SoCal Vietnam vets memorial is a ‘disgrace’ and must go, official says

It was announced with great fanfare and hope: a memorial in the center of Orange County to honor veterans of the Vietnam War.

But two years and more than $1 million later, the memorial stands as an unlikely symbol of corruption and broken promises.

The memorial project is plagued by shoddy construction and, according to Orange County Supt. Janet Nguyen, mired in fraud.

Standing in front of the memorial, which has already begun to show signs of cracking, Nguyen said last week that the structure should be torn down and a new memorial built to honor Vietnam veterans.

“It is shameful. It is a disgrace,” Nguyen said during a Nov. 10 news conference at the memorial in Fountain Valley’s Mile Square Park. “We’re going to replace it. We gotta do it right because we owe it to these veterans.”

Aspirations for the project were initially high, with supporters saying it would be reminiscent of the memorial in the nation’s capital.

But its construction is rooted in scandal.

Former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do was sentenced to five years in federal prison in June after taking more than $550,000 in bribes and steering millions of dollars in contracts and federal pandemic funds to a nonprofit that, in turn, funneled the money to his two daughters.

In September 2023, Do allocated $1 million in taxpayer money from his discretionary fund to that nonprofit, the Viet America Society, where one of his daughters was an executive. The stated goal was to design and construct a memorial to honor Orange County’s Vietnam War veterans.

Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen wants to demolish the unfinished Vietnam War Memorial in Fountain Valley’s Mile Square Park.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

In a video announcing construction of the memorial at the park, Do described it as a smaller version of the Washington, D.C., Vietnam Veterans Memorial that would also recognize South Vietnamese armies that were allied with the U.S. during the war. Orange County has the largest Vietnamese enclave in the U.S. Many refugees made their home in the area following the communist takeover of South Vietnam.

But at the press conference, Nguyen ticked off the failings of the unfinished memorial — upright black slabs that are mostly blank and show visible cracks — and noted the scandal behind it. She said in addition to the memorial’s disrepair, no thought was made as to how veterans would reach the site, which is not wheelchair-accessible and lacks an easily reached path. Most veterans of the war are now in their 70s and 80s.

“What was the point?” Nguyen said. “They … put up these cheap materials that are getting worn down already within not even a year, just so they could launder the rest of the money themselves.”

A county report estimates that repairing the still-unfinished monument could cost the county between $168,000 and $420,000, and completing the engraving of names on the granite slabs up to an additional $40,000.

To make the site compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, the county could also be on the hook for an additional $1 million to add pathways, restrooms, shade and other amenities.

Demolition, according to the report, would cost the county up to $30,000.

Nick Berardino, president of the Veterans Alliance of Orange County, or VALOR, agreed that the memorial should come down.

“It looks in total disrepair,” he said. “It looks trashy.”

VALOR, which has also advocated for a veterans cemetery in Orange County, was listed as a co-sponsor of the memorial. Berardino said the organization supported building a Vietnam War veterans memorial but did not provide any funding or participate in planning.

Like Nguyen, Berardino said the current memorial should be torn down so efforts can start anew, if for no other reason than its ties to Do and the taint of scandal that would continue to haunt the memorial.

“It dishonors the service of the brave men and women whose names are on that wall,” Berardino said. “It’s time to tear it down and move forward.”

How the construction of a new memorial would be funded — or how demolition of the unfinished one would be paid for — is unclear, but Nguyen said she would work with the county and private donors to move forward.

“We’re going to make it right,” she said.

Nguyen was elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors after Do resigned from his seat amid the legal scandal. Do at one point worked for Nguyen as her chief of staff after she was elected to the board in 2007, but the two had a public falling-out when Do campaigned to take the county seat in 2016.

Do pleaded guilty and is serving five years in federal prison. Peter Pham, the founder of Viet America Society, has also been indicted on multiple charges of fraud. Pham fled the U.S. and is considered a fugitive.

Orange County has also filed a suit against Viet America Society, as well as Pham, Do and his daughters, among others, accusing them of using public funds for personal gain.

The suit, which is being heard in San Diego County, seeks to get the defendants to return millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

In a cross-complaint in the same lawsuit, Pham has in turn sued Do for $50 million, accusing the former supervisor of betraying their friendship. In the suit, Pham claims that the payments from Viet America Society to Do detailed in Do’s criminal case were not bribes, but loans.

Nguyen said the county received little to no information from Do, Pham or Viet America Society about how the memorial was built, what materials were used, or if it could be pulled apart to be moved.

When the county asked for details on the project, she said, Pham and the organization returned $150,000, claiming the project came under the $1-million budget, but she said the county still had no details on the structure.

“We don’t know anything,” she said. “We don’t know what was spent, and how it was spent.”

The costs associated with moving the memorial to another site, with the risk of damaging it further, or to fix it would be more than the price of building a new memorial, Nguyen said.

Instead, she said, the memorial should be taken down “for a few thousand dollars” and erected elsewhere.

She said the county was in talks with the city of Fountain Valley to possibly collaborate on keeping a memorial at Mile Square Park but was also considering building the memorial at an Orange County cemetery.

“We can’t continue to have this standing the way it is,” she said.