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The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam

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"The Life We Were Given" is a beautifully and sensitively written account of "Operation Babylift," the harrowing evacuation of an uncertain number of Vietnamese orphans and non-orphan children who were boarded in orphanages because of wartime conditions. The title comes from a statement of a Vietnamese-American man who had been adopted via Operation Babylift; he is reflecting on his and other adoptee's need to accept and come to terms with the life he and other adoptees have lived because of their evacuation from their homeland. But, the book does not just give the varying viewpoints of some adoptees--also providing the nuanced perspectives of the birth parents, adoptive parents, orphanage and adoption agency operators and their staffs, members of the U.S. military, doctors and volunteers who helped in the days following the frantic arrival in the U.S. of flights of Vietnamese babies and children, South Vienamese locals, and a North Vietnamese communist who took over management of many South Vietnamese orphanages after the "fall of Saigon." Taken together, their reflections give broad scope to Dana Sachs's persevering effort to answer how and why Operation Babylift happened as it did, and what it means. The recollections of those in South Vietnam also give a fascinating and moving description of the frantic final weeks before the "Fall of Saigon." The almost daily descriptions of the plight, and the fears, of those in South Vietnam as they listened to the bombs and the fighting approach and as they heard the stories of the refugees who flooded Saigon while both the military and the rumors closed in. This backdrop frames the the agonizing decisions that birth parents and orphanage directors, in particular, made in haste and rising panic about the orphans` welfare -- including the fear of possible Communist mistreatment of the mixed children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. The harrowing efforts of one mother of such a child to save her child by giving her child up for adoption, and their poignant reunion decades later, is so intimately described that it is almost too painful to read. While taking a sympathetic view of the participants and their actions, Sachs does not shy away from addressing the wrenching moral questions the operation posed and continued to pose for the treatment of children in war, the failure to help those who were not evacuated, and for international adoption then and now. This is a deep and meaningful book.

History:

During the Vietnamese War, American soldiers average tour of duty was about one year. The American soldiers fathered and left behind many Amerasian children. The Vietnamese are a fairly racist society and they were prejudiced against the Amerasian children, especially the Amerasian children of African American descent. Many of these Amerasian children ended up being abandoned by their mothers or orphaned. There were a lot of orphans in Vietnam during this time, both Amerasian and Vietnamese because of the war. There were several international organizations that came into Vietnam to take care of the orphans. These organizations arranged international adoptions for the orphans that they were caring for both in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.

When it became apparent that the North Vietnamese were going to take over South Vietnam, many people, both South Vietnamese and international, were afraid that the conquering communists would kill the Amerasian children and punish their families. Because of this an effort was made to get as many Amerasian children out of Vietnam as possible. This effort became known as Operation Babylift. Operation Babylift only had time to evacuate around 3300 children. Most of the children were orphaned Amerasian children but there were some who did have living mothers. These mothers turned their children over to Operation Babylift because they feared that the communists would harm or kill their Amerasian children. These mothers often did not realize that they were turning their children over to this organization for foreign adoption. Some of these mothers were able to leave Vietnam and immigrate to the United States. When they arrived they found that their children had been adopted. It was very difficult for these mothers to obtain custody of their children.

Negative aspects:

1. Bashes America - The author makes the case that Operation Babylift was not very successful and that the United States should have left the children in Vietnam. The author basically accuses the United States of stealing the Vietnamese children. This book focuses on a few unhappy evacuees of Operation Babylift. The author also quotes a couple of Vietnamese sources who believe that the Vietnamese people would have stepped up and taken care of the Amerasian orphans when the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam. The author fails to mention the fact that there were thousands of Amerasian children that didn't get evacuated by Operation Babylift. The Conquering North Vietnamese did not kill the remaining Amerasian children as many feared they would, but the vast majority of these children who were left behind suffered from rampant racism whether they were orphans or not. The situation was similar to the South in the United States after the Civil War. Many of these Amerasian children starved to death or died of neglect. The survivors usually were unable to get any sort of an education. The Vietnamese rarely stepped up to take care of these children. The children who were adopted were treated as slaves by their "families."

