VietnameseMusic inAmerica

end of decades of U.S. military and political involvement in South Vietnam, and beginning the influx of the first waves of Vietnamese refugees to the North American continent. At the beginning ofthe evacuation, the first planeload ofU.S. officials, their Vietnamese wives, and their Vietnamese collaborators landed at California's Travis Air Force Base on April 20, 1975.' The tragic exodus from Vietnam by sea began on April 30 and continued for a decade. In response, the United States and other major Western countries generously agreed to resettle within their borders the majority of Vietnamese remaining in Southeast Asian refugee camps. The U.S., which accepted the largest numbers of refugees, distributed them throughout all fifty states, although California and Texas were the two areas of greatest concentration. Large populations were also settled in New Orleans, Seattle, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and the Washington