France, April 30 -- Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War continues to shape lives far beyond Southeast Asia. In Bussy-Saint-Georges near Paris, three generations of Vietnamese immigrants reflect on the conflict that forced their families into exile.

On 30 April, 1975, the fall of Saigon - the capital of Southern Vietnam - to the Communist-controlled North brought an end to the Vietnam War. A crushing defeat for the United States, it sealed the country's reunification with a Communist regime that remains in power to this day.

In the late 1970s, many Vietnamese people fled this new regime by sea. Around 120,000 of these so-called "boat people" found refuge in France. There are now an estimated 400,000 people either born i...