This book is like the story of the blind men who found an elephant. They each took one part of the elephant to feel with their hands. One man felt the trunk and thought the elephant was snake-like. Another man felt the legs and decided that the elephant was like a tree etc. The author only looks at one aspect of Operation Babylift and makes assumptions that are inaccurate. Read the book "Surviving Twice: Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War" by Trin Yarborough to get better idea of what happened to the Amerasian children who were left behind. Then make up your own mind.

2. Dry - This isn't an easy read. It is pretty dry and boring but I finished it because I find it interesting to read different viewpoints even if they are slanted.

Disturbing read in that the author takes every opportunity to show America in an ugly light. Mistakes were made, no doubt about it, with this operation, but it was with the best of intentions to save these children. No statistics were given in the number of successful adoptions. The author provides anecdotal stories about some of the grown children trying to discover their origins. Quite normal for adoptees under any circumstances. However, the definite spin is that America is bad, bad, bad. The author tries to make her point that if the Americans had only left these children in Vietnam, the Cuddly Communists would have nurtured them and loved them. In truth, those kids would have lead extremely deprived lives (many would have died), but on the bright side, they would have been in their own culture--way more important than the opportunity for education, medical care, food, clothing, and every other life necessity. How myopic and racist is that??? The horrible insensitive Americans "kidnapped" these children--many of whom were desparately sick. By the end of the book, it was tiring to read.

To let your child live thousands of miles from you for a chance at a better life was a sacrifice many Vietnamese parents made. "The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam" looks at the history of Operation Babylift, where the United States government helped relocate thousands of Vietnamese children from war-torn Vietnam. Dana Sachs reflects on her past well, and gives new insight on these tragic events. "The Life We Were Given" is an eye opening and thought provoking read, highly recommended.

I'd rank this book right up there with Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." So many brilliant moments and vignettes - I can't decide which is my favorite. The scariest one was when the medical team boarded the plane in advance of President Ford and the description of the conditions onboard. Dr. Stalcup and his medical team are heroes. Not the only heroes in this story, hardly at all, but what a job! Sachs's relationship with her interpreter Thuy was also very telling, reminding us that after all, we can be close with folks from another culture, another world, the other side. I understand the author's reluctance to reduce Vietnam to another story about the war and only about the war, since there is so much more to Vietnam, but I am grateful that she carved out this small piece of that war and wrote about it so brilliantly. Years ago, before I went to Cambodia to cover the last stages of the civil war there, I spent a lot of time reading about the region -- including Vietnam and Laos, too -- reading about the wars, the endless wars, and looking at all the photography that came out of that place - so much of it was about the innocents, the very young and the very old. I realized that the real story of war has little to do with generals or troop movements, strategy or weaponry. Sachs captures that brilliantly in this book. The real victims are innocence and the innocent. Desperate people doing amazing things to rescue a homeless and hungry child. Lieberman and Taylor, Stalcup and countless others named and unnamed in this brilliant book remind us so clearly who it is that suffers most. Such a subtle work of writing, it evokes the depth of the tragic American experience in Vietnam -- as well as the horrific experience of the Vietnamese themselves in that bewildering and savage war. I cannot imagine the person who would not be moved by the story this book tells.

Sachs is the reporter -- among all the writers who wrote about that war -- yes, Sachs is the reporter who finally got the story right. This book encompasses all of that conflict within the story of those babies tucked in cardboard boxes under airliner seats.

To the cynics and the wags who cry Enough! No more books! Too many already! And too many about Vietnam! I would love to hand them all a copy of "The Life We Were Given," and say, You ain't seen nothing yet.

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in review of a book by Vance Bourjaily, Dana Sachs
is a friend of mine. I would plug any book she wrote but I wouldn't cross
my heart and swear that it was good.

I swear on my heart that Operation Babylift is a good book. No one ever
told me that as you age you get to watch your friends turn into artists,
much better than the ones whose works you enjoyed in youth, because you
know exactly what they are talking about.

Dana has reached into one of the comets that lit up the night sky when
were five and ten years old, the mad evacuation of a few thousand children
from the falling Republic of Viet Nam, and told its origins and trajectory
and how the tail broke up and what it portends.

