50 years on: The legacy of the Vietnam War lives on amongst Vietnamese Australians
50 years ago today Saigon fell, and the Vietnam War finally came to an end.
For many Vietnamese-Australians, the war is not a distant memory, but a historical event which continues to shape their identity and their place in Australia.
Daachi Dang, is a visual artist who was born in Saigon in 1966 where in April 1975 he witnessed the chaotic evacuation of the American forces and the takeover of the Communist Party. In 1982, with his siblings, he undertook a treacherous journey aboard a small fishing vessel to Malaysia, before reaching Australia.
Furthermore, while many are familiar with the Vietnamese refugees known as the boat-people, many babies were airlifted out of Vietnam in the final years of the war and taken to countries such as the US and Australia.
Indigo Willing is an academic who has extensively researched the Vietnamese-Australian diaspora and founded the Adopted Vietnamese International in 2000. She came to Vietnam as a orphan baby in 1972.