After the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, Vietnamese refugees built Little Saigon along Jackson Street, the district you are walking through now. The end of the Vietnam War triggered one of the largest refugee resettlements in American history: more than 125,000 Vietnamese arrived in the first wave, with hundreds of thousands more through the late 1970s and 1980s. Seattle's Vietnamese community, concentrated in this corner of the International District, built a neighborhood that served its needs — grocery stores stocked with pho ingredients and fresh herbs, bakeries making bánh mì, restaurants open early for the community's preferred breakfast.
Children of refugees became doctors, lawyers, and business owners; Vietnamese Americans were elected to city council and the state legislature. The food on Jackson Street — pho loaded with rare beef and tendon, bánh xèo sizzling in the pan, iced coffee thick with condensed milk — represents a community that arrived with almost nothing and built something that endures. Walk east on Jackson and read the menu boards; every dish has a story that began somewhere else.