Held at the Donald Wash Memorial Auditorium, the daylong Vietnamese National Day event was the first time the international gathering has been held in Orange County. Historically, the event has been celebrated as founding fathers' day. But 12 years ago, a Vietnamese group proposed expanding the holiday to include a celebration of national pride as well. In Vietnam, the government celebrates Sept. 2, the day the Communists officially took power, as the national holiday. But for overseas Vietnamese, exiles of the war, there was no common day for national celebration analogous to a July 4 holiday here.
All countries have a day that celebrates their nation.
That first year in 1986, Vietnamese National Day was held in Paris. D.C. The event was especially welcomed this year in Orange County, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. One of the sponsors of the celebration, the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, an anti-Communist group, also has established an annual art and literary award to celebrate the works of Vietnamese artists and writers. It was a day to revel in the Southeast Asian nation's lengthy history, which spans 5,000 years. Not much recorded history survived from the first 3,000 years, but legends and heroes galore have flourished in the storytelling tradition.