Ma’s father, Vo Ma, worked with the U.S. military and finally brought the family to Tucson from Vietnam in the 1970s after several failed attempts to smuggle his family out of the country. Bao Ma remembers both of his parents working two jobs to support their three sons. He said his father worked seven days a week for 12 hours each day. They met at the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, 1288 W. River Road, earlier this week to record their family’s story for the center’s oral history project.

The center hopes to have the interviews completed to play at the Asian Pacific American Celebration on Saturday, May 7. May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage month.

“I would like to let people know that everyone who comes to the U.S. can become a business owner,” said Vo Ma, the one who started the family’s business.

Honoring and remembering their heritage is important, said Bao Ma, who has friends whose grandparents were part of the Asian population that moved west to work on farms and the railroad.

The Smithsonian exhibit chronicles everything from railroads in the West to agricultural work in Hawaii to Japanese internment during World War II to the influence of Asian cuisine to the labor movement and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, said Blackwood.