by Dana Melius Anh-Tuan is a first-generation Vietnamese American, the son of Vietnam War refugees. His father is a veteran of the South Vietnamese Air Force and a political refugee; his mother fled the communist regime, a boat refugee. His father, great uncle, and grandfather all served for the South Vietnamese military during the war, and their flight out of a turbulent Vietnam was a harrowing journey. “They fled the day before Saigon fell,” Anh-Tuan said. “And every one of those on my mom’s side fled by boat.” Three Tong family groups eventually arrived in Camp Pendleton, California, finally settling in Hutchinson as Minnesota was “the only state that would take all of them,” according to Anh-Tuan. In the 1990s, Anh-Tuan’s father moved to the Twin Cities area, where he and his mother met and were married.