What Was Operation Babylift?

Operation Babylift (hereafter initialized “OBL”) is popularly known as a “salvage operation”. In April 1975, under the manufactured threat of a mass slaughter of infants and children by advancing North Vietnamese forces, Western relief agency and orphanage personnel in South Vietnam, and finally the American government, pressed into action a daring “rescue” plan. Vietnamese children under the jurisdiction of these relief agencies and orphanages, and any other child that was handed to them or whom was picked up off the street, were to be sent out of the country and placed with adoptive parents in Western countries. Apart from this controversial plan, OBL is most well known for the crash of a C5A cargo plane in which about 148 people died, most of them children. By the time the Vietnam War officially ended on April 30, 1975, approximately 3,000 infants and young children were taken out of Vietnam for the purpose of adoption.

Although specific to Vietnam, we’ve learned that Operation Babylift actually fits into a pattern of American interventionism in Asia that includes Korea. The adopting out of Korean children in the 1950s proved to be a precursor to the adopting out of Vietnamese children in the 1970s for very similar reasons.