FYI-Acknowledge

To recognize the existence of...

[foryourinsight]

Notebook 5

Throughout the research that I conducted on my country of my ancestors I noticed that there are more things that I have overlooked. Especially with the sides of the war and what their views were. I didn't know how much about the Vietnam War except for what they talked about in school which was there was a draft for men to go to fight in the war. After the U.S. helping the South Vietnam people they pulled out because of protests and later the Fall of Saigon happened. That there is more to the history that we were taught and that in our life span we can’t learn about all of them. The only thing that we can be certain about is the major events that happened and what has resulted from it. The tiny details were not important, just the main story line of what historians had written. This relates to our lecture about the master narrative. The countries that are in power today create master narratives for the world to believe in and teach in schools. What I learned in this Ethnic studies class is that there are multiple counter-narratives in this world. That there are many different stories to an event depending on the person. If the event hit home, then the story would be extremely biased. If the event was towards a certain country that has a relationship with another then the country would side with whoever they have a relationship with. This ensures that with master narratives created the countries are also intersecting with each other to make this happen. Even with the counter-narratives, there are different stories with them analyzed by experts. Without people in this field, I would never really know about the differences and instances in history where there are counter narratives.

 I think this is because resistance is fairly a new approach to looking at history; therefore, I think to educate the people around me with what forms resistance are and what they can do. One thing I am really set on doing is making a change in how people are treated. There are many people who are still getting treated like they don’t belong and that they are inferior to another race. There are also people who do not have enough for health care, citizenship, and to live. Most importantly I want to inform my parents that there is more to politics than just listening and going with whatever is happening because it is the law. Since my parents came here as refugees they are very keen on what they should do to keep their position where they are. It’s like they are scared that one day everything can be taken away from them. I don’t blame them because this did happen to them many years ago when the Vietnam War started. Their home becomes something they did not recognize. This is why I want to inform them that they can resist the politics that they don’t agree with in their own way. In the lecture, there was also a talk about how Asians don't really have radical politics and are the model minority. I totally understand that because of what my parents do. They watch the presidential elections but when I ask them if they voted they always shrugged it off and said no. I first want to change my community by informing them of their voting rights and their rights to protest. Lastly, I always had a dream of helping the people who did not have health care. I wanted to travel around the world and in the states to help people. Recently, the dream has become even stronger as I have family members who don’t have health insurance that covers everything. With their piles of bills from the hospital when they have to go to the emergency room, it only makes me want to fulfill this dream as soon as I can.

 This leads me to a song that I would like to share to anyone that is feeling like they are being held tight in their life and not being able to go anywhere. This song is meaningful to me because when this song came out I was in sixth grade not really knowing what to do, how to fit in with the people at school, and felt like there was nothing I could do to fix my loneliness when I watched this song being performed by Kris Allen on American Idol. The song was called No boundaries. After listening to this song I believed that nothing would be in my way if I tried and keep trying to break free of the restrictions I made in my mind.

 I think this relates to my reflection of being restricted to what the government wants and forces people to be. Instead of looking at the restrictions like the mountains in the song or the hurricanes that make you run away I think it’s best to move forward and resist what you can until your dream is achieved. To the people who are fighting their restrictions, I know that you will be able to do so because there are no boundaries to where you can go.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au78ra4HsUo

Here are the lyrics to the song:

Seconds, hours, so many days You know what you want but how long can you wait? Every moment lasts forever When you feel you lost your way

And what if my chances were already gone? Started believing that I could be wrong But you give me one good reason To fight and never walk away

So here I am still holding on

With every step you climb another mountain Every breath it's harder to believe You make it through the pain, weather the hurricanes To get to that one thing

Just when you think the road is going nowhere Just when you almost gave up on your dreams They take you by the hand and show you that you can There are no boundaries! There are no boundaries!

I fought to the limit to stand on the edge What if today is as good it gets? Don't know where the future's headed But nothing's gonna bring me down

I've jumped every bridge and I've run every line I've risked being saved but I always knew why I always knew why!

So here I am still holding on

With every step you climb another mountain Every breath it's harder to believe You make it through the pain, weather the hurricanes To get to that one thing

Just when you think the road is going nowhere Just when you almost gave up on your dreams They take you by the hand and show you that you can

You can go higher, you can go deeper There are no boundaries above and beneath you Break every rule 'cause there's nothing between you and your dreams

With every step you climb another mountain Every breath it's harder to believe

Yeah! There are no boundaries There are no boundaries!

