Bouncing off Vietk…
After all the bad adoption books and newspaper articles, I’ve become more critical of how adoption is written about. One thing I have learned to look for is “framing” which is basically the placing of a subject into a certain context in order to influence how it’s perceived. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
What worries me about OBL is the possible ways it could be used to set the stage for the framing of Vietnamese adoptions in general. This is another reason why I stress looking at OBL within it’s surrounding historical context. To view it as a strictly humanitarian act puts a picture in the mind. While there may be elements of truth in that picture, it is still incomplete.
Before, my feelings were extremely conflicted about OBL and still are in many ways. I was not a part of it which affects my point of view, however, I can relate to what many of my fellow Viet adoptees who were involved express in their stories. My concern here is not what they say, but what is said about and for them and how that might affect future generations.
I have been reading more about OBL from both a historical and personal perspective. While trying to refresh my memory of the old PBS documentary, I came across this:
As one adoptee’s mother says, “These children needed homes, they needed food, they needed medical care. That’s what was important. The political part of it was not important.”
Perhaps in the chaos of the moment, that might have been true then but that was over 30 years ago. I have no doubt that politics played its part in OBL. Still, I have to ask myself was there more to it? How many people told themselves that it didn’t matter if some of these children weren’t orphans because life was better with them? They were better. It didn’t matter if some of them had parents that loved and wanted them. It was such a small percentage anyway, so why should anyone care?
It matters to me, because I fear how much of that same attitude carried over into today’s adoptions from Vietnam.
People were adopting children from Vietnam before OBL and have continued to present day. This will likely only increase as it become more difficult to adopt from China, Korea and Guatemala which were previously some of the largest exporters of babies. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the history of adoptions from these countries. Korea is a prime example of what can happen when adoptions begin with war orphans and continue for decades afterwards.
A kind of savior mentality can be created in the minds of people who hold this view of OBL. This attitude can create all kinds of problems as many TRAs have tried to convey in the growing amount of adoptee authored literature out there. Not only can it blind an adoptive parent to their children’s needs, it can justify their reasons for being blind to them. Adoptive parents who unconsciously hold this view of themselves can give off subtle signals that may cause a child to suffer from “gratitude gagging.”
Some of my generation suffered as a result of this way of thinking, not only within our own families but within society itself. As a result, many of us kept silent while we were being indirectly and directly conditioned to hate and be ashamed of ourselves and where we came from. I have written about this before, so I’ll skip the details. Suffice it to say that I dread the thought of the next generation having to deal with similar issues. Yes, things have gotten better, but sometimes that only means problems haven’t gone away but simply become more subtle.
In regards to Amerasian children in Vietnam at the time, should OBL be cast as a humanitarian act or a duty? These kids were half-American. There is little chance that we’d ever know the exact number of Amerasian children born as a result of America’s occupation of Vietnam. According to War and Children, it’s 40,000 but who can really say where the truth lies?
If that number is even close, what does that really say? While America patted itself on the back for OBL, there were still thousands of children who were left to fend for themselves. It would also be nice to hear more of their voices, btw. It wasn’t until 1989 that Congress implemented the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act. It took over 12 years after OBL for the US government to officially recognize that these were also American kids?
Does it take away from the humanitarian aspect of OBL? No, I don’t think so. I don’t view Operation Babylift as a wholly good thing or a bad thing. There are many layers and individual stories involved and that is what I think should be remembered. Hopefully, the new documentary Vietk mentioned does just that.
Speaking of children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women, I have at least one cousin who is such….maybe more. I’m sure families back home weren’t often told of the existence of these children.
I wish I could know who this person is today. I don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman. I guess they’d be about my age. I suppose they may or may not even be in Vietnam. Whoever this person is, they’d be impossible to find. I just have no info. Although, I think I’ll email my mother right now. I doubt she knows much, but still I’m going to ask.
Thanks for the link to the reference PDF – 40,000 is a staggering number to think about…..
Isn’t OBL a wreck somedays? *grin* It’s like you have all these people who were against it at the time too, but like you said – was it more about duty and politics – and what does the lasting impression of it have on the parents who adopt from the country today?
Great questions you’ve posed.
Margaret, good luck if you try to find your cousin. I’m sure many didn’t know but there were many who did know. I linked a pdf from the AmerasianUSA website. A large number did try to contact their fathers once they reached the US only to be rejected. Sad. Only a small percentage agreed to meet with their children who were adults by then.
lol Vietk, conflict, conflict. It’s such a mess when I zoom out the lense. I don’t know. I can see why people would be against it, but on the other hand, I can see why people pushed for it. Then there are the different aspects. From my pov, Amerasians were in a different situation plus now, we have the gift of hindsight.
Another reason I think it should be kept in context is if there hadn’t been a threat to Amerasians, wouldn’t an ethical question have been more pronounced? Otherwise, it could have been viewed as government sanctioned kidnapping. That should always be kept in mind.
And what about the parents who seemed to have been coerced into giving up their children and later wanted them back? Shouldn’t that be examined as well? What possible ethical questions arise upon closer examination of the surrounding political and social environment? Questions. Questions. I’m still reading, but yeah, it’s a mess some days.
Sounds crazy but I don’t think the question of whether it was right or wrong is one we can answer in absolutes. To do that would be oversimplifying a very complex situation and set of events.
I guess a large part of my point is that OBL is one event with it’s own set of unique circumstances. It should never be used to “frame” all adoptions from Vietnam nor be viewed as a precedent for future attitudes regarding culturally/racially mixed children.
Sume, I started reading that pdf file to see if it mentions any online databases that I can check. The more I think about this the more it’s dawning on me that I also had an uncle that served in both Korea and Vietnam. My father was in Japan during the Korean War (and I know from my mother that he had girlfriends while over there). What if they had children they told no one about? I’d certainly like to know my relatives. Do you know of any major online databases to search for relatives related to the war(s)? TIA.
[…] 2nd, 2007 at 10:41 pm (FirstFamilies, Families, Geneology, War, Truth) ….this post Operation Babylift by Sume got me thinking about this for the first time in many many […]
Margaret, you could start with these.
http://amerasianfamilyfinder.org/?page_id=2
http://www.subicbaypi.com/subic_behind_c_p.htm
http://www.amerasian-childfind.org/about_us.asp
http://www.findmyamerasian.com/
If they aren’t of much help, they might at least point you to other places where you can find what you need.
Thanks so much, Sume. I checked those sites with my cousin’s (and uncle’s and father’s) last names. Nothing popped up, but they do have lots of other info. I spoke with my mother and she found out some very basic information…like that I have a male cousin in Vietnam who is about my age and that my cousin (his father) did keep track of him at least for a while. My mother called some of my cousins and they are going to ask my cousin (who is the father) more about who his son is. I feel positive that something will come out of it.
Thanks for this, Sume.
A nurse I worked with up in DC was a missionary in Vietnam and, according to her, was on the last OBL flight, so I’ve only heard her perspective on it. She actually ended up adopting one of the Amerasian kids (black/asian), and said she was supportive of her doing a birth search, but it didn’t sound sincere to me.