A few years ago, Van Ta Park’s brother was killed on a morning jog by a driver who ran a red light. When the time came, her father could not bring himself to board the boat taking the family to scatter the ashes of his only son into the ocean. In a flashback, he recalled fleeing the aftermath of the Vietnam War by sea as a young man and went into a sharp cognitive decline after the fresh tragedy.

Born in Vietnam, Park arrived in San Jose via Houston, where her family first touched down as refugees in 1980. With no memories of the journey, she asked her parents for theirs. Her mother recounted holding her, then still a baby, in front of her on the trip out of Vietnam because pirates were rumored less likely to rape women with infants.

Among refugees, such accounts were normally glazed ove

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