In late April 1975 the war that raged in Vietnam for decades came to an end as the American-backed government of South Vietnam collapsed. Out of the territories that had once been French Indochina came over 200,000 Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugees fleeing by plane, by boat, or on foot. Some left under U.S. government auspices; others setout on their own.

This book is a chronicle of the 1975 flight of Vietnamese from their country. It traces the departure from Vietnam and the resettlement of 130,000 of these refugees in the United States and focuses on the process by which Vietnamese went from refugees to immigrants.