When the North Vietnamese captured Saigon in April 1975, Vicky Ung was only twenty-three years old when she escaped the city with her four-year-old daughter.

“Her mother bought rat poison," she recalled. "Better that than to be tortured to death.”

Intensified by the ensuing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Vietnam War was nominally fought between communist-backed North Vietnam and South Vietnam. More than three million people were killed in the Vietnam War, and Vietnamese civilians made up more than half of the dead. The United States eventually sponsored the evacuation of approximately 125,000 refugees. Despite finding new homes, many immigrants like Vicky Ung still feel the loss of their country today.