A long-delayed memorial to fallen combatants of the Vietnam War will finally be unveiled at the San Jose Vietnamese Heritage Garden, a planned cultural gathering space that has been stymied by community division.
The life-size statue of two armed soldiers, an American and a South Vietnamese, could be ready for public viewing this month or early July. It would mark a major milestone in turning the Kelley Park garden into a community oasis and homage to the Vietnamese enclave of San Jose, the largest city outside of Vietnam. The concept emerged almost 40 years ago, but has since gone through different eras of leadership, stalling several times due to unstable funding and disputes over who was in charge. The statue, meanwhile, was a separate effort. Now the two are brought together in one location through a combination of city and county funding.
The challenge of unifying the town under a single vision became a source of both hope and friction within the Vietnamese community of San José.
“The fact that we are finally getting somewhere, that we are moving forward, is because we have come to the point of recognizing that if we want something, we have to stop arguing among ourselves about where it should be and what it should look like,” he told San José Spotlight Huy Tran, executive director of the Immigrant Rights and Education Services Network. “We make more progress by working together than by simply trying to fight each other.”
Vincent Pham said the statues will commemorate the unique struggle of Vietnamese refugees. Pham is the son of Vietnamese-American community leader Nam Pham, who helped organize an annual event called “Thank You, America” to express gratitude to the United States for giving refugees a new home. He said he hopes to uphold his father’s legacy of organizing and community service.
“We bring with us the trauma of war and other horrors that faced the refugee experience through our parents, our grandparents, our family, but it is up to us to navigate and continue that history,” he told San José. Stand out.
A statue of two soldiers.
The idea for the statue arose before the city about 20 years ago, with the goal of honoring the American and South Vietnamese soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War that ended in 1975. Over the years, residents felt frustrated by the lack of progress and broken promises.
As Councilman Bien Doan, who represents the area, and other San Jose officials shoveled dirt at the project’s groundbreaking in May, Tran said he won’t believe it until he sees it.
“There has been delay after delay and repeated promises,” he told San José Spotlight. “I almost don’t want to celebrate too much.”
In spring 2019, San Jose secured a $210,000 grant for the monument from Santa Clara County with the help of Supervisor Cindy Chavez. But plans fell apart during the pandemic. In early 2020, Maya Esparza, area councilwoman at the time, pivoted to respond to COVID needs.
But the effort dates back to state Sen. Dave Cortese, who served on the San Jose City Council from 2001 to 2008. He was the first city official to push for the statue.
As a councillor, Cortese helped secure an initial location for the monument on Tully Road. Developments such as Little Saigon and the garden were not considered because they had not yet been developed. The project then passed to Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American elected to the San Jose City Council. But the project was shelved when Nguyen faced fierce backlash over Little Saigon’s naming in 2008.
Some residents formed a committee and advocated for the monument to be placed in McEntee Plaza. That proposal died in 2015 after an outcry from others who said it was inappropriate to have a war memorial next to a plaza honoring Jim McEntee, a peace advocate.
Garden trapped in limbo
Meanwhile, plans for the garden progressed in fits and starts during the same period.
Following her historic victory in 2005 as the first Vietnamese American councilwoman in San Jose, Nguyen began pushing the heritage garden project at City Hall. But it wasn’t until she became vice mayor six years later that the project took off.
“The unveiling of the monument marks a milestone for the Vietnamese American community as well as the city of San José,” Nguyen told San José Spotlight. “It is the culmination of hard work, patience and solidarity within the Vietnamese American community for more than 20 years. “I am excited to witness history being made here in our community.”
As part of the garden, the visionaries proposed a series of ideas for mini-replicas of historical Vietnamese structures, such as the One Pillar Pagoda, the Hùng Temple, the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady and the Tomb of Lê Văn Duyệt. Like the Japanese Friendship Garden located at the other end of Kelley Park, the garden at one time envisioned a reflecting pond filled with lotus, an iconic aquatic flower in Vietnam.
The vision for the garden changed over the years, but support never waned. While advocates mobilized the city for funding, the Vietnamese Heritage Society, a local nonprofit, was tasked with designing and building the garden.
Between 2006 and 2012, the project received more than $2 million in funding from the city, county and state. The heritage society also raised more than $1 million from residents to bring the garden to life.
The garden began construction in 2011, but construction was halted after the city claimed inadequate management by the Vietnamese Heritage Society, an allegation. the nonprofit organization in dispute. But delays proved costly as construction costs rose. The heritage society was only able to complete the first phase of the project, which included the imperial gate, a parking lot and three masts.
In 2016, the city cut ties with the heritage society and took over the project, saying the site was a health and safety hazard, according to a city memo. In total, more than $3.5 million had been spent, but the project remained unfinished.
Little has been done since then, other than the garden getting several dozen new community projects. garden plots in 2021 for residents to grow their vegetables. But after the community disagreed on the location of the soldiers’ monuments, the garden emerged as the ideal option.
“This was all accomplished through that network of old-school refugees who wanted to build a monument to leave their legacy,” Tran said.
The heritage garden represents both the Vietnamese community’s potential and its obstacles over the years, said Lam Nguyen, chief of staff to San Jose Councilman David Cohen.
“Although we are now nearing completion, it serves as both a reminder of those shortcomings and the need to come together as a community,” he told San José Spotlight.
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.
