VIDEO: Painful anniversary commemorated at West Seattle’s Vietnamese Cultural Center

A solemn commemoration in West Seattle today marked half a century since a difficult day in history.

This week will bring the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Today’s attendees and participants at the Vietnamese Cultural Center included South Vietnamese and U.S. military veterans.

Speakers talked about the “complicated” and painful feelings stirred by the anniversary.

The ceremony also included a chapter of the Patriot Guard Riders, who stood with flags throughout the program. The focus was on honoring fallen soldiers. Incense and food offerings were made. Attendees chanted “long live the Republic of Vietnam” and “Down with communism” in both Vietnamese and English.

One speaker who had served in the U.S. military during the war, 81-year-old U.S. Navy veteran Samuel Perkins, offered words in honor of the thousands of refugees rescued from Saigon who came to the U.S. and have worked hard for decades. “You came here with nothing and now you are more than great,” he said. (You can read some of the history of Southeast Asian refugees settling in our state after the war by going here.)

The Vietnamese Cultural Center is at 2236 SW Orchard, usually open to the public on Saturday afternoons. They also welcome community members during multiple cultural events each year, such as Vietnamese New Year and the Children’s Moonlight Festival.k

28 Replies to "VIDEO: Painful anniversary commemorated at West Seattle's Vietnamese Cultural Center"

  • Rhonda April 26, 2025 (11:08 pm)

    One of the darkest days in history.

    • Mike April 27, 2025 (6:23 am)

      Agreed and schools should be teaching the truth about Marxist ideology, that it has always resulted in Communist dictatorships who’ve killed hundreds of millions of their own people and enslaved even more over the past 100 years, rather than celebrating it as something righteous.  We teach the truth to our kids, we make sure they know the hardships family endured to survive, everything that was left behind and the sacrifices given to this very day so they will not live under the same cruelty.

      • k April 27, 2025 (1:58 pm)

        Schools should really teach post-colonialism.  

      • Derek April 27, 2025 (2:31 pm)

        Communism wasn’t the reason lives were lost. US Imperialistic capitalism was. Why are you misleading and speaking from capitalistic propaganda? The US directed the entire war against South Vietnam. This is an undisputed fact. This was entirely to stop the National Liberation front. The US was the bad guy here in trying to stop south Vietnam independence. Stop making this anything about Marxism or Communism, it was about South Vietnam and only them. Saying dictatorships come from anything other than FAR RIGHT ideology is absurd. US feared an independence so strongly it had to stop it, because they felt it would be conciliatory and successful economic development that was against Johnson and later Nixon’s imperialistic goals. Trump’s America is closer to a dictatorship (as we’ve been seeing) than anything far left.

        • Rhonda April 27, 2025 (4:48 pm)

          Derek, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Half of my husband’s family was tortured and many murdered by the Communists after Saigon fell. The ones who survived to get to Thailand and made it to San Diego have never been the same. They.are now elderly and still suffer with terrible PTSD. You should think before you post things on here that you have no knowledge of, especially on such a tragic anniversary when many survivers live in West Seattle.

          • CT April 27, 2025 (7:28 pm)

            are you saying the US’ occupation and involvement in Vietnam (following the Frenchs’) had no bearing on what came after? y’all are just going to boil the conflict down to “communism bad”? that’d be ahistorical… I feel for your husband’s family’s experience with inhumane torture; however, if you’re able to ride for the US so hard while we have a much longer, extensive experience carrying out torture programs well into the 21st century, I’m sure you can give nuance to the tragedy that befell Vietnam (again, due in majority to the part played by the US)

          • Rhonda April 27, 2025 (8:39 pm)

            CT, talk to someone from ANY Communist country (which most are formerly-Communist, thank God) and they’ll tell you similar stories of miserable living conditions. Look what the Khmer Rouge Communists did to the Cambodian People after their capitol fell 10 days before Saigon: almost 2 million murdered. My coworker grew up in Soviet-controlled Poland and he didn’t escape until 1990. He describes shocking poverty that was normal nationwide. Communists and Socialists have by FAR the largest body counts of all historical genocides.

          • Tile April 27, 2025 (10:41 pm)

            The US backed the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese Communists were the ones who brought them down.

          • Build Baby Build April 28, 2025 (5:39 am)

            @rhonda: authoritarian and ideological regimes are extremely dangerous regardless of their politics; see South America in the 80s/90s. It’s why many are opposed to the current regime in the USA. Always better to stop it earlier than later. 

          • bill April 27, 2025 (8:41 pm)

            Rhonda and Derek illustrate the poisonous legacy of the war. Rhonda comes by her opinions honestly although I think they are warped and extreme. Derek is bizarrely misinformed and cynical, perhaps an extreme result of the betrayal of public trust by Johnson and Nixon. I was nearly old enough to be drafted at the end of the war; I’ve seen the entire arc. The course of American history, our national self confidence, was disastrously affected by the war. I have some Vietnamese friends; as much as I am glad to know them and for their success here I wish the US had not intervened. Eisenhower was right to let the French fail. The era of colonialism was over. The reckoning in South Vietnam would have been brutal as happens in all revolutions, and we would be lamenting it today. But the US intervention was stupendously more destructive.

