Children of the Dust - 5. The Search

I grew up in an affluent Sydney suburb, went to a private school, and eventually had two brothers and two sisters. The man who’d brought me out of Vietnam married shortly after his return to Australia―offspring soon followed.

You could say I led a sheltered life for the next half-dozen years. Because of the environment, I was spared much of the teasing and name calling children of mixed races often had heaped upon them. I was an Australian just as much as my siblings. My features revealed my heritage, but I wasn’t openly being called gook, slanteye, or Charley, as many of the Amerasians were in the countries in which they settled.

The plight of those who remained behind was much harsher. The Vietnamese government considered them an unwanted element, possibly subversive. Other children, and adults, treated them as sub-humans because of their features. Mothers rejected many because they were a reminder of what they had done during the war. There were no extended families willing to provide shelter and comfort. Poverty was rampant in Vietnam in the years following the war; Amerasians supposedly suffered the most.

My Vietnamese roots were never of interest to me. Being part of Operation Babylift was but a minuscule part of my life. I knew my mother had abandoned me at the door of the orphanage. Searching for her, as was sometimes suggested by others, would have been like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. For better or worse she’d made a decision which she must have felt was the right one at the time.

Thoughts of my father, however, were always in the back of my mind. My Australian parents had decided I should keep my name when they adopted me. They felt a change as a teenager might add to the chaos in my life. There was never any question I was adopted, hell all you had to do was look and my features and you’d realize I wasn’t a blood relative of my blonde brothers and sisters. So I was part of that loving family, but I was an outsider at the same time.

Dreams of my father began to frequently plague my sleep around the time I started year twelve. On the cusp of adulthood, a desire to find my biological father―the man who’s name I carried― became almost an obsession. My adoptive father, using his skills and resources as a reporter, supported and aided my search.