Escape from Saigon (9 page)

After five hours in the air, the plane landed on the island of Guam, in the Pacific Ocean, to refuel and change crews. When the governor of Guam came on board to greet them, the Holt officials realized for the first time what big news Operation Babylift had become. Everyone in the world, it seemed, was interested in the children and was concerned about their safe evacuation from Saigon.

The crash of the C-5A focused the world's attention on the plight of the orphaned children of South Vietnam. In the United States, adoption agencies—whether or not they had any connection with overseas adoption—were flooded with calls. Not understanding that nearly every child was spoken for, good-hearted people stepped forward to help, offering to take the children. A toll-free number was set up in Washington, D.C., to handle the inquiries. At times, more than a thousand calls a minute were turned away by busy signals.

Three other flights also left the same day as Long's—another chartered Pan Am jumbo jet and two military transport planes. Together the four planes carried nearly nine hundred children to new lives in the United States. Forty of the children were survivors of the C-5A crash the day before. Another 263 children left Saigon that same day bound for Canada and Australia. By the time Operation Babylift ended, 2,242 children would be airlifted from Saigon as part of the U.S. government's pledge that all the orphans with homes already waiting for them would be evacuated from Saigon. It was the first time in history that the U.S. government had participated in such a project, working alongside agencies like Holt. The Holt Pan Am 747, with Long aboard, brought out Operation Babylift's single largest group of children.

An airman and a volunteer help children aboard a plane that will deliver them to their waiting adoptive families

*   *   *

As the plane sped on, cruising at a speed of 580 miles per hour, the Steiner family of West Liberty, Ohio, was traveling to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, to meet it. Although Long could not know it, he was a celebrity. When the interview conducted with him the morning of April 5 at the Holt Center appeared in newspapers across America, the Steiners' phone started ringing.

“How can my wife and I get one of those kids?” asked a typical caller. Jim or Mary then explained the adoption process, that they had been working two years on this, that much paperwork was required on both sides of the ocean. “But don't they have extra kids?” the caller would insist. “We'll take one.” And again the Steiners would try to explain how international adoption worked.

“Holt had advised us to keep things as quiet and calm in the family as we possibly could, so when Long arrived, he would have time to adjust,” Mary says. “But we were bombarded by people wanting to know how to adopt, and also by the press wanting to do stories on us. It was crazy.”

Oldest son Dan had to work, so he didn't accompany his dad, mom, and brothers Doug and Jeff to Chicago. They arrived at the airport two hours before the plane was scheduled to land. About a dozen other families were also waiting—and so was the press.

“I was so excited at the time that nothing could bother me, not even all the reporters,” Mary remembers. “I wasn't concerned about whether we would recognize our new son. I just knew we would. All I wanted was for that plane to hurry up and land.”

*   *   *

After refueling in Guam, Long's plane stopped in Hawaii, the final destination for several children. The next stop was Seattle, Washington, where the children destined for West Coast homes departed the plane. That left two more stops: Chicago for the Midwest children, and New York City for the East Coast children.

Long thought his journey to America would never be over. On the flight from Seattle to Chicago, he grew restless. The plane was only half full because so many children had gotten off in Seattle. The last two hours of his trip, no longer interested in his toys or coloring or looking out the window, he took out the photo of the Steiners again. He wondered why they wanted another child when they already had three sons. How different would he look from these boys? Would they like him? He practiced his English: “I am so happy to meet you.” “Hello.” “Thank you.” “I am hungry.”

When the huge jet finally touched down in Chicago, Long unbuckled his seat belt the first moment possible, even though he knew he had to wait in his seat until all his documents were checked again and he could be escorted off the plane. He tried to be patient. Couldn't they hurry up? Why did everything take so long!

After what seemed like forever, he was told to come to the front of the plane. He had to force himself not to run.

A Holt staff member walked with him into the airport terminal. A bank of bright lights from all the news crews waiting for the children suddenly blinded him. He heard cries of excitement on either side of him, and two small children ahead of him were scooped into the arms of their new families.

He searched the waiting crowd. What if the Steiners had changed their minds and didn't come? What if they had decided they didn't want him?

And then he saw them. He knew those faces by heart. The man and the boys reached for him, but he saw only her.

In one movement, he rushed into the arms of his new mother, and the two of them held each other so close that anyone watching them knew they would never let go again.

9

I
NTO THE
E
YE OF THE
S
TORM

Long was safe in the United States. But in Saigon, no one was safe. The North Vietnamese army was closing in on every side.

Fear gripped the city. When the Communists arrived, who would they single out to punish? How hard would life be after the takeover? Rumors spread that whole families were choosing to commit suicide together rather than live under Communist rule.

Three days after John Williams and Glen Noteboom flew to the United States as escorts on the plane transporting the Holt children, they returned to Saigon. They still had work to do. Bob Chamness met them at the airport.

“We knew the danger of returning, but since our April 5 flight, thirty more children had come into Holt's care,” John says. “We also had several children who had remained behind because they were too sick to travel on that flight. We were determined to evacuate all these children.”

