It should be clear by this point in the book that although the collective memories of the American-Vietnamese War share the same subject matter, the way those memories are narrated within each of our three main social groups differs substantially. In the case of the Vietnamese Americans, to whom we now turn our attention, the most radical differences in terms of content derive in part from two historical peculiarities. First, unlike both the Vietnamese communists and the broader American society, at the end of the war the South Vietnamese experienced the annihilation of their governmental and political institutions, military forces, economic system, and mode of social organization: their state—the Republic of Vietnam—was simply snuffed out. Second, also in contrast to the communists and the rest of the United States, the individuals who would become Vietnamese Americans were displaced from their homeland to a foreign country. As we pointed out in the book’s introduction, when a collectivity understands itself to have suffered a significant calamity, one that fractures its collective identity, then if it is to persist as a collectivity, it must reconstitute its identity.