[foryourinsight]

Draft Zine

Introduction

 In the present day today there are many instances where immigration is talked about. In the last few years and still continuing today the Syrian Civil War has taken the lives of many civilians and the number of refugees has increased. Many of these civilians were killed just because they were in the way or simply living in their own home. They are people just proceeding through their day whether that is going to work, going to school, having a bad day and finally coming home anticipating that tomorrow will be better. Then, suddenly not existing in the world and no one would know that they ever existed as an individual because days, weeks, or maybe months later their acquaintances are also gone from this world. There are also people who barely survive and get to another country to live the tale and try to help people from where they left.  

 With war, there are always refugees or people who seek a new place to live because of their status in their own country. Like any other war there are people who die, and people who don’t really care about it because it doesn’t affect them in their everyday life since it is normal to them; however, what if suddenly there was a war where you live that there is danger lurking around and you don't know when it will come to get you. That one day you will just be gone like anyone else and suddenly you wouldn’t be able to see who’s important to you.With these questions in mind, I want to proceed with a personal story. A story of a lucky young lady that left her country after the war and now have two beautiful children in college.

The picture above represents the journey of how Vietnamese refugees got to their refugee camps before they got accepted to migrate into the country.

 The stick figures in the sea represent one of the hardships of leaving their home country to go to a new, unknown country. Those people represent the people who died while on their journey to a safe place.

 Câu Chuyện Gia  Đình Của Tôi

( My Family’s Story )

 My mother at the age of eighteen left her home country. It was about three years after the war when the Việt Cộng took over South Vietnam’s capital Saigon. During that time, everyone in the South was looking for a new place to live because of the land that was destroyed by the war. Lots of youth were told to work for the government and worked on clearing trees in the jungle to get new land for farming. There was also hope that another country would accept them. The U.S. started to help people in South Vietnam even before the war ended with some people taking the U.S. navy routes that lend them all the way to Camp Pendleton. Unfortunately, after the U.S. pulled out of the Vietnam war the Camp closed down. There are other refugee camps that were at the islands that were close by. One of the islands was Bidong Island which belonged to Malaysia. My mother at the time was living with her aunt and her cousins. Before my mother, my great aunt had sent some of her daughters to the United States already so she knew how to get on the boats. One way how people got on the boat was by offering gold to the people that live close by the bay to see if there was the boat there and to secure seats or space for them to travel. Once they got on the boat, there was an overload of people making it obvious that this boat would go to a refugee camp. The boat was at the bay for thirty days with no people going in and the only way going out was if they died. With an overload of people, there was not enough food for the people and they started to die of hunger. When they died of hunger they were tossed off the ship and a gong was hit to signal a moment of silence for the person who died; however, with no food, the bodies started to accumulate so whenever someone had died they just tossed them out of the boat. The boat eventually did not leave and let the people out.

Eventually, my mom got on a boat and arrived at Bidong Island around 1979. Pictures of how the refugee camp was are shown below.

After a while, with all the papers filled out for immigration, my mother got to immigrate to Canada. She arrived in Canada in May 1980 and eventually moved to California in 1987. Actually, before she went to Canada she met her brother at the Refugee Camp. Her brother was actually supposed to arrive a few days earlier than she because he left on the boat earlier than her but his boat got lost at sea.  She was happy to meet her brother stating that “Of course, I was happy to see him. I didn't know I would meet him at the refugee camp because he left a few days earlier and the path each boat takes are different. The truth is..I didn’t know if I would be able to see any of my family members again. Once they were out on the boat, it was like saying goodbye to them because we didn’t know if they would survive.”

 Of course, when there are some people who survive they are others that don’t make it alive.

 My grandfather was recruited to be in the military to help the Republic of Vietnam. Where he was dispatched there was a bomb mine. He stepped on one of them and according to a neighbor that also went into the military that he died because of the blast.

 My father who was also in Vietnam at the time with his mother and father. At the time they were living in a village in Da Nang which is in the Middle of Vietnam. According to my aunt, they were on the run because military personnel would rain through the village and take everything they had and kill everyone. They had to run away whenever they heard machines or guns that were shot. According to my aunt, my grandmother and grandfather did not make it to Macau where their relatives were at. They were killed on the way to Macau.  