          • Rhonda April 27, 2025 (10:26 pm)

            Bill, pulling out and letting the Communists invade and take over South Vietnam was far more damaging to the Vietnamese People than holding the Communist forces behind a parallel as in South Korea. Instead, Vietnamese suffer to this day under a complete ban on privacy, freedoms of speech, association, and expression. They endure a classist system of those University-educated abroad and service workers. Young Europeans treat it as a college spring break frat party during the winter months. It’s a true police and surveillance state with two entire generations who have never tasted freedom unless they were fortunate enough to study or work abroad. Writing on a forum like the WSB would get one thrown into a labor camp there. The Starbucks and Amazon delivery vans there are little tastes of the free world. Just enough to let them know what they’re deprived of.

          • Derek April 27, 2025 (9:44 pm)

            @Rhonda, please show the numbers on Communism and Socialism genocides versus British and American Imperialistic wars. Nazi Germany was closer to American Right ideology than anything actual “socialistic.” This ought to be backed up with fact and not just spewed. And STOP appealing to authority fallacy already, you keep basing your argument around straw man of “people you know” and “got to talk to someone” type stuff. Tiring. US has to install a puppet government in anything that remotely goes communistic(in a real sense), see Chile, South Vietnam, El Salvador, Philippines, the Coca Cola war in Nicaragua etc. etc. etc. Imperialistic genocides in Israel, proxy wars around Syria. It never ends with America and the bloodshed.  Since you like appealing to “you knowing people personally affected by communisms” why don’t you talk to someone experiencing US Imperialism in Nicaragua. Or how about asking ANYONE in Iraq what they think of US? Or Iran or any predominant Muslim country. You won’t. You will probably ignore how deadly US was in the Philippines and Japan too. But all good, because “not communism” right?

      • DucLy Bui April 27, 2025 (11:21 pm)

        Well said. Thanks

      • WS Resident April 30, 2025 (10:28 pm)

        Very true words. As someone who was born, and lived in a communist country, I can confidently say it’s not something we should strive for in America.

    • SoLongDelridge April 28, 2025 (12:14 am)

      So much attention and energy spent on the past.

      • CT April 28, 2025 (4:36 am)

        How far in the past is it really? I still have relatives reckoning with the trauma their experienced as children during WW2. Or entire surrounding environment is shaped by the policies and actions of the generations before us. What it sounds like you’re advocating for is to plug our ears to the uncomfortable. All wounds do not heal if left unaddressed. Refusing to talk or work thru them, and to dismiss those doing that as spending too much energy on the past is actively fighting against any sort of resolution that may come to past wrongs. Maybe you as an individual have been able to be insulated from the (traumatic) echos of the past, but many, many people don’t share that same privilege.

      • Rhonda April 28, 2025 (3:16 pm)

        SoLongDelridge, it’s not the past when you’ve had to be on the other side of the planet from your home country every day. 

      • SoLongDelridge April 28, 2025 (10:42 pm)

        I see you missed the point and are offering up more emotional outbursts.

      • SoLongDelridge April 28, 2025 (10:50 pm)

        I see you both missed the point and are offering up more emotional outbursts.

        Nowhere did I say we should plug our ears, but that is nice straw man to build and tear down. What is being talked through above? Nothing useful for today. The same unhelpful arguments about communism and war.It is remarkable, use some personal story or anecdote, and then sprint toward a broad conclusion. Are these the SJWs people talked about?

        I don’t care what individuals experienced, I can’t do anything about it. I care about the lessons, but we have them already and yet even today we ignore them. But rest assured, Rhonda will be here to tell you about the evils of communism.

        To return to what you missed, my comment was in response to the pointless discussion above. If you had taken a beat and absorbed it, maybe you would have replied differently or changed your tone. I know better of course.

        • Rhonda April 28, 2025 (11:22 pm)

          You comments are exactly the reason why displaced war survivors have these ceremonies, SoLongDelridge. They are for them to heal, not for the privileged. 

        • Mike April 29, 2025 (5:59 am)

          “I don’t care what individuals experienced, I can’t do anything about it.” That’s the problem, you literally are putting your head in the sand.  Yes, you can and should be doing something about it or history will repeat itself.

    • Erich April 30, 2025 (4:35 am)

      Agreed. A very dark day. My father served in the USAF in defense of the Republic of Vietnam. He died due to agent orange exposure. Before he died, I asked him if he would, knowing what he knew, do it again and without hesitation he said “yes”. He felt it was his duty to do his part to “halt the spread of communist aggression in SE Asia”. He was proud of his service to the United States and the Republic of Vietnam. I am proud of him, and I honor the memories of all those, American and Vietnamese, who died to defend the Republic of Vietnam by flying the flags of both nations at my home. May freedom once again ring in that land! Death to communism!

  • Suzanne April 27, 2025 (6:08 am)

    Thank you for covering this important story. 

  • Lauren April 27, 2025 (7:29 am)

    It’s important to remember and talk about our history, even the darkest moments. Wishing healing for the people and future generations impacted. 

  • Lynda B April 27, 2025 (9:33 am)

    Thank you for the coverage. Hearing from our veterans gives us perspective of our history.  Never forget.

    • Both April 27, 2025 (12:22 pm)

      Hearing from BOTH ….❤️

      • Lynda B April 27, 2025 (7:18 pm)

        ❤️

      • G T April 30, 2025 (4:50 pm)

        The winning side in the VN war has re-written history to present their point of view.What’s lacking or not enough of, is history from the losing side’s point of view.Seeing the 2 versions will give readers the more complete version of what had happened, and why the 2 sides still have not reconciled.

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