The people from the Indochinese countries of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam constitute one of the largest groups of refugees ever to settle in the United States.1 One of the major waves of immigration to the United States took place in 1975, after the American withdrawal from Vietnam. This prompted the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government by communist North Vietnam, as well as the defeat of the American-supported government in Laos by the communist Pathet Lao regime. Yet the violence associated with these two actions paled in comparison with the carnage that soon engulfed Cambodia.

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took control of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. During his rule, at least 1.7 million Cambodians died of starvation, torture, or execution, representing approximately 21% of the Cambodian population at the time.2 Survivors of what was later dubbed the Killing Fields were forced to work twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. The infamous Khmer Rouge operated a campaign based on terror and constant fear to keep their victims in line. By 1979, Cambodia's communist neighbor Vietnam had had enough of the brutality and invaded Cambodia, allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees to escape to neighboring Thailand.

Refugees fled in great numbers from the communist regimes that took control of Southeast Asia. Many risked their lives and fled on overcrowded, unstable boats, which constantly faced the threat of being boarded and capsized by Thai Pirates. The refugees were received in neighboring countries and placed in "first asylum camps", many of which were located in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The refugees, however, saw the disease-plagued camps as prisons. Visitors to the camps reported entire families confined to cubicles, not much larger then the size of a closet, in temperatures ranging from freezing to 100 degrees.

As public outcry for the refugees reached the United States, President Jimmy Carter called for a program to resettle 14,000 refugees in the United States every month. Soon after, the Indochinese Resource Action Center was established to assist in the domestic resettlement of the refugees and to put an end to the widespread suffering in Cambodia. More importantly, the formation of IRAC brought together government and private agencies, social service workers, and refugees themselves to develop and implement effective resettlement solutions.

In its first year of operation the staff of IRAC conducted extensive field research within the refugee community, which it used to produce a number of information reports and statistical updates, as well as a directory of national resettlement organizations and programs. Sometime later a "working group" emerged from IRAC's staff, and expanded to include representatives from voluntary agencies and private sector organizations, as well as federal, state, and local governments. The group worked to design and implement strategies around major areas of need, which included data collection and analysis, information dissemination, cultural orientation, training and technical assistance for practitioners, and Indochinese involvement in resettlement policy planning. In December of 1979, a national meeting of Indochinese resettlement practitioners and community representatives reviewed the working groups implementation plans and advocated support for emerging refugee self-help organizations, soon to be called Mutual Assistance Associations (MAA).

In 1982, IRAC was restructured to reflect the final initiative put forward by the working group, which called for Indochinese involvement in planning policies. A predominantly Asian-American board of directors replaced the Anglo-American board, and Le Xuan Khoa was selected as IRAC's first chief executive of Asian descent.

In June 1986, IRAC organized the first national Indochinese Community Leadership Convention on the campus of Georgetown University. Over 300 participants met for three days to address both domestic and international refugee policies and programs, and formulate plans of action for specific issues. Among the many achievements stemming from this convention was the passage of the Hatfield-Atkins Indochinese Refugee Assistance Protection Act of 1987. After its adoption, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield commented:

By 1997, the Southeast Asian refugee crisis had passed, and the board refocused its efforts on domestic issues and community empowerment. The following year, Ka Ying Yang took over as chief executive, and voiced her sense of SEARAC's new mission, stating, "Let's march into the 21st century joined by a sense of spirit for community empowerment, economic independence, political activism and social consciousness."4 Originally created during a crisis situation to stimulate cooperation among a diverse collection of public and private agencies, SEARAC has established itself as a voice of authority for the interests and needs of Southeast Asians across the United States.

The papers of the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, formerly the Indochinese Resource Action Center, document the struggle of Indochinese refugees throughout the world, with specific emphasis on their own self-empowerment. Serving as a clearinghouse for refugee and resettlement information, Series III of this collection provides background information on hundreds of Mutual Assistance Associations as well as government agencies on the federal, state, and local level. For historians studying the refugee crisis of the late 1980s, the correspondence located in Series IV provides primary source material documenting the plight of the Indochinese refugees. The public reaction to the crisis is illustrated in Series V through the tens of thousands of American citizens who signed petitions to the government voicing their opposition to the policy of forced repatriation of refugees. Series II contains a resource bank of hundreds of people across the United States who volunteered their technical assistance to recently resettled refugees. The assistance they provided ranged anywhere from financial planning to animal husbandry. Finally, this collection documents the shift of IRAC's mission of bringing Indochinese refugees to the United States, to SEARAC's mission of building strong Asian American communities. This information is located in the office files of IRAC and SEARAC in Series I and VI respectively, and includes board meeting packets, correspondence, activity reports, by-laws, and newspaper clippings.

The collection is open for research.

Cite as: [Indicate series, box and folder # here], Southeast Asian Resource Action Center Papers (Collection 3021), The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

The collection was donated by the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center in several accessions between April 1998 and April 2000.

Accession numbers: M98-03, M99-17, M99-25, M00-06

Processed by: Patrick Shea

Processing Completed: June 2002

The correspondence of Series IV is written entirely in Vietnamese and most letters are undated. The only apparent distinction among them was the original location from which the letters were sent. Although they all originated from various refugee camps in Hong Kong, nearly half were sent from the Whitehead Detention Center. Since the Whitehead letters were separated from the rest of the correspondence in their original order, they remain a discrete portion of the processed collection and provide the only organization in series four. As of 2002, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is actively seeking a Vietnamese translator to provide a detailed description of this series.

The Norman V. Lourie Papers (MSS 158), provide information on many of the same organizations found in Series III of this collection, including the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Services, The Center for Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement, The Department of Health and Human Services, The Indochinese Mutual Assistance Association, The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, The Refugee Policy Group, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Indochinese Resource Action Center to name just a few.

English.

Southeast Asian Resource Action Center http://www.searac.org/

The Cambodian Killing Fields http://www.dithpran.org/killingfields.htm

The Cambodian Genocide Program (Yale University) http://www.yale.edu/cgp/main.htm