Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Camp Pendleton Thang 4 nam 2010
Từ Quận Cam lấy I-5 South, exit Camp Pendleton, qua cổng chính và tiếp tục trên VANDERGRIFT ROAD cho đến khi qua khỏi BASILONE ROAD phía sau sân bay trực thăng và địa điểm ngay góc BASILONE và VANDERGRIFT ROADS.
Lấy freeway 5 South to Oceanside exit DEL MAR ( trước khi đến Oceanside). Quẹo trái ( qua dưới freeway) và vào cổng chính CAMP PENDLETON. khoảng 5 miles trên VANDEGRIFT BLVD cho đến khi qua khỏi sân bay trực thăng. Sau 3 STOP LIFGHTS sẻ đến BASILONE ROAD phía bên trái.
Địa điểm CAMP PENDLETON RANCH HOUSE phía tay phài của BASILONE ROAND ngang sân bay. Rất dể nhận diện và đã được trang trí và hướng dẩn cho quan khách.
USMC Major Bill Mimiaga and Lt. Pham
Marine
Oct 9 2005, 07:20 PM
Ex-refugees, veterans gather
at 'tent city'
Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 20005101585
Story by LCpl. Brian J. Griffin
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (May 4, 2000) -- A quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, Vietnamese refugees and American veterans of the Vietnam War came together at the Hand of Hope Memorial Sunday at Camp San Mateo.
The ceremony served several purposes, said retired Maj. William Mimiaga, who oversaw Marines helping erect a massive 'tent city' that housed tens of thousands of refugees on base after the fall.
"First, it recognized the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which resulted in the creation of Operation New Arrival, the welcoming and the resettlement of the Vietnamese refugees to our country," he said about the ceremony.
Second, it recognized the positive contribution to our country and communities resettled refugees have made, Mimiaga continued. "We have schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, political appointees and, yes, even Marines who are of Vietnamese origin."
Third, it recognized the Vietnamese armed forces that were our allies in the fight against communism, Mimiaga said. "War brought us together as allies in a just cause, and peace, once again, brought us together in a day of remembrance for all those lost."
The ceremony brought together, shoulder to shoulder, the Vietnamese and American veterans who fought gallantly throughout the struggle in Southeast Asia, said retired BGen. Nhut Tran, a South Vietnamese general.
Many of the veterans who attended the ceremony, both American and Vietnamese, came together for the first time since the war, Mimiaga said.
"They immediately felt the old friendships and closeness, as comrades-in-arms and former allies. A lot of healing was accomplished this day and old friendships renewed," he added. "It was a heartfelt moment for us that only warriors and soldiers can understand and appreciate."
The refugees of 25 years ago came to commemorate their arrival in this country and to show their children where they lived before they were sponsored, Mimiaga said. "It also allowed the returning refugees, once again, to say thank you to the United States and especially to the men of the United States Marine Corps for welcoming them and taking care of them," Mimiaga said.
Saigon fell April 30, 1975. Refugees were already being transported to the United States by then, and work began April 28 to hastily erect the tent city.
"I was a Warrant Officer ..." Mimiaga recalled, "serving with the 11th Marines when the refugees arrived. I had a working party of 82 Marines helping to set up the tent camps.
"Having served two tours in Vietnam, I felt a tremendous personal sadness when Saigon fell. I welcomed the refugees with mixed emotions. Sadness for them losing their country and also for the tremendous loss that we paid with American lives."
"The Vietnam experience has left a scar on the United States and everyone involved. The ceremony here helped to continue the healing process," said Brian H. Ward, a Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war. "The healing process will go on for sometime, it is something you never forget."
Twenty-five years after the end of the war in Vietnam, a group of American and South Vietnamese war veterans and citizens formed a committee to build the world's first memorial commemorating the alliance between Vietnamese and American people during the war.
The memorial -- to be built on city property in Westminster, home of one of the largest populations of Vietnamese refugees in the United States -- will represent the sacrifice of 58,000 Americans and 300,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in the Vietnam conflict, Mimiaga said.
"It is a symbolic memorial for all warriors who (answered) their country's call."
For more information on the memorial, visit www.vnwarmemorial.com.
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,vietnam
Direction:
From the I-5 South, exit Camp Pendleton, go through the main gate and continue on Vandegrift Road until you pass Basilone Road on the far side of the air wing and the drive is first on the left, right on the corner of Basilone and Vandegrift roads.
