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Adoption
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US Operation Babylift ‘orphans’ are still seeking their Vietnamese parents, more than 40 years on

  • In the final days of the Vietnam war, Operation Babylift evacuated 3,000 children and took them to the West to be adopted.
  • Not all were orphans; many of them, now middle-aged adults, are still searching for their roots

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Children aboard an Operation Babylift flight at the end of the Vietnam war. Photo: AP
Sen Nguyen

When David Matthew Redmon met his birth mother at Saigon airport, it was as if his own ghost were being laid to rest.

“For more than 40 years, my mother lived with the thought that she had killed her son,” says David, 47, as he recalls finally meeting the woman from his faded childhood dreams.

On that day in August 2015, David had flown to Ho Chi Minh City from Boston, where he was brought up by adoptive parents. He spent most of the 20 or so hours in the air rehearsing every possible scenario, yet still it was not enough to prepare him. As he passed immigration at Tan Son Nhat International he saw an elderly lady dressed in a purple ao ba ba , a traditional South Vietnamese garment, and suddenly it was as if those childhood dreams had come to life. “When that moment came, my emotions simply took over and I cried like a child.”

David Matthew Redmon and his mother are united at the airport. Photo courtesy of David Matthew Redmon
David Matthew Redmon and his mother are united at the airport. Photo courtesy of David Matthew Redmon
David was among the more than 3,000 children airlifted from South Vietnam in the final stages of the Vietnam war as part of Operation Babylift. The operation had been intended to offer Vietnamese orphaned by the war the chance of new lives in the West, but while it may have been well-intentioned, it has long been controversial. Not all the children were orphans; many were sent away by parents, driven desperate by circumstance, who hoped they would be able to reunite their families when the chaos of the war and its immediate aftermath had died down. These hopes were largely misplaced. Vietnam and the United States – where most Operation Babylift children were taken – did not normalise their diplomatic relationship until 20 years after the war ended in 1975. This stand-off, coupled with a lack of public records relating to the children in the operation, greatly stymied any efforts by family members to find each other. Relations between the US and Vietnam today may be far more cordial, but for many of these families, the rapprochement came simply too late.
US Marines evacuate civilian children during the final days of the Vietnam war. Photo: AP
US Marines evacuate civilian children during the final days of the Vietnam war. Photo: AP

MY MOTHER, THE SPY

David’s mother had been working as a spy for the North in the South Vietnamese military when she gave birth to him at the age of 27.

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