Out of the Fog

Summary

Out of the FogBy: Camille.BromleyDate: Apr. 21, 2025Illustrations: Nguyen TranOperation Babylift was an earnest attempt to save children during the fall of Saigon. Decades later, a generation of adoptees wrestles with the aftermath.In 1975, to hear the Americans tell it, the mass adoption of Vietnamese children was a story of rescue and redemption. These children were war babies, bụi đời, children of dust. A decade of death coupled with a thriving sex trade near US military bases had put nearly 20,000 children in more than a hundred orphanages throughout South Vietnam. By April, as the Viet Cong swept down the coast, mixed race children were said to be in danger. The Northern army would find foreign offspring and carve their livers from their bodies to eat, or so the rumors went. Out of fear and desperation, mothers relinquished their babies — many underweight, sick, or maimed by war — to the Americans. And the Americans took them away.The popular narrative of Vietnamese adoption began like this:In a Saigon school, orphans are cared for and rounded up before their departure for the United States in April 1975 during Operation Babylift.Photo by Jean-Claude Francolon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesIn a Saigon school, orphans are cared for and rounded up before their departure for the United States in April 1975 during Operation Babylift.`Photo by Jean-Claude Francolon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesAnd ended like this:Edna Deichl (left), wife of a Free Flight pilot, naps while Linda Reid (center), wife of the copilot, and Lillian Bradshaw (right), an orphanage worker, feed their charges on a flight from Seattle to Chicago, bringing Vietnamese children to their new homes.Photo by Barry Sweet/Associated Press1975, April 5 – Inside Aircraft - San Francisco International Airport – San Francisco, CA – Gerald R. Ford, Medical Staff, Nurses, Refugee Children, Others talking, holding children- Arrival of Operation Babylift Plane from South VietnamCourtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidenti...