Collection is open for research.
Gift of The Immigrant Story, June 2021 (RL2021-057).
Van Dung Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1957. Her father worked for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, and later spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. After the 1975 fall of Saigon, she and her family attempted several escapes. In 1985, they were finally able to emigrate to the United States. She first lived in Portland, Oregon. In 1987, she and Thuong Le were married; they later had two children. The couple moved to Stockton, California, where Le worked in his family's restaurant. In 1991, the couple opened Phở Lê, a Vietnamese restaurant in Camas, Washington, while they lived in Portland. They later opened locations in Portland and Vancouver.
Oral history interview with Van Tran, by Sankar Raman and Shea Seery, SR 12330, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Van Tran was conducted by Shea Seery and Sankar Raman in 2019. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States.
In this interview, Tran discusses her family background and early life in Saigon, Vietnam, including her education, particularly learning languages, and her love of music. She shares her experiences during the Vietnam War. She talks about her father's work with the U.S. military and his imprisonment in a North Vietnamese camp. She shares her memories of the fall of Saigon in 1975, and describes her family's attempts to escape to the United States. She then describes the process of emigrating to the U.S. in 1985, including a stopover in the Philippines, where she taught English and met her future husband. She talks about her marriage in 1987, about raising a family in Stockton, California, and about opening Phở Lê, a Vietnamese restaurant in Camas, Washington, in 1991. She talks about the restaurant's success, about opening other locations in Portland and Vancouver, and about her and her husband's reasons for closing the Camas location. She also looks at photographs and talks about them.
Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted,
An article about Van Tran, "Putting Passion Into Work and Play" by Shea Seery, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at