The City of Rosemead displays Vietnamese Freedom Flags along Valley Boulevard to commemorate the fall of Saigon as motorists travels past on Monday. After a special ceremony was held Friday, the flags were put up to commemorate the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 and will remain there through Saturday. They are installed and paid for by the Vietnamese Refugee Community of Los Angeles. (SGVN/Staff photo by Keith Durflinger)
ROSEMEAD - Over the weekend more than 100 Vietnamese Freedom and Heritage flags were hung in Rosemead, lining a stretch of Valley Boulevard. Each of the yellow flags, which feature three horizontal red stripes, represents the former democratic South Vietnam, before the take-over of Communist North Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
"This flag is in remembrance of our motherland. We still believe that one day we will have democracy and freedom in our country," said Long Nguyen, president of the Vietnamese Refugee Community of Los Angeles County, which requested and paid for the installation of the flags in Rosemead. "It's for the people to remember that freedom and democracy and to unite together."
The flags in Rosemead have been placed alongside American flags on Valley, between Walnut Grove Avenue and Mission Drive.
"The flag that you see in Rosemead is flown next to the American flag because it's a unity between two cultures," said Rosemead city councilman Stephen Ly, whose family emigrated from Vietnam to the United States in 1983. "It represents the refugees who left Vietnam and the welcoming culture of America."
The City Council last month unanimously approved the installment of the flags, as it has done since 2007. They will remain up until Saturday, city officials said.
Garden Grove and Westminster also display the flags, Long said. The Torrance resident left Vietnam in 1980 when he was a teenager. He was one of the "boat people," who set out to sea as a refugee, he said. He fled to an Indonesian refugee camp before coming to the United States in 1984, he said.
"We just had to leave the country. We didn't know if we could survive. At lot of people died in the ocean," he said.
Vietnamese Refugee Community of Los Angeles County approached Rosemead to hang the flags because of its high concentration of Vietnamese residents and business owners, Ngyuen said.
According to the 2010 U.S. census, about 60 percent of Rosemead's population is Asian, and Vietnamese residents represent a large portion of that number, Rosemead Mayor Sandra Armenta said.
"It represents the suffering and sacrifice South Vietnam went through and to find refuge here in the U.S. and to become Americans," Armenta said.
When North Vietnam overtook Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, it also marked the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
In 2006, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order recognizing the yellow flag as the official symbol of the California Vietnamese-American community. It can be displayed on state premises during related ceremonial events.
However, Vietnamese officials have said efforts to legitimize the flag run counter to diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States, which recognizes Vietnam as a sovereign nation.
"We worked together over the past decades," Cuong Nguyen, a spokesman for the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Washington, D.C., said in 2007. Some groups "try to revive the flag that represents a state that was in existence more than 30 years ago. For what?"
Still, city officials hope that the community will respond positively to the display of flags and embrace the diverse cultures that Rosemead has to offer.
"The Vietnamese community has made great strides here in the U.S. and a lot of them came with nothing but the clothing on their back," Armenta said. "They've given back to our community."
maritza.velazquez@sgvn.com
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