Voices: How we tell immigrant stories — like mine — matters

For more than 50 years, a single black-and-white photo has defined how Americans remember the Vietnam War: General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner on a Saigon street. It’s a brutal, iconic image, but it has flattened history — reducing a war of staggering complexity into a single act of South Vietnamese brutality.

The story of that war is more than one image — and far more than one narrative.

In my film “On Healing Land, Birds Perch,” I seek to reveal the untold stories behind it and show how its silences echo into our present. The movie traces the triangle of three intertwined lives: the executioner (General Loan), the executed (Nguyen Van Lem) and Admiral Huan Nguyen — a child survivor whose family was massacred by Vietcong forces earlier that very day. His father was beheaded. His entire family was slaughtered in front of him. That photo, too, exists, but it was never made iconic.

By reexamining the intersecting lives caught in that frozen moment, I wanted to confront how the legacies of war, betrayal and selective remembrance still shape the way we talk about whose suffering counts — then and now.

I think about current refugees, as well as my own experience immigrating. I can still see people lying and crouching around me as I lay on the crowded deck of the last Navy ship to depart Saigon in 1975. I have vivid memories of Vietnamese running with a child in one hand and a bag in the other. Sometimes at night, I still hear the screams of hopelessness as people pushed and shoved on the single plank to the ship. The sounds of helicopter blades chopping through the air still terrify me to this day. For my parents and many others, the loss of their country meant the beginning of an uncertain life as empty-handed refugees.

Like American veterans, South Vietnamese soldiers suffered PTSD and the effects of Agent Orange. Vietnamese refugees endured starvation at sea and reeducation camps. Through it all, they carried silence. Their stories remained footnotes.

Even in the United States, refugees were seen as remnants of a “lost cause.” Many in Congress questioned our arrival. Would we burden a struggling economy? Could we assimilate? A national poll at the time showed only 36% of Americans supported allowing Vietnamese refugees into the U.S. And yet, against that tide of doubt, President Gerald Ford and Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act and authorized the resettlement of 200,000 Vietnamese refugees in the U.S.

I saw firsthand how a welcoming spirit can change refugees’ lives.

In Massachusetts, where my family and I immigrated, neighbors showed up with turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes to welcome us for our first Thanksgiving. Mothers helped teach me English. And when Tết, the Lunar New Year came around, neighbors came to our home to celebrate with us over Vietnamese food. To be embraced like that meant everything. It helped us believe we were not alone.

My husband and I, along with our three young kids, moved to Utah in 2012 — a state with a long, proud history of welcoming those displaced by conflict. From Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and 1980s to Afghan and Ukrainian arrivals more recently, Utahns have demonstrated what it means to lead with compassion. Here, refugee stories are not seen as distant or abstract — they are recognized as part of the state’s moral landscape. I’ve seen it in the way Utah neighbors help sponsor newcomers, donate furniture, tutor children and show up with meals and warmth. For many like me, it helped rebuild our belief in belonging.

But, as a nation, have we truly learned our lesson?

The Vietnam War taught America about the limits of military power, but it also revealed our failure to understand the human consequences of conflict. We often look at the Vietnam War through the lens of American loss — big and significant as it is — often forgetting the suffering of our South Vietnamese allies. It brings into question what our responsibilities as allies to other nations are.

Today I see repeated, troubling patterns.

The U.S. has entered talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine — without Ukraine at the table. President Donald Trump has deployed the California National Guard against American protesters who are demonstrating against sweeping deportations of immigrants, including those who once served alongside U.S. forces in the army or as interpreters in Afghanistan. These deportations appear indiscriminate, netting not just hardened criminals, but refugees and longtime residents with deep community ties.

People are scared. They feel vulnerable and desperate. And, once again, some voices are heard while others are left out. Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, we still see the innocent caught in conflicts. We still circulate the same photo. It’s time we expand the frame. It’s time to listen to the untold stories.

Healing takes movement. It takes courage. It takes understanding and compassion and not seeing all refugees in America as convicts and killers. Here at home, Utah’s leaders and citizens must continue to show compassion and support for their fellow new Americans. We must continue to be the shining example of the “city upon a hill” that made America great.

Naja Pham Lockwood is the director of “On Healing Land, Birds Perch.” She has executive produced multiple documentary and narrative films focusing on social justice issues including “Try Harder! (2021),” “Gook (2017)” and “Cries From Syria (2017).” In 2020, Naja executive produced “76 Days,” directed by Hao Wu, which revolved around the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and won a Peabody Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Born in Vietnam, Naja immigrated during the Fall of Saigon and continues to advocate for immigrants.

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