Escape from Saigon (13 page)

Matt and his wife, Laura, are the proud parents of Christian and Kate

A
FTERWORD

P
OSTSCRIPT ON
P
EOPLE IN THE
B
OOK

Matt Steiner
is an emergency room physician in Indiana. His wife, Laura, is also a practicing physician. They are the parents of Kate and Christian. When Matt and Laura married, Matt's brothers were his groomsmen.

Mary Steiner
has remarried and is now Mary Psolla. She still lives in the family home in West Liberty, Ohio. Matt's brothers and their families are close by.

John Williams,
former president and CEO of Holt International Children's Services in Eugene, Oregon, is now director of the Peace Corps in Thailand. He was a guest at Matt and Laura's wedding.

Glen Noteboom
lives in Palm Springs, California. He recently retired from his job of doing adoption home studies for Holt and other agencies.

Bob Chamness
is deceased.

Matt's teacher,
Miss Anh,
and Tai's mother,
Lan,
are real people whose names as well as identifying details have been changed, both to protect them and to respect their privacy.

O
PERATION
B
ABYLIFT

For many Americans, the rescue of the orphans airlifted from Saigon was the one bright spot in the otherwise bleak landscape of the Vietnam War. Like Matt, the children arriving in the United States, Canada, Australia, and throughout Europe via Operation Babylift were instant celebrities.

An American crewman feeds one of the babies aboard an Operation Babylift flight

In three days' time, planes dispatched by the American government and by private agencies, such as Holt International and Friends For All Children, airlifted to safety approximately 2,300 orphaned children, almost all of whom had already been assigned to adoptive homes abroad. President Gerald Ford flew to San Francisco to greet the first Babylift plane and carry the first orphan onto American soil.

The airlift had no precedent in history. Americans and people of other nationalities had adopted European and Korean orphans after World War II and the Korean War, but their passage to their new homes had been arranged by the agencies sponsoring the adoptions.

I
NTERNATIONAL
A
DOPTION

When the American government got involved in Operation Babylift, some people questioned the idea of removing orphaned children from their homelands to grow up in countries where they would be minorities and possibly be subjected to discrimination.

But this risk had to be weighed against the prospect of leaving these children in a country lacking resources to care for them. Far more children died of malnutrition, injury, illness, and neglect than ever got into stable care and finally to adoptive homes abroad. International and Vietnamese humanitarian groups, including Catholic and other religious orders, tried to help the children. Their efforts were heroic, but never enough. In some remote orphanages, where malnutrition was rampant, it was not uncommon for every single child to die when there was an outbreak of measles, dysentery, or one of many other diseases prevalent in poor nations.

The relief agencies placing children for adoption focused on children with no known relatives. A few, like Holt International, also accepted some children—Matt among them—whose parent or guardian had relinquished the child to the agency.

Most agencies had only the children's best interests at heart. But many groups got involved in the crush and confusion of the fall of Saigon, and subsequent claims challenged that some Vietnamese children who were airlifted and then placed in adoptive homes were not actually orphans. This remains an area of controversy, even decades later.

Not all children who went to adoptive homes in other countries adapted to their new lives as readily as did Matt. Because of the emotional and physical stress most of them had experienced before they reached stable homes, many have had long-term problems, ranging from ongoing physical problems to disabling emotional and learning problems. Some have suffered from feelings of displacement and isolation. They wonder what happened to their birth families, or they grieve for birth families they remember. Some have not felt accepted by their new families or have suffered imaginary or real discrimination. Still, most recognize that international adoption gave them the opportunity for a new life.

Life was difficult in orphanages during the war because few people were available to take care of large numbers of children (top). But kids had fun, too, like these youngsters learning to ride tricycles (bottom)

T
HE
A
MERASIAN
C
HILDREN

A significant number of the children adopted from South Vietnam were Amerasian, fathered by U.S. servicemen. No one knows exactly how many Amerasian children were born during the Vietnam War. A conservative estimate is 40,000. Because the Vietnamese have always been sensitive to “outsiders,” they can be biased against anyone of mixed race. Some Vietnamese referred to the Amerasian children as
bui doi,
meaning
the dust of life.
Because it could be very difficult for mothers to survive economically if they had mixed-race children, they sometimes chose to place their children with agencies that could provide a better life for them in adoptive homes overseas.

Glen Noteboom, an American social worker at the Holt Center, risked his life helping Holt children escape from Saigon in the closing days of the war

Peik Larsen, an Amerasian child at an orphanage near Danang, was reunited on a visit to Vietnam with the Sister who had helped care for him as a baby. Peik grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts

After the war, some Amerasian children, particularly those without families to protect them, did suffer discrimination. In 1987 the American government sponsored the Homecoming Act, giving permission for Amerasian children and their families to emigrate to America, and more than 22,000 Amerasians resettled here.

S
TATISTICS OF THE
W
AR

• Two to three million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War (from 1954 to 1975), along with several hundred thousand soldiers and civilians in bordering Laos and Cambodia.

• At least a quarter million South Vietnamese were sentenced to “reeducation” camps after the reunification of the country.

• During America's involvement in the war, of the 3.3 million Americans who served, 58,000 died and 2,000 were classified as missing in action. More than 300,000 Americans were wounded, many of them disabled for life. These statistics include medical personnel. About 10,000 American women served in the war. The majority were in the military and were nurses.

• The current population of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is 81 million.

M
ULTIMEDIA
R
ECOMMENDATIONS

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EADERS