Direction form Major Bill Mimiaga
Take the 5 Fwy South to Oceanside and exit off the Del Mar Exit right before Oceanside. Turn left at stop sign and go under freeway and into main gate at Camp Pendleton. Travel about 5 miles into Camp Pendleton on Vandegrift Blvd and you will pass the airfield on your left full of helicopters. Go through about three stop lights and you will come up to Basilone Road on your left. The viewing is at the Camp Pendleton Ranch House on the right hand side of Basilone Road across from the airfield. Easy to get to and they will have it marked well for visitors.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Story from Orange County Register
During April 1975, the State Department organized a two-phased operation: Operation New Life evacuated refugees to centers in the Pacific during the spring and summer of 1975, where they would be medically screened and treated and administratively processed. Operation New Arrivals covered their later movement to the United States and assimilation into American society. Two thousand Army support troops set up a tent city at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam capable of housing more than 50,000 refugees. A center was established at Fort Chaffee, AK and later at Fort Indiantown Gap, PA for U.S. reception. The first of more than 130,000 Southeast Asian refugees evacuated to the United States arrived on 2 May 1975. Over 90,000 received medical care provided by Army nurses at stations along their journey. 
The temporary housing facility for Vietnamese refugees erected at Camp Pendleton, CA, May 1975.
Also in April 1975, with Operation Baby Lift, Vietnamese and Cambodian orphans were airlifted to Army bases at the Presidio of San Francisco, Fort Benning, GA, and Fort Lewis, WA as well as the Marine base at Camp Pendleton, CA. The Army provided temporary housing and care for 1,853 of the 2,715 orphans evacuated to the United States before turning them over to voluntary adoption agencies.
The April 1975 refugees were only the beginning. Over the next 25 years, some 3 million people left their homes in the former French Indochinese colonies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, including 1.75 million Vietnamese land refugees and boat people. They found resettlement, mostly in Western countries and Australia. Of these, the United States East Asian Refugee Admissions Program resettled over 1.4 million Indochinese refugees, including some 900,000 from Vietnam. Countless thousands more lost their lives leaving Vietnam in rickety boats -- only to be preyed upon by pirates, battered by rough seas, and, at times, devastated by an inability to land in friendly territory.
The sailors of the U.S. Seventh Fleet came to the aid of seafarers during the peak years as U.S. naval vessels rescued thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" fleeing political and religious persecution and economic deprivation in the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
BY VIK JOLLY
THE ORANGE COUNTY / CAMP PENDLETON — The stark black and white images evoked deep emotions and vivid memories of the days when he helped put up tents, built latrines, hauled clothes and diapers and learned to cook rice.
The photographs transported Lewis Beatty back to 1975, to the first real contact with Vietnamese civilians the U.S. Marine had. The two tours of Vietnam during the war that left thousands dead on both sides is not something he likes to remember.
An exhibit of photos and paintings at Camp Pendleton brings back memories for Hoa Pham of Torrance who was a 22 year-old Vietnamese refugee at the Marine base in 1975 after the fall of Saigon.
But this was different. This had tears streaming down the face of the 72-year-old Marine who retired after 23 years in the service. This was a dramatic reminder of the toll war takes on people.
The Camp Pendleton Historical Society in conjunction with Oceanside's the "Big Read 2010," on Thursday opened "Images at War's End," an exhibit at the Ranch House on base featuring pictures of the thousands of refugees who found temporary shelter and got their first taste of American cooking here in 1975.
The exhibit that moved Beatty includes pictures of the first two weddings of Vietnamese refugees who lived in eight tent cities at the base, when Pendleton got about a 24-hour notice to transform itself into one of four U.S. military installations to house Southeast Asian refugees.
The gallery includes pictures of the first Protestant baptismal ceremony at the Camp San Mateo water training tank from May 28, 1975, the day 28 were baptized by a refugee pastor. A toddler and a grandmother playing hide and seek. Women doing laundry and children at play. Singer Rosemary Clooney entertaining. Then First Lady Betty Ford stopping by to visit with former Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky.
The images, shot by Marine photographers, have surfaced in the past but not as a full collection open to the general public.
The gallery, which also displays refugee camp paintings by then Col. Charles Waterhouse, is a poignant window into where the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam got its start in America.
Pendleton was the first base in the United States to provide accommodations for Vietnamese evacuees during the U.S. military's 1975 relocation effort, Operation New Arrivals.
More than 50,000 Southeast Asian refugees – a majority of them Vietnamese – came to the base as part of the largest humanitarian airlift in history. From the base, refugees resettled across the United States, including the biggest chunk of the immigrant population in Little Saigon in Westminster.
