Loan C. Pham is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of California at Berkeley. She studies the Cold War in Southeast Asia, focusing on the military and political interactions between North Vietnam and the communist superpowers. Her dissertation is entitled “Going Global: The International Relations of the People’s Army of Vietnam during the Indochina Wars, 1945-1980.” Prior to Berkeley, she earned her M.A. in International Relations from U.C. Santa Barbara, and served as a Southeast Asia country director advising the Secretary of Defense on U.S. policy. In this interview, she discusses her childhood in post-war Vietnam as the daughter of parents who served and supported South Vietnam. She addresses the final North Vietnamese offensive in 1975 that captured Saigon, during which her father was wounded, his internment in a reeducation camp, the poverty and ostracism she and her family experienced for having been labeled criminals, and her embarking upon a new life in America in 1992.
