Little Saigon Honors Dead

Its name is Vuon Vinh Cuu, “Garden of Peaceful Eternity,” but South Vietnamese veterans call it their Arlington Cemetery.

Dressed in uniforms more than two decades old, hundreds of Vietnamese Americans came to Westminster on Saturday to inaugurate this nation’s first burial ground for South Vietnamese veterans and their spouses.

They buried two fellow soldiers--Khanh Nhi Tran, 68, and Tuan A. Ngo, 46, both of whom served as lieutenants in the war against Communist forces in Vietnam--and Giau Thi Nguyen, the wife of another veteran.

“We had a national veterans’ cemetery in Saigon but it was dug up by the North Vietnamese when they took over,” said Hoa Pham, a lieutenant who escaped from Saigon on April 30, 1975. “Some families were able to get remains of their relatives, but most graves were leveled.”

A replica of a statue that once stood at Saigon’s cemetery soon will be placed at the new cemetery in Westminster’s Little Saigon, home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans in the country.

The veterans’ cemetery adjoins a section of Westminster Memorial Park that was designed specifically

for Asian Americans. Ornate dragons decorate the pagoda at the ceremonial walkway, which is lined with lotus blossoms and bamboo stalks. A coalition of veterans bought 300 adjoining parcels at the park to create their own armed forces cemetery.

Veterans from the South Vietnamese navy, air force, special forces and military police listened in silence to the United States’ national anthem and then to the South Vietnamese anthem, before Tran and Ngo were buried.

Binh “Benjamin” Ly, a former lieutenant, said the anthem and uniforms were symbolic to him since soldiers of the South Vietnamese army were never formally discharged.

Ly was imprisoned for almost a year in Vietnam after the war, but managed to escape to the United States and find a foster family in Michigan. Today, he lives in Westminster. His daughter recently joined the U.S. Marines.

“The cemetery’s value is first to fellow soldiers and secondly so the Vietnamese community will be recognized,” he said.

In addition to reserving the cemetery space, the group set up a fund to help those veterans or their spouses who cannot afford a burial site by offering financial assistance to pay for a portion of the funeral expenses.

Vietnamese traditionally believe soldiers must be buried together, rather than with their families. Tran and Ngo were the first veterans to be buried side by side at the new cemetery. But they won’t be alone for long.

“Many people have already reserved a spot here,” said Peter Pham, a 38-year-old software program manager from Garden Grove. “It’s a spiritual and symbolic place.”