 Why does this Matter?

 What is overlooked when a person moves to another country whether it is for a better life, a new job, war in a country, or for personal reasons is how a person had to start from scratch in the new place. My mother and any refugee would know that to leave your home country alone is the hardest. With no knowledge of how your family is if you would make it alive, or what you would do when you finally get to this country. The only thought they have in mind is “Will I survive today?”.

 Even to this day my mother really hates to get on boats because of what it reminds her of, her memory of how she spent days at sea not knowing if she will make it. When I was younger I was curious on how my mom recognized the smell of the ocean when we pass by a city by the ocean. I later realized that she knew this smell because it was the smell of fear for her. Now every time I pass by or go near the ocean the smell of salt always reminds me of my mother. The image of my eighteen to nineteen-year-old mother on her own in the corner of a ship rocking back and forth with the waves as the boat goes over them.

 Then my thoughts go to how did this happen? How did these people experience this? Whether blaming it on the Americans who backed out of the war during the middle which resulted in the end of the war or the fact that the war was actually going on because of land the refugees had to experience this. Was it their fault to experience it because they wanted a different life or was it just the reason behind their leaving the country?

 Just like in Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the theme of Rememory, I wanted to bring up the untold story of the Vietnamese refugee. I wanted to bring awareness to the people that this is one example of what happened during those times. That the Vietnamese people are more than the ladies that are doing your nails and you are thinking that they are talking bad about you.

 Rememory is simply about living the present in the past. To acknowledge the history that happened and to do something about the future. That what happened in the past influences what happens in the present. The civil war took a toll on the Vietnamese people and the people who lived through it are affected by it critically.

 Since we are all people in rememory, we should do something to change the future or at least try to figure out what we can do to change the outcome of things.

 To remember this event that happened to the Vietnamese people and make sure that this doesn’t happen to other people we can start helping the people in the Middle East who are experiencing some of the same things. That the United States got involved in a war with some of the countries there and that there was a civil war that was started there. That they are taking the lives of other countries for their own benefit and it’s like they don’t even care what happens to the people that are just trying to live. With war, there are refugees that are looking for a new place to live. We can all help by giving money to:

 International Rescue Committee

 UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency)

 Save the Children

 Or going out on your own and looking for local organizations that help the people who are affected directly.

 I advise you to take action. Lives are at stake. Innocent lives are becoming numbers as death totals.

 And Remember This Can Happen To You At Any Time

 Maybe at that time…no one can help you…because they are now all gone…

 Resources:

 http://saigontimesusa.com/bai/thuyennhan/1338_divedau.shtml

 Images for the Refugee Camp :

http://refugeecamps.net/PBPhoto.html

 For More Information about Vietnamese Refugees or Body Counts Please look for Professor Yen Le Espiritu’s work here:

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520277700

[foryourinsight]

Zine pages

The picture above represents the journey of how Vietnamese refugees got to their refugee camps before they got accepted to migrate into the country.

The stick figures in the sea represent one of the hardships of leaving their home country to go to a new, unknown country. Those people represent the people who died while on their journey to a safe place.

 One personal example of how the Vietnamese people migrated to different countries was how my mother got to Canada and eventually the United States of America.

My mother was around eighteen years old at that time when she decided to leave the country to find a safer place to live. With her aunt and two of her cousins, she tried different ways to get out of the country. One was to give gold to someone they knew that lived close to the shore to ensure that they would be able to go on the boat; however, with overloading of people, the boat was docked there for 30 days. Within those 30 days, people began to starve as the supply of food was decreasing by the day. The people then began to be malnourished and in the end died before they got to go to another country. After a while, she finally got on a boat to go to the refugee camp at Bidong Island in Malaysia. An image of the refugee camp can be seen here:

Around that time many countries such as Canada, United States, France, and Australia. One refugee camp close by UCSD is Camp Pendleton. Although the camp did close by October 1975, the Vietnamese people who tried to escape Vietnam during the war did star at the camp. The country that accepted my mom was Canada, but before she got to Canada she got to meet her brother, my uncle, who also went by boat. He was supposed to arrive days earlier than my mother but his boat got lost at sea. My mother arrived in Canada by May 1980. She then came to California in 1987.

