Vietnamese refugees in Chicago mark 50 years since Saigon’s fall

CHICAGO (WGN) — Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

The end of the Vietnam War was a pivotal moment in U.S. history – and one that brought a wave of refugees to Chicago, forever changing the landscape of the city.

There is a section of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood known as “Asia on Argyle,” a neighborhood whose seeds were planted a half century ago, 87,000 miles, and a world away.

Doug Nguyen was just 10 years old on April 30, 1975, when communist North Vietnamese forces captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.  

“You saw people climbing over barbed fencing around the American embassy,” he said. “You saw people trying to jump on the back of cargo planes taking off.”

U.S. ally South Vietnam surrendered, bringing an end to the Vietnam War, as the final helicopter left the American embassy.

“That shot is the epitome of the Vietnam war. The shot of the people boarding that helicopter,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen’s father, a South Vietnamese soldier, was killed in the war. He and his mother escaped the conflict and were brought to a refugee camp in Arkansas.

“We left everything we had behind. You just had your clothes on your back,” Nguyen said. “We left on a cargo plane, they pushed everybody in as much as they could, to fly us out of Saigon.” 

Eventually, he moved to Chicago.

“The refugees found themselves in these ethnic enclaves, like Uptown, and formed their own communities,” Nguyen said.

The Uptown neighborhood became a community of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who settled in the area and created a new home. Along the way, they blended Vietnamese culture with Chicago style and found a common thread that helped tie them to the city.

“Sports became something that unified young people,” Nguyen said.

Illinois now has 40,000 residents of Vietnamese descent, half of them are in Chicago. It is a lasting legacy of the Fall of Saigon including the vibrant “Asia on Argyle” area of Uptown, where shop owners trim trees and make bubble teas.  

Van Huynh is the executive director of the Vietnamese Association of Illinois.

“To be able to come to a new land to be resettled in a country in which you don’t know the language, you don’t understand the culture, there might be some political context that you’re not filled in on, and to revitalize neighborhoods and communities, so you see little Saigon’s all over the United States as a result of the work that Vietnamese refugees have built,” Huynh said. ”I think April 30 has always represented a very somber and heavy moment in my family.”

She said April 30 is a time to both reflect on the end of the war and recognize the new beginning it brought. 

“Often times when people think about Vietnamese people, they think about the Vietnam War, but obviously it’s more than that,” Huynh said. “April 30 is about more than the end of a war but about how people sought to rebuild after that.”

On Saturday at St. Augustine College, the Vietnamese Association of Illinois will host a series of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. There will be speakers, panel discussions, cultural performances and more from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.