Reading about “Operation Babylift”, as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.
Thinking about Miss Saigon (1989), the first musical I ever watched, in 1996. Also thinking about the book The Girl in the Picture (1999) by Chinese Canadian author Denise Chong, which tells the story of Kim Phuc, the girl in that (in)famous Puliltzer Prize-winning photo. Kim later wrote Fire Road (2017, co-authored with Ashley Wiersma) but I didn’t get to read it.
Also thinking about Mirranda Burton’s graphic novel Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia’s War in Vietnam (2021). It is quite an eye-opening work, allowing me to see Australia’s side of the story for the first time.
Among all the online coverage of “Operation Babylift” and its legacy, the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library & Museum mentions the former US president authorised the operation because many of the orphans were “fathered by American military personnel”. A CBS news story in June 2025 gives a more specific number: “In April 1975, during the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War, there were some 3000 babies in the country that had been fathered by US servicemen.”
When the operation’s first plane out of Saigon crashed on April 4, 1975, a total of 78 children were lost. “The dead orphans were cremated and were interred at the cemetery of the St Nikolaus Catholic Church in Pattaya, Thailand,” says Wikipedia. I recall the song from Miss Saigon: “They’re called Bui-Doi, the Dust of Life, conceived in Hell and born in strife.” It saddens me because I grew up in a culture that designates April 4 as the “Children’s Day”.
(Day 60 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 