
IRVINE, Calif. — Spc. Quoc Binh “Bo” Tran always told his family he wasn’t in danger in Iraq.
When he spoke to his mother for the last time a week ago, he told her again that he was safe because he was in a support battalion, not on the front lines.
“Don’t worry,” said Tran, a member of the California Army National Guard.
Tran, 26, of Mission Viejo, died Nov. 7 after an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad.
His father, Van Tran, was a former second lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army who says he was captured and placed in a “re-education camp” after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Van Tran said that as a young...