Hearts, Minds and Passion in Little Saigon

Amid the shouts came the echoes. Three weeks into 1999, and yet Tuesday morning in Little Saigon felt like 1969 again. From out of nowhere in the usually humdrum haven that is Orange County, we once again had a Vietnam protest.

The war is long over, you say? Don’t try convincing those in the crowd who spent the morning outside an electronics store in the 9500 block of Bolsa Avenue.

When they heard that a store owner was displaying the flag of the Communist government and a picture of the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, they walked, drove and bicycled to vent their displeasure or, perhaps, to watch others vent.

It’s unscientific to read faces, but many in the crowd seemed as entertained or curious as passionately angry. It’s hard not to, when in modern-day Westminster you see men dressed in American and Vietnamese army fatigues, exhorting the crowd and shouting “Down with communism.”

The store owner, Truong Van Tran, had locked up and left, his well-being if not his business sense suddenly called into question after some in an angry crowd roughed him up Monday. In his absence, protesters redecorated his storefront window with about 20 flags of the former Vietnam, before the Communists took over.

Twenty-four-year-old Thommey Le watched the protest with what could only be called detachment. By no means mocking the protesters, he said he just couldn’t get into it.

“For me, it doesn’t mean much because I’ve been in America for most of my life,” he said. “I don’t see what the big deal is [over the owner’s pro-communist display]. This is a country where you’re free to express yourself. He’s not harming these people out here. If they don’t like it, they’re free to protest, but don’t hit the guy. That’s wrong.”

Wearing a designer sweatshirt, Le conceded that, “I’m pretty much Americanized.” Yet, he said, he understood the protesters’ passion. “Some of these people, their families died in communist countries. They came over here to get away from it. To see this [the flags and Ho portrait] going on over here, I guess it brings back what was over there.”

Le was as unmoved as Jack Tangard was motivated. A 50-year-old former sniper with the 101st Airborne Division, Tangard said he was watching TV when he heard about the protest. “The fact that we have a communist infiltrating the area kind of irritates me,” he said, dressed in his fatigues.

“I got seven people on the wall [Vietnam Memorial in Washington] because of these guys,” he said of the communists. “They’re soldiers, we’re soldiers. I expect that. But let’s fight them in their yard. To have a man come over here and run a flag up the pole. . . . It’s one guy today, two tomorrow and 10 by the end of the week.”

The prevailing theme directed at the forlorn store owner was a variation on “Love it or leave it.” I hadn’t heard that phrase, nor seen a picture of Ho, since my college days in the late 1960s.

Not until Tuesday, that is, when Vietnam once again was a catch-all word for a debate that fractured two countries.

“If he [the store owner] had a picture of Ho Chi Minh,” 53-year-old Vien Le said, “it hurts here,” pointing to his heart.

Like most Americans, I got all caught up in those passions once. The years dispatched them somewhere, only to be conjured up Tuesday morning in a Little Saigon strip mall.

And that perhaps explains why what happened doesn’t lend itself to theorizing.

Yes, the most ardent protesters know American law protects the owner. He can display Ho’s picture and shouldn’t lose a business over it.

But for those who fled Vietnam after a war and left relatives behind to die, what happened outside the video store wasn’t about time-honored legal protections on paper.

It was a matter of the heart.

And of the memory.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com