She has talked to almost everybody and consulted the archives, here and in
Viet Nam, with a Fulbright grant but without the doctoral-level funding
which would have required her to frame and discuss the events in the
discourse of a discipline.

She can just say what happened. The discourse she does engage with is
common sense, the questions that are going to come up if you talk about
the Babylift. Were they orphans? What happened to the mothers? Would
the children have been better off in Viet Nam?

I don't have a lot of common sense. My father's father was placed in an
orphanage by living parents and farmed out to fosters as free farm labor.
My mother's mother was abandoned as a Jew to the French state and raised
with loving righteousness by a village that took in such as she for pay.

Pop hated the adults involved in his childhood and paid for all their
graves in grim glory. Grandmere longed for her mother, and then for her
foster mother and village, who got her out of France ahead of the Nazis,
all her life.

But I love the way Dana follows down every possible issue from the common
sense of people who are not yet aware that we are all orphans. She goes
to such lengths as to find the Communist who entered Saigon in 1975 to
take charge of its orphans, another woman of Saigon who was a child on the
same block as one of the evacuated orphanages, on and on.

The book is indefatigable, yet short. It glows with wisdom, nuance,
acceptance, compassion, all earned from asking questions I would never
ask. It also has uncanny charm, the gravity I think of an occulted
planet.

The one person Dana didn't talk was the prime mover of the Babylift,
Rosemary Taylor, one of those queen bees we all know from international
aid. She wouldn't cooperate with the book. Dana's deft presentation of
her nonetheless is a marvelous display of what it is not only to be from
the South but also to actually be kind and courteous.

Saints aren't saints because they are nice, or professional, or because
what they do makes sense. Taylor is a piece of work, who sent children
around the world because she loved every one of them as an individual,
whatever that can mean, in a world where every orphan also has family.

She glows in Dana's book like that maniac who stomps around Scripture,
whom we are all supposed to worship. It's a book about life as we live
it, the real stuff. Really should be in libraries.

Dan Duffy
Editor, Viet Nam Literature Project

This account of Operation Babylift allows the voices of those directly affected by the experience to speak out. From caregivers to orphanage workers, pilots to volunteers, adoptees to refugees, orphans to doctors, Vietnamese to American, and politicians to judges, all provide their important perspective in this compelling tour de force of Operation Babylift. The politics, the controversies, the chaos, and the lifelong impact of the Babylift are offered a place in the conversation.

For anyone who has any connection to the Babylift, this is a must read! Yet, even for one not involved or unfamiliar with the Babylift, it raises timeless questions about international adoption, the chaos of war, and how decisions impact real lives long after they are made.

Yet, Sachs does something provocative and unique in her account of the Babylift - she makes no judgment about the event. She leaves that up to the reader to decide. With so many perspectives and voices interweaving throughout the book, we realize how complex, and controversial, Operation Babylift truly was...

--Bert Ballard, Ph.D., Operation Babylift orphan (April 1975), international adoption researcher, Vietnamese adoptee community activist

This is a very good book and the person on the cover lives over in Superior, WI. That's where she went to college and met her husband.

What a wonderful read! In "The Life We Were Given" Ms Sachs brings back from history the heartwarming and heartwrenching stories from the Vietnam Era. We all heard about the Vietniam Baby Airlift so long ago, but with most of us it didn't really register. At that time our thoughts were not really with the families that were torn apart or with the Mothers who had to make an unimaginable decision. This book was written in a way that brought it back to life for all of us. The research and the time that went into all of the investigation is amazing. That Ms Sachs could tell this story without showing any predjuice is one of the best parts of the book. We are left to decide - was it a good thing in the long run, or not? - and how will anyone know? For some, the future was very bright, but not for all. Can even wellmeaning individuals go astray? So many unanswered questions.

I came of age in the Vietnam Era and watched my loves and friends disappear for years . . .physically and mentally, to a country they had scarcely heard of before the "Conflict". Dana Sachs tells the story of Operation BabyLift that I always knew - in a way I never heard it told before. Her story touched my heart and left me questioning my thoughts and feelings of the 1960's and 70's. I could not put this book down.