Southeast Asian Diasporas of the Vietnam War (Spring 2025)

Courage and Resiliency: the Cambodian-American Women Oral History Project at Schlesinger Library has had a long and distinguished history since its original conception in the early 1980s. At that time, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were being resettled in the United States. The American people know little about the Khmer Rouge and its murderous regime (1975-1979) that killed an estimated 2-4 million Cambodian citizens. Although Cambodian women were less likely than men to be executed, they suffered a great number of trauma events including starvation, incarceration, torture, the witnessing of the execution of family members, abuse and starvation deaths of their children and sexual violence. Upon arrival as refugees in America, these women faced the incredible task of building a new life for themselves and their remaining family members.

The following pages contain photos, documents, resources, and videos from the HSLB Cambodian Community History and Archive Project.

This project, the first of its kind, will document the untold stories of Lao refugees in the US through audio and video media and create an on-line archive of interviews, videos, and historical documents. Currently, there are almost no existing oral history projects and little academic research that focus on the ethnic Lao refugees in the US. By creating a Lao Oral History archive, CLS aims to raise awareness within the Lao-American community and the greater population of the history, culture, and contemporary realities of Lao refugees in the US as well as the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA) Secret War in Laos in the 1960s and 70s. This project will disseminate the voices of underrepresented population, whose stories of immigration reflect unique moments in both Lao and American history, thereby building bridges between the past and present and between disparate cultures.

An open archive where individuals can submit artifacts and stories.

The Hmong Oral History Project works to connect the younger generations of Hmong, and the broader communities in which many Hmong live, with resources describing Hmong culture in Laos, the Secret War in Southeast Asia, and stories of the Hmong immigrant experience, facilitating greater intercultural and intergenerational understanding. This project was completed with the support of the Elder Council of the HAMAA, the Hmong Cultural and Resource Center, Concordia University’s Center for Hmong Studies, and Concordia University’s Faculty Development Program.

Nine interviews with Hmong Americans about their journeys and experiences.

The year 2015 marked 40 years of the Hmong migration from Laos and Thailand to the United States of America. To commemorate this special anniversary, an exhibition comprised of photographs, stories, fine art, and artifacts was create to showcase the Hmong experience.
Hmongstory 40 is a joint effort from many people from throughout the state of California. It represents a collaborative that shares a common vision. This exhibition provides a rare and intimate opportunity to connect with the Hmong people. From the past to the present, Hmongstory 40 constructed a narrative that was absent within the Hmong community and to the general public at large.

Legacies Library is a collection of books, films, articles, and oral histories vetted by Legacies of War that tells the story of the American bombing of Laos (1964-1973) and its neighbors in Vietnam and Cambodia. Legacies Library offers original programming including film screenings and author interviews that tell the living story of The American Secret War in Laos–ensuring it’s no longer a footnote in American history.

How do nations remember wars? Usually nations remember their own soldiers and citizens, and usually nations will build memorials to those who have died fighting their wars. But memorials help us to forget as much as they help us to remember. An Other War Memorial questions why nations should remember only their own, and why soldiers are the ones recalled in memorials. The war commemorated here is what some call the Vietnam War and what some call the American War. The people commemorated here are both the living and the dead, soldiers and civilians. Visitors can begin by clicking on a portrait to see the profile of someone who died in the war, survived the war, witnessed the war, or protested against it.

Sacramento is home to the third largest Hmong population in the nation. The Sacramento Hmong community continues to grow but not much is known about their life experiences. The goal of this project is to record the life histories of five Hmong Americans who came to the United States as refugees. Although the Hmong have been the subject of increasing scholarly studies, little has been done in terms of oral histories on the Hmong community. The project employed oral history methodology to record the personal histories of five individuals with regards to their life experiences in Laos, Thailand, and the United States.

Over 1,500 images and 4,000 textual documents selected from the Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine.

Thousands of images, audio, video, and documents, organized by collection and fully searchable, from the California Digital Library.

Digital collections and exhibits from the Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine.

Thousands of images, audio, video, and documents from the Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine organized by collection and fully searchable, from the California Digital Library.

Hundreds of audio/video oral histories with transcripts (English and Vietnamese) from the Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine.