Among Friends in a New Land : Refugees: Vietnamese who arrive here without relatives to welcome them find a home waiting for them and countrymen who understand their plight.

SANTA ANA —  Outside an apartment on Silver Drive hangs a red banner with white Vietnamese words welcoming former political prisoners and their families.

Inside, five families share four bedrooms, with a mattress in the living room accommodating the fifth family. The garage next door houses four desks, a printer and a portable tray containing a tea set.

The apartment is headquarters for the Vietnam Political Detainees Mutual Assn., which sponsors released political prisoners and their families and resettles them in Orange County. The group’s 60 members, most of whom also are former political detainees, work in the garage and maintain the apartment as temporary quarters for newcomers.

“We also keep track of their morale, and encourage them to find jobs as soon as possible and adapt quickly to society here,” said 61-year-old Thu Duong, head of the group’s Committee to Support Political Prisoners.

Duong, a former South Vietnamese colonel who was detained for five years in re-education camps after the communists took over in 1975, was reunited with his family in San Clemente in December, 1989. That was five months after the United States and Vietnam signed an accord to allow political prisoners released from re-education camps to leave for resettlement in the United States.

The bulk of the political prisoners are former South Vietnamese military officers and government officials.

As of June, 4,852 released detainees and their 17,697 family members have arrived in the United States, according to the Bureau for Refugee Program of the State Department. About 1,340 of them have settled in California, and 422 of them are in Orange County, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. State statistics for the family members of detainees are not available.

There are still about 100,000 people--former prisoners and families--on the waiting list to enter this country, said Pamela Lewis, a bureau official.

Most of the former detainees were sponsored by relatives or friends living in the United States. But realizing that those who do not have connections here faced difficulty in leaving Vietnam, the detainees association was formed a month after the political prisoners agreement was signed, said Hau Nguyen, the group’s 62-year-old chairman.

The organization has sponsored about 400 of the former prisoners, Nguyen said. Fifty-five of them, along with 301 family members, have settled in the United States, and about 60% of them came to Southern California.

They first stayed with the group’s members until the families could help themselves. But so many of them were coming and they had so many needs, ranging from material to spiritual support, that it was necessary to create a halfway house, Nguyen said. Members said they pooled about $2,000, and in March rented the dwelling, which now houses 29 people.

Each family stays at the halfway house about a month, Duong said. From the airport, the new family is taken to the apartment, and their first dinner there is an occasion to celebrate.

“Everyone--families already at the house and several association members--sit down together for the first dinner,” Duong said. “It creates an intimate atmosphere where we can tell them about life here and answer their questions like one family member to another.”

On Wednesday, while the wives worked together to prepare the evening meal at the apartment, the new arrivals said having people from their homeland greet them at a huge airport in a strange country helped ease some of their bewilderment.

“I was like one who was living on the moon and fell to Earth,” said Phu Duc Nguyen, 49, a former chief battalion commander not related to the group’s chairman. “I never thought I could be living in the United States some day. . . . The reception was very warm and encouraging.”

He was detained for seven years in a re-education camp. Since the accord was signed, Vietnamese government officials have closed all but four of an estimated 200 camps and there are about 1,000 political prisoners still being held, newcomers report.

But the first secretary of the Permanent Mission of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United Nations, Pham Que, said there are less than 100 people still in re-education camps. He said he does not know how many camps remain. It is estimated that 100,000 people have been detained at the camps since 1975, he said.

Doug Pike, director of Indochina studies at UC Berkeley, said that number is closer to 1 million. Now, about 100 are left in less than five camps, said Pike, who returned last week from a research trip to Vietnam.

Whether they have been released from the re-education camps or not, those without relatives or friends here continue to apply to be sponsored by the detainees association, chairman Hau Nguyen said. The group receives about 15 requests a month.

The paperwork to process them adds to the expenses of the halfway house, which the organization already is struggling to meet. Each month, the association spends $1,025 on rent, close to $200 on utilities, $300 on household products and about $400 on office supplies, he said.

“We realize it’s a risky venture to rent this house,” Hau Nguyen said. “But if we didn’t, there would be no place for them to stay.”

The load has been shared somewhat by donors who send money--some from as far away as Philadelphia, members said. Others come with food, furniture and clothing. In the garage-turned-headquarters Wednesday, there were a dozen bags of rice, several bottles of fish sauce--a staple in Vietnamese cooking--and boxes of instant noodles donated by those in the Vietnamese community.

But in May, with $700 left in the treasury, association members thought it was time for a fund-raiser.

The group will sponsor a Vietnamese opera at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Church of the Nazarene in Westminster. Admission is $15.