Phan Dang of Vista, then 27, arrived here May 21 through a circuitous route, she and her two siblings and mother shuttled to American bases just days before the fall of Saigon and ending up at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station before arriving by bus to Pendleton at 2 a.m.
Dang's brother, a South Vietnamese solider, went missing weeks before her family's departure and is presumed dead. She used to work for the U.S. Department of Defense in Bien Hoa, so her family was evacuated April 24, 1975.
Her family arrived at Pendleton with their life's belongings stuffed in two sacks that used to hold rice -- some photos, towels and sheets packed by her mom, a pair of scissors.
After a month at the camp, her family was sponsored by Beatty's commanding officer and so they got to know Beatty as well.
On Thursday, Dang and her sister, My – who was only 12 when she got to Pendleton – embraced the Marine, with whom they have kept in touch.
"We felt happy that we were here," Dang recalled of her family's time at the base.
"I can picture the camp," she said standing next to a painting at the Ranch House portraying camp site # 8, where her family found temporary shelter in one of the tents but little privacy because it slept alongside about half a dozen strangers on cots. "All I wanted to do was keep my family warm."
My got her first taste of hamburgers on base and recalled speaking no English when she and her brother enrolled in school, where they quickly picked up the new language.
For Beatty, who lives in Oceanside, the gallery takes him to his days working at the tent city, where he and his wife also sponsored two sisters.
During the Vietnam War "we saw things that no person should ever see," he said.
Then, after a long pause to collect himself, he added: "Here it was joy. In their kids, I could see my kids ... The hard times those people had to go through to assimilate into our society."
The refugees coming to America didn't affect the way Beatty perceived the war that claimed 58,000 Americans and 300,000 South Vietnamese lives.
"That was my job," he said, "I really didn't look at whether it was right or wrong. But when (the refugees) came here you looked at the little kids' suffering because of what the grown-ups had done ... It really gets to your psyche. You change your attitude about people in general."
The Pendleton exhibit will run through September.
Contact the writer: 949-465-5424 or vjolly@ocregister.com
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Camp Pendleton Thang 4 nam 2010
Từ Quận Cam lấy I-5 South, exit Camp Pendleton, qua cổng chính và tiếp tục trên VANDERGRIFT ROAD cho đến khi qua khỏi BASILONE ROAD phía sau sân bay trực thăng và địa điểm ngay góc BASILONE và VANDERGRIFT ROADS.
Lấy freeway 5 South to Oceanside exit DEL MAR ( trước khi đến Oceanside). Quẹo trái ( qua dưới freeway) và vào cổng chính CAMP PENDLETON. khoảng 5 miles trên VANDEGRIFT BLVD cho đến khi qua khỏi sân bay trực thăng. Sau 3 STOP LIFGHTS sẻ đến BASILONE ROAD phía bên trái.
Địa điểm CAMP PENDLETON RANCH HOUSE phía tay phài của BASILONE ROAND ngang sân bay. Rất dể nhận diện và đã được trang trí và hướng dẩn cho quan khách.
USMC Major Bill Mimiaga and Lt. Pham
Marine
Oct 9 2005, 07:20 PM
Ex-refugees, veterans gather
at 'tent city'
Submitted by: MCB Camp Pendleton
Story Identification #: 20005101585
Story by LCpl. Brian J. Griffin
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (May 4, 2000) -- A quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, Vietnamese refugees and American veterans of the Vietnam War came together at the Hand of Hope Memorial Sunday at Camp San Mateo.
The ceremony served several purposes, said retired Maj. William Mimiaga, who oversaw Marines helping erect a massive 'tent city' that housed tens of thousands of refugees on base after the fall.
"First, it recognized the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which resulted in the creation of Operation New Arrival, the welcoming and the resettlement of the Vietnamese refugees to our country," he said about the ceremony.
Second, it recognized the positive contribution to our country and communities resettled refugees have made, Mimiaga continued. "We have schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, political appointees and, yes, even Marines who are of Vietnamese origin."
Third, it recognized the Vietnamese armed forces that were our allies in the fight against communism, Mimiaga said. "War brought us together as allies in a just cause, and peace, once again, brought us together in a day of remembrance for all those lost."
The ceremony brought together, shoulder to shoulder, the Vietnamese and American veterans who fought gallantly throughout the struggle in Southeast Asia, said retired BGen. Nhut Tran, a South Vietnamese general.
Many of the veterans who attended the ceremony, both American and Vietnamese, came together for the first time since the war, Mimiaga said.
