Children of the Dust - 4. The Fall of Saigon

I was twelve years old when I was handed an envelope by one of the nuns at the orphanage in which I lived. It was addressed to My New Vietnam Friend from Drew in Oakland. I knew I was supposed to read the letter inside and write one back, but at the time I had more interesting things to do. I stuck it in my pocket and went out into the city.

In January of that year, the North Vietnamese Army began a military campaign aiming to reunite their country after decades of separation and strife. Without the help of American forces, which had left after the Paris Peace Accords, the South Vietnamese were unable to stop the communist onslaught. They overran the central highlands and several coastal cities. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell on the last day of April of nineteen seventy-five, when forces of the North Vietnamese Army invaded the city, and captured the presidential palace.

The previous year, an Australian journalist had written an article about Child of Saigon Orphanage. He interviewed and photographed me for it; subsequently keeping in touch. He would drop by about once every other month, bring a couple of bags of groceries to the nuns, spend a little time with me, and leave some pocket change behind when he departed.

One day in the first week of April, a group of men and women showed up at the orphanage, my reporter amongst them. The nuns gathered all the children, explained we were about to get on an airplane, and fly to a place where we would be safe. Being older, I was handed an infant to look after, and loaded into a military truck. We were part of Operation Babylift, which saw thousands of children evacuated from Saigon to the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

While he chronicled the departure from Vietnam, and the arrival in Australia, I stuck by the side of my reporter. At the airport, soldiers, nurses, and volunteers flocked to the new arrivals, hugging us, comforting those who were crying, and wrapping the infants in clean blankets. The baby I had cradled through the entire flight was taken from me by a young couple, who thanked me profusely for looking after the little girl. I was told they’d responded to a notification in the newspaper, and offered to adopt one of the children from the orphanage. No one came for me.

Hours later, when I was completely exhausted, my friend put his arm around my shoulders and asked if I was ready to go home. I was certain he meant back to Vietnam, back to Saigon. I was wrong. He’d made arrangements to keep me for himself.