlived their usefulness,” Lowerison said. “We’ve lost our bargaining power with the Vietnamese. Vietnam has won the war totally now.”

Lowerison, a longtime activist among POW/MIA families, had asked Clinton about her brother in a televised Town Hall meeting in San Diego in May. She believes her brother is still being held prisoner. After the release of American POWs in 1973, the Pentagon listed Scharf as dead but Lowerison maintains that the military is withholding vital records that might prove that he and others are still captives.

For years, opposition to the end of the trade embargo had been a test for every local Vietnamese leader in Orange County. Supporters were probed for softness on communism; some were found lacking. It was difficult to find anyone favoring normalization to debate the issue on Little Saigon television shows.

But the embargo’s end opened the way for many younger Vietnamese to speak freely about the future.

Dustin Nguyen, 31, is an actor who has appeared on television shows such as “21 Jump Street” and the movie “Heaven and Earth.”

“There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t hope the embargo would be lifted,” he said. “It’s not a panacea, but it’s definitely a step.

“Eventually, we have to transcend the political barrier for the country to heal,” said Nguyen. “Vietnamese Americans who oppose (normalization) may have to re-examine themselves and their feelings and ask themselves whether their problems are personal issues.”

This weekend, when the Union of Vietnamese Students Assn. of Southern California hosts a two-day Tet festival in Huntington Beach, there will be students manning an information booth with petitions calling for free elections in Vietnam. They are ready, they say, to move on.

Chung Nguyen, who has ambitions to one day run for Congress, will be there with the younger generation. “Back in the ‘60s, Americans came to Vietnam for freedom and now they have the chance to attain the same goal with a peaceful means,” he said. “We should not betray the Americans who died for political freedom.”

Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson, Dave Lesher, Lily Dizon, Thuan Le, E.J. Gong, Anthony Perry and Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.