Links to Pictures: http://refugeecamps.net/PBPhoto.html

[ethn2elyse-blog]

Notebook3

My object symbolizes the racial fear and tension that comes about during times of war and how certain groups are easily represented and stereotyped. I have realized my object represents a type of racial project in which Japanese Americans have suffered.  Structurally, aside from Executive Order 9066 and the use of internment camps, anti-Japanese organizations formed to fight for the removal of Japanese Americans from society.  Two of these organizations were called the Japanese Exclusion League and the Remember Pearl Harbor League.  By way of the media and local Congressmen, they spread their beliefs and arguments to the public to gain members.  In terms of representation, immediately after Pearl Harbor Japanese Americans were associated and identified as the enemy.  They were not allowed in certain neighborhoods and large amounts of discrimination ensued.

Internment camps as a racial project correlates to the relational analysis between other Asian groups (as discussed in lecture) and whiteness. Even though Japanese Americans were legal citizens, the American government failed to recognize their American identity because of their “nonwhite” appearance.  Any cultural differences were automatically overlooked and failed to be considered American.  Furthermore, they reasoned with issues of national security and disloyalty as a way to implement measures of racism and exclusion. Their action also provoked underlying racial and economic tensions, as many Japanese Americans were stripped of their farms, homes and belongings.

I also believe that this object directly connects to the “wake” in which Sharpe is referring to in her work, “In the Wake”.  Japanese American incarceration was an example of the failure to recognize a group of people’s civil liberties, as well as complete ignorance of their cultural differences and identity.  This is an issue that applies to, not just African Americans or Japanese Americans, but to many marginalized minority groups that have failed to fit into white culture.  This exemplifies the “wake” as Dr. Sharpe defined in her book because it is a concept that has been repeated and constantly reappears throughout history. Even today we can see a strong sense of generalized fear revolving around the idea of allowing (or not allowing) groups such as immigrants and refugees into our country.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-traphagan/immigration-racism-and-th_b_9285930.html

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/after_internment.htm

[foryourinsight]

Review

Elyse’s Zine focuses on how America treated the Japanese during World War II. With the attack of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor fear and hatred started to follow the Japanese American people like shadows. They were forced into internment camps and suddenly treated differently because they became the enemy of war. With this history that the United States has done and apologized for their behavior, they are again stereotyping and treating Muslims differently. With the attack of the World Trade Centers on 9/11, the Muslims image started to change as people identified themselves with the victims of the war in Iran and Iraq. Elyse is comparing the treatment of Japanese during the time of World War II with the recent war on terror. She wants to give awareness that what is happening to the Muslims happened to the Japanese.

Maybe Include this quote:

“GEORGE TAKEI: Well, as a matter of fact, yesterday, which we, as you said, consider the Day of Remembrance, I remembered my childhood imprisonment at the home of the man who put us behind those barbed wire fences, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home at Hyde Park. I spoke of my memories there. And I spoke about that morning, when my parents got me up very early on that morning, together with my brother, a year younger, and my baby sister, still an infant, dressed us hurriedly. And my brother and I were told to wait in the living room while they did some packing back in the bedroom. And so, the two of us were just gazing out the front living room window, and we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway carrying rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stomped up the front porch.”

To emphasize how it was all of a sudden and that they were forced to leave. Just like what is happening with people around here with ICE. Maybe include this as the talk of the current president indicating that Muslim internment might happen.

(Link to article)

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/20/george_takei_on_75th_anniversary_of

Images of the yearbook like what was posted on Tumblr. Maybe a picture of all of the students or a class that shows how the experience was. I really like the picture with “Japs keep moving this is a white neighborhood” sign. This picture speaks for itself with the stereotyping and the alienation of the Japanese as an “other”. Or someone that should not be included in the society. I don’t think it should be photoshopped maybe at resources put the source of the picture.

I would include your relational analysis because of the framework of whiteness or investment in whiteness that shows that in the American society what is white is what is accepted. With the attack on Pearl Harbor the image of the Japanese American. The Americans at that time were consumed by the fear of danger and death making them go back to their ways which were anti-blackness just like how Dr. Sharpe talked about. That their liberties that they had before were now gone because of one event just as how the liberties of African people were taken from them when they went on the ship. Even though this is like antiblackness it is not completely like that. These Japanese people were citizens but with one executive order all of their rights were taken and they were basically sent to a confinement space where they had to stay to make sure that they wouldn’t do any more terror. The fact that a spy from Japan might be amongst the people in America caused the scare. I think this would fit in your Zine because of how the Japanese were treated at the time and with a little research of what is going on with the Muslims in America to see how it is going. How America was caught in the moment of their terror that this happened.

