13499 research outputs found
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Oral History of Anh Quoc Nguyen
No full textOral history of Mr. Nguyen Quoc Anh who was born in Rach Gia, Vietnam in 1964. He and his family emigrated from Vietnam in 1975 by plane. After stopping in the Philippines and Guam, he arrived in Camp Pendleton. He received his education from UCLA where he earned his B.S. in Physics, CSUF where he earned his M.S. in Electrical Engineering, and UCLA where he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. One of the significant events that happened in Mr. Nguyen’s life is the nature of his immigration to the United States and his experience growing up as a refugee. He explains in the interview in detail about his journey. Mr. Nguyen is married to his wife Theresa and has three children. He currently resides in Fullerton, California and works as a systems engineer at Panasonic.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Nhan Thi Thanh Nguyen
No full textAn oral history with Mrs. Nhan Nguyễn, born on December 17th, 1954 in Nha Trang, Vietnam. She identifies as a Roman Catholic. She attended a Catholic congregation and school. Alongside her education in Vietnam, Nhan worked in her grandfather’s farm every summer. In 1974, she enrolled in Trường Cao Đẳng Sư Phạm college to obtain her teaching credentials. Alongside her college education, she taught kindergarten students basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. Following the fall of Saigon, she, unfortunately, had to withdraw from college and move to a rural village to assist her grandfathers in the rice fields. She discussed her experiences living in South Vietnam following 1975 and the difficult circumstances she faced to escape. She discussed how she left Vietnam with her younger sister by boat and her arrival at the refugee camp in Palawan, Philippines. She elaborated on her interview experience where she was selected to immigrate to America since there was a prioritization of family reunification. Her younger brother was already residing in the United States. She arrived in the U.S. in August 1989 to Dublin, California where she lived with her older brother. After one month, Nhan left to Los Angeles, California to live with her older sister where she found her first job at the Broadway Warehouse in the jewelry inventory department while attending Los Angeles Trade Tech College. After getting married, she had three children. To raise her children, she became a nail technician. Now, she currently resides in Riverside, California.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Charlie Lam
No full textAn oral history with Charlie Lam, born in 1960 in rural Cambodia, near Sihanoukville. He is a 2nd generation ethnic Chinese, where his grandparents migrated to Cambodia from Hainan, China. When he was 12, he and his family migrated to Kien Giang, Vietnam to live with his aunt. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he escaped with his aunt’s family by boat and arrived in Thailand. Through family sponsorship, they made their way to Camp Pendleton, San Diego. He discusses his hardship of readjusting to a new life in California as an orphan. After not graduating high school, Charlie was constantly moving around trying to figure out life. Eventually, he started his own bakery business and opened a store in Echo Park, Los Angeles in 1999. He has three children and lives in Echo Park, California with his wife.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Phan Chang Phuong (Peter Phan)
No full textMy narrator’s name is Peter Phan, and he was born on December 18, 1967, in Rach Gia, Vietnam. In 2007, he, his wife, and two children took a plane to San Jose, California and moved to Moreno Valley, California in 2008. Peter and his family then moved to Corona, California in 2009 for a short time before moving to Utah in 2010 and then back to Corona six months later where they still reside today. Peter graduated from high school and attended two years of college in Vietnam before dropping out to become an electronics repairman. Some topics covered in the interview were Peter’s experiences and thoughts as a nail technician, his feelings about America, and his plans for the future. Currently, Peter is married to Elaine Phan and has two children, a son and a daughter, and they all live in Corona, California where he and his wife work as nail technicians.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Minh Ngoc Tran
No full textThe oral history by Mr. Minh Ngoc Tran who was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam 1963. He immigrated to the U.S. after he escaped Vietnam and settled at a refugee camp in Indonesia. He had some secondary education in Vietnam and had two years of college at Fullerton college under electronics. He started in America with many menial jobs such as being a dishwasher, and eventually became a system technician and then an electrician. Some significant accomplishments he made include escaping Vietnam by boat, sponsoring over his family, moving to the U.S., and securing a well-paying job. He’s married to his wife Dao Thi Tran, and had has three boys. He now resides in Eastvale, California.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Jennifer Tran Hoang
No full textMrs. Jennifer Hoang was born in Saigon, Vietnam on June 10, 1958. In 1977, two years after the Fall of Saigon and a year after she finished high school, Jennifer graduated from a vocational school as a teacher in order to help to support her family. At the end of 1987, Jennifer left her family and her country by boat in hopes of finding a better life elsewhere. After many months in various refugee camps, she was granted permission to come to the United States. Currently, Jennifer works as a manicurist at a nail salon and lives with her husband, Brian, and her three kids, Hannah, Douglas, and Tracey, in Westminster California.Recorded digitall
Oral History of David Nguyen
No full textThis is an oral history with Dr. David Nguyen, aged 35, and born in Culver City on July 7, 1985. He is a second generation Christian Vietnamese American that is a plastic surgeon. Throughout his life, he has not been around many Vietnamese Americans until he attended UCLA. There he started to establish his Vietnamese identity by establishing a Vietnamese dance team. From there he went onto medical school, residency, and is now running his plastic surgery practice, Heavenly Plastics, in Lake Forest, California while living in Irvine, CA. Right now, he has no children but is currently seeing someone. He also has good relationships with his parents and his sister.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Thai Van Le
No full textThai Van Le was born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1988. He moved to Orange County, CA in 1994. He went to UCLA for his bachelor’s degree and obtained a Master’s from USC. In between these two programs, Thai worked in South Korea and then Indonesia as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Dang Nguyen
No full textThis is an oral history of Mr. Dang Nguyen. He was born in Da Nang, Vietnam in 1964. After the Fall of Saigon and the communist takeover in 1975, his father was imprisoned in a reeducation camp. In 1981, when he had just finished high school in Vietnam, he and his younger sister made their escape by boat. After three days at sea, he was processed at the Pulau Bidong refugee camp in Malaysia, where they stayed for seven months. His aunt and uncle in Akron, Ohio were able to sponsor him. After a year living in Ohio, he moved to Santa Ana, California where he pursued an Electronic Technician certificate at Santa Ana College. Through his work in an assembly line at a factory, he was able to sponsor his father and brother to California. His mother arrived via the Orderly Departure Program. He later moved on to the California State University of Long Beach to receive a Bachelors of Science in Engineering. Since then, he has worked in the computer-engineering field and is now a manager. He got married in 1993 and has three children. As of this interview, Mr. Dang Nguyen and his family live in Tustin, California.Recorded digitall
Oral History of Thanh Le Lam
No full textAn oral history with Mrs. Thanh Le Lam (Surname: Lam, First name: Thanh), born on July 14, 1965, in Can Tho, South Vietnam, the largest city of the Mekong Delta. She is the youngest child in a family of 7 children. She identifies as ethnically Chinese and attended Chinese-run school before the government change in 1975. She left Vietnam in 1984 at the age of 19 with only her mother through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). She stayed at the Bangkok refugee camp in Thailand for ten days before departing to California, landing on May 28, 1984, where her older brothers had already set up papers and a home. She lived with them in Orange, CA, where she started learning English as a Second Language (ESL). In 1985, she began studying at Santa Ana College, where she graduated with an AS degree in Computer Science in 1988. That same year, she transferred to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she eventually graduated with a BS degree in Computer Science in 1991. In 1994, she married Tin Tran and bought their first home in Santa Ana, CA. They moved to Orange, CA in 1998, where they continue to live with their two children, who were both born and raised in Orange County.Recorded digitall