City of San Jose Proclaimed Black April Remembrance Month

Last Tuesday, at the City Council weekly public meeting, Mayor Sam Liccardo, together with Councilmembers Ash Kalra and Tam Nguyen and other members of the City Council, proclaimed Black April Remembrance Month in the City of San Jose to remember the Fall of South Vietnam in April 30,1975.

The Vietnamese American Roundtable, a nonprofit organization, composed mainly of many Viet-Americans born after the Vietnam War, accepted the Proclamation on behalf of the Viet-American community in San Jose.

The significance of Black April commemoration in the community is eloquently articulated by VAR on their Website -

Black April is a deeply meaningful and important occasion for the Vietnamese diasporas and is observed each 30th day of April. In 1975, this date marked the fall of Saigon and was the symbolic ending of the Vietnam War and the Government of the Republic of Vietnam. In the years following the end of the war, waves of tens to hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country as refugees--leaving as “boat people” to seek asylum and a new life in many foreign countries. Countless lives were lost in the open sea due to famine, disease, exposure, piracy, and more. Eventually, over 800,000 refugees were resettled in the United States and these communities have been thriving and growing ever since. The City of San Jose has the highest population of Vietnamese in any city outside of Vietnam.

Now, four decades later, the 40th Black April Commemoration aims to provide a respectful and meaningful opportunity to reflect upon the significance of a dark day in Vietnamese history and what it means to the millions of families of Vietnamese heritage that were forced to uproot themselves and start new lives in strange lands. Black April provides a unique opportunity for Vietnamese-American families to properly respect those who have sacrificed much for freedom and to help educate future generations of how their legacy was forever changed by the Vietnam War.