‘We were them:’ Vietnamese Americans help Afghan refugees

By AMY TAXIN
Associated Press

WESTMINSTER, Calif. (AP) — The crisis in Afghanistan has reopened painful wounds for many of the 2 million Vietnamese Americans living in the United States. It’s driven some elders to open up about their own harrowing departure to younger generations for the first time. It has also spurred many Vietnamese Americans to donate money to refugee resettlement groups to assist newly arriving Afghans and offer to  help. Television images of Afghans vying to get out of Kabul on U.S. military flights evoked memories for many Vietnamese Americans of their own attempts to escape a falling Saigon more than four decades ago. Seeing themselves in the Afghans left behind, many say the U.S. military departure isn’t the end of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan but the beginning.