OAKLAND - Old Glory and the flag of South Vietnam rose slowly, side by side, into the clear blue sky over Clinton Square to the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" followed by the anthem of the former Republic of Vietnam, the South's official name.

Then came a mournful tune "for our ancestors, for the freedom fighters, for the boat people, for everybody who fought for freedom and to escape from Vietnam," as Tuan Hoang, a master of ceremonies of Sunday's Oakland Tet Festival, told it. Then firecrackers broke the silence as the crowd cheered.

Three decades after the end of the Vietnam War and the Communist takeover of the South, the Vietnamese community is a vibrant piece of Oakland, evidenced in the many shops with Vietnamese names surrounding the square and the growing corps of politicians who show up at Tet, the annual lunar New Year's festival.

But in this community, which hails mostly from Vietnam's South, the wounds of war have scarcely healed with time. Their flag is still South Vietnam's yellow background with three red strips, not the hated red flag with the yellow star of today's Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Their capital will always be Saigon, not Ho Chi Minh City, as the victorious Communists renamed it.

"People from here refer to it as Saigon," said Uy Nguyen, 32, of San Jose, an insurance agent. "Even worldwide, people still say 'Saigon.'" Especially, in business circles, he added.

Many of Oakland's older Vietnamese are former members of South Vietnam's military, said Nguyen. His father, a former military man, was thrown in a re-education camp to be brainwashed, he said.

"When he came out of the camp, they said, 'You worked for the Americans.' He couldn't get a job."

Chi Le, 44, of Antioch, who sells real estate in Oakland, said her husband, a former military pilot, escaped Vietnam "with the boat people" a year before she and their two daughters managed to get out. The new regime "treated everybody in the South badly," she said.

"They pushed us out of the country," said Chi Le's friend Nguyen, speaking for all of Oakland's Vietnam-born.

Sunday's festivities began with a ribbon-cutting under an arch inscribed with the words "Chuc Mung Nam Moi" and "Happy New Year" and the ceremonial lighting of strings of firecrackers to ward off bad luck and demons. Two dragons danced to a drumbeat through the arch and on to the base of the stage, tantalized by a fan-wielding, masked man, Ong Dia, or "Mr. Earth, a holy person from Buddhism," according to Hoang. After more firecrackers, speeches and appearances by elected officials or their representatives, there was dancing and singing by local Vietnamese pop stars Nhu Quynh, Don Ho, Huong Lan and Phuong Hong Que and others.

Nguyen Duy Trung, 60, of Oakland, no relation to Uy Nguyen, is a former South Vietnamese Navy officer who works for the Alameda County Social Services Agency. Nguyen, who also helped organize Sunday's event, said he wants Americans to understand the hard line many local Vietnamese take toward the regime in power in their homeland today and offered himself as an example.

"I was put in a Communist prison for five years," he said. "I suffered a lot of hardship. After jail I couldn't get a job. So I ran back and forth between Saigon and Cambodia selling medicine illegally in order to feed and take care of my family."

His daughter, once the outstanding student in her high school, could not pursue a medical career. Nguyen, his wife and two sons eventually made it to the United States and his daughter will arrive shortly, he said. Today, the regime that threw him in prison as a traitor for his alliance with the Americans seeks good relations with the United States, he said, "so why did they put us in prison? It's unreasonable."

Other families had it worse than his.

"They lost their property; their house was taken by the Communists; their relatives were killed by the Communists or died trying to escape from Vietnam.

"We cannot forget. That is why we cannot get along with the Communists. Ever."