South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975. After ten years of negotiation between the Communist regime and the US government, the US agreed to accept some of the former South Vietnamese officials and military personnel who had spent years in North Vietnamese “reeducation” camps. Their families were allowed to come with them.

Hoang Xuan Thu, a South Vietnamese army captain, spent six years in prison camps. Even after his 1981 release, the family struggled, although they did receive a small amount of financial support from relatives in the US. Hoang and his family were on one of the first flights for “reeducation" camp prisoners, and they arrived in Seattle on January 17, 1990.

In this image, Hoang Xuan Thu (second from right) stands at Sea-Tac Airport with daughter Hoang Ngoc Tram (left), wife Phan Tui Nga (second from left) and son Hoang Xuan Tao (right).

Caption information source: “New life in U.S. for a Viet prison camp ‘grad’”, by Ron Redmond, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 18, 1990, pages B1, B4.