John and Glen were surprised at how much Saigon had changed in just three days. At the airport gates they saw desperate Vietnamese begging and bribing the guards, hoping that once inside, they could get on a departing military cargo plane. The guards' uniforms were stuffed with money. People with nowhere else to go jammed the streets, making it difficult to get anywhere. Barbed-wire blockades and checkpoints were everywhere, though no one really knew why.

At the Holt Center, a few Vietnamese staff members still reported for work. Most of the children in their care were Amerasians. They had been brought to Holt either by members of religious orders who ran area orphanages or by frantic parents certain that Communists would mistreat or even kill them because they were half American.

John, Bob, and Glen assessed the situation. During the war, many Americans had come to Saigon to work for the American embassy or for one of the companies doing business with the South Vietnamese government. Marines continued to guard the embassy. Americans still in the city awaited orders from the U.S. government to evacuate. Only a few American planes were still landing and taking off at the airport, but because of the U.S. government's involvement in Operation Babylift, the men hoped they could arrange passage for the remaining children.

They began checking every possibility, not knowing how much time they had. Two weeks at most. A Catholic priest approached them and said he represented a group of American families who wanted to adopt Vietnamese babies. He was trying to find children to take back to the States with him. He had a satchelful of money and was going from agency to agency, offering any price for a child.

“He dared to ask us to turn over some of our children to him. I'm usually easygoing, but I was blind with rage,” John says. “These children were not for sale! We always tried first to help families find a way to keep their child. If we took a child into our custody, we did a careful home study on prospective adoptive parents before we approved them. We felt we owed this to our children.

“The priest couldn't understand why we wouldn't help him. But apparently a few desperate parents turned their children over to him—people were crazy with fear—because we heard a few days later that he had several children at the airport and was trying to get them on a plane. We also heard that U.S. embassy officials planned to stop him. I don't know what finally happened.”

By late April, Holt had secured a flight for the thirty-three children in its care. Once they were safely on their way, everyone at Holt breathed more easily. Bob, John, and Glen now had to figure out how to evacuate the Vietnamese staff and their family members who wanted to leave—one hundred people in all.

The biggest hurdle was getting them past the guards and into the airport. The three Americans tried several times to drive staff members through the gates, but were always stopped. No Vietnamese were allowed to enter—at least not without paying heavy bribes. The Holt staff wouldn't do that.

The situation in Saigon was extremely perilous. North Vietnamese rockets made direct hits on the city, adding to the growing panic. The president of South Vietnam resigned and fled the country. When U.S. President Gerald Ford announced that the Vietnam War was “finished as far as America is concerned,” he closed the door on additional military aid from the United States and sealed the fate of South Vietnam: it
would
fall to the North.

Even with the airport being shelled, crowds mobbed the gates, hoping to find a way out. Bob, Glen, and John tried everything they could think of to get their Vietnamese staff past the guards. With each attempt, they used different vehicles given to them by others fleeing the country.

Then it happened: one of the cars was allowed to pass through the gates.

“We realized it had diplomatic license plates,” John says. “Working as quickly as we could, we made trip after trip with this one car, taking as many people as possible each time. We were always afraid we'd be stopped, but finally we had everyone on the base.”

American marines directed the Holt Vietnamese staff and their family members to one of the few airport warehouses that still had space. The others were already overflowing with Vietnamese men, women, and children who were waiting for evacuation.

“We received assurance from American officials that our staff would get out,” John says. “Bob, Glen, and I were told that we must leave immediately or risk losing American protection, so we boarded another flight. That was on April 27.”

The men flew to Singapore, where they planned to catch a flight to America. But when they arrived in Singapore, a heartbreaking message awaited them. “For reasons we've never understood, someone from the U.S. embassy had showed up at the warehouse and made all our staff people get on buses. Unbelievably, they were taken
back
to the Holt Center. One of our staff members somehow managed to call our Oregon office, begging for help. But there was nothing anyone could do. Nothing.”

Lan was with the staff members trapped in Saigon. Though she had lost her daughter, Tai, who had gone on the Babylift flight with Long, she hoped she could escape to safety and live somewhere in freedom. When she realized that the Holt group could not leave, she decided to try one last possibility. She knew an American living in Saigon who worked for an international firm. He had once told her to contact him if she ever needed help. She did not know if he was still in the city, but she put through a call to his office. Both electricity and phone service had become so undependable, she could hardly believe it when the call went through and the operator put the man on the line.

“I'll try to help,” he said when she explained her plight. “My company has a private plane leaving tonight. Maybe I can pull some strings and get you on it, provided you can get into the airport. Go to my apartment immediately and wait for instructions.”

It took Lan two hours to make her way through the mobbed streets. She found a note on the American's apartment door addressed to her, stating that she was to go to a nearby school, where a car would meet her. Only half believing this, she hurried to the school. Within minutes, a car pulled up. The driver verified her identity and told her to get in. Traffic on the main streets was at a standstill, but the driver knew the side streets and got to the airport. At the gate, the car was waved through without stopping. The driver told her to go inside the terminal and wait until she heard her name called. She had only one small suitcase and her travel documents with her. She had no food or water and did not know any of the people who packed the terminal waiting room. She found a place against a wall and stayed there. Everyone looked nervous and upset. Some paced around and some cried, especially when they heard explosions outside. Lan could see smoke and fires on the runways from the Communist shelling, which increased every hour.