Welcome

Welcome to my introduction of research into the Vietnamese boat people. Within this website, I will be introducing you aspiring researchers to the field of the Vietnamese boat people. Firstly, some context must be made. The Vietnamese boat people are the people who fled Vietnam via boat in order to escape the oppression spurned on by the advent of the communist Vietnamese government. The exodus occurred after the Vietnam War in 1975 and is generally considered, at least the major part of it, to have ended around ~1990 though there were circumstances happening past that point. The boats used to leave the country were typically overcrowded and highly priced, and many people died on these journeys. Approximately 200,000 to 400,000 people out of the 2 million who fled lost their lives. Further information is covered within the annotations section of this website.

Within the annotation section, you will find a list of annotated sources and key terms covering the Vietnamese boat people. These sources range across the specific topics of the boat people including stories told by Vietnamese boat people refugees, a diary of a refugee, policies of Hong Kong, efforts by an international French group, images of the boat people, and more. The key terms portion covers a few terms that you typically see when researching within this topic. Along with these, I have created a creative asset in the Journey Out of Vietnam tab that will take you through a click-through story in the perspective of a Vietnamese refugee.

To begin in this research, I suggest first reading Priscilla Koh’s “The Stories They Carried: Reflections of Vietnamese-Canadians 40 Years after That War.” Though it may not give the most in depth or worldly context for the boat people, she directly tells of the stories of refugees who had fled to the Canada. It serves as a great article in humanizing and help understanding what circumstances the Vietnamese boat people found themselves in from their decision to leave to their resettlement.