The racial fear and tension that comes during times of war affect how certain groups are easily represented and stereotyped. The yearbook represents a type of racial project in which Japanese Americans have suffered.  Structurally, aside from Executive Order 9066 and the use of internment camps, anti-Japanese organizations formed to fight for the removal of Japanese Americans from society.  Two of these organizations were called the Japanese Exclusion League and the Remember Pearl Harbor League.  By way of the media and local Congressmen, they spread their beliefs and arguments to the public to gain members.  In terms of representation, immediately after Pearl Harbor Japanese Americans were associated and identified as the enemy.  They were not allowed in certain neighborhoods and large amounts of discrimination ensued. Even though Japanese Americans were legal citizens, the American government failed to recognize their American identity because of their “nonwhite” appearance. Americans think of their country as something they recognize with and something that they will fight for so for the Japanese Americans they thought that the Japanese would connect with their origin. With this fear, the movements of the Executive branch to enforce the executive code with different organizations as listed above. Furthermore, they reasoned with issues of national security and disloyalty as a way to implement measures of racism and exclusion. I also believe the yearbook directly connects to the “wake” in which Dr. Sharpe is referring to in her work, “In the Wake”.  Japanese American incarceration was an example of the failure to recognize a group of people’s civil liberties, as well as complete ignorance of their cultural differences and identity.  This is an issue that applies to, not just African Americans or Japanese Americans, but to many marginalized minority groups that have failed to fit into the white culture.  This exemplifies the “wake” as Dr. Sharpe defined in her book because it is a concept that has been repeated and constantly reappears throughout history. Even today we can see a strong sense of generalized fear revolving around the idea of allowing (or not allowing) groups such as immigrants and refugees into our country.

Didn’t change much in the analysis rewording because the ideas flowed well. If this was an informing Zine then the wording would be okay but if it were for something more informal then the wording would need to be done again. 

[foryourinsight]

“… , slowly people started dying of hunger and what they did was whenever a person died they would hit a gong to signal someone was dead. After the gong, they threw that person into the sea. After a while, there were too many deaths that they just threw them into the sea without the gong. “ (Cindy Lu - Notebook3)   

[foryourinsight]

“... , slowly people started dying of hunger and what they did was whenever a person died they would hit a gong to signal someone was dead. After the gong, they threw that person into the sea. After a while, there were too many deaths that they just threw them into the sea without the gong. “ (Cindy Lu - Notebook3)   

[foryourinsight]

Notebook 3

I changed my object to the movement of refugees after the Vietnam War. I changed my object to this because of how I wanted the Zine to look like. Most of the national contexts are the same for this object. The intersections of this object could be the class of the people who moved to different countries, how these Vietnamese refugees interact with or how they live in that country, and the societal rules that they have to learn in the new country.

 Many refugees like my mother in the 1970s to 1980s left Vietnam by boat to go to refugee camps in hopes of leaving the country. Since the 1960’s there were southern Vietnamese communists that were assassinating the political officials of the south Vietnamese government. With all these attacks, it was said that they were merciless meaning civilians were also killed. This made the people in the south who did not side with the government or the North’s ideology of communism want to leave the country to a better place. One of these people happened to be my mother who was in Vietnam during the aftermath of those times. Since the fall of Saigon, the south Vietnamese people were anxious whether their family would be hit next. The people who lived close by the shores knew when there were boats at bay with a covering on the side it meant that those people were leaving the country. At that time my mother was living with her aunt and they were trying to find ways to get on the boat. Most of her aunt’s daughters and sons had already left on that boat. For an amount of gold her aunt had asked a neighbor that she knew to get her on the boat. When they got on the boat there were more people then they could carry on the boat. The boat stayed at bay for 30 days without moving because if they moved with that many people then the communists would find out. Within those thirty days, there were a few pots of porridge. Each family got about two bowls of porridge. Once the porridge started to get scarce only the rich that bribed with their gold got the porridge. When the porridge was gone, slowly people started dying of hunger and what they did was whenever a person died they would hit a gong to signal someone was dead. After the gong, they threw that person into the sea. After a while, there were too many deaths that they just threw them into the sea without the gong.

