Summary:
Escape From Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy
Overview:Escape From Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy is the story of one of the orphaned children who was airlifted out of Saigon in the final, chaotic days of the Vietnam War.
Today Matt Steiner is an emergency room physician. But once he was a thin little boy living in Saigon, South Vietnam, with his elderly grandmother, who struggled to earn enough money to feed him.
No longer able to provide for him, she asked an American agency, Holt International, to care for him. Holt sought to find adoptive families in the United States for children like Matt. As he waited for a family, Matt struggled with his feelings of abandonment, first by his mother and then by his grandmother. He also worried about the war, which was drawing closer to Saigon.
Finally a family was found for Matt and he anxiously awaited the day he could join them. But in March 1975, South Vietnam began to rapidly fall to North Vietnam. Rumors of mass slaughter by conquering Communist troops put everyone in panic. As Communist troops encircled Saigon, closing off all avenues of escape except by air, Matt wondered if he would ever reach his new family. Like many orphaned and abandoned children, he was mixed blood--half Vietnamese, half American--and was thought to be at special risk should he still be there when the Communists took over, for in him flowed the "blood of the enemy."
Miraculously, the American government decided to help airlift orphans like Matt, and he was able to make it to his new family. For years he rejected his Vietnamese heritage. As a young man he had an opportunity to return to Vietnam, and there he confronted his past in his quest to find forgiveness and peace.
Overview:Escape From Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy is the story of one of the orphaned children who was airlifted out of Saigon in the final, chaotic days of the Vietnam War.
Today Matt Steiner is an emergency room physician. But once he was a thin little boy living in Saigon, South Vietnam, with his elderly grandmother, who struggled to earn enough money to feed him.
No longer able to provide for him, she asked an American agency, Holt International, to care for him. Holt sought to find adoptive families in the United States for children like Matt. As he waited for a family, Matt struggled with his feelings of abandonment, first by his mother and then by his grandmother. He also worried about the war, which was drawing closer to Saigon.
Finally a family was found for Matt and he anxiously awaited the day he could join them. But in March 1975, South Vietnam began to rapidly fall to North Vietnam. Rumors of mass slaughter by conquering Communist troops put everyone in panic. As Communist troops encircled Saigon, closing off all avenues of escape except by air, Matt wondered if he would ever reach his new family. Like many orphaned and abandoned children, he was mixed blood--half Vietnamese, half American--and was thought to be at special risk should he still be there when the Communists took over, for in him flowed the "blood of the enemy."
Miraculously, the American government decided to help airlift orphans like Matt, and he was able to make it to his new family. For years he rejected his Vietnamese heritage. As a young man he had an opportunity to return to Vietnam, and there he confronted his past in his quest to find forgiveness and peace.
Operation Babylift
Credits: Wikipedia
Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other countries (including Australia, France, and Canada) at the end of theVietnam War (see also the Fall of Saigon), from April 3–26, 1975. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been evacuated, although the actual number has been variously reported.[1][2][3][4] Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of children were airlifted from Vietnam and adopted by families around the world.
(Operation babylift was how long got to his home in America.)
Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other countries (including Australia, France, and Canada) at the end of theVietnam War (see also the Fall of Saigon), from April 3–26, 1975. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been evacuated, although the actual number has been variously reported.[1][2][3][4] Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of children were airlifted from Vietnam and adopted by families around the world.
(Operation babylift was how long got to his home in America.)
