Sacramento engineer came to America among Vietnam’s “Boat People”
Now an engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, Karl Mai was among Vietnam’s “Boat People” – a term coined by the world press for the almost two million people who escaped from oppression in Vietnam between 1975 and 1985, following the fall of Saigon. “So many who stayed in Vietnam went to concentration camps and died,” Mai remembered. “We thought we were young and fearless to escape in 1981 … but really, we were just innocent.”