Laotians in the San Francisco Bay Area (Images of America)

Throughout the 19th and up to the mid-20th centuries, immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Philippines came to America through San Francisco. The end of the decades-long Vietnam War changed the modern Asian American demographics of the city, this time with refugees coming from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The San Francisco Bay Area remains a hub for Laotian American culture, history, and community resources, and it has been a center for Laotian American advancement since the early 1980s. After calling the United States home for more than 30 years and battling the scars of war, a new Laotian American society is seeking meaning from its past while moving forward with hopes of a better future as Americans.