 I wanted to relate this to what happened to this present day where there are people in Libya who are crossing the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe for a better life. It is said that the numbers rose over the year of 2016. A fact from one of the articles below states that the deaths in the Mediterranean pushed the global death numbers by about 7,000. These people came from Syria, Tunisia, Libya and the Palestinian Territories. This is the result of the Middle East crisis which could be tailed back to the 9/11 Terrorist attack. With the U.S. and other nations in the Middle East people are dying and I mean civilians who just happened to live in their own home. The refugees who left Libya to go to Europe were people just like the south Vietnamese people who were trying to find a better life, a safe place, and a guarantee that they won’t end up a civilian that died because of a war that does not deal with them. These refugees looking for a better life were sent in boats that break down or sink before any rescue boats can go save them. Of course, not all of these people were leaving their origin because of war; however, they are still people who think they deserve a better life giving them the initiative to leave what they had before. Smuggling people into a country which makes those people criminals were just sending the people on boats that they knew were going to capsize. The people that decided to go, the refugees, never lost hope that maybe they would be lucky to be able to make it even though they probably knew the boat wouldn’t make it to Europe. These people knew that they wouldn’t come back to their country so they took a risk.

The Vietnamese people who left the country during the aftermath of the fall of Saigon did the same thing. They left knowing that they might die out there in the ocean and their family would not know of that. My mother left her country knowing that maybe one day she wouldn’t make it, but still, she tried for her future. My mother was one of the lucky refugees that got to her destination at the Bidong Island where the refugee camp was and she was also lucky that she was able to get to Canada.

Sources:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/libya-halts-hundreds-europe-bound-refugees-170204180351634.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/number-refugees-reaching-europe-plunged-2016-170106132732972.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/least-700-people-drowned-mediterranean-8076451

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/23/record-migrant-death-toll-two-boats-capsize-italy-un-refugee

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/the-vietnam-war-as-seen-by-the-north-vietnamese/390627/

http://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/viet-cong/

[foryourinsight]

“The teachers at my Vietnamese School were very adamant about making the children and kids there to be able to at least recognize the song. Since the anthem is not from a country that the United States recognizes as a country, the song is actually not allowed to be supported; however, to Vietnamese people, this anthem and the flag of the former South Vietnam government is a symbol of freedom.” - Cindy V Lu (Notebook 2)

Photo Credits:https://vanlangsfv.org/hinh-anh-pictures/

[foryourinsight]

Notebook 2

The anthem that was created by Lưu Hữu Phước was for the youths of that time to go up against the Ngô Đình Diệm who became tyrannical after some time of his presidency; despite the song that was supposed to be against him, he used the song and rewrote it to gain more support. Ngô Đình Diệm was an anticommunist Catholic who was backed up by 900,000 refugees that fled the North who became a communist country during the 300-day period. The 300-day period was made at the Geneva Conference. At this conference, people were free to “switch sides” at the 17th parallel or what is called the Ben Hai River.

I would like to focus on how this anthem is used by the refugees that have left the country to find a better opportunity and a better chance at life. The teachers at my Vietnamese School were very adamant about making the children and kids there to be able to at least recognize the song. Since the anthem is not from a country that the United States recognizes as a country, the song is actually not allowed to be supported; however, to Vietnamese people, this anthem and the flag of the former South Vietnam government is a symbol of freedom.

Vietnam was first influenced greatly by China and also was a French colony. Then the United States also interfered since they were scared of having another communist country emerge during that time. A national bind that Vietnam has are Communism. Communism had spread through Vietnam via their neighbor, China. The influence of communism into Vietnam spread like wildfire. North Vietnam had decided to become a communist country; however, the South wanted a republic. This caused the civil war to occur. With the cold war against Russia, the United States could not stay idle while the communists can gain another country to their side; therefore, there were troops sent to support the Republic of Vietnam. After a few years of supporting the South Vietnamese people for their civil war, the United States backed out of Vietnam and eventually, the fall of Saigon occurred. Soon after, many South Vietnamese people fled the country to go to refugee camps. There is one that I know of which was in Malaysia, Bidong Island, which is also the place where my mother stayed for a while until she left to Canada in 1980. 