"They immediately felt the old friendships and closeness, as comrades-in-arms and former allies. A lot of healing was accomplished this day and old friendships renewed," he added. "It was a heartfelt moment for us that only warriors and soldiers can understand and appreciate."
The refugees of 25 years ago came to commemorate their arrival in this country and to show their children where they lived before they were sponsored, Mimiaga said. "It also allowed the returning refugees, once again, to say thank you to the United States and especially to the men of the United States Marine Corps for welcoming them and taking care of them," Mimiaga said.
Saigon fell April 30, 1975. Refugees were already being transported to the United States by then, and work began April 28 to hastily erect the tent city.
"I was a Warrant Officer ..." Mimiaga recalled, "serving with the 11th Marines when the refugees arrived. I had a working party of 82 Marines helping to set up the tent camps.
"Having served two tours in Vietnam, I felt a tremendous personal sadness when Saigon fell. I welcomed the refugees with mixed emotions. Sadness for them losing their country and also for the tremendous loss that we paid with American lives."
"The Vietnam experience has left a scar on the United States and everyone involved. The ceremony here helped to continue the healing process," said Brian H. Ward, a Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war. "The healing process will go on for sometime, it is something you never forget."
Twenty-five years after the end of the war in Vietnam, a group of American and South Vietnamese war veterans and citizens formed a committee to build the world's first memorial commemorating the alliance between Vietnamese and American people during the war.
The memorial -- to be built on city property in Westminster, home of one of the largest populations of Vietnamese refugees in the United States -- will represent the sacrifice of 58,000 Americans and 300,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in the Vietnam conflict, Mimiaga said.
"It is a symbolic memorial for all warriors who (answered) their country's call."
For more information on the memorial, visit www.vnwarmemorial.com.
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...light=2,vietnam
Direction:
From the I-5 South, exit Camp Pendleton, go through the main gate and continue on Vandegrift Road until you pass Basilone Road on the far side of the air wing and the drive is first on the left, right on the corner of Basilone and Vandegrift roads.
Direction form Major Bill Mimiaga
Take the 5 Fwy South to Oceanside and exit off the Del Mar Exit right before Oceanside. Turn left at stop sign and go under freeway and into main gate at Camp Pendleton. Travel about 5 miles into Camp Pendleton on Vandegrift Blvd and you will pass the airfield on your left full of helicopters. Go through about three stop lights and you will come up to Basilone Road on your left. The viewing is at the Camp Pendleton Ranch House on the right hand side of Basilone Road across from the airfield. Easy to get to and they will have it marked well for visitors.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPSMARINE CORPS BASE
BOX 555031
CAMP PENDLETON, CA 92055-5031
5750
H&M 31 March 2010
Dear Major Mimiaga,
Please accept my personal invitation for you and your family to attend our exhibit opening on April 8, 2010 at 10:00 A.M. at the Ranch House National Historic Site. "Images at War's End” is a special art and photographic exhibit depicting the refugee camps aboard Camp Pendleton after the Vietnam War. A copy of the announcement is included in this email.
To reach the Ranch House, enter the Main Gate of Camp Pendleton from I-5 in Oceanside by presenting a valid driver's license, current registration, proof of insurance and this letter. From the gate take Vandegrift Boulevard until you reach the complex on the left side of the road just past the Air Station and the Basilone Road traffic light.
The Ranch House is the last building on the right side of the driveway. Enter the main door across from the flagpole.
I look forward to meeting you at the opening. Thank you for your interest and support of Camp Pendleton history.
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CAMP PENDLETON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC. | |||||||||||||
Preserving a Rich and Colorful History | |||||||||||||
Several historic buildings serve as reminders of Camp Pendleton’s rich and colorful past. CPHS is dedicated to helping the Marine Corps restore and maintain these historic structures and to help build a visitor’s center and museum to give the public a better understanding of Camp Pendleton’s history and the exploits of its' Marines and sailors. For tours of the Santa Margarita Y Las Flores (Ranch House) or the Las Flores Adobe, contact Faye Jonason, History and Museums Officer at 760-725-3146 or send your request for a tour via e-mail. | |||||||||||||
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The Camp Pendleton Historical Society is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), corporation dedicated to supporting and promoting the historical programs of Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton by, * raising funds for the preservation of Base historic sites and museums, * promoting public pride and patriotism through an understanding of the historical, cultural, and architectural significance of the Base as mission land, a working ranch, and an amphibious training base, and * increasing public awareness of the Marine Corps role in preserving this national treasure. | |||||||||||||
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© 2008 CAMP PENDLETON HISTORICAL SOCIETY | |||||||||||||
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