Out of the Fog

Loading . . . Loading . . . Loading . . . Loading . . . Out of the Fog By: Camille.Bromley Date: Apr. 21, 2025 Illustrations: Nguyen Tran Operation Babylift was an earnest attempt to save children during the fall of Saigon. Decades later, a generation of adoptees wrestles with the aftermath. In 1975, to hear the Americans tell it, the mass adoption of Vietnamese children was a story of rescue and redemption. These children were war babies, bụi đời, children of dust. A decade of death coupled with a thriving sex trade near US military bases had put nearly 20,000 children in more than a hundred orphanages throughout South Vietnam. By April, as the Viet Cong swept down the coast, mixed race children were said to be in danger. The Northern army would find foreign offspring and carve their livers from their bodies to eat, or so the rumors went. Out of fear and desperation, mothers relinquished their babies — many underweight, sick, or maimed by war — to the Americans. And the Americans t ... Read full article.