Demonstrators Live With Memories of Communists’ Cruelty

Today marks the start of a new phase in the standoff between Vietnamese American protesters and the Little Saigon shopkeeper who antagonized them by displaying a Communist Vietnamese flag in his store.

With owner Truong Van Tran’s successful move Saturday to reinstall the symbols of a hated regime, protesters--who vow to continue demonstrations outside his store until the items are gone--are in a waiting game.

Among the demonstrators are a small band of stalwarts who have spent day and night outside the Bolsa Avenue video store--men and women driven by traumatic memories of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

They include a war veteran haunted by memories of his father’s and brother’s grisly deaths at the hands of Communist soldiers; a grandmother whose sister was forced to become a prostitute for Communist troops; and a young technician who lost his job for protesting.

The pain of old wounds that eats away at these protesters has fueled their determination to stay to the bitter end, they say.

‘My Heart Aches’

The nightmares come often, Andy Nguyen says. An olive green cap covers his eyes as he apologizes for breaking into tears so easily.

Only 5 feet tall and thin, Nguyen, 64, of Westminster is intensely passionate about one thing: his hatred of all things communist.

Carting around a sign that compares Ho Chi Minh and Hitler as brothers in mass murder, Nguyen says he has constant memories of the four years he spent in a prison in Hanoi.

“I escaped Vietnam to escape communism. But then I come here, and he throws Ho Chi Minh’s face at me. I want to go crazy,” Nguyen said, as tears streamed down his face.

“I just feel sick about it. It makes my head hurt and my heart ache,” he said.

Nguyen is matter-of-fact as he rattles off a list of family members killed or wounded by communists.

“They killed my father; they cut his knees off so he bled to death. My nephew was only 14, they took a hammer and beat his head in. My younger brother, they chopped up into three parts.”

“I lost two of my four children at sea, when they died trying to escape.”

He made it to the U.S. in 1982 with one son. He used to have a job, he says, but now he lives with relatives.

Nguyen has been out at the store every day since the protests first started on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, about a month ago.

“Sometimes they tell me to go home. I’ve tried, but then I have to come back,” he said. “I can’t sleep thinking about that flag out there.”

Grandmother Turned Dedicated Protester

With her curly graying hair and deeply lined face, Xuan Thi Nguyen looks like the homebody grandmother of four that she is.

But for the last month, Nguyen has found herself turning into one of the most vehement and dedicated of protesters. She is there from 8 in the morning to 11 at night.

For Nguyen, 64, of Westminster the war was responsible for the deepest hurt of her life.

The youngest of five children, Nguyen said she lost two brothers during the war. But even more painful was the loss of her sister.

Her eldest sister was kidnapped at age 16 by Communist troops and forced to serve them as a prostitute, she said.

“We thought she had been killed a long time ago,” said Nguyen.

But in 1975, when the country was reunified by North Vietnamese troops, her sister came looking for the family.

“She heard we were still alive so she came to find us. She told us that she had been in the North the whole time with the troops, so I told her, ‘You don’t live here anymore.’ She cried and showed us her knees, where they had made her kneel. There were still scars on her legs.”

Nguyen pauses in pain: “Just imagine the hurt at that moment. What the Communists did can never be forgiven.”

Her husband fled to the U.S. with her four children in 1980, but Nguyen stayed behind to take care of her elderly mother.

She joined them six years later in 1987 but says she left reluctantly.

“I love my country and it was very hard to leave, but it was even harder to stay and see what the government was doing to the people,” she said.

When Nguyen heard about Tran on the radio, she didn’t believe it at first. When she went to see for herself, she was incredulous.

“Why does he do this? I don’t want him to be hit or hurt. I just don’t want to see that flag,” she said.

Family’s Struggles Leads to Commitment

Bleary-eyed and hoarse from shouting, Giang Ho nevertheless shakes off his exhaustion as he hoists the yellow flag with red stripes over his shoulder to make one more round through the parking lot.

He hasn’t slept straight through the night in more than a week, but he cannot make himself rest.

Fueling himself with 12 cups of coffee a day, Ho, 26, of Garden Grove, says simply that he dares not let his guard down.

“Whenever [Tran] comes back, I have to be ready. Ho Chi Minh stole our lives. I cannot accept this flag of blood and his picture out here.”

Wearing a headband with the flag’s colors, Ho has maintained overnight vigils in front of the store for the last week, determined to prevent it from happening.

The electronics technician, who has already lost his job for taking time off to protest, warned his family that he is willing to go to jail to stop Tran.

“I’m not afraid to go to jail,” Ho says. “The Communists put my father in prison for 15 years in Vietnam.”

Ho came to the United States seven years ago under a program that allowed former South Vietnamese political prisoners and their families to immigrate to America.

He grew up not knowing his father, who was imprisoned for his service as a captain in the army’s psychological warfare unit.

The youngest of nine children, Ho remembers struggling to survive. His mother sold whatever she could to make money, but most of the time, they went hungry.

He only has a ninth-grade education, because the government doesn’t allow the children of South Vietnamese officials or veterans to gain more education.

He’s been able to have opportunities since he came to the U.S. that his peers in Vietnam don’t have. For that reason, Ho said, he is compelled to protest Tran’s display of the Communist government’s flag.

“There are still 75 million people in Vietnam who have no freedom under the Communist government,” Ho proclaims, eyes blazing. “How can I do anything less to show I support them?”