It’s a Saturday afternoon in Orange County. I just finished taking my dad around town to visit some old friends. After ten more minutes of negotiating through freeways and side streets, we ended up in Westminster, Calif., where he suggests that we find lunch. I reply with a muffled ‘yes’; I wasn’t unenthusiastic at his suggestion even though I had eaten so much Vietnamese food in the past week, but I was being overcome by a sudden wave of nostalgia.

The memories spin back through my mind as fast as freeway signs blurring and fading out from my vision: the large supermarkets with electric trains outside that run on a quarter; the usual stench of 555 cigarettes by the bustling coffee shops filled with middle-aged men who all bear a resemblance to a familiar uncle; and the unforgettable Asian Garden Mall with all its jewelry stores, arcades and drink stands hawking fresh sugar cane juice.

Borne from two Vietnamese parents, I feel that I am able to touch, though not fully grasp, the essence of the American and Vietnamese identities. I pass through cultural realms when I come home from school and step into the domain of my parents’ home, and when I drive to the Vietnamese American ethnic district known commonly as Little Saigon.

Throughout the years, events have occurred to show time and again, that the Vietnamese people abroad have not forgotten the war or their political roots. The communities’ reactions to: Truong Van Tran’s unwise public display of Ho Chí Minh and the communist flag in Westminster in March 1999; the visit from current Vietnamese president Nguyen Minh Triet in June 2007; the rejection of the officially recognized Vietnamese flag by the veterans and older generation; and the recent flurry of human rights incidents in Vietnam. What I am curious about is, if these events were to occur years later (from when they actually happened), how would the community react? I believe that the answer would depend upon the Vietnamese community’s knowledge of the exodus that spawned these communities and the war beforehand.

Tran’s communist display was a spark that set off a shot heard around all Vietnamese communities abroad. Had it not been for the police presence there, Tran would have most certainly met an untimely demise at the hands of an inflamed mob.

I observed two responses: the first being one of complete rejection and immediate condemnation from the elder generation who lived the war firsthand, and the second being an open attempt at discussion and dialogue from a younger generation that learned of the war only through their parents and books.

The younger Vietnamese Americans are unscathed by the war, making their thoughts on the war more open to dialogue and less biased than the older generation. Progressive thinking Vietnamese American college students who seek opening a dialogue with their generational counterparts in Vietnamese international students are shot down as communist sympathizers with no respect for South Vietnam’s history.

Is the solidarity of this community still safe if its people don’t all remember and share the same history? True, losing one’s history means losing parts of oneself. However, is this the appropriate reaction considering that there will be even more Vietnamese coming into these communities in America straight from Vietnam?

The Vietnamese from Vietnam have grown up in a nation whose version of history is quite different from those of the communities overseas; how will they fit in? So far, I see that some Vietnamese Americans keep quiet despite their feelings about Vietnamese communists’ moving to Vietnamese American communities abroad, while others have decided to accept their new “neighbors” so far as they (the new immigrants) don’t stir up trouble or bad blood like Tran did.

With the influx of Vietnamese—who were not citizens of the former democratic southern regime—coming into Vietnamese American communities abroad, and the gradual assimilation of the first generation Vietnamese Americans abroad into their host nations, the memory of South Vietnam erodes, ground away into dust over time.

With the gradual fading out of South Vietnam’s exodus history, will an ethnic enclave still retain? The path of the future, I believe, will lie with the next generation, not the older.

Growing up in the U.S., young Vietnamese Americans have a choice on what they consider their nationality, molded and shaped by the household. Some, immersed in their household and a local Vietnamese American community, will retain a strong sense of culture from their parents, while others who grow up as a minority in a predominantly Caucasian community will try to assimilate with the majority and lose part of their culture.

I see how the name or history of Vietnam would be as foreign to them as Latin in today’s school curriculum. Aside from simple dinnertime commands and home conversations, the average extent of Vietnamese spoken by first generation Vietnamese Americans isn’t very deep. I’m not so sure whether their lack of interest or awareness of the old culture is a result of choice as much it is a consequence of environment. Growing up as a minority, the children assimilate quickly to adapt. The loss of some culture is the cost of assimilation. So, whose responsibility is it to carry on this historical essence of the Vietnam from our parents’ memories? It’s not to say who is wrong or right in their “decision,” because it is what these individual decisions mean for the community as a whole that is significant. I would believe that, had Traàn’s actions been observed by a younger crowd more detached from the war than their parents’ generation, the response would have been more of a dialogue instead of swift harsh disapproval.

It brings to mind the various Vietnamese Student Associations at university and high school campuses. Like the formation of the expatriate Vietnamese communities, these student associations serve to unite the Vietnamese American students on campus and provide them with a sense of belonging, where the greatest comfort would be the common culture and history. If then, the VSAs would serve as a microcosm of the Vietnamese American community from which it is borne, for the younger generations.

But just how much culture and history can be passed on or shared by the younger generation of Vietnamese Americans, whose only knowledge of the history is secondhand? Having been brought up in the Vietnamese communities in America, France, the U.K., etc., many are already at a disadvantage of not being fluent enough in Vietnamese to read the literature written in these expatriate communities. As the student associations are becoming more tolerant and accepting of those recently arrived who don’t share the political history, does this mean that the community will follow suit with the younger crowd?

I’ll never forget the Little Saigon that I grew up around. Thinking of it now, I wonder just how much is going to be different when the next generation of Vietnamese Americans is growing up. I remember my father’s recollections and random musings of life throughout the war: what was lost, what was changed.

What do I tell my children when they ask of my grandparents, or of what I knew about our history? I used to think that, to answer their curiosity, I would only have to head down the freeway and stop by Little Saigon to show them the Vietnam War Memorial statue in Westminster; the yellow flag with three stripes proudly displayed at the heart of Bolsa, Calif.; and the annual marching Vietnamese veterans, honoring the flag and memory of a homeland lost to them so long ago.

The future belongs to the youth; but I only wonder how much of the past will be remembered in the future Vietnamese communities.