The Vietnamese refugees around the world still use the South Vietnamese Anthem to remember why they had to leave their country in the first place. In this case, the flag and national anthem are grouped together as one. There is also the South Vietnamese flag that is still used today or kept by some in their homes. The flag and the anthem go together to complete the history of how some Vietnamese refugees fled their own country to go to another country. The flag can be interpreted as a sign of rebellion in Vietnam and freedom in the United States. Such as, the Vietnamese people who still live in Vietnam are not allowed to recognize and support the flag or the national anthem. Some refugees that went to other countries such as, the United States, affiliate themselves with South Vietnamese people which refer to the prior government of South Vietnam. Class could also be considered with the anthem. At the time there were not a lot of children that were in school because for education in Vietnam the parents would have to pay for their education. The educated people in Vietnam would think differently than the people who couldn't get an education and this is because of class difference which affects what race would the person want to be affiliated with.

Sources:

Lyrics: http://www.chilang279.com/11_SCOUT-SONGS/Song-Pages/QuocCaVN.htm

Event where the ceremony for the 40th anniversary of Fall of Saigon: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pendleton-657462-federal-policy.html

History of Vietnam: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/history

Flag: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Flag_of_South_Vietnam.svg/255px-Flag_of_South_Vietnam.svg.png

[foryourinsight]

Notebook 1

The ‘object’ that I chose for this notebook is the Southern Vietnam national anthem “Tiếng Gọi Công Dân”. The first version of the anthem was created when the Vietnamese people were fighting for independence against the French by Lưu Hữu Phước. He wrote the lyrics to the anthem while he was a student during World War II. It got known through other students. At the time, he was rallying students so the anthem was to gather the youth of Vietnam.  In 1954, the Geneva Accord split Vietnam into two. In 1955, when the independence from France occurred Ngô Đình Diệm restructured the lyrics to include everyone since the song was mostly promoted for youth. South Vietnam adopted the song after Saigon fell. Today Vietnam, which is currently a communist country, still use this song as one of their anthems; however, the lyrics are a bit different.

 I think that the anthem relates to the theme of War and the Figure of the Refugee since the anthem was used when the Vietnamese people were at war and the fact that the North American Vietnamese people still use this song during events. I came across this anthem when my parents decided to send me to a local Vietnamese School that spread the Vietnamese culture where I live when I was about 12 years old. The organization was called Hội Người Việt which stood basically translates to The Vietnamese People. The school’s name was Việt Ngữ Văn Long. During the six years that I was learning the Vietnamese language, there were many traditions that I learned about. The first was that the first week of every month all the students were to sing the anthem. After a year, I was one of the students that stood in the front singing the anthem. This specific anthem that I learned is actually the third national anthem of the Republic of Vietnam from 1956 until 1975.

 This anthem circulated from when the Republic of Vietnam was created in 1956 to today in the United States; however, this anthem also was around the communists in the North of Vietnam. Nation, in this case, is where people are recognized in and where they are accepted in. During the time when there was a united Vietnam fighting for the independence of Vietnam the people came together; however, when Vietnam split into two governments the people had to choose which side that they belong in. Once the two governments split war took place. The South Vietnamese people used this anthem to help promote the war while it was going on and to get more people to join their side. During this time my grandfather had was enlisted to fight in the war with South Vietnam. The last memory that my mother has of her father was when he gave her one of his tags when he was on his way to leave Saigon. I’m not sure whether it was a few months or years after but when a neighbor from the same town my mother lived in came back he told the family that my grandfather had died by stepping on a bomb and exploded. I don’t know if this was how my grandfather died for sure, but the only thing I’m sure of is that he did not make it because I have not seen him yet. In North Vietnam, this anthem circulated as a revolutionary song. In the United States, this anthem is used to remember their old country that they used to live in. This anthem is widely used by Vietnamese refugees in other countries as well. This anthem could also mean that although the South had lost the war there are still Vietnamese people around the globe that are from the South. In other words, the war was not lost because they still have the thoughts and ideas of the South within the refugees and their descendants.

Sources:

http://knowledge.unavsa.org/culture/vietnamese-heritage-flag-and-the-national-anthem-of-south-vietnam/

http://www.nationalanthems.info/svn-75.htm

Link to the song and the Lